A World the Color of Salt (13 page)

“No. And I don't have a plumbing problem. The toilet flushes fine. The dishwasher works. Everything works.” She sounded piqued.

“Good,” I said. “That's one on the plus side, then. See, life's not so bad. And you haven't seen anyone strange hanging around? I mean no strangers?” She assured me she hadn't, and I told her to be sure, extra sure, that she locked doors anytime she went out, even to empty the garbage. Then we slowly began to make jokes about the toilet business, tee-hees you'd find funny in third grade. I told her the origin of the term
crapper
. She actually knew enough about it to argue with me, to tell me it wasn't invented by John Crapper; it was invented by somebody else, but she couldn't remember the name. I heard the softness return to her voice, the disarming Melanie Griffith tone. Then we talked about planning a ski trip together at the end of February, something to break up
the long dry spell between holidays. All the cute guys go skiing, she said.

And then, after I hung up, as if I'd been waiting for this moment all along and couldn't admit it to myself, I got out the phone book and looked up “Diving.” As in deep-sea. I had a Los Angeles phone book as well as an Orange County. “Divers” came right after “Ditching Services.” Then under “Diving” the boxed ads for several companies announced their specialties, including “Propeller Removal”; “Underwater Inspection”; “Salvage”; “Engineering Consultation.” I looked back at “Ditching,” and, on the same page, “Dishwashing,” and I thought about all the unique and possibly exotic jobs in the world, and all the ordinary and homely. With real people going to work every day, in real and separate places, figuring out the answers to engineering problems involved in digging ditches. Figuring out the unique choreography of automatic dishwashers: the belts and gears and brakes and motors. Brainstorming on how best to cable up and remove five-hundred-pound ship propellers. I'd forgotten ships
had
propellers. I thought how nice it must be to have a job where the opponent is inanimate, will sit there waiting for you, passionless, to get the better of it. Down the long list under “Diving,” I checked off three places, all in San Pedro.

The next day I asked for the afternoon off. Still a little weak, I said. I ordinarily don't lie, but I learned a long time ago that management doesn't want the truth, because
they
have to lie to someone then, and so on, upstream. Better to say you're sick.

On the passenger seat of my car was the map I'd pulled out for L.A.-Southern, showing the harbor area. I put the yellow sticky with my notes on it on top of the map and headed out the 5 to the 22, to the 405, to the 710 South, to PCH, to the 110 South, and then to Gaffey. Here was new territory. I needed a change. Patricia should be with me. She'd like the dockhands.

Communications patched me through to Gary Svoboda. I was parked with my window down on a sloping side street in San Pedro not far off Gaffey. Over warehouse roofs in the distance, I could see loading cranes at the wharves, and beyond that, a scattering of ships and barges silhouetted on a sky the color of bleached tin. Gary was off a high from two hours ago chasing a jewel-heist suspect around the parking lot of the Westminster Mall. His voice was strong and urgent when he spoke, the adrenaline still at work.

“So what's the latest on the Dwyer case?” I asked. “Did you take photos to the Mexican guy at El Cochino's—Emilio—what's his last name? Sandoval?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Well, why not, Gary? I thought you were hot after those two you thought maybe did it.”

“I forgot.”

“Shit, Gary.”

“Hey, listen, you want to hire me some help? I got one hour sleep last night. There's more of them than there is of us.”

“I don't think so, Gary.”

“My ears are ringing. My stomach hurts. I'm an old man. I should retire.”

“No way,” I said.

“Hey, the crooks are stealing Christmas.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“We had fourteen B-and-E's last night, can you believe that, and one murder. Two creeps grabbed a girl at a motel and handcuffed her to the balcony outside, went inside the room,
and screwed a twenty-five in her boyfriend's ear. We get called in for a canvass since we're in the area anyway. And that was the first two hours. You want to hear the rest?”

“Ah, you love it, you old horse,” I told him.

“I guess I could have somebody run a six-pack out there.” He was referring to a set of mug shots. “But I think it's a serious waste of time.”

“So's sitting on Harbor Boulevard watching whores go by, but you guys do that.”

“Look,” he said, “I'm supposed to talk to the Dwyer kid's father today. I want to talk to him a little more about the kid's friends, like that, though I don't think we got a problem there. Looks like the boy led a clean life. I'll bring a pack by the taco stand, then, okay? How's that suit you?” I said great. He said, “You know the case's pretty much been turned over to the homicide dicks, don't you?” Yes, I knew. The detectives, their progress, he didn't know. Harry Felton—who's that, I say; the bald detective, he says, the one with the arms, you ever see his arms?—Felton's knee-deep in an officer shooting happened over the weekend. The other one, Ted Reddeker, don't do nothin' but pick his nose.

I laughed at that, said, “That's not fair. People kill, pardon the pun, to work Homicide. He must do something, be good at something.”

Gary said, “Where you at, anyway?” He heard my phone cut out, go staticky. When I told him, he hit the roof. I let him get it off his chest while I was admiring the look of San Pedro. The sky was overcast, and the smell of the ocean drifted in through my car window. This was an area with an old-neighborhood look, of small stucco and clapboard houses and women pushing strollers along cracked sidewalks.

“You have absolutely no business out there, Smokey. None. Now, I mean that.”

“I can take care of myself. Don't worry.”

“First off, that's not your
job
, and second off, my chief hears about it and tells ol' Joe, you'll be supervising recess at Madison Elementary.”

“Let me worry about old Joe. He's not my boss anyway. What I hoped to find out from you, the reason I called you in the first place, is where Roland Dugdale works. You can do
that for me? You remember the name of the company?”

“
I
am the investigator on this case, not you, damn it. What's got into you?”

“Come on, Gare. You remember—I was a sworn once. I can do this. What would it hurt? Maybe I can help. It'll take half an hour out of my day and not encroach at all on
your
busy day. We could be a step ahead.”

“You could screw things up.”

“I'm not going to screw things up. I be cool, man.”

I could hear his brain churn, whether to continue chewing, or give me the information.

“Hannifin, I think. Hannifin Diving.”

“That's on my list.”

“What list? Now, listen, that's rough trade out there.”

“I'm only going to go ask general questions of somebody probably hasn't seen a pile driver in thirty years, somebody in the office, okay? I'm going to ask if they know what the tools are we found at the crime scene. Remember the brass thing and the wrench?”

“God! You removed the evidence?”

“No, no, no, no. Gary, you've got to have a little trust. I've got sketches is all.”

“I better come down.”

“Gary, you don't need to come down. I
said
I didn't take the stuff out, I'm not
going
to take the stuff out. Just the sketches. You come down, everybody gets paranoid. I told the guy on the phone my grandfather left these tools in a chest. And he bought that.”

“I think maybe Felton already made some calls. Had to. He would've talked to Hannifin by now. It's probably all in the report. I just haven't had a chance . . .”

“Gary? Take a Valium and call me in the morning, okay?”

“Christ,” he said, and I could hear him softening. He said, “You got hair, I'll give you that.”

“Got to learn to improvise, Svoboda. See, that's an advantage, I'm not in uniform.”

“If I tried that I'd never get away with it.”

“Your problem is you got too much of an honest streak in you, that's what. They'd read your little cherubic face. Better watch out, you'll make captain one of these days.”

He grumbled, but I knew he liked the suggestion. “When the cows come to roost.”

“Gary—ten-four, all right?”

I figured somebody must have checked on Roland Gene's alibi; otherwise, they wouldn't have let Roland and his brother Phillip walk out of detention Friday night. But if they hadn't, if someone slipped up, got busy on the weekend; if Reddeker really was a fuckup or friend Gary himself wasn't leaning on this as much as he could. . . . Then again, they couldn't really press the Dugdales too hard unless they arrested them on suspicion, and, like it or not, I guess they didn't have enough to do that.

I called Gary back.

“Gare,” I said. “It's Smokey.”

“In trouble already?”

“You're holding out on me. You've got other suspects, don't you?”

Silence for a moment on the other end. Poor honest dear. As mad as he was about the Dugdales, I could not picture him giving in so easily. He had to have other suspects.

“You get back, we'll have a drink, okay?” he said.

Okay. That was enough. When I hung up, I thought, I could call Harry Felton myself. But then there'd be two people pissed off at me and more chance of that getting back to my boss as well. Also, it was two o'clock. My appointment was for two-thirty. I had to find the place yet.

I squeezed out behind a slow-moving truck with lapping branches hanging off both sides and sticking through the slats at back. Not being able to read the street sign with the truck ahead of me, I missed my first turn. Then, doing a U, I saw a green pickup approaching at a high rate of speed. It startled me. I remembered Emilio, the boy at El Cochino, talking about a big focking green pickup. My first reaction was to do another quick U, chase that sucker down. But this one was a new model, and I figured, boy, I'm getting jumpy.

Passing dozens of holding tanks, I drove onto one of the land spits that separates the channels. Railroad tracks ran the length of the spit. I drove slowly, fifteen miles an hour, looking
up at the huge white tanks looming all around me. Through spaces between buildings I could see the gray-green water in the channel, and, on the other side of the channel, a few buildings associated with the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island.

Straight ahead, perched on top of a building, was a small tank resembling the Tin Man, arms and all, looking as if he'd query all who passed. Individual red railroad cars nosed into warehouse doors like huge battery packs plugged into mammoth outlets. Men on the platforms waved arms and lifted things, barely taking notice of a small white car creeping by.

Mr. Davis was a little man. He wore brown pants and a green-and-blue-plaid shirt buttoned to the neck and anchored with a bolo tie, the fastener a miniature diving helmet in dead-dipped brass to give it a “been around” look. Facing outward like a pig snout was a green glass representing the diver's sighthole. It looked eerily like a tiny camera, or a window into parts of Mr. Davis I didn't want to see. But Mr. Davis was nice as he could be, and he shook my hand with strength and liking. It made me feel not so good, to be here under pretenses. I never wanted to be a private investigator—wouldn't like the lying you just have to do.

“Well, you can come right in here, little lady,” he said, ushering me up the long wooden ramp from the driveway into the cavernous shop storage area, which was located in a corner of a warehouse. “This used to be Davis-Hannifin till I sold out a year ago. This here”—he was indicating a small vehicle of some sort, futuristic-looking, a clear bright blue, lying on its side—“is a motorized hull cleaner. It's got brushes on the bottom. A man rides it like a motorcycle right over the hull, scours off all the garbage. Ever seen one of them before?”