City of War (8 page)

“We don’t assume liability for our customers’ cars, sir.”

“And I’m not claiming any. I just want to see if there’s a license number I can take down to give to my insurance company.”

Arkadios furrowed his brow. “I couldn’t do that, sir. What if you tracked the guy down and beat him up or something? Ralphs could get sued, and I’d lose my job.”

A woman walked up and asked Arkadios where she could find the ricotta cheese. After he directed her, he turned back to me. I leaned over his desk so our faces were almost touching. It made him uncomfortable.

“Arkadios,” I said, looking at his name tag. “Greek?”

He drew himself up proudly. “Yes.”

“Athens?”

“No, Santorini.”

“Ah, the Cyclades Islands. Paradise. Tell me, does Nick Pouliasis still make his famous lamb with rosé sauce?”

A smile came across Arkadios’s face. “I was a waiter at Koukoumavlos,” he said with pride. “Nick hired me when I was sixteen.”

“Then you are a responsible young man. Nick is a very demanding boss.”

“He said I was one of the best.”

“Arkadios, are you married?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Then I hope you’ll understand my problem.” I lowered my voice. “You see, I caught my wife sleeping with this guy she works with.” I heard Kim suck in her breath, but she stayed silent. “I told her I was taking the kids and leaving. But she begged, and she cried. Said she’d been crazy and stupid. That she’d never do anything like that again. So for the sake of the kids, I decided to give her another chance.”

Arkadios looked up at Kim, who must have looked properly shocked. I continued, “Then two nights ago, she comes home with alcohol on her breath and a big fucking scratch on the new Mustang I busted my ass to buy her. She says she stopped off to have a glass of wine with a girlfriend, then came here, where the car got scratched in the garage. I want to believe her, but I think you’ll understand I need to be sure.”

I saw Arkadios look over at Kim again, then back at me.
When he did, the apprehension was gone from his eyes. We had just become coconspirators. “I’ll get the key to the security room.”

It was more like a closet wedged between the meat cooler and the employee lockers, and there was barely enough room for the three of us to stand. But the technology was up to date—Panasonic Digital with almost unlimited memory.

“When were you here, ma’am?”

“Saturday, between five thirty and six.”

Arkadios expertly manipulated the equipment, and in seconds, he had the right scene. The camera was fitted with a good lens, and after a moment or two, the Mustang came into view at the entrance ramp. As Kim parked, the dark blue van entered the garage and stopped just inside the entrance.

Unfortunately, the camera was positioned so that only the van’s right side was visible, and it was too far away and the garage too dimly lit for me to make out any details. After a few seconds, an arm extended out the passenger window and pointed toward the camera. Immediately, the van backed out of the garage and disappeared.

We watched Kim walk to the elevator, enter it and the doors close. Then, from out of nowhere, a hand holding a can of spray paint came around from behind the camera. A finger depressed the valve, and everything went black. But not before I saw the seven-legged spider tattoo on the spray painter’s forearm.

“People are assholes,” said Arkadios. “If they’re not stealing carts or drinking a carton of milk while they shop, they’re vandalizing the parking lot. I’m afraid this isn’t going to tell us who scratched your car, but it does prove your wife was here.” He looked at Kim and smiled.

“Yes, it does,” I said. I nodded to the Mac on the small desk in the corner and said to Arkadios, “Do you think you could burn me a copy of that scene we just watched?”

“No problem.”

A few minutes later, Kim and I were back in the car.

“Thanks for making it so I can never go in there again,” she said tartly.

“You’ll be a celebrity.”

“Yeah, and next time I stop for a head of lettuce, Arkadios’ll check my cart for Trojans.” Kim lit up a Benson & Hedges. Exhaling, she said, “And what was with that Santorini business?”

“It’s one of the most beautiful—”

Kim rolled her eyes. “Save the travelogue. You’re not the only one with a passport. I was just wondering what you’d have done if he’d been from Helsinki.”

“I’d have asked him about the sautéed reindeer at Kappeli—and if Ari still sings the Love Song from
Carmen
at midnight.” While Kim chewed on that, I let a FedEx truck go by, then turned west on Olympic and accelerated into traffic.

Princeton Street is in a fashionably run-down Santa Monica neighborhood about two miles from the beach. The aging one-story bungalows sit on postage stamp lawns, and broken-down Dusters and RVs drip oil on driveways hand-poured by the original owners when they came home from Iwo Jima. During Rose Bowl week, when rubberneckers from Iowa and Michigan cruise SoCal streets in their rental cars, the color drains out of their faces when someone mentions that these places go for over a million.

Chez York was a cute little place with green shutters and a front yard full of cactus. Unlike most of its neighbors, the paint was fresh and the awnings new. I pulled to the curb in front of 429 and told Kim to wait in the car. Picking my way past a couple of dwarf saguaros, I peered through the front window. It was dark inside, but not so dark that I couldn’t see that the place had been trashed.

I went around back, past more cactus and a blue tile fountain, and found the back door jimmied. I pushed it open. The kitchen was a mess. Not only had the drawers been pulled out and dumped and the cabinets trashed, but whoever had
been here had also taken everything out of the refrigerator and thrown it against the wall.

Further in, they’d shoved the china cabinet over onto the dining room table and hacked at the furniture in the living room with a knife. They’d even cracked the television screen with the fireplace poker.

The master bed and bath hadn’t fared any better. Drawers were smashed, the bedposts broken off, and every mirror and even the shower door were shattered. The guy with the knife had been busy here too, slashing Kim’s clothes and the drapes. Same with the second bedroom.

But whatever this was, it was by design. Vandals usually aren’t thorough. They lay waste to a couple of rooms, then get tired. This was pros covering up a sophisticated search, and it confirmed my suspicion about why they’d taken her car. They’d been looking for something. I needed an inventory, so I started back toward the front to get Kim.

I heard the guy coming behind me, but the hall was too narrow to get completely out of the way. I didn’t know where he’d come from, only that he had a clear shot at my back. At the last second, I flattened myself against the wall, and the shovel he was swinging missed my head by inches. Instead, it hit me on the top of my left shoulder, clipping my ear as it went by and numbing my arm all the way down.

The force of the blow drove me to the floor, and the guy moved in for the kill. But instead of trying to get away like he expected, I rolled toward him, and his second swing whanged off the hardwood floor.

I aimed my foot at the front of his left knee and connected. The guy was wearing shorts, and I saw his leg bend too far in the wrong direction. The ligaments popped audibly. He screamed in pain, but instead of collapsing, he turned the shovel on its edge and brought it down savagely, like an axe. Fortunately, he missed, but the floor didn’t fare so well. The shovel hit a seam in the hardwood, splintered it and got wedged in the gash. It was all I needed.

I kicked upward into his crotch and felt the heel of my
shoe mash soft flesh. This time, the guy went down. Taking no chances, I rolled on top of him and hit him in the chin with two short, powerful shots. His eyes glazed, then closed. He was out.

“Gary! Jesus Christ, what are you doing in here?” I looked up and saw Kim. But Gary wasn’t going to be answering her anytime soon.

Shakily, I got to my feet and took inventory. There was no telling how big the bruise was going to be where the shovel had hit my shoulder, but nothing was broken. Kim was bending over the unconscious man, pushing his hair off his forehead. I finally noticed how big the guy was. Linebacker size.

“If you don’t mind my asking, who the hell is Gary?”

“Gary Wainwright. He lives next door. He’s got a landscaping business and takes care of my yard when he does his own. Do you think he needs an ambulance?”

Just then Gary rolled onto his side and began to snore, a common reaction when people are knocked unconscious. I looked at him, then at Kim, and shook my head. “What he’s really going to need is an orthopedic surgeon, but that can wait.”

Kim looked at Gary’s knee, which was already swollen to twice its previous size. I thought she was going to be sick, but she managed to keep it together.

We walked back to the living room, and Kim looked around, really seeing the mess for the first time. She started toward the kitchen, but I stopped her. “It’s just as bad in there. Everywhere, actually.”

Fumbling out a cigarette and clumsily lighting it, she sank down on her sofa with the stuffing hanging out and took a deep drag. “Why would Gary do something like this? I’ve always been nice to him.”

“Gary didn’t do anything. My guess is he saw the mess and came in to check on you. Then I walked in.”

“How do you know he didn’t do it?”

I explained why and asked her what she had that somebody
would want badly enough to risk a noisy, time-consuming break-in in a quiet neighborhood. “Let’s not kid each other, okay. You know, and I know, it was Tino and Dante—or somebody working for them. It may not be why they grabbed you, but it’s a loose end they wanted tied up.”

I watched her carefully. For a split second, I saw something in her eyes, then it disappeared. She pretended to run through a mental checklist. “I can’t think of anything, but let me look in the bedroom. See if my jewelry is still there.”

She was buying time. She returned shortly, shaking her head. “What a fucking disaster, but nothing’s missing.”

She was acting like a schoolgirl, so I pushed. I didn’t expect an answer, but I wanted to see her reaction again. “Cut the crap, Kim. Tino and Dante weren’t looking for a drug score. You have something they want. What is it?”

Again her eyes flashed, but she covered it more quickly this time. Now, though, I knew it was fear, not calculated deception. She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

I wasn’t finished. “If they found it before they grabbed you, it was probably in the van.”

She got angry. “I told you, I don’t know. And I didn’t see anything. Maybe you forgot, but I was a little fucking busy trying to save my life.”

There was a moan from the hallway. Kim got up, and I followed her.

Gary’s face was pale, and when he got to his feet, he was trembling from the pain in his knee and elsewhere. But I had to give him credit, he sucked it up and didn’t complain. He even apologized to me. “I was so pissed I just didn’t think,” he said.

“When did you notice the break-in?” I asked him.

“Only about fifteen minutes before you got here.” Looking at Kim, he said, “I was going to plant you a new cactus I had left over from a job in Brentwood, and when I came through the backyard, your door was standing open.”

We got Gary to the sofa, and he sat down heavily. Kim brought him a glass of water.

“Did you notice anything unusual the last couple of days?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yesterday. I had a Sunday re-sod over in Culver City, and when I left about 8:00 a.m., there was a dark blue van out front. Two guys. The driver flicked a cigarette out the window as I drove by. It hit my truck, and I stopped. The guy gave me the finger, and I gave it back. Smarmy-looking weasel, but I didn’t have time to stop and kick his ass.”

“So it really was them,” Kim said, not really to anyone.

“Then you know who did this?” said Gary.

Kim looked at me, so I answered him. “Yes, the question is why.”

“So you gonna call the cops?” asked Gary.

Kim shook her head. “What are they going to do? Paw through my stuff then make a report nobody will read. Waste of time. Theirs and mine, but mostly mine.”

That made twice she’d passed on calling the authorities.

A friend, Melvin Rose, runs a business that cleans up after fires and violent crimes. It can be revolting work, but people will pay a lot to get the smoke smell out of a house or not have to wipe up the viscera of a loved one. I never asked Melvin how he prices out a job, but he lives on the beach in Malibu, so he must not be bashful.

I got hold of him on my cell, and an hour later, there was a team of Russian women putting the house back together. Melvin hires only women and only ones from the old East Bloc. Says nothing bothers them, and they don’t steal.

“The men, they’re a different fuckin’ breed,” he told me once. “Loot a cathedral and get the cardinal to help carry out the altar. One showed up in drag once and snuck through. Broads on his crew almost beat the fucker to death when they caught him shovin’ a clock down his skirt. Now I make the new hires strip. Had a couple run out the door.”

Gary got up to limp home, and I told Kim to pack a bag so she could stay at my place. Besides the mess, the back door wouldn’t lock, so there was no point tempting fate.

I saw Gary look at her, and I realized he had a crush. Women always know that kind of thing, but the vibe from Kim was that, for whatever reason, Gary hadn’t gotten anywhere. Now, not only was his knee wrecked, but he also had to watch the guy who did it leave with the girl. I felt bad for him.

I called Mallory on the way, and by the time we arrived, he had the Toledo Room brightened up and the closets empty. I reminded myself to tell him to donate the clothes to charity. But I’d made that note before, and somehow it hadn’t happened. My failure, not his.

Kim wanted to take a nap—a real one—so I went out to my office to make a few calls and try to locate a photographer named Walter Kempthorn.

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