Dating is Murder (21 page)

“Tcheiko. What’s his story?”

“Interesting one. Convicted last year on racketeering charges, then escaped. Left the Feds standing there with their dicks in their hands, pardon the language. Two agents died and a couple more wished they had. Careers died. Escapes are bad. No one’s supposed to escape.”

I said, “So catching him might involve the DEA as well as the FBI?”

“Everyone wants a piece of this guy. Someone’ll get him, too, because he’s cocky. By the way—” There was a pause. “Happy Thanksgiving. I did a little checking, and you still want the address of that pickup you were interested in buying, grab a pencil.”

“The—what?—oh. Oh!” He’d called the DMV for me. “You’re a saint, Pete.”

“No, we’re friends. I don’t know anything about the truck, how many miles on it, so forth, so you’re on your own, if you catch my drift. And you didn’t hear about it from me. I have mixed feelings about this. I can’t check it out myself, for . . . reasons. So you have to promise me to take along someone who knows . . . trucks.”

I glanced at Joey, sitting on a table, long legs swinging, reading a copy of some glossy periodical called the
Robb Report.
I smiled. “I promise.”

“Vic Mauser. That’s
the guy’s name,” I said. Joey’s old Mercedes zipped west toward the Brentwood address Cziemanski had given me. “Sounds like an assault rifle. Shouldn’t we wait until daylight to do this? And what is it we’re doing, by the way?”

“Surprising him,” Joey said. “We won’t get a signed confession, but if we do this right, we’ll find out if he knows about Annika.”

“How?”

“By asking. He doesn’t expect it, so there’s this window of opportunity while he gets his story together where we’ll see it in his face. We only get one shot, but it’s perfect. Thanksgiving: wine, football, L-tryptophan, the stuff in turkey that makes you sleepy. He’s mellow.”

“He didn’t look mellow three days ago,” I said. “You really think he spent today giving thanks?”

“You think only nice people do holidays?”

I felt a qualm of conscience. “What about your Thanksgiving, Joey? Where’s Elliot?”

She kept her eyes on the road. “Atlantic City. Elliot thinks holidays are sappy. It’s okay, I got calls from four hundred family members, which more than compensated. You know, I bet Cziemanski can’t check out Vic Mauser himself because it’s not his case and it wouldn’t be cool. I’m also guessing he asked around and found out the sheriff’s guys don’t think much of the Annika-Rico connection. That’s why he went out on a limb and got us this address.”

“What about the FBI?” I asked. “Do you think—oops.”

Joey’s head swiveled to me. “Your boyfriend’s in the FBI? Not the DEA?”

“Oh, God. I can’t believe I just said that. I promised I wouldn’t—”

“Oh, boy, a Fed. A fun Fed, better than DEA. My cousin Stewart’s FBI, so— Look, Chenault. What’s the number?”

We parked on Barrington and walked to Chenault, a small street ending in a cul-de-sac, as Joey reassured me about my indiscretion. “It’s their own fault. Anyone who’s known you five minutes can see you’re not wired for deception. Where’s Vic’s pickup?”

“They must have underground parking,” I said as we reached the building. “Unless he’s out assaulting someone.”

“Wollie, check this out.” Joey pointed to the intercom box, with its dialing instructions and list of tenants. Code 004 was Mauser/Wooster.

“Vic Mauser . . . lives with Bing Wooster?” I said, confused. We tried on the possibility of Bing being gay. It wasn’t a good fit. And Vic, even on short acquaintance, suggested severe heterosexuality. “This is stupid,” I said. “Sane people don’t go knocking on the doors of dangerous strangers, and how do we even get into the building—”

“Look, if he’s lying, we pretend to believe him and walk away. There’s no reason for him to shoot us in the back. And relax. We’ll get in. I have a plan.”

Joey’s plan involved a tenant turning up with a key or a visitor letting us in with them. When this didn’t happen she began punching codes. The intercom squawked. Joey squawked back, “It’s me!” On the fourth try, someone hit the buzzer.

We found 2E. We looked at each other. Joey pressed the doorbell.

A woman answered the door. She wore maroon jeans and an argyle sweater. Her hair was red, not Joey’s Irish setter red, but a short, fluffy tangerine. She looked like she’d packed sixty years of living into forty years of life. “Yeah?”

“Hi,” I said. “We’re looking for Vic Mauser?”

She frowned. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Penny?” a male voice yelled. “What’s the story?”

“Someone to see you,” she yelled back, not taking her eyes from me.

“Who?!”

“I don’t know!”

There was a short curse. I imagined the goateed man hauling himself out of a sofa, with unbuttoned trousers and unbuckled belt, dining recovery measures.

He appeared at Penny’s side. I was wrong. He wore shorts and a yellow T-shirt. His feet were bare. His look held no recognition; then he half-smiled, half-sneered. “Well, look who it is. Did he send you?”

“Who?” Penny asked. “Who are they?”

A child appeared in the doorway, wearing pajamas with attached feet. She held a fork in her mouth. Her hair looked like a bright orange Brillo pad, inherited from her mom. Vic glanced down. “Go back and finish your pie. Go on. Penny, take her.” He backed us out into the hallway and followed, shutting the door behind himself. “What do you want?”

“Annika Glück,” I said.

His eyebrows drew together. “What?”

“Where is she?” Joey asked.

“Who?” Vic barked.

“Annika Glück,” I said. “You don’t know who she is?”

“I can’t even understand what you’re saying. Who buzzed you in, by the way?”

“A friend of ours is missing,” I said. “We thought maybe Bing and you—maybe that’s what your argument was about the other night. Annika Glück.”

He looked back and forth at us. “I don’t know what this is about, but you tell that slime bucket Wooster that his kid waited all day for him to show. If he can’t stop reading his own fan mail long enough to pick up the phone—”

“The slime bucket,” Joey said, “didn’t send us. The slime bucket’s not a friend of ours. We just have the misfortune to work with him. Sorry.”

I was already pulling Joey down the hall. “Sorry to disturb your Thanksgiving. Really.”

The elevator smelled
like curry. Joey and I were melancholy with thoughts of small girls and absent fathers. There was also something about the idea of fan mail that bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

“So when Vic talked about making people disappear,” Joey said, “I guess he meant Bing’s child, taking her out of state, maybe, if Bing didn’t show some interest.”

“I’ve heard Bing mention a wife or ex-wife,” I said, “so that must be her. Penny Wooster. But he never mentioned their little girl. How can someone talk about himself all the time and not talk about being a father?”

“The whole thing depresses me.”

“Joey,” I said. “Does the show get fan mail?”

“Well, it gets mail, and some of it’s positive. Mostly on the Web site. Don’t you check the Web site? No, of course not. Anyhow. I really hoped to connect Bing to Annika’s disappearance, but I think he’s just a garden-variety deadbeat dad.”

I agreed. Much as I wanted Bing to be Little Fish, he was more of a worm. I couldn’t imagine him being of interest to some Big Fish, or scaring Annika into disappearing.

Scariness, of course, is relative. For instance, in ninety minutes I had a date. It would be my first nontelevised date in four months, since the night Doc left my life and broke my heart. And I was scared stupid.

30

W
e got to
West Hollywood an hour before I was to meet Simon. The lights were on at Book ’Em, D’Agneau, and on impulse I had Joey drop me there. I wasn’t the only customer. My uncle was in the back, having decaf with Lucien.

“Waiting for my ride,” Uncle Theo said. “Your brother rode back with the troops, but Prana and I took in a cabaret act. She’s in deep meditation now, which requires solitude.”

Lucien offered me a liquer. I declined. “Do you know a drug called Euphoria?” I asked.

“Don’t you mean Ecstasy?”

“Related to it, I think. Do you know much about Ecstasy? Like, how it’s made?”

“My friend Roger could tell you,” Uncle Theo said. “You remember him, Wollie, the homeopath in Ojai. He’d make up batches of the stuff for Christmas presents. For close friends. It was handy because safrole, the operative ingredient, is derived from sassafras oil, which Roger had on hand for his medicines. Safrole has few other legitimate uses, you see. Unhappily, he’s doing time now, although not for the Ecstasy. He didn’t believe in paying taxes.”

“Okay. So if Roger had gone beyond Christmas gifts,” I said, “and built a thriving business, would that get the attention of a drug bigwig? Like Vladimir Tcheiko?”

“I don’t believe I know him,” Uncle Theo said.

Lucien shook his head. “It would take more than Ecstasy to interest Tcheiko.”

“Like a new drug?” I said. “If it’s a really big deal? If this Euphoria, for instance—”

“U4,” Uncle Theo said. “Is that the same, do you suppose?”

I stared at my uncle and nodded.

“A young man at the hospital with P.B. described it to me,” he said, “as tripping on clouds at the bottom of the ocean. ‘U4 is 4U, U4 is 4U’ he liked to say. He had repetition compulsion, repeating words in multiples of eight. The drug sounded quite delightful.”

“Mental hospital,” I said to Lucien, by way of explanation. “Okay, would that do it? Would a new drug that’s big with college kids interest Tcheiko?”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” Lucien refilled Uncle Theo’s coffee cup. “But how far would he go for it? Actually, I’m inclined to think that if it’s big enough, he would go very far. The man is a megalomaniac, a publicity slut, a player. Outsize ego made larger by his famous escape last year. He is in retreat now, on the coast of Africa, they say, but he will no more live there quietly than movie stars retire upon winning Oscars. Yes, I can imagine him needing to be associated with the next trend, whatever it is. Heroin and cocaine are the old world order and Tcheiko sees himself as the new.”

He sipped his coffee and gazed at me. “Now we have questions. Yesterday a man came in asking about you. I made him buy two books and one of your greeting cards and told him nothing.” He nodded at my reaction. “Receding hairline. Medium height. Unlike the well-proportioned being who walked you down the street today, who came in Sunday and bought one each of your cards, thirteen in total. I charged him for twelve. Question: why did the man yesterday leave here and drive off in a van with a plumbing logo on its side?”

“And why,” Uncle Theo said, “did your building superintendent stop by to say Happy Thanksgiving and that he wasn’t aware of your plumbing problem?”

I had no answers. I had no plumbing problems. I had other problems, though.

Uncle Theo and I pondered these while walking to my apartment. We arrived without incident and once I’d delivered my uncle to his friend Gordon, who was waiting in his truck on Larrabee, I headed to my own car, parked right in front of my building. I opened the trunk, removed my art portfolio, and went to wait for Simon in the lobby. While I waited, I sketched. Sketching relaxes me, occupying my hands when thoughts trouble my mind.

I’d been doing a line of condolence cards, initially inspired by my broken engagement. There is no end to things deserving of sympathy. “Sorry about that canceled wedding” led to “Sorry about your cholesterol levels,” “Sorry your house has mold,” and, this being Hollywood, “Sorry your series was canceled.” I finished “Sorry you flunked” and was starting a new one, “Sorry about your biological father,” when a knock on the building’s glass door made me jump.

I slapped my sketchbook shut and went outside to meet Simon Alexander.

“Nice office,” he said, indicating the lobby. He took my sketchbook. “May I?”

I nodded, watching him study my work. He’d changed clothes since this morning: different dress shirt, different dark pants, no tie. He turned the pages slowly, studying each as if it were directions to buried treasure. I realized I was holding my breath. Finally, he closed my sketchbook and handed it back. “I like your mind,” he said.

I let out my breath.

He escorted me to his sports car and opened the passenger door. A first-date sort of gesture. I wondered how long he’d do that, hold the door open for me. A lot of guys never do it, which is okay. Other guys start out doing it and after a while they get in the driver’s side and lean over to open the door for you, and then sometime later they dispense with opening your door at all, and the next thing you know, they’re in the car and halfway down the block before they even unlock your door, leaving you to hop after them in your high heels, waving your arms. Would we last that long, Simon and me?

I wasn’t in heels tonight.
B.C.
dictated flat shoes, since my feet were never seen on camera and Bing didn’t want me towering over Carlito, Henry, and Vaclav. I was also in a tight black skirt that went with my tight polka-dot blouse, part of my recent Beverly Center haul. And a lot of makeup. TV makeup, as applied by Fredreeq, is just slightly more subtle than what you’d see at the circus. Would Simon think I’d worn three coats of mascara to impress him?

I snuck a look at the bump in his nose I was growing fond of, prominent in profile. He caught me looking, smiled, and went back to his driving.

“Nice wheels, your cheap Bentley,” I said. “I thought Joey’s husband Elliot’s BMW had an impressive dashboard, but this one’s downright—” I stopped before saying “sexy.”

“Thank you,” he said, as though I’d finished my thought. “What kind of BMW?”

“I don’t know. Some convertible.”

He smiled. “I thought we’d go to Falcon. Do you know it?”

“No.”

“You’ll like it.”

“Naturally you know what I like, based on—my FBI file?”

He kept his eyes on the road. “Your favorite potatoes are french fries. You support the legalization of pet ferrets. You like watches. You hate sisal carpets, tolerate Berber, love Persian rugs, but worry about little girls in Third World countries sitting at looms making them.”

Oh.

He continued. “You designed your first greeting card when you were six, you listen to Christmas carols all year, you used to think James Bond was your father.”

I cleared my throat. “Okay, perhaps a government file is redundant for a contestant on
Biological Clock.
Still, you cannot predict with certainty that I’ll like . . . Pheasant.”

“Falcon. I’ve watched you eat without complaint at seedy restaurants across L.A.”

“They haven’t all been seedy.”

“A good restaurant wouldn’t allow a show that bad to be filmed on its premises.”

“Is it really as bad as I think it is?”

“Biological Clock,”
he said, “is as bad as it gets. I’m hooked. I fell asleep in front of the TV one night and woke up to your face. Your date berated the waiter for not knowing if the beef was domestic or Argentinian, and you stood up for the waiter.”

I stared. “But that was our first episode. Weeks before I appeared on your radar.”

“If you’re looking to keep a low profile, you might consider a different line of work.”

“Okay, I’m confused. I thought I came to your attention because of this sting operation, you thinking I was in with the bad guys, Little Fish, Big Fish . . .”

“No, I’ve known about you for weeks.” He looked at me. “Unofficially.”

Something went zinging through me. “Is it common,” I said, “for an FBI agent to approach someone he thinks is working with bad guys, to warn her off?”

He looked back at the road. “No. It’s not common at all.”

He was so relaxed. They probably taught relaxation techniques at Quantico. My heart was pump, pump, pumping away like an old washing machine with a spin cycle gone crazy. “And when,” I said, “did you decide I wasn’t a criminal?”

“Last week. I might have recruited you in any case, but then you’d have been a dirty source. I like it better this way.”

“And you’re done investigating me?” I thought about the man questioning Lucien.

“Officially, yes.”

Was that a double entendre? He hadn’t taken his eyes off the road. “Great,” I said. “The FBI thinks I’m clean. If I want to go into crime, this is the time to do it.”

The light turned green. His hand played with the gearshift. He had articulate fingers. “What makes you think I have a sense of humor?” he asked. The car shot forward, leaving my stomach half a block behind.

I said, “What makes you think I’m kidding?”

He looked at me. It was hard to hold his look, because for one thing, I was scared we were going to crash if his eyes didn’t return to the road, and for another thing, eye contact like that says something after a point, something along the lines of
Yeah, I’d sleep with you.

He looked away first. I let out a long, slow breath, as quietly as I could, focused on the appealing bump in his nose.

A smile settled in on his face. He said, “This is going to be fun.”

Falcon had valet
parking on Sunset Boulevard, but no obvious entrance. A gate to the right of the valet was manned by a woman: intimidating, hip, holding a clipboard. In a careful voice that could turn either respectful or discouraging, she asked if we had reservations. I wanted to say that I had some pretty serious reservations, but I let Simon answer.

“Alexander.”

She thawed, smiled, and crossed the name firmly off the clipboard. “Certainly, Mr. Alexander. Straight on back, left at the arbor. Enjoy your evening.”

We walked down a long path, a sort of floriferous alleyway leading to a doorway. It was an entrance ritual calculated to make us feel Chosen. Good feng shui, Fredreeq would say.

Falcon was all wood and steel and mood lighting, starkness undercut by whimsy, with fur-covered seating cubes scattered around a sophisticated bar. Booths surrounded the bar’s periphery, and a lower room, actually outdoors, complete with trees and bleachers, served as a nightclub. A waiter/runway model showed us to our upper-level booth, gliding silently across a wood floor. I, in my flat size eleven shoes, galumphed along behind, making loud creaking noises.

The booths were constructed for privacy. “Bet no one in this place does drugs,” I said, pulling the curtains around our table experimentally, then pushing them back.

“Think you could forget for two hours what I do for a living?”

“No. Oh, how nice. The elderly gentleman over there dining with his granddaughters. And they say no one dresses for dinner anymore. A little late for teenage girls to be out, don’t you think? My, they’re affectionate.”

“Nervous?”

Oh, dear. We weren’t in a car anymore, we were opposite each other, his blue eyes flickering in the candlelight. Candlelight fosters double entendres.

“I’m not nervous.” But I was, because when the waiter came I ordered a martini with an olive, a drink I’ve had twice in my life and didn’t enjoy, as this was a restaurant where ordering white wine by the glass could be a faux pas, which begged the question of why I cared what some waiter and bartender thought of me, for which I had no satisfactory answer.

Simon asked for something called Ketel One, and the waiter retreated. A man came by and set a small plate on our table. It held two servings of something involving phyllo dough, along with two smaller empty plates.

“
Amuse-bouche.
Veal,” he said, and vanished.

Simon stabbed one of the appetizers, put it on a plate, and moved it to me. “Then let’s entertain our mouths.”

Not finding veal entertaining, I pushed the plate back toward him. “You speak French. Had I known of your erudition when you were stalking me, I’d have asked you to help me pass my math assessment test.”

“I’d have said no.” He ate his
amuse-bouche.
“Why test out if you don’t know the subject?”

“Because I don’t like numbers. I don’t want to study them into retirement.”

He pushed my
amuse-bouche
toward me. “That’s because, underneath that good-girl exterior, you’re your mother’s daughter. You think math’s not creative, it’s for left-brain types. I bet you don’t even like computers.”

There it was again. Computers. Web site. Fan mail. There was something I needed to check out when I got home. “Math doesn’t interest me,” I said. “Can’t I not be interested?”

“Yes. But you aspire to higher education.”

“Not in math.”

“Then half the world’s closed to you. The language of physics. Chemistry.”

“I’m not the scientific type.” I pushed my plate back toward him.

“Really? Art is okay, and religion, but science, that other great mode of human inquiry, holds no appeal. Interesting. A little arrogant.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I have no problem with arrogance; it can be sexy. You really think what bores you isn’t worth learning? Feynman was like that. He thought literature was a waste of time.”

A martini appeared in front of me. I took a long sip from the chilled glass and felt my ears twitch. Imagine getting so heated up about arithmetic. I popped the olive in my mouth and looked at him, his soft white shirt such a textural contrast to the steel booth he leaned against. What a masculine restaurant. Except for those fur-covered seating cubes. I took another sip.

“Chaco,” I said. But I mispronounced it, so that it sounded like “Tcheiko.”

“What?” His body tensed. I could feel it in the space between us.

“
Ceratophrys cranwelli,
predaceous South American horned frog. I’m painting it. The Chaco. Of the subfamily Ceratophryinae, within the family Leptodactylidae. See? Science.”

Simon relaxed. Smiled. “That’s not science, that’s showing off your Latin.”