Nature of the Game (21 page)

And he wondered if Beth ever wore dresses.

He turned left at La Brea.
Are the tar pits around here?
He imagined black puddles bubbling up bones of unwary dinosaurs.

A matted-haired man with sun-leathered skin, a torn brown T-shirt, stained green pants, and wearing one sneaker ran screaming from the franchised burger shop. Wes braked to avoid him, but the screamer didn't care. No one else paid any attention.

Hollywood Boulevard came two lights later. He spotted the hotel, pulled into a parking spot. Two gaunt, denim-clad boys with backpacks, tattoos, and long hair almost as many years out of style as they were old watched him feed the meter. They shuffled down the sidewalk when Wes stared back.

When he was a boy, Wes's mother told him many times of her pilgrimage to Hollywood, of seeing the center of that dazzling universe, Graumann's Chinese Theater, with its red-and-green facade and carved dragons, its pagoda sloping roof, and its sidewalk where the names of the stars were immortally cast in concrete.

Across the street, Wes spotted his mother's memory.

Wes glanced at his feet: he was standing on the star of a person he'd never heard of. Two buses stopped in front of the theater, belched diesel smoke, and disgorged blue-haired American matrons with their sagging husbands and nattily dressed Japanese families in which everyone carried a camera.

A chattering woman wearing 163 slogan and campaign buttons marched up to the tourists. Some of them took her picture; some of them got back on the bus.

Wes walked into the hotel.

A Mexican bellhop nodded to him. A perky brunette wearing the hotel's maroon blazer and a gray skirt gave him a beautiful smile. Another woman wearing that outfit sat at the concierge desk. She had smooth olive skin and was speaking Farsi to a disgruntled man in a three-piece suit.

Two men stood by the dining room. One was fifty, Jewish, with short gray hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He had thick glasses, wore a bulky sweater. His companion was a beefy black man in a two-piece suit and heavy black shoes. He carried a notebook. The middle-aged Jew bid good-bye to the black man, then hustled past Wes, a distracted look on his face.

The black man and Wes sized each other up.

“I'm looking for Mr. Rawlins,” said Wes.

“
Detective
Rawlins,” answered the black.

“Wes Chandler,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

Rawlins had a powerful grip. “You got something besides a driver's license to show me?”

Wes held out his laminated NIS ID for the cop to see.

“That's not a federal buzzer.” Rawlins flashed Wes his own badge.

“I'm a lawyer.”

“So why ain't you working in Century City, banking big bucks and driving a BMW?”

“My idea was that learning the law would help me understand how things tick. Have a better handle on it.”

“You wanna learn how things tick, get yourself a buzzer, a 9mm, and ride around with me.”

The L.A. cop nodded to the hotel door.

“That guy I was with?” he said. “Nice guy. TV man, but none of the crap. Couple nights ago, his wife picks him up from work. Good lady. He remembers a call he ain't made, has her park out front. Runs in, drops a dime to some actor with the who-am-I heebie-jeebies, calms him down, walks outside just in time to see a dude
cowboy
the doorman with three blasts from a .45. Going to law schools won't give you the tick on that one.”

“What was it?”

“Same gun that nailed a guy on my turf downtown.” Rawlins shrugged. “Filipino rock 'n' roll. You had lunch?”

“Airplane food. I'll buy.”

“I'll eat,” said Rawlins. “We could do it cheap in the coffee shop, but the tables aren't designed for privacy.”

Wes nodded to the maître d' waiting by the velvet-roped entrance to the dining room. Rawlins led the way.

“You care if we sit in smoking?” he asked.

“I used to mind.” Wes smiled. “I've loosened up.”

They took a table by the far wall. About half the other tables were full. A white-coated waiter walked their way.

“You drink on the job?” asked Rawlins.

“No.”

“Me either.” Rawlins looked up at the waiter as he reached their table. “Vodka rocks.”

Wes ordered coffee. Rawlins shook a filtered cigarette out of a pack, tore the filter off, and tossed it in the ashtray. He lit up, nodded to the discarded filter.

“Makes my wife think I'm being cautious. Bumper pads for coffin nails.”

A Chinese woman in a tailored suit worth a week of Wes's salary sashayed past the table, ebony hair sleek on her shoulders.

Both men watched her petite hips sway away. Rawlins's eyes were waiting for the Marine's gaze to return to business.

“You never get used to that in L.A.,” said Rawlins. “So many of 'em. You married? Kids?”

“Not lucky enough for either.”

“This is a hard town to be married in.” The cop rubbed out his cigarette. Sipped his vodka. “So how come a L.A. street cop like me with a D.U.O. on ice has a federal case on his hands?”

“I can't tell you.”

“I hate the classified blues.”

The waiter returned, took their lunch orders.

“Naval Investigative Service,” said Rawlins when the waiter had left. “Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“You been to more than law school.”

“I'm a Marine.”

“Ah. With a little rock 'n' roll time. Now you're gumshoeing this ex-sailor—Hopkins.”

“Has anything changed?”

“He's still dead.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rawlins sighed. “Nobody's claimed his body, nobody's called. San Fran P.D. doesn't list him as a missing person and found nobody at his place, so they're done with him. Our coroner says could be accident, could be somebody pushed him down the stairs in back of that bar. The County will keep his body on ice for thirty-one days, then if no other authorities protest and nobody claims him, he'll get a cheap hole at the county cemetery.”

“That's it?”

“Hopkins is a case of the
could be's
and
don't cares
.”

“What about your investigation?”

“I figure you're the center of my investigation.” Rawlins's voice was even. Cool.

“I've got nothing to add to what you know,” said Wes.

“You could subtract some of the could be's.”

The waiter brought their food.

“I'm just making sure everything is in line,” said Wes.

“What line?”

When Wes wouldn't answer, Rawlins cursed, but they both knew it was pro forma.

Throaty feminine laughter came from the table to their right, a steadier-toned laugh than Beth's. A lean, hawk-faced woman with curly brown hair, a tailored jacket, and a midthigh leather miniskirt used humor to insist that the three studio men she was meeting with take her seriously.

“Do you have any suggestions?” said Wes.

“You could go to the Oasis, talk to the night bartender. Guy named Leo. He found the stiff. That's all he told us.”

“Was there anybody else there that night?”

“Like who?” asked Rawlins.

“Nobody special.”

“As far as we know, nobody special is who was there.”

Rawlins told Wes how to find the Oasis, suggested a hotel. The detective agreed to send Wes the autopsy report.

“With Leo,” said Rawlins, “try a little lean, try a little green. I ain't had the time or motivation for a second round with the boy.”

“Thanks.”

Wes gave the waiter cash and took the receipt stub. He stood, looked down at the cop. He liked him.

“There's an outside chance I may need help,” said Wes.

“We all take our chances,” said the cop. Smiling.

Wes called private eye Jack Berns in Washington from the L.A. pay phone the CIA said Jud had used.

“You said you could provide a service,” said Wes.

“I said I could provide
any
service.”

“It would be helpful to know the calls placed from a pay phone in L.A. The number called, who the number is registered to.”

“‘
Helpful
'
?
You cagey lawyers!” Berns laughed. “Local calls are damn near impossible. Long distance … can be done.”

“How fast?”

“It's a question of timing. You're in the middle of a billing cycle, so if somebody were to ask the computer, the machine would make a special run, and then that somebody might get hit with questions none of us want asked.”

“I don't want to ring any alarm bells,” said Wes. “How soon can you get me what I need?”

“I'm betting a couple days—if you can afford to ask.”

“I can afford to ask, but not to wait forever.”

Wes gave him the number, dates bracketing the night Jud called.

“So you're in L.A.? Where should I call you?”

“Don't try.” Wes hung up. He was on a busy road, a second-class commercial strip.

Why here?
he thought.
Why this phone?

Leo was polishing glasses at the far end of the Oasis's bar when Wes opened the door. Wes stood in the entrance, giving the bartender a black silhouette in front of the red sunset.

The half dozen drunks scattered through the bar paid the newcomer no mind as he stepped into their dim-lit world. When Leo saw the jacket and tie, the clean-shaven face, he knew.

“You're new,” he called out to the obvious cop.

“Same as I ever was,” said Wes, leaning on the bar. He casually waved his black ID case, stuck it back in his pocket without opening it, and beckoned for Leo to join him.

“Sorry I didn't come down right away,” said Leo. His breath smelled of pizza. “Dozen years after the USC game and the knee still locks up.”

“Just tell me the rest about the dead guy,” said Wes.

“I told you guys everything. He went out there, he died. I don't know why, I don't know how, don't know him, end of story.”

“If it were
end
of story, I wouldn't be here.”

“I don't want no trouble. I run a nice place.”

“Bullshit.” Lawyer Wes held his breath, but Leo didn't object to such arrogance from an authority. “I'm not here to bust you, I'm not here to be your buddy. But I'll do one or the other before I go.”

“What do I gotta do?”

“Tell me what happened—all of it, not just the skim you laid on the other cops. Tell me about the dead guy.”

“So he and I shot the shit. So he helped me out.”

“How?”

“Helped me drag a rummy out there to the bull pen. Didn't mean nothing, so I didn't say nothing.”

“What about this rummy?”

“Passed out.” Leo's face lit up. “The guy who died? He went back out there to check on him.”

“What did he find?”

“The wrong way to go down the stairs.”

“What about the other guy?”

Even Leo got it now.

“The other guy came back in first, walked out the front.”

Wes knew such a rigged identification would be thrown out of court, but he didn't care about court. He showed the bartender Jack Bern's surveillance photo of Jud.

“Yeah. That's the guy we dragged out.”

“You know him? He live around here?”

The idea came slow to Leo, but it came.

“This guy in the picture: if I was to call in what I knew to Crimesolvers, might be a reward in it for me.”

“And you'd get busted as an accessory after the fact, plus obstructing an investigation.”

The bartender frowned. While he was talking, Wes laid a twenty-dollar bill on the table.

“That guy ain't been back,” Leo said, eyeing the bill. “I think he lives at a fleabag up the street called the Zanzibar.”

“That's not much for a whole lot.”

The bartender licked his lips.

“Maybe his name is Bill,” he said.

Wes shook his head, nodded to the money.

“Buy yourself some lying lessons,” he said.

“I figured you guys would be asking about him,” said the pockmarked man behind the registration desk at the Zanzibar Hotel Apartments. He smelled of violet perfume. With one hand he held a slim cigarillo, with the other he tapped the picture Wes had laid on the desk. “Figured.”

“Is he here?” asked Wes.

Beneath the smog of cigarillo smoke, the Zanzibar smelled of dust and mold.

“No. Been, oh, few weeks since he paid his rent. We closed out his room.”

“Why did you figure we'd be around asking about him?”

“What am I: stupid? The gentleman's a burglar, right?”

“What makes you think he's a burglar?”

“He's a juicer who jaws your ear off. How
important
he is, how much he knows. He'd get an attitude. Tell me I didn't have a clue. Hah! He's supposed to have this day job? Sure enough, no matter how loaded he got the night before, morning come, he'd crawl out of bed, get a bus to somewhere. But I don't buy it as a
job
. One day he shows me this bag of tools. I seen lockpicks before. Says he's the top locksmith in the country. I say yeah, great, but
I
had it figured.”

The clerk blew a cloud of smoke.

“A walking ticky-tocking time bomb, that one.” He smiled. “Jud, right? Jud … Seward?”

“Something like that,” said Wes.

“So am I going to be reading about him in the papers?”

“I doubt it. You said you closed out his room.”

“After we didn't see him on rent day, I boxed up his stuff, gave the room to a more responsible party.”

Springs stuck from holes in the lobby's sofa. The pay phone on the wall was battered. The muffled sounds of a man and a woman yelling at each other floated down the open stairwell.

“What happened to his stuff?”

“It's in the back room. We're a legit place, so we
must
hold stuff like that for a month. How do you figure the law?”