Shamus In The Green Room (26 page)

envelope from In the Green Room into the pocket of my coat.

I took the box out of her hands and stood there, sort of

paralyzed.

“I think I hear my phone ringing,” the woman said. Her

phone was not ringing, but she clearly wanted to be rid of me.

“I have to wash my hands,” I said suddenly, starting down

the hall.

“You can do it at my place,” she shouted after me.

“What?” I asked, closing the bathroom door behind me.

I turned on the water, grabbed the envelope out of my

pocket, and slit it open furiously with my nail.

“Dear Eleanor,” it began.

“Yours, Rafe,” it ended.

That was as far as I got. Then there was a loud pounding on

the door. “I’m expecting an important call. Can you hurry up,

please?”

I turned off the water, folded up the letter, and shoved it

back in my pocket.

“All done,” I said, smiling brightly. “Oh, look how pretty

Eleanor looks here.” I pointed out a picture in a gold frame of

Eleanor shaking hands with Clint Eastwood.

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The woman shepherded me out, making sure I didn’t forget

the package. She stood next to me, like an armed sentry, as I

waited for the elevator. She was still standing there when the

elevator doors closed.

When they opened, I stepped out, tucked my hair into my

hat, tucked the package under my arm, and walked down the

front steps into the falling rain, feeling exactly like the burglar

I wasn’t.

That would be two times, in less than one week.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

The defogger in my rental worked brilliantly, which sur-

prised me, as climate control was not a big Camry selling

point. The letter surprised me, too. I read it once outside

Eleanor’s building, a second time parked in my driveway.

Dear Eleanor,

First, let me apologize for Will. You of all people know

how he can be. He thinks he’s doing the right thing, loy-

alty is his number one priority, but he gets a little carried

away sometimes. Sorry if he said hurtful things. I really

mean that.

I hope this gets to you before you take off for India.

That is so cool. Hope you have a productive trip, and that

you’ll show me pictures when you get back. If we’re still

friends, ha, ha.

I also wanted to remind you about our conversation

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regarding the Oceans Conservancy. They do really impor-

tant work, and given your interests, it’s a natural fit for

you. Tell anybody you want to. All donations are appreci-

ated, no matter how small. They’re tax deductible.

Take care of yourself, Eleanor.

Steve Terrell is a dick, did I say that already?

Yours,

Rafe

I went inside to do some thinking. Then I did some pacing,

the latter with a cup of coffee in my hand, which I now know is

not a good idea unless you happen to be preternaturally graceful.

It was like those games in kids’ magazines: find ten things

wrong with this picture.

Rafe and Eleanor obviously knew each other well, so why

wasn’t this letter handwritten? Stranger yet, it was printed on

the computer with perfect margins and no typos—in short,

nothing Rafe could have managed on his own. Fredericka must

have typed it for him. Or maybe even Kat. But it didn’t make

sense. Could he really have wanted either of them to know his

true thoughts about Will? Not that Will was the one with the

temper. Will had fired me as calmly and as matter-of-factly as

I’d ever been fired. I’d never seen Will get carried away. No,

Rafe was the one who got carried away. Rafe was the hothead.

Just how well did Eleanor and Rafe know each other? They

went back at least as far as Tahoe Nights. Was Eleanor another

high school pal, another gorgeous blonde from Palos Verdes?

That wouldn’t be hard to find out.

And what was that bit about the Oceans Conservancy?

Why would Rafe Simic be working on behalf of a conservation

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organization, much less one that May Madden worked for?

The daughter of his high school science teacher? He was a

surfer, yes, meaning he probably cared more than your average

person about the state of the environment, but something here

wasn’t ringing true.

I went into the bedroom and dug around for the stack of

brochures Owen Madden’s old neighbor Diana had given

me, the ones that May had left behind. Then I peeled off my

wet shoes and soggy clothes and slipped under the covers to

read.

Pollution, habitat destruction, and overfishing take a serious

toll on our oceans, so Oceans Conservancy works to preserve

and restore the rich diversity of ocean life and the quality of

coastal waters.

A good cause.

Our widely covered beach-pollution research has prompted

many states to clean up their beaches.

I flipped through and found a report from the field: they’d

been extremely successful at the Malibu Lagoon.

We work to stop destructive fishing methods, end overfishing,

rebuild fish populations, and reduce the tonnage of fish

caught accidentally and thrown away dead. We helped create

networks of fully protected marine reserves off the California

and Florida coasts, and are pressing for more elsewhere. Fi-

nally, we work to ban offshore drilling in coastal areas, while

promoting sound coastal-zone management.

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How was the Oceans Conservancy paying for all this?

I found the section that tells who ponied up in the previ-

ous calendar year. There were big donors, in the $500,000 and

up category, mostly large corporations; small donors, in the

under $250 category, individuals, mostly; and a lot of folks in

between.

Like In the Green Room.

In the Green Room had given the Oceans Conservancy two

hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

A quarter of a million smackeroos.

Now why would Will and Rafe have done that?

t

T h e r a i n s t o p p e d .

I went for a run, because there went that excuse.

The good news is, I lasted four miles. The bad news is, my

Walkman ran out of battery power after five minutes, so I had

no choice but to listen to the voices in my head, which were

having a field day. I tried to sing show tunes to drown them

out, but it’s a problem when you don’t remember the words.

Gambino called while I was out. He sounded elated. The

judge in the Gonzalez case had ruled the evidence admissible,

despite the iffy circumstances. He said the twenty seconds

Gambino and Tico had waited before forcibly entering Gonza-

lez’s apartment had been more than sufficient, given their rea-

sonable concern about the destruction of evidence. And further

to the fact, because Gonzalez was in the shower at the time

they approached the apartment and did not hear them knock

and announce themselves, additional delay before entry would

247

have made no difference in how subsequent events unfolded.

Gambino and Tico were still up for disciplinary review, but

given the judge’s findings, it was pretty much a slam dunk. All

anybody wanted, Gambino said, was to see the son of a bitch

go down for a long time.

It made me happy to hear him so happy. How could I lay

my garbage on him when he was feeling so happy?

He was going out with Tico to have a celebratory drink,

then to his apartment for a while. He’d see me at my place,

late, around eleven.

My story could wait until at least then.

In the meantime, I needed to talk to May Madden. I went

out to the office to find the Oceans Conservancy online. There

was an 800 number on their Web site, but I don’t trust 800

numbers, so I called them directly in Washington, D.C. It was

two in the afternoon L.A. time, which meant almost closing

time for them. I hoped someone would still be in the office.

Someone was. Unfortunately, May Madden proved more

elusive. She was out in the field, on a research expedition in

Woods Hole. The man on the other end of the line said he’d be

happy to leave a message for her and that she’d get back to me

when she returned.

I left my information, then got back online to look up

Woods Hole, which turned out to be the Woods Hole Oceano-

graphic Institution, pronounced “whooey,” an international

center of oceanographic studies located on Cape Cod. The guy

who answered talked to me for a long time about scuba diving,

which was interesting up to a point. He, however, turned out

to be an intern, subbing for the regular receptionist, who was

out until Monday, and he had no idea how to access the guest/

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visitor database, which meant that unless I had specific infor-

mation about May’s research area, he wasn’t sure he’d be able

to track her down.

This didn’t seem possible to me.

He let out a sigh. In the applied ocean physics and engi-

neering department alone, he explained, there was the ad-

vanced engineering laboratory, the air-sea interaction group,

the coastal and ocean fluid dynamics laboratory, the deep sub-

mergence laboratory, the ocean acoustics lab, and the ocean

systems laboratory. And that was just one department.

Couldn’t he find her in the cafeteria at breakfast time? I

asked.

Apparently not.

I hung up after leaving my name and number, and called

the Oceans Conservancy back. Someone there would be able to

tell me May’s research area at least. But they’d all gone home

for the day. I even tried the 800 number, but it was only in ser-

vice from nine to five, eastern standard time.

Useless, just as I’d suspected.

I took my shower and walked around the corner to the

mailbox store, where I mailed Eleanor Lonner the package I

had borrowed from her, which turned out to have contained

two Egyptian cotton sheets, one fitted, one flat, ivory with sage

trim, four hundred thread count. They would’ve looked great

on my bed, but I’m not that far gone yet.

Then, for lack of a better idea, I decided to surprise my

fiancé.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

In point of fact, I was the reason Gambino no longer lived in

Simi Valley, the bedroom community consistently rated by

the FBI as one of the country’s safest places to live. Six

months ago he’d sold his two-bedroom house in a perfectly

nice development favored by what seemed to be half the offi-

cers in the LAPD on the understanding that he and I were

moving in together, which had sounded like a great idea until

the Bekins Moving and Storage truck pulled up outside my

front door.

It had been a bit of an inconvenience for him at first—being

homeless, I mean—but as it turned out, Annie’s brother-in-law

(Vincent’s brother) had a great apartment in the Villa Gina, a

courtyard building on Los Feliz Boulevard, that he needed to

sublet for a while. He was going to Anchorage to work in talk

radio, and who knew how long that would last. That apart-

ment had been our silver lining. Even Gambino saw it that way

250

eventually. At which point I cried, if memory serves me right.

But you can’t have it both ways.

Los Feliz Boulevard is a broad, tree-lined residential street

that runs along the southern border of Griffith Park, an urban

oasis of hiking paths, horse trails, golf courses, tennis courts,

and other diversions for athletic types. Griffith Park was named

for Colonel Griffith J. Griffith, a corpulent businessman who

was not, himself, the athletic type, and despite his name, never,

in fact, served in the armed forces. In 1882, he acquired the

bulk of Rancho Los Feliz, including the entirety of the Los

Angeles River, which made him the grand poobah of water

rights, much to the dismay of city officials who’d never had to

pay for the privilege of draining the river before. A decade or

so later, at Christmastime, he went soft on them, and donated

over three thousand acres of rolling hills, oak groves, and man-

zanita for use as a municipal park.

The colonel was one of those colorful characters who prob-

ably should’ve avoided alcohol. Or perhaps he suffered from

the infamous Los Feliz curse, uttered on the site of the original

adobe by Antonio Feliz’s disinherited niece, Petronilla. In ei-

ther case, one balmy summer evening, he accused his long-

suffering wife of plotting with the pope to poison him, and

shot her in the head. She leapt off the balcony of the hotel they

were staying at, broke a leg, and lost the use of one eye. Griffith

was convicted of assault and served one year at San Quentin.

Upon his release, he tried donating more land, but nobody

would touch it until after his death, when the Greek Theatre

and Griffith Observatory were both erected on his dime.

You could walk to the Greek Theatre from Gambino’s sub-

let in the Villa Gina, though we hadn’t done it yet, and like-

wise the observatory, though the latter was closed right now for