The Black Marble (35 page)

“Okay, Clarence,” Valnikov said. “Let's go, Natalie.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, brushing her Friz out of her eyes. “Clarence, where's the captain? I have to talk to him and I'm not going anywhere until I do!”

“Gud-damn, Natalie!” Clarence sneered, standing up and putting his fists on his hips, the twin magnums dangling impotently beside his barrel chest.

“Gud-damn, what!” she sneered right back. A black General Patton!

“Is it that same thing you been complainin about the last three days, Natalie?”

“Yes it is,” she said, looking involuntarily at Valnikov, who busied himself with a follow-up report, too polite to pry.

“Well, this is a hell of a time,” Clarence snorted. “You got an extortion to work on and you wanna go runnin to …”

He was interrupted when Natalie jumped to her feet. She jumped because Hipless Hooker came flying through the door and ran across the squad room. He was holding his stomach and was followed by a young woman in a yellow pantsuit, walking like a robot, wearing a neck brace.

“Clarence!” Hipless Hooker cried, but Natalie Zimmerman beat Clarence to the captain's office.

“I just gotta talk to you today, Captain!” Natalie cried.

“Not
now
, Natalie,” Hooker whimpered. “Clarence, this lady was waiting for me at the desk when I came in. She claims she was out on a date with Bullets Bambarella last night. She works for the district attorney's office. She wants to sue us for half a million dollars!”

“Let's all go in and quiet down,” said Clarence, smiling at the woman in the neck brace.

“Bullets told me about it, miss,” Clarence said placatingly, “but I didn't know he hurt you. He said he just pushed you into a swimmin pool.”

“He did!” Hooker cried. “But her apartment was two floors up!”

“I got a whiplash,” the young woman said, “and Bullets is
not
gonna get away with it.”

“Oooooooooohhhhh, my stomach,” Hooker suddenly moaned.

“And I was wearing a good wristwatch and my contact lenses at the time,” the girl said, sitting down gingerly.

“Yeah, well I think we can clear this up,” Clarence said as he closed the door in Natalie's face. “You see, Bullets really
cares
about you a lot. He told me.”

It was starting to seem like a dream to Natalie Zimmerman. Destiny and Bullets Bambarella were conspiring to save Valnikov from his fate. And here they were driving up the hill, high to the top of Trousdale Estates, overlooking Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Natalie Zimmerman was starting to believe she would never be rid of the man next to her, driving all of fifteen miles per hour.

“It's beautiful up here on top of the smog, isn't it?” he said amiably, as she sat and smoked and thought about sex without orgasm. And the black marble.

“Yeah, beautiful.”

“Mrs. Gharoujian must be very rich.”

“Jesus!” said Natalie, coming out of her funk when she saw the contemporary home of Millie Muldoon Gharoujian on the cul-de-sac overlooking all of Baghdad. There was a Silver Shadow Rolls-Royce in the driveway, and a chauffeur in a black cap. He was nineteen years old and had shoulder-length blond hair hanging from under his cap. He got out of the car when they pulled up to the gate.

Valnikov held his badge out the window and the chauffeur nodded and opened the gate. There was a granite fountain in the center of the circular drive. On it was a plaster sculpture of David. With an erection. A stream of water flowed from the erection. In the fountain, a boa constrictor writhed and rubbed his scales against the granite bowl and got a suntan, compliments of Millie Muldoon Gharoujian.

When Natalie pushed the doorbell, the chime played a chorus of “Roll Out the Barrel.” Then the door was opened by a horseboy with a 29 waist and 19-inch arms. The horseboy was eighteen years old and was a runner-up in a Mr. California contest.

“Mrs. Gharoujian is expecting you,” he said, admitting them into the living room overlooking the cantilever, clover-shaped swimming pool.

The living room was white. White sofas filled seventy square yards of room. White wall-to-wall carpet buried Natalie's heels. White slump-stone fireplace. White baby grand ingeniously built so that it could play as well as any upright player piano when Millie wasn't too tired to pump the white enamel foot pedals.

The white walls of the living room were covered with gilded antique mirrors and paintings of nudes, men and women. Over the fireplace was an enormous painting of a reclining Millie Gharoujian when she was thirty years old and still looked like Harlow. The painting was done in 1932.

Then the east wall, which was all mirrors, opened. Millie came briskly through the mirrored door. She had had five face lifts over the past twenty-five years, and in a huge silk kimono barely covering the breasts which hung like twin punching bags, she looked not a day over seventy-two. She was perspiring and red-faced and petulant.

“Sergeant, I told you on the phone, I already reported that schnauzer to my insurance company. It's a closed incident, far as I'm concerned. I appreciate you're a good cop and all that, but why don't you gimme a break? I got something in there hung like …”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Valnikov cried, not wanting Natalie to hear about Michelangelo penises. “But, Mrs. Gharoujian, if you could just come with us. The pet mortuary is only twenty minutes from here and we'd bring you right home as soon as you say if it's your Tutu or not. And …”

“Leave here? Now? Sergeant, you gotta be kidding! With what I got waiting for me on that water bed in there?”

“Uh, yes, I understand, ma'am,” Valnikov said quickly, as Natalie moved a few feet to her left to try to see what Millie had on her water bed.

“Damn, you're a tough man, Sergeant,” Millie sighed. Then she picked up a cigarette, put it into a ruby-studded holder, and said, “You married, Sergeant?”

“No, ma'am,” Valnikov said.

“Hmmm,” said Millie. “Well, some other time maybe. Right now, I gotta get back to business.”

“Is there anyone else here …”

“Anyone else here! You kidding! I got two kids in there with …
”

“Yes, I mean anyone who could come with us and look at the dead schnauzer,” said Valnikov. “It might save everyone a lot of trouble.”

“Hey, Twinkles!” Millie ye'led, and the houseboy returned from the kitchen with a plastic mixer full of banana daiquiris.

“Yes, Millie?”

She patted his buttocks and sighed, “If only you were Japanese, sweetie. Maybe we could get your eyes fixed. Listen, go with these cops, will ya? Have Buttons drive you in the Rolls. Look at this dead dog they wanna show you and see if it's Tutu or not. Then get your ass right back here. These two in the bedroom are already tired out.” Then to Valnikov, “The youth of America ain't what it used to be, Sergeant. The President's Council on Physical Fitness oughtta listen to
me
, sometime. I could tell em.”

“Yes, ma'am, and thank you,” said Valnikov as he and Natalie followed Twinkles out the front door, getting a fair glimpse into Millie's boudoir. There was a huge hairy creature lying on the floor. Alive!

“There's a goat in there, Valnikov!” Natalie cried when they were outside.

“It's a baby llama,” Twinkles said. “Millie's keeping it for a friend. And I'm getting sick and tired of cleaning llama shit all day, I can tell you.” Twinkles peeled off his waistcoat and revealed a torso that actually split the shoulder seams of his starched white dress shirt. He rolled up the sleeves over bulging forearms with tendons like pencils. “We'll follow you in the Rolls,” he said. “If it's Tutu, I'll know her.”

There was a wake going on when they arrived at the pet mortuary. Three women and two men were weeping inconsolably and saying adieu to a raccoon who lay in state in a little walnut baby coffin. It had a fawn satin lining with black ruffles to match the tail stripe and mask on the eyes of the dead animal. The coffin had a double lid and the lower half was closed, revealing only the head and torso of the deceased. There was soft music drifting over the intercom, instrumental strings playing “My Buddy.” The deceased had never looked better. His fur was brushed with lanolin. His black raccoon mask was touched up with shoe dye. His little raccoon hands were folded on his chest, as though in prayer, artfully kept in that position by driving a cobbler's needle clear through his chest and sewing them in place. In this prayerful pose the raccoon looked anything but dead. The raccoon could have been playing possum.

They were greeted by a balding man in a somber gray suit with a white carnation in his lapel.

“May I be of service?” he asked.

“Mr. Limpwood?”

“No, he's conducting a graveside service at the moment.”

“I called him. I'm Sergeant Valnikov from the police department.”

“Yes, he said to show you to the cemetery. He'll be finished shortly. It's a private graveside service for the immediate family.”

Valnikov and Natalie walked outside and saw Mr. Limpwood consoling a tearful couple. He tried in vain to scratch the arched backs of the immediate family of Siamese cats. Then he walked jauntily along the cobbled path among tombstones and granite sculpture of all sizes and description which said things like: “Our beloved Duchess, lest we forget!” and “Farewell, Happy Oliver! Till we meet in the Great Beyond!”

He was dressed similarly to the other mortician, but was much shorter and more bald. He wore a white carnation. “May I be of service?”

Valnikov showed his badge and Mr. Limpwood registered disappointment. It was the best week since he'd been in business: fourteen dogs, ten cats, a chimpanzee, two ocelots, a piranha from Pomona (Not all freak's lived in Hollywood.) and a raccoon. There was a rumor that they might get an Arabian gelding, which had them all excited. (Eleven plots of ground to bury that baby. Eleven! And the embalming cost!) But these were just cops not customers.

“You know, Sergeant, I tried to call you this morning but you'd just left. I'm terribly sorry, but the deceased was buried last night. I thought we still had her set for burial this morning, but as you know, there was no bereaved, only dear Mrs. Whitfield, who kindly arranged for the burial, bless her heart.”

“Where's she buried? Let's dig her up,” said Valnikov.

“Dig her up? Sergeant! Exhume the body? I've never been asked …”

“I think that only applies to people bodies,” said Valnikov. “Is it that fresh grave over there? By the shovel?”

“Yes, but I don't know! I don't want to be sued, Sergeant! In the event the deceased's next of kin is determined!”

“We can't determine anything until we look at the body,” said Valnikov.

“Millie wants me back on time and she means business,” said Twinkles suddenly, and Valnikov didn't doubt that at all. Then the giant kid strode over to the half-filled grave, stripped off his dress shirt, showing a black silk body shirt that Millie had bought him, and started swooping up earth like a steam shovel. He had the shallow grave uncovered in fifteen minutes.

“I don't want to be responsible,” Mr. Limpwood cried. “I'm getting out of here.” And he took off in a hurry while Twinkles pulled the box out of the ground with one hand. (It was a cheap pine box and not the walnut that Madeline paid for.)

The lad used the shovel blade and cracked it open easily. Then he grimaced. “Oh!” he said. “Oh, I don't think that's a schnauzer!”

“It's a schnauzer,” Valnikov said, with little admiration for Mr. Limpwood's art. (When there's no bereaved, save a buck where you can.)

The young giant was unaccustomed to death in any form. “Tutu was so beautiful!” he said. “I don't know!”

“Mrs. Gharoujian said something about a white toenail on the rear foot. Do you remember that?”

“Do dead things look so …”

“Yes, they do,” said Valnikov. “Now look at the back foot. You can just reach in there.”

“I couldn't,” the kid said, getting pale. “Is her body hard?”

“Rigor has come and gone,” said Valnikov. “Let's see.” And he reached in the coffin. “Yes. There
is
a whitish toenail. I think this might be Mrs. Gharoujian's Tutu.”

“But the face!” the young man cried. Then he sat by the grave site and dropped his head. “I loved Tutu.” His eyes were filling. “Millie never cared about her.”

“Listen, son,” Valnikov said, squatting beside the tearful body builder, “who would be able to positively identify this schnauzer by her markings? Who knew her best?”

“There are so many guys that come and go at Millie's,” said the young man. “Everybody played with Tutu. So
many
guys.”

“Mrs. Gharoujian mentioned her dog handler,” said Valnikov. “Would he know her markings?”

“He might.” The kid nodded, taking a look at the contorted mastiff face on the dead animal. “That
can't
be Tutu! Is
this
what death does to you?”