The Black Marble (8 page)

“What I'm saying, Val,” Hooker said patiently, “is that I want Zimmerman here to work business burglary with
you.
You've got too much work in your district for one man. You should have a partner.”

“Oh,” Valnikov said, lips and throat parched. “Could you excuse me for a minute, Captain? I'd like to get a drink.”

“Go ahead, Val,” Hooker said, while Natalie Zimmerman sneered at her Friz.

Before Valnikov returned, she said, “One more question: Was he bombed or wasn't he, during his
problem
with the pathologist?”

“Argument over a homicide case.” Hooker shrugged. “I don't even know the details. Insulted the doctor and got reported. He may have had liquor on his breath at the time. He just needed a transfer, I think.”

“And now
we're
going to straighten him out?”

Valnikov scuttled back into the room, his cinnamon hair wet and stringy as though he'd made a half-hearted attempt to comb it. He wore Clarence Cromwell's green tie instead of his own dirty blue one. The tail of the tie hung three inches too low. It was a half inch off center and his collar button showed. He sat erect and made a vigorous attempt to focus his runny eyes.

“I see you're wearin my tie,” Clarence nodded.

“Mai tai?” Valnikov said vacantly. “No, I don't care for exotic drinks.”

Then Valnikov looked blankly at Captain Hooker, who laughed, thinking Valnikov had intentionally made a joke.

Natalie Zimmerman knew better. “Oh Jesus!” she said to her Friz.

In the squad room, Fuzzy Spinks had gone out in the field and Nate Fanner had taken over the blackjack game with Earl Scheib Lopez.

The black detective was glowering down at the eleven-year-old who was shaking so much he could hardly hold the cards.

“You think you're bad, Earl?” the detective whispered. “You ain't bad, Earl. Me,
I'm
bad! You hittin or stayin?”

“I'ma … I'ma … I'ma … h-h-h-hitting,” Earl Scheib Lopez said, with a king showing and a jack in the hole. Then he said, “I b-b-b-b-busted,” even before Nate Farmer gave him his card.

The big cop had won all of Fuzzy Spinks' money back and was into Earl for three of his own bucks while Earl's grandma sat at the table of the other kiddie cop, Irma Thebes, patiently trying to convince Montezuma, in formal Spanish, that
of course
Earl was old enough to be gassed at San Quentin.

5

The Big Sewer

Madeline Whitfield awakened that morning not knowing or caring that it was Russian Christmas. Nor did she care that in two days there would be a football game played within sight of her mansion, just down the hill in the arroyo, just near the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. Nor did she know that the most wistful, desperate dream of her life would be totally demolished by the arm of a left-handed quarterback.

To Madeline Whitfield the day was significant only because it was Friday. And that meant it was only two days from Sunday. And Sunday meant the Winter Show of 1977, sponsored by the elite Kennel Club of Beverly Hills, at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena.

It was perhaps not as prestigious as the Summer Show, and certainly would not compare with Chicago International, or that jewel in the crown, the Westminster Kennel Club Show at Madison Square Garden. But it was an important show and for Madeline, crucial. There would be as many as five major points awarded, and Vickie with twelve needed only three more points to become a champion.

Madeline had agonized with Vickie's handler, Chester Biggs, whether or not to show her now in the Winter Show. Should they bring her in with a coat not quite prime and risk a loss to save the prime coat for New York in February? It was a decision which had to be made weeks in advance. Vickie had never lost yet, and Madeline was beside herself with anxiety. Finally, Chester made the decision by guessing who would judge. He guessed right. The judge was a shrewd old hand, one who could not be bought with expensive gratuities. A judge who knew his business, who would not penalize Vickie because her coat was now not quite prime, who would forgive, knowing that Vickie was being readied for Madison Square Garden and everlasting glory.

Madeline had overridden the vigorous objections of the dog handler by keeping Vickie at home these last crucial days before the show.

“Mrs. Whitfield, I've
got
to keep her for you,” he had said. “Owners
don't
keep their dogs at home if they expect to win important dog shows!”

“But, Chester, I just can't bear parting with Vickie. She's never spent a night away from me since I got her.”

“Mrs. Whitfield, do you want a pet or a
champion?
This dog is the finest miniature schnauzer bitch I've ever seen. She can win it
all
, do you understand? And I'm not talking about the best of breed, or best of terrier group. I'm talking about the best in show!”

“Chester, I'm sorry,” Madeline Whitfield said. “You just … well, it's hard to say what Vickie means to me. She's like my child, silly as that sounds.”

“It's not silly, Mrs. Whitfield. I've been a handler for a long time. I know how you feel about your Vickie. But you're so fortunate to possess a thing of rare beauty like Victoria Regina of Pasadena.” He touched her hand in a gesture of understanding when he said it, thinking how that dumb name made him want to puke. “And you're a generous woman who would want to share Victoria with dog lovers everywhere, like Norton Simon and Armand Hammer share their art. Vickie will never be as beautiful as she
can
be, never show her true perfection, if you don't let me keep her for you. You owe it to dog lovers and to Vickie and to yourself and …”

But to no avail. Victoria Regina of Pasadena would sleep between her mother's pearly sheets even the Saturday night before the big show. There was nothing Chester Biggs could do about it but come to the Whitfield home to groom and train the gorgeous little bitch and try to reason with the dowdy big bitch, and try his best to win it all with this little schnauzer and build the reputation of his kennel to where even his stupid brother-in-law could run it and Chester Biggs could get his ass into real estate where he belonged.

Chester often said as much during the twelve months he was Vickie's handler. He had said it the night before the Santa Barbara Show last summer. He had said it in the bar of the hotel while drinking with three other dog handlers who discuss dog exhibitors the way thoroughbred trainers discuss horse owners. The conversation generally centered around the richest exhibitors, how much of a bonus had been laid on a handler for winning best of breed, how high the tariff would be if a client was
really
wealthy and competitive and you won him five major points.

Most handlers got only $35-40 a day per dog even when showing a tough breed like a German shepherd. Perhaps $100 a point as a winning bonus. You had to own a kennel to make enough to live on. Handling and showing a few dogs for rich clients simply wasn't enough, unless your client was a crazy Persian like the one who reportedly gave his New York handler a bonus of $10,000 for bringing him a win with his Great Pyrenees bitch.

There were some, like Buck Hickman, who found other ways to collect rich bonuses. Hickman had married a Beverly Hills client and now
he
was an exhibitor and hired his own handlers, and came to dog shows in blue blazers, his silver hair rinsed and back-combed and sprayed just like his dogs, with a rich man's winter suntan, as though born to the purple. That was a secret dream of many handlers who had rich lonely female clients. Women who doted and pampered and spent up to $40,000 a year to show their dogs. Reasonably young and willing dog handlers could hope. There was always a chance, since women exhibitors outnumbered men four to one.

When Chester Biggs sat in the bar that night in Santa Barbara, and talked about the potential of the great young schnauzer bitch who slept in the same bed as her lonely screwed-up owner in Pasadena, there was a handler present who paid more than passing attention, especially when he heard that the owner was rich and available. But he went back to more pressing problems, such as how to convince the cocktail waitress that they might be able to find a little action even in a town like Santa Barbara if she'd meet him when she got off work.

She'd almost laughed in his face because his gray roots were showing and he was tipping only fifty cents a round. “Some other time, high-roller,” she finally told him.

Philo Skinner had sat there with yet another erection left to wilt. And at his age how many were
left?

Madeline had a minor hangover from the Scotch and Dalmane. In the past she had experienced wretched ones from Scotch and Librium and Scotch and Valium. So far the Scotch and a small dose of Dalmane seemed the best way to sleep.

Victoria was certainly alive enough at eight a.m. She frisked in the kitchen, yapping and wiggling around Yolanda, the housekeeper, formerly a live-in with Madeline, now a day worker on Mondays and Fridays.

“Vee-kee,” Yolanda grinned, showing golden Tijuana bridgework in front, a status symbol which, unfortunately, was as much a tip-off to Immigration officers as was the long shapeless hair, the cast-off clothes, the diffident bearing of the illegal aliens.

Vickie started leaping straight up, showing off, barking, begging for the liver tidbits she knew Yolanda would get from the refrigerator.

“Morning, Yolanda,” Madeline groaned, shielding her eyes from the morning sun as she shuffled into the kitchen and collapsed at the table, tolerating Vickie's shrill and happy growls.

“Joo wan jus café, Meesus?”

“Please, Yolanda. And perhaps a little orange juice.”

“Jas, Meesus,” the plump young girl nodded, first giving Vickie another slice of boiled liver, humming with the Spanish music on the radio, too loud for Madeline, who nonetheless tolerated it as she tried to concentrate on the
Los Angeles Times.

Madeline was distressed to read that one of the city's leading decorators was sick and tired of wicker and rattan and jungle plants and swore that it would be déclassé in six months. Madeline looked around at the white wicker chairs and rattan loveseat, and all the hanging fern which she had bought at great cost six months before when she saw a kitchen in the Los
Angeles Times
done by the same decorator. It was ever thus. She would finally get the courage or the impetus or the money to embrace a style about a month before it was déclassé, whether it be clothes or furniture or hairstyles.

Lord, she wished Yolanda would turn down that radio. The frequent commercials in machine-gun Spanish were unbearable right now. And Lord, she wished she could still afford to have Yolanda live-in and take care of the house as it should be. As it was when Mason was here, before she had to close off three of the upstairs bedrooms, and the guest house, to conserve gas and keep the soaring maintenance costs in check. Many Old Pasadena scions lived on modest trusts and inheritances in mansions remodeled by Sears or Montgomery Ward. Lovely tiles which had been painted, fired, and glazed fifty years before by Spanish, Portuguese, and Mexican artisans now lay side by side with fifty-dollar sheets of formica. Many an eight-thousand-square-foot Colonial or Tudor mansion didn't have enough furniture left to fill a three-bedroom apartment. They settled for leaky gurgling toilets, but kept their expensive club memberships, hence, their identities, intact.

One more year and the trust fund would be finished. As always, her stomach churned when she thought of it.
One
year. Who could have thought about such a possibility when she was Mrs. Mason Whitfield? Not even after the divorce. Her mother had always said the trust was constructed by Madeline's father to endure throughout his only child's lifetime. With “prudent” management, of course. Always, Madeline had thought of the trust anthropomorphically: at first a guardian angel, later a kindly uncle who would always
be
there. Except that when her father designed that trust he didn't consider something as imprudent as a breast cancer which spread to the bone and eventually devastated his widow, her property, her hospital insurance, her Medicare,
and
the trust fund which was to sustain Madeline Whitfield forever.