The Fame Thief

The Junior Bender Series

Crashed

Little Elvises

The Poke Rafferty Series

A Nail Through the Heart

Breathing Water

The Fourth Watcher

The Queen of Patpong

The Fear Artist

For the Dead

The Simeon Grist Series

The Four Last Things

Everything but the Squeal

Skin Deep

Incinerator

The Man With No Time

The Bone Polisher

Irwin Dressler crossed one eye-agonizing plaid leg over the other, leaned back on a white leather couch half the width of the Queen Mary, and said, “Junior, I’m disappointed in you.”

If Dressler had said that to me the first time I’d been hauled up to his Bel Air estate for a command appearance, I’d have dropped to my knees and begged for a painless death. He was, after all, the Dark Lord in the flesh. But now I’d survived him once, so I said, “Well, Mr. Dressler—”

A row of yellow teeth, bared in what was supposed to be a smile but looked like the last thing many small animals see. “Call me Irwin.”

“Well, Mr. Dressler, at the risk of being rowed into the center of the Hollywood Reservoir wired to half a dozen cinder blocks and being offered the chance to swim home, what have I done to disappoint you?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.” Despite the golf slacks and the polo shirt, Dressler was old without being grandfatherly, old without going all dumpling, old without getting quaint. He’d been a dangerous young man in 1943, when he assumed control of mob activity in Los Angeles, and he’d gone on being dangerous until he was a dangerous old man. Forty minutes
ago, I’d been snatched off a Hollywood sidewalk by two walking biceps and thrown into the back seat of a big old Lincoln Town Car, and when I’d said, “Where’s your weapon?” the guy in the front said, “Irwin Dressler,” and I’d shut up.

Dressler gave me a glance I could have searched for hours without finding any friendliness in it. “You got yourself a
franchise
, Junior, a
monopoly
, and you’re not working it.”

I said, “My business plan calls for long periods of inactivity.”

“That’s not how this country was built, Junior.” Like many great crooks, even the very few at his stratospheric level, Dressler was a political conservative. “What made America great? I’ll tell you: backbone, elbow grease, noses to the grindstone.”

“Sounds uncomfortable.”

Dressler had lowered his head while he was speaking, perhaps to demonstrate the approved nose-to-the-grindstone position. Only his eyes moved. Beneath heavy white eyebrows, they came up to meet mine, as smooth, dry, and friendly as a couple of river stones. He kept them on me until the back of my neck began to prickle and I shifted in my chair.

“This is amusing?” he said. “I’m amusing you?”

“No, sir.” I picked up the platter of bread and brie and said, “Cheese?”

“In my own house he’s offering me cheese.” Dressler addressed this line to some household spirit hovering invisibly over the table. “It’s true, it’s true. I’ve grown old.”

“No, sir,” I said again. “It’s, uh, it’s.…”

“The loss of American verbal skills,” he said, nodding, “is a terrible thing. Even in someone like you. I remember a time, this will be hard for you to believe, when almost everyone could speak in complete sentences. In English, no less. What have I done, Junior, that you should laugh at me? Get so old that I don’t frighten you any more?”

“I wasn’t—”

“I bring you here, I give you cheese, good cheese—is the cheese good, Junior?”

“Fabulous,” I said, seriously rattled. This had the earmarks of one of Irwin’s legendary rants, rants that frequently ended with one less person alive in the room.

“Fabulous, he says, it’s fabulous. What are you, a hat maker? Of course, it’s fabulous. The Jews, you know, we’re a desert people. The two gods everybody’s killing each other over now, Jehovah and the other one, Allah, they’re both desert gods, did you know that, Junior?”

“Um, yes, sir.”

“Desert gods are short on forgiveness, you know? And we Jews, we’re the chosen people of a desert god and hospitality is part of our tradition, and now I’m going to get badmouthed for my cheese by some
pisher
, some
vonce
—you know what a
vonce
is, Junior?”

“No, sir.”

“It’s a bedbug, in Yiddish, great language for invective. I’ll tell you, Junior, I could flay the skin off you using Yiddish alone, I wouldn’t even need Babe and Tuffy in the next room there, listening to everything we’re saying so they can come in and kill you if I get too excited. My heart, you know? A man my age, I can’t be too careful. Someone gets me upset, better for Babe and Tuffy just to kill them first, before my heart attacks me.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Dressler. I wasn’t thinking.”

“But
thinking
, Junior, that’s what you’re supposed to be good at.” He reached out and took some bread off the platter, which I was apparently still holding, and said, “Down, put it down. Did I offer you wine?”

“Yes, sir.” He hadn’t, but I wasn’t about to bring it up. I put the tray in front of him on the table. Inched it toward him so he wouldn’t have to lean forward.

“I still got arms,” he said, tearing some bread. “What were we talking about before you got so upset?”

“My franchise.”

“Right, right. You may not know this, Junior, but you’re the only one there is. You’re like Lew Winterman when he—did you know Lew?”

“Not personally.” Lew Winterman had been the head of Universe Pictures and long considered the most powerful man in Hollywood, at least by those who didn’t know that the first thing he did every morning and the last thing he did every night was to phone Irwin Dressler.

“When he and I thought of packaging, we had to get horses to carry it to the bank, that’s how much the money weighed,” Dressler said. “You know packaging?
You can have Jimmy Stewart for your movie, but you also gotta take some whozis, I don’t know, John Gavin. And every other actor in your picture and also the cameraman and the writers
, and he represented them all, Lew did. For about a year after we figured it out, he was the only guy in Hollywood who knew how to do it, and he did it ten hours a day, seven days a week. You know how much he made?”

“No, sir. How much?”

“Don’t ask. You can’t think that high. So you’re like that now, like Lew, but on your own level, and what are you doing? Sitting around on your
tuchis
, that’s what you’re doing. That whole thing you got going? Solving crimes for crooks? And living through it? You got Vinnie DiGaudio out of the picture for me with every cop in LA trying to pin him. You helped Trey Annunziato with her dirty movie, although she didn’t like it much, the way you did it. When four hundred and eighty flatscreens got bagged out of Arnie Muffins’ garage in Panorama City, you brought them back, and without a crowd of people getting killed, which is something, the way Arnie is.
You’re it, Junior, you’re the only one. And you’re not working it.”

“Every time I do it,” I said, “I almost get killed.”

“Ehhh,” Dressler said. “You’re a young man, in the prime of life. What’re you, thirty-eight?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Prime of life. Got your reflexes, got all your IQ, at least as much as you were born with. You’re piddling along with a franchise that, I’m telling you, could be worth millions. Where’s the wine?”

I said, “I’ll get it.”

“
You’ll
get it? You think I’m going to let you in my cellar?” He picked up a silver bell and rang it. A moment later, one of the bruisers who’d abducted me and dragged me up here came into the room. He was roughly nine feet tall and his belt had to be five feet long, and none of it was fat.