The Straight Man - Roger L Simon (5 page)

I pulled up in front of Burckhardt's office about a
half hour later. It was on a run-down part of Sixth just shy of the
Miracle Mile district, as if whatever saint decreed such matters had
said, "The miracle stops here!" and the blocks and blocks
of shiny mirrored high-rises were suddenly interrupted by a 1915
vintage lump of neo-Victorian sooty brick called the Fallbrook Arms.
My son Simon and his buddies could have improved it with a little
graffiti.

I ignored the flaking plaster and urine-scented
corridors and marched directly up to Burckhardt's office on the
fourth floor, barging in on him so quickly he didn't have a chance to
get his maple bar out of his mouth and put away his copy of Penthouse
Forum.

"What's the matter?" I said. "Couldn't
you afford someone for your morning run or were they just better than
you are? You know, some of us work in the daytime. In fact, some of
us work at libraries or at the courthouse or the registrar of voters
or the Hall of Records. Of course, some of us don't work at all!"
I was pouring out a lot of vitriol at this small-time loser and I
didn't particularly like it. It had the acrid smell of self-hate.

"I don't know what you're talking about,"
he managed.

"Oh, c'mon, Burckhardt, you know exactly what
I'm talking about. Now, who put you up to this or do you want to be
slapped with an invasion of privacy suit?"

"Oh, Jesus. Give a guy a break. You're in this
business too. Of course, lookin' at that car you drive, you must be
makin' out a lot better than I am."

"That's last year's car. Now look, I don't know
what you know about this, but this isn't some Armenian deli owner
trying to juggle three mistresses and an ex-wife. Someone could have
been murdered here and I'm sure you don't want to be mixed up in a
capital crime, particularly on the killer's side. So I'm going to
make you a simple proposition: you tell me who hired you to watch me
and I'll pretend it never happened . . . and I'll pay you besides."

"How much?"

"Two hundred dollars." What the hell, it
was Emily's money.

"Not enough. You can't buy me, mister! Who d'ya
think I am?"

"Two-fifty."

"All right." He looked away quickly in
embarrassment. I was almost embarrassed myself. "Only I don't
know the guy's name."

"You don't know your client's name?"

"
I was about to close up last night ..."
Close up, I thought. It was the safest bet in California that this
guy slept on the couch behind me. . ." when this kid comes in
all nervous and excited. He must've been about twenty-two,
twenty-three, and real skinny, but I don't think he was a hype."
For a moment I didn't realize he meant an addict. This guy was back
in the 1940s. "He's got this car what's parked around the Fun
Zone he wants me to follow—a BMW with your plate numbers—and tell
him everything about who owns it and whatever. He offers me
sixty-five on the spot and a hundred more when I got the information
and tells me to send it all care of B and B, post office box such and
such in Glendale."

"B and B, like the after-dinner drink?"

"
Yeah, that's what I thought. Only the minute I
mention it he gets all upset, like he wouldn't have nothin' to do
with alcohol, as if I was gonna offer him a swig of my Gordon's Extra
Dry over there." He nodded toward a half-empty bottle of generic
gin on an end table. "Anyway, I had it wrong. It was B
for
B, not B and B."

Great, I thought. That clarified matters.

"So the kid just slips me the sixty-five and
runs out of here like a scared coyote on Wilshire Boulevard. Ever
seen that—a coyote on Wilshire Boulevard? I did once. The day
before Eisenhower was elected. So that's my story, Maury. More than
that I can't tell you. I guess it's not worth the full two-fifty, but
. . ."

I stood there a moment before continuing. Somehow
just being in this room was giving me a headache. "Stanley,
you're a professional in this business."

"Uh-huh. Sure. Twenty-six years."

"You and I both know getting a P.O. box identity
out of the Glendale post office is about as easy as doing a tooth
extraction on a Bengal tiger."

"
Yeah, yeah. Right." He liked that one.

"So I've got a proposition for you." I
reached into my wallet for a crisp hundred-dollar bill. "I'm
giving you this hundred now to go over to the Glendale post office
and stake out that box. There's a hundred more in it for each
additional day it takes you and a five-hundred-buck bonus when you
tell me whose box it is."

"Sounds great to me, pal. I'm your man."

It was a close race between Burckhardt and me to see
who was out the door first. I felt better the moment I hit the
street. It was a gorgeous day in early October, my favorite time of
year in L.A., and the opening day of the new California Lottery. I
went into the liquor store across the street and bought a ticket. It
was kind of a bingo game and you had to get three of a kind to win.
The first two numbers were $5,000.00, but the next four chances came
up trumps when I scratched them off. I put it down to not-a-bad-start
and got back into my car. In any case, I was off to Malibu to see
Otis King, and just the thought of being near the ocean kept me in a
good mood. On the way I stopped by the phone company's phone book
library on Wilshire just to see if something resembling B for B
popped up. There wasn't anything similar in the L.A. directories for
the last five years. I also knew I should check the fictitious
business name listings in the courthouse building on Hill Street, but
it was sheer drudgery and I wished I had someone I could trust to do
that. Sometimes I used my older son, Jacob, but he was in school now,
getting ready for his college boards on Saturday.

It was then I thought of Chantal Barrault. Maybe she
was serious about being a PI, One trip down to the court would cure
her. Anyway, a woman like that would be crazy to have a listed phone
number. I checked anyway. She wasn't crazy.

I kept thinking of Chantal Barrault as I drove out to
Malibu. She only started to drift out of my mind as I came through
the tunnel leading from the Santa Monica Freeway onto the Pacific
Coast Highway. The minute I got down by the water, I always wondered
why I didn't live there. Maybe it was fear of isolation, not living
in the middle of things in West Hollywood, the newly incorporated
capital of gay pride, gray power, and fresh lox. But I often thought
that if I had someone to live with again, I would move out here, find
a spot in those Malibu hills that look so much like Portugal, and
watch the whales go by.

I certainly didn't have fantasies about living in
that world-famous
cordon sanitaire
—the
Malibu Colony. We all have our own level of ambition and mine just
didn't run to living in a cluster of 110 $2 million-and-up houses
with twenty-eight tennis courts.

Actually, like most things, the Colony was no longer
what it once was-the seaside capital of movie glamour. The
vicissitudes of the entertainment industry being what they are, some
of the more expensive homes had been sold to jet-set refugees and
petrodollar riffraff from places like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Now,
with oil prices plunging, some of them would doubtless have to move
on, to be replaced by whom? I wasn't sure.

I was musing on this subject as I drove up to the
Colony gatehouse, which seemed to be modeled after those other
imposing edifices that blocked the way into the movie studios
themselves. In fact, it was just as easy to get into the Colony as
onto a studio lot. All you needed was a knowing look, a fancy car,
and perhaps the name and address of someone living within. I often
thought it would be fun to put on a Fila jogging suit, rent one of
those new Mercedes station wagons, park right on the narrow street
that divides the pricier beachfront houses from the less costly
landward properties, and start ripping off Mondrians while waving to
my friends and neighbors.

Dr. Carl Bannister lived in 63A, a two-story redwood
and glass structure on the landward side. The maxed-out funk of the
Jesse Johnson Review was pounding through the walls at megadecibels
on what must've been studio JBLs or Altecs when I approached. I
banged extra hard on the door to be heard over the sonic boom, but a
muscular young man of about twenty in a Banana Republic T-shirt
opened it almost immediately, as if he had been standing there
waiting for me. I glanced up at the video camera above the door and
knew why.

"
I'm looking for Dr. Carl Bannister," I
said, knowing I'd have to see the man himself before I had a chance
to see his patient.

"
Do you have an appointment?"

"
No, I don't. But this is sort of an important
matter and—"

"Dr. Bannister is with a patient now."

"That's okay. I'll wait."

"That could be a long while. Sometimes he's with
his patients four or five hours at a time."

I nodded. "I'll wait."

The young man looked unhappy. He wasn't losing me as
easily as he expected. Behind him I could see a woman walk by in a
bikini with a note pad, a Malibu secretary.

"What'd you say your name was?"

"Wine. Moses Wine."

"Why don't you give me your phone number, Mr.
Wine, and I'll have the doctor call you?"

"I'd prefer to wait."

I got my foot in the door just before he tried to
shut it on me, and I wedged my way into the living room. I had barely
taken in the two-story space with the sunken fire pit when a man in
his fifties entered wearing a worn pair of khaki shorts, huarache
sandals, and no shirt. He had curly silver hair like spun wire a la
Joseph Heller or Norman Mailer, but his physique was trimmer. And his
piercing, almost catlike hazel eyes gave him the charismatic
appearance of a high-toned hypnotist.

"
Dad," said the Banana Republic shirt.
"This is Mr. Wine."

"Moses Wine," I said.

"Oh, yes, the famous detective. I've heard all
about you from friends in the personnel behavior department at Tulip
Computers. They were sorry to lose you. It's an honor." He bowed
to me with an ambiguous flourish. "No doubt you're here to speak
with Otis about the horrible business with Mike."

"If you don't mind."

"Not at all. Not at all. Although if you wish to
see Otis alone, that's going to be hard. He can't be alone for six
months or so."

"
Never?"

"Not according to his contract. From his first
jog in the morning until the last late show at night, one of our
people is going to be with him. And if he wakes up in the middle of
the night, I insist that they call me." Bannister gestured
toward his son and the secretary.

"You mean his movie contract specifies he can't
be alone?"

"N0, no." The secretary signaled Bannister,
who went to answer a blinking phone. "His contract with me—for
the initiation phase of therapy. You lead a person to independence by
first making him dependent." Bannister picked up.

"Carl, here. Yes, Ian . . . I see .... Well,
just do what normal people do and go from aisle to aisle in the lot
until you've found your car .... Yes, call me back." He hung up
and turned to me. "Celebrities are so sheltered, you have to
teach them to walk all over again .... C'mon, let's have some
lunch—with Otis."

He led me down a corridor toward a mirrored room
where the sound of Jesse Johnson was, if anything, redoubled. Otis
King was inside working on a rowing machine while a large Polynesian
who looked like a bodyguard for the king of Samoa sat sleepily in a
wicker chair.

Otis jumped up the moment he saw Bannister. "Carl,
please, baby, my man, my lord, my mother, please please please ....
The dude called from the California-Hunger-Africa shit and wants me
to do a Jerry Lewis on their motherfuckin' telethon. Can I do it,
Carl, please? I wanna help them babies, please please please."
He got down on his knees and begged like a little child.

Bannister went and turned down the stereo. "Sure,
Otis, why not? I want you to help the babies." He petted Otis's
shoulder as you would a dog. "This is Moses Wine. He's a private
eye looking into Mike's suicide."

"Oh, man, I don' wanna run down that shit again.
Blue-jays had me up three days on that one. Almos' set me back in
therapy six years. Any more o' that, I'll be a regressive
motherfucker, back on the floor like one o' them fetuses." He
balled himself up and rolled over by way of demonstration. Then he
looked up at us, grinning.

"Good show, Otis," said Bannister.

"Yeah, how you like that body language? Not bad,
huh? Pryor never did shit like that. Not even Eddie." He stood
up and brushed himself off. "When's lunch? I wanna get me some
of that Malipussy!"

6

"S0 you one of them private eye motherfuckers.
Get you laid a lot?"

We were sitting in a booth in the Malibu Pharmacy and
Otis definitely had his eye on the "Malipussy" as he
spoke—and not just the blond, blue-eyed kind, but on anything that
walked between the ages of seven and seventy.