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Violent Ward
Len Deighton
If America is a lunatic asylum, then California is the Violent Ward.Mickey Murphy is a criminal lawyer with an office in LA’s downtown low-rent district, an ex-wife who bleeds him for money, clients who would plead the Fifth Amendment if they could count that high, and an unrequited passion for his wealthiest client’s wife. To make matters worse, Mickey finds himself embroiled against his wishes in an elaborate and clever scam that’s going askew, and being interrogated by the LAPD about a brutal murder.With an observant eye and ear for the California ‘scene’, Deighton once again uses his brilliant storytelling skills to propel an exciting and suspenseful narrative at breakneck speed to a dramatic climax in a riot-torn city.This reissue includes a foreword from the cover designer, Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Schwartzman, and an introduction by Len Deighton, which offers a fascinating insight into the writing of the story.



Len Deighton
Violent Ward



Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
This paperback edition 2011
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers in 1993
Copyright © Len Deighton 1993
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011
Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
VIOLENT WARD. Copyright © Len Deighton 1993. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Source ISBN: 9780006479017
EBook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007450879
Version: 2017-08-10

Contents
Cover (#uf7bca8b1-639a-574d-8b36-20eb4415f466)
Title Page
Copyright
Cover designer’s note
Introduction
1
‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge,’ I said…
2
That was some bash, that party for Petrovitch. The little…
3
I drove back from the Petrovitch bash with a lot…
4
Fancy Goldie remembering our breakfasts in Tommy’s. It’s one of…
5
I’d had it too long to trade it in. Maybe…
6
It wasn’t like staying with friends. There was a sort…
7
Flying back from Colorado was not a pleasure for me,…
8
I went home to Woodland Hills and shuffled through some…
9
Next day was Sunday. From the very back of my…
10
Budd’s party was not the sort of Hollywood celebration that…
11
When my next-door neighbors, the Klopstocks, had people over, they…
12
My secretary, the indomitable Magda Huth, came running out of…
13
A week later a call from Felix Chiaputti brought a…
14
Petrovitch had a place up on Hillcrest, where the folks…
15
The trial of the policemen accused of beating Rodney King…
16
Like most of the city’s inhabitants, I spent many of…
About the Author
Other Books by Len Deighton
About the Publisher

Cover designer’s note
Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.
It is amazing to think that it is also nearly twenty years since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, an event which looms large in this book. When first reading Violent Ward, it struck a chord with my wife and me as we had just moved into our new apartment in Hollywood when the riots took place.
On the first night we were awoken by loud shouting: ‘Get out, get out, your building is on fire!’ The warning came from a police officer who was banging his night-stick against our building’s wall. In the alley behind us were a couple of LAPD black-and-white patrol cars, and I could hear an officer speaking on his radio urging the fire department to come as quickly as possible. Meanwhile my wife, wielding a garden hose, attempted to douse the flames that were engulfing our neighbouring garages.
The next night, along with several neighbours armed to the teeth, we formed a vigilante watch on the roof of our remaining garage. Apart from the sounds of a stray cat I am pleased to report that it was an uneventful night.
In the morning I visited Samy’s, the professional camera store across from our home, to purchase a few rolls of film in order to record the damage of the previous day. A couple of hours later, while sitting at my desk, I heard three loud explosions. Looking out of the window, I saw an enormous mushroom-cloud rising up from the camera store, which had been torched. It appears that their large stock of photographic chemicals were responsible for the enormity of the explosions.
The following morning I ventured to the scene of the crime to discover the burnt-out shop front strewn with the remnants of expensive cameras, including a gold Leica that had become molten by the inferno, and a large shattered fish-eye lens. These later became part of an exhibit in the store’s new premises.
The composition on the front cover draws upon all these events, with the addition of a National Guardsman who stands ready, and perhaps too eager, to respond to the civil unrest and general chaos that is unfolding. For the book’s title I chose a bold font within which could burn the flames of civil unrest; the falling ‘D’ an apt symbol of the city’s descent into ‘war’.
The back cover collage includes a book match cover from the Beverly Hills Hotel, a valet parking stub with Murphy’s Cadillac circled, a couple of Hollywood postcards, and a movie clapper board. Sitting behind all these is an edition of the ‘Los Angeles Messenger’, beneath whose fictional masthead shouts a contemporary headline that was all too true. When applying some authentic fire damage, we did not realize how flammable the newsprint would be, and nearly ended up burning our apartment down – it’s a good job Isolde was standing by with a bucket of water! Each item in the montage has been selected to convey a facet of the City of Angels, its glamour and charm that is always just a hair’s breadth away from a seedy underbelly full of corruption and violence.
The book’s spine features an LAPD badge. Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.

I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera, and my illustration was drawn with a HB Staedtler pencil.
Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI
Hollywood 2011

Introduction
Not all of the world’s greatest cities are old. Paris (where I set An Expensive Place to Die) is a great city. Cairo (the setting for City of Gold) is indisputably great but so is Los Angeles. People frown and argue when I say that but I stand by my assessment. And Los Angeles is dynamic; no sooner than you start to think you understand something of it you find it has substantially changed yet again. It is big, a vast sprawling city of low buildings that follow the freeways so that you can drive all the way to Mexico while believing you are still in the city. It is only when you fly over it that you see the uninhabited expanses that lie behind the freeways. The off-ramp signs offer a wonderland of realtor’s poesy: Tarzana, Hidden Hills, Thousand Oaks, Malibu Canyon, Lake Sherwood, Woodland Hills. But you are never far from the wild outback; listen to the raccoons pattering across the roof to invade your attic; hear the noise of a rattlesnake lurking in your woodpile, go into the yard and see a coyote rummaging through your garbage; go for an early morning round of golf and be confronted with an impudent mountain lion in no hurry to depart. This is Los Angeles County.
I had first visited Los Angeles as a very young man but it was meeting Bill Jordan, a detective with the LAPD intelligence division, that enabled me to see the inner life of the city. Bill arranged for me to go out with the police cars on such expeditions as raiding the home of a drug dealer. Bill showed me the downtown streets and alleys he had walked as a young police officer, a Pacific war veteran just out of the US Marine Corps. Eventually Bill became a private detective and he is as near to being Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe as anyone could be. But although also armed with a Law Degree, Bill Jordan is a very far cry from Mickey Murphy. Bill is a sober and reflective man whose honesty, skills and charm combined to make him into a very successful investigator. As I witnessed one night when riding in a police car, he could even make a drunken driver believe that being taken into custody was an act of goodwill. ‘How would you face your family if tonight you killed someone on the road?’
Bill showed me the many faces of Los Angeles, including the comfortable suburbia where a lot of this story is set. I returned many times and I was in Los Angeles during the days of the riots. It was a devastating time when mild-mannered citizens were suddenly brandishing guns. But writers are always apt to be opportunistic and I decided that the acrid smoke, drifting across the city’s stately skyscrapers like a net curtain, should become the climax of this book. The description of the riots is as accurate as I could make it. It was my publisher who provided me with a close view of Los Angeles at the height of the violence. Due at a book fair in Anaheim, I was collected by an out-of-town driver who carelessly took the direct route through the smouldering streets of South Central.
Many of my stories are written in the first person. Eight of nine of the Bernard Samson books are in the first person and this one is too. Deciding to set a story in the first person is a major decision in the planning of a book. Some authors prefer to have their first-person narrative written in what is sometimes called the authorial voice. Somerset Maugham did this and did little to change the idea that his tales are that of an author gathering material and reporting on the follies and misfortunes of his friends and acquaintances. Other writers use the voice and actions of the main character to create a person quite different to themselves. Bernard Samson exaggerates and distorts the world he tells us about. Without deliberate, self-serving lies he is apt to parody his superiors and ridicule his father in law. Well, this is not unknown in our real lives and it provides a chance to see into Bernard’s mind and judge his skills and his courage. Just as we love our friends and relatives as much for their failings as for their virtues, so we love and admire Bernard. The anarchic Mickey Murphy is also depicted by means of the first-person narrative and few men could be quite as different as Mickey is to Bernard. I hope that these characterisations provide something you enjoy for I devote a great deal of thought to creating these first-person people.
I am the luckiest of lucky men and I take pleasure in my work but I am a very slow worker. I envy those writers who find their characters speak to them and are able to dash off books at lightning speeds. I plod; writing books demands more than a year; no vacations, seven days a week and that includes wide-awake nights as I worry about whether to slim down characters, dump chapters or move them all to another town and start again. It is my family who deserve sympathy and have to be thanked for their understanding. Violent Ward was a specially happy book for me. Reading it again to write this introduction reminded me of all the fun I had creating the maverick Irish lawyer who has to be the hero because there is no one else around to play that role. More than one of my friends said that Mickey Murphy was exactly like me; quick to anger; quick to repent and tormented by self-doubt. Perhaps they were right. I admit to finding it relatively easy to create this rebellious Irish sinner; I admired him. Mickey’s abrasive, cynical manner cloaks the fearless morality that arms those with little or nothing to lose.
Most of my stories are love stories. And most of these love stories are set in a commanding environment such as Cairo, Los Angeles or Berlin; or an environment of hazard, such as war or espionage. Or both. And the love is tempered by the asserted masculinity of men who declare their failure to understand women. Mickey Murphy does not resemble Bernard Samson in any way other than a failure to understand the women he loves, but this failure can be a fatal one. The theme of what might have been is a sub-text of fiction and of life. This story was different to all the other books I had written. Mickey was different so when I finished the first draft of Violent Ward I asked Mickey to write to my publisher to explain the change:

Hear me out, buddy. They say if America is a lunatic asylum then California is the Violent Ward. My name is Murphy and I’m a Mick lawyer with an ex-wife who sends her astrologer around demanding money so she can pay off her orthodontist. My kid has hocked his 9mm Browning using false ID. I’m in love with the wife of my wealthiest client and the cops are trying to pin a nasty homicide on me.
But there’s no recession in the crime industry and my business is fine, or it might be if my German secretary could write and speak English, and my clients didn’t get wasted before they paid my bills. The kind of crooks I defend never plead the Fifth because they can’t count that far.
Okay, Okay. So nobody loves a lawyer.
See ya in court.
Len Deighton, 2011
If America is a lunatic asylum
then California is the Violent Ward.

1
‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge,’ I said quietly and calmly into the phone.
‘I can’t see you, Mr Murphy!’ said Miss Magda Huth, my secretary. Her German accent was more pronounced when she was agitated, like now, and her voice was strangled whenever she stood on tiptoe to see into my office over the frosted glass partition.
‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge. You can’t see me because I’m behind my desk.’
‘You must be on the floor.’
‘Yes, well, I’m trying not to frighten her,’ I said. ‘Will you please just do something about it?’
Miss Huth has no sense of urgency except when she is leaving work. ‘Your coffee is losing its froth out here,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if I brought it in to you—’
Jesus! ‘Are you listening to me?’ I said. ‘She didn’t come by for a cup of coffee and a Danish. She’s going to throw herself into the street. Any minute.’
‘There is no need to become belligerent.’ Magda Huth wasn’t young. She’d been some kind of schoolteacher in Dresden until reunification gave her a chance to leave, and at times she treats me like a backward pupil in a totalitarian kindergarten. That’s the way she was treating me now. ‘I will see if I can reach the Fire Department,’ she said primly.
‘Yes, you do that,’ I said.
Miss Huth had not been with my law partnership very long. Previously, for five years I’d had Denise, a really sensible woman and an efficient secretary. Then she went off on a package-deal skiing weekend in Big Bear – I must have been soft in the head to give her so much time off – and within eight weeks she was married to a Mexican orthodontist she met in a singles bar there. For a long time I kept hoping she’d tire of living in Ensenada and ask for her job back. But then last Christmas I had this long chatty boilerplate letter, plus a blurred snapshot of her and her husband and twin bambinos, and now I was trying to get used to Miss Huth all over again. It wasn’t easy.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Get the Fire Department, and tell them to make it snappy or they’ll be hosing her off the sidewalk.’
‘You should not talk that way,’ Miss Huth said, with a sniff, and cut me off before I could reply. I hung up so gently it didn’t make a sound.
I looked through the kneehole of the desk so that I could see the window. The woman was still there, fidgeting around, trying to look down into the street below her. This would happen today of all days. My new boss, the mighty Zachary Petrovitch – el supremo, ichi-ban, tycoon extraordinaire – was spending a few days at his Los Angeles mansion so he could be guest of honor at the ‘surprise party’ his minions had been planning for weeks. Petrovitch wanted his own little law firm here in the city, and he was bringing to this partnership something it had never had before – money. By putting one of his tame in-house lawyers behind Korea Charlie’s empty desk he’d found a legal way of getting control of a law practice. It had been decreed that I should be at his party tonight, tugging my forelock and bowing low and telling everyone how grateful I was to become a toiler ant in the Petrovitch zoo.
The phone buzzed and I snatched it up. It was Miss Huth again. ‘The people from Graham’s builders’ discount store have come out into the street; they are all staring up here, Mr Murphy.’
‘So?’
‘I thought you would wish to know.’
‘What did the Fire Department say?’
‘They’ve put me on hold,’ she said.
‘On hold?’
‘I’ve got them on the other line. They asked was it a fire, and I said no, it was not a fire.’
‘Well, that’s dandy. I’ll throw a lighted cigar butt into the shredder basket, and then maybe they’ll discuss the possibility of dropping by sometime.’
‘They are on the line now!’ she said urgently and cut me off again. I had to crouch real low to see properly. The woman outside my window was still shifting her ass about. Maybe the rubbernecks in the street thought she was getting ready to throw herself off the ledge, but I had my reasons for guessing that she was getting a cramp in the gluteus maximus and moving around to be more comfortable.
There was a tapping noise – imperious and persistent – on the frosted glass panel. It was Miss Huth, making a menacing shadow against the whitened glass with just her fringed hair and beady eyes peeping over it. She signaled to tell me that I’d put the phone down without putting it properly on the hook. I picked it up and she said, ‘They are coming. The firemen. They are coming – right away.’
‘I should hope so.’ There was the sound of a siren, but it grew fainter and went north up Western Avenue toward Hollywood. ‘Maybe I could use that cup of coffee,’ I told her. ‘If you put it on the mat inside the door, I’ll crawl over and pull it toward me.’
‘I don’t see what good you think you’re doing sitting there on the floor, Mr Murphy.’ She was peering over the frosted glass again; I could hear it in her voice.
‘I’m trying not to alarm her.’
‘The firemen will arrive and the woman will see them, won’t she? Why don’t you get up and go over and talk with her?’
‘And if she jumps, I take the blame? You come in and talk to her. Maybe you’ve got an insight into the motivation of women who jump off ledges.’
She let that one go and busied herself with placing two tall polystyrene cups on the mat, together with a Bear Claw on a paper napkin. I’d ordered one coffee and an almond croissant; the Bear Claws were too big and had brightly colored strawberry jelly inside, and I didn’t like them. The little old Vietnamese guy who had taken over Tony’s Deli employed his relatives, and some of them couldn’t understand a word of English. When Big Tony and his brother ran that place, Tonichinos – large cappuccinos to go – had froth you could cut with a knife. Now it withered and died within five minutes; I guess the Vietnamese didn’t understand the froth machine. Even so, Tony’s Deli still made the best cappuccinos in this part of town. Thank God those guys had passed on the recipe to their successor, because I was hooked on them.
Gently I pulled the mat over and grabbed the coffees. They were still warm; I savored them. Sitting there on the Persian carpet, the final sixteen payments for which had now been underwritten by our new owner, gave me a chance to reflect on the arrangements for the party that night. It had to go well. I needed the money, really needed it.
Before I’d finished the second cup of coffee I heard a siren coming along Olympic. I looked under the desk to see the window. The woman outside must have heard it too, for she was slowly and painfully getting up. First she brought one foot up onto the ledge, then she was kneeling there. Finally, moving like someone terrified of heights, she stood up and leaned back against the window, with both arms pressed flat against the glass. She was wearing an expensive light-weight tweed pants suit and a gold and blue Hermès scarf around her head, the kind of outfit a choosy woman would need to throw herself out of a Los Angeles window in springtime. I watched her cautious movements with great interest. Considering the way she’d been acting out there on the ledge, enjoying all the motions of a would-be suicide, she was certainly taking great pains now to make sure she didn’t lose her balance.
I went across the room. She had her back to me now. I slid the window up and said, ‘For God’s sake come on in.’
She swung her head around and stared at me with hate in her eyes. ‘Did you send for the Fire Department?’ She coughed to clear her throat. Her cheeks had reddened; I could see she was cold. Maybe that was why she’d decided to come in.
‘Why me?’ I said. ‘Any one of those people down there might have sent for them. The whole neighborhood’s been watching you.’ This was one of the few tall buildings in a street of one-story shacks; everyone could see her. ‘Come in!’
‘You’re a shit,’ she said, and moved suddenly, swinging her feet into the room with commendable dexterity. Spotting the polystyrene cups on the mat, she went across to get a hot drink. Finding that both cups were empty, she tossed them across the room with a violence that made me shudder. She didn’t seem to fancy the Bear Claw; I suppose it was the strawberry jelly. She made for the door.
‘The Fire Chief is going to be asking you some questions,’ I called after her.
‘You answer them, you goddamned lawyer,’ she yelled. ‘You’ve always got an answer for everything!’ She slammed out through the door that leads to the back stairs, just as the sirens were dying outside in the street. She knew the way to the back entrance; it was the way she got in.
The next moment the whole room was filled with burly men in shiny oilskin coats, rubber boots, and yellow helmets. They were mad at me. ‘How is it my fault?’ I yelled back at them. ‘You let her get away.’
‘Where’d she come from?’ said a burly fire fighter, picking up the Bear Claw and chewing a piece out of it.
‘How should I know where she came from? Maybe she escaped from the zoo.’
‘You called in and said this was an emergency,’ said a rat-faced little guy who seemed to be the chief. He smelled of metal polish and mint digestive tablets.
‘Is that so? Did I interrupt a poker game or something? What am I supposed to do when someone comes into my office and wants to leap out of the window, get an entertainment license?’
The burly one tossed the remains of the Bear Claw into the wastebasket, where it landed with a loud clang. No wonder they give me indigestion: toss away an almond croissant and it makes only a soft swoosh.
Maybe if I’d been a little more diplomatic, Ratface wouldn’t have turned nasty and sent two of his men to search out violations of the Fire Department Code. ‘You should have been doing that before your own block burned down,’ I said. But these guys were young kids; they hadn’t been with the department long enough to remember that scandal. Finally Ratface came up with a clipboard reading aloud what he said were twenty-two infringements. ‘The fire escape is rusty,’ he said, jabbing at the clipboard with his finger.
‘We just ran out of Brillo,’ I said. I looked over his shoulder and read the sheet. Most of the faults were minor ones, but it looked like someone was going to have to renew the sprinkler system, put up new smoke detectors, and install some kind of fire doors. If I knew anything about the small print in the lease, it wasn’t going to be my rapacious landlord, but no matter. It wasn’t my pigeon. Two months earlier, the bottom line on that kind of work might have been enough to bankrupt me, but now it was just something to pass on to the new owner: the mighty Petrovitch. ‘These old firetraps should be torn down,’ said the guy who didn’t like Bear Claws to his buddy. ‘The whole block should be flattened. It’s just a shantytown.’
‘We can’t all live in Bel Air, buddy.’
After they all trooped out, I examined the carpet and the dirty marks that their boots had left. The carpet needed cleaning anyway, but the extra stains were not going to help me when Zachary Petrovitch came to see what kind of premises he was getting for his money.
When at last I was free to sit down behind my desk and leaf through all the work outstanding, I found there was plenty to do. A new client, hooray. A one-time soap star, drunk and resisting arrest. It took me a minute to recognize her name; there is no limbo more bleak than the oblivion to which the soapers go. Then there were two movie scripts, one dog-eared and the other pristine. This client was a writer – a nice intelligent guy until now – who had worked himself up into a roaring frenzy about a movie that was being made by a producer he used to work with. He wanted me to read the two scripts and sue the production company for plagiarism. Plagiarism! He must be living on another planet. Start seeking injunctions for that kind of larceny and Hollywood would slither to a complete standstill. Did he think those guys with the Armani suits could write connecting the letters just because they had Montblanc fountain pens? Original ideas?
None of it was more urgent than the red box file marked Sir Jeremy Westbridge. A lawyer gets used to the idea that most of his clients are on a course of self-destruction, but this Brit was something else. Every mail delivery brought word of some new and more terrible misdeed. I could see no way of keeping him out of prison, it was just a matter of whether he got ten or twenty years. The only consolation was that he had me on retainer and paid up like a sweetheart. How did I ever get into this crock? When I left high school I had everything set for a career as a car thief.
Dumping the whole stack of work back into the tray, I found myself looking at that damned window ledge, so finally I decided to go see Danny. I picked up the phone and told Miss Huth, ‘I have to see my son.’
‘No. You have an appointment at eleven-thirty.’
‘Cancel it.’
‘It’s far too late to do that, Mr Murphy. It is already eleven-twenty-two.’
‘Who is it?’
‘Mr Byron.’ She purred: she recognized his name. Women always knew his name. Budd Byron was now old enough for his early shows to be on daytime runs.
‘Oh,’ I said. I guess his old shows were on TV in Germany too.
‘I think he’s here,’ she said, and I heard the outer door buzz. ‘Shall I show him in?’ I could hear the emotion in her voice. No woman could catch sight of Budd Byron without losing her emotional equilibrium.
‘Yes, do that, Miss Huth … Budd! It’s good to see you.’ Budd was slim and tanned. He came into my office with the kind of cool, calm confidence of General MacArthur wading ashore in the Philippines, Newton demonstrating the force of gravity, or Al Capone denying that he owed income tax.
Budd had been a college classmate; you maybe would not have guessed that from the hellos. Budd has a certain sort of Hollywood formality. He fixed me with a sincere look and gripped my hand tight while giving my upper arm a slap: a California salutation.
‘You’re looking great,’ I said. ‘Great.’ He was wearing Oxford brogues, custom-made gray-flannel slacks, and a jacket of Harris tweed, the heavy sort of garment worn in the winter months by Southern California’s native male population. His shirt was tapered and his collar gold-pinned to secure the tight knot of a blue-and-red-striped Brooks Brothers silk tie. The effect was of a prosperous young banker. It was the look many Hollywood actors were adopting now that so many of the bankers were going around in bleached denim and cowboy boots.
‘Coffee? A drink?’
‘Perrier water,’ said Budd. To complete the costume, he was wearing a beautiful gray fedora, which he took off and carefully placed on a shelf.
I went to the refrigerator hidden in the bookcase and brought him a club soda. ‘Cigarette?’ I picked up the silver box on my desk and waved it at him.
He shook his head. I can’t remember the last time someone said yes. One day someone was going to puff at one of those ancient sticks and spew their guts out all over my white carpet.
‘I read the other day the UCLA School of Medicine calculated that one joint has the carbon monoxide content of five regular cigarettes and the tar of three,’ Budd said.
‘These are not joints,’ I said, shaking the silver box some more.
Budd laughed. ‘I know. I just wanted to impress you with my learning.’
‘You did.’
Budd didn’t have to work hard at being a charmer: it just came natural to him. We’d stayed in touch since he abandoned Social Sciences in favor of Actors’ Equity. He’d made a modest rep and his face was known to those who spent a lot of time in the dark, but he expended every last cent he earned keeping up a standard of living way beyond his means because he had to pretend to himself and everyone else that he was a big big star. I suppose only someone permanently out of touch with reality tried for the movie big time in Hollywood. The soup kitchens and retirement homes echo with the chatter of people still talking about the big chance that’s coming any day. But Budd was not permanently out of touch with reality, just now and again. As the smart-ass student editor of our college yearbook wrote of him, his head was in the clouds but his feet were planted firmly on the ground. He really enjoyed what he did for a living, whether it was first class acting or not. Back in the forties, when movie stars were youthful and wholesome and gentlemanly, Budd might have made it big – or even in that brief period in the sixties when the collegiate look was in style – but nowadays it was stubble-chinned mumbling degenerates who got their names above the title. Budd was out of style.
‘You are coming to my little champagne-and-burger birthday bash?’ said Budd.
‘You couldn’t keep me away,’ I said. I’d received an elaborate printed invitation to a luncheon party at Manderley, his old house perched up in the Hollywood Hills, near the Laurel Canyon intersection. Budd was one of those people who keeps in touch. He always knew what all his old classmates were doing, and when reunion time came round he was there addressing the envelopes.
‘Lunch, a week from Sunday. We’ll keep going until the champagne runs out.’
‘Sounds like a challenge.’
He shifted in his chair, ran a fingernail down his cheek, and spoke in a different sort of voice. ‘Mickey, I need advice. You’re my attorney, right?’
‘You don’t need an attorney,’ I told him. ‘You’re too smart. If all my clients kept their noses clean the way you do, I’d be out of business.’ It was true. I sent hurry-up letters and sorted out the occasional misunderstanding, but most of what I did for Budd could have been done by a part-time secretary. Maybe I didn’t charge him enough.
He nodded and smiled some more and looked out of the window. ‘This is a lousy neighborhood, Mickey.’
‘I know, all my visitors tell me. But we got cops on every corner and great ethnic food. What can I do for you, Budd?’
A pause, a tightening of the jaw. ‘Would you get me a gun?’
‘A gun? What do you want a gun for?’ I said, keeping my voice very steady and matter-of-fact.
‘No special reason,’ he said, in that nervous way people say such things when they do have a special reason. Then came the prepared answer: ‘The way I see it, the law will be putting all kinds of new restrictions on gun sales before long. I want to get a gun while it’s still legal to purchase them over the counter.’
‘I guess you saw that TV documentary on the Discovery channel. But you don’t need a gun, Budd.’
‘I do. My place is very vulnerable up there. There have been two stickups in the doughnut shop since Christmas. My neighbors have all had break-ins.’
‘And having a gun will keep you from being burglarized? Listen, the chances of someone breaking in while you’re there are nearly zero. When you’re not there, a gun won’t be any good to you, right?’
‘It would make me feel better.’
‘Okay. So you made up your mind. Don’t listen to me; buy a gun.’
‘I’d like you to purchase it.’
‘Come on, Budd. What’s the problem?’
‘I’ll be recognized. My face is known. Maybe it will get into the papers. That’s not the kind of publicity I want.’
‘Buying a gun? If that was the secret of getting newspaper publicity, there’d be lines forming outside the gun shops and all the way to the Mexican border.’
‘The paperwork and license and all that stuff. You know about that, Mickey. You do it for me, will you?’
‘You mean within the implied confidentiality of the client-attorney relationship?’
He nodded.
I sat back in my swivel chair and looked at him. Just as I thought I’d heard everything, along comes a client who wants me to buy a heater without his name on it. Next he’s going to be asking me to file off the identity marks and make dum-dum cuts in the bullets. ‘I’m not sure I can do that, Budd,’ I said, very slowly. ‘I’m not sure it’s within the law.’
He caught at the equivocation. ‘Will you find out? It’s the way I’d like it done. Couldn’t you say it was for a well-known movie actor who wanted to avoid the fuss?’
‘Sure. And I’ll promise them signed photos and tickets for your next preview.’ As he started to protest, I held up a hand to deflect it. ‘I’ll ask around, Budd.’
‘A Saturday-night special or a small handgun would do. I just want it as a frightener.’
‘Sure, I understand: no hand grenades or heavy mortars. Can you use a gun? You were never in the military, were you?’
‘I was in ROTC,’ said Budd, the hurt feelings clearly audible in his voice. ‘You know I was, Mickey.’
‘Sure, I forgot.’
‘I can shoot. I’ve had a lot of movie parts using guns. I like to get these things exactly right for my roles. I do an hour in the gym every day. I jog in the hills, and sometimes I go to the Beverly Hills Gun Club.’ He slapped his gut. ‘I keep myself in shape.’
‘Right,’ I said. Well, wind in the target; he sure scored a bull’s-eye with that one. The only thing I could sincerely say I devoted at least one hour every day to was eating.
‘Am I keeping you too long?’ he said, consulting the Rolex with solid gold band that came with every Actors’ Equity card.
‘No rush. I’m going to see Danny: my son, Danny.’
‘Sure, Danny. You brought him and his girlfriend along to watch me on the set of that Western I did for Disney last year.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Give Danny my very best wishes. Tell him if he wants to visit a studio again I can always fix it up for him.’
‘Thanks, Budd. That’s really nice of you. I’ll tell him.’
Budd didn’t get up and leave. He reached out for his glass and took a sip, taking his time doing it, as I had seen so many witnesses on the stand do, buying time to think. ‘I haven’t told you the whole truth. There’s something else. And I want to keep it just between the two of us, okay?’
‘The client-attorney privileged relationship,’ I said.
He got to his feet and nodded. All my clients like hearing about the confidential relationship the attorney offers; I always remind them about it just before I give them my bill. Prayer, sermon, confession, and atonement: in that order. I figure the whole process of consulting an attorney should be a secular version of the mass.
‘How could I get a gun without anyone knowing?’
‘Without even me knowing? Buy it mail order under an assumed name, I guess.’
‘Could I have it sent to you?’ he said.
‘But then I would know,’ I said, keeping my tone real negative. I didn’t want him mailing guns to my office.
‘It’s like this,’ Budd said, making a futile gesture with his hand. ‘I have a friend who is being threatened. She needs a gun.’
‘Well, you tell her to order one through the mail and have it sent to a post office box,’ I said. I guessed we were into some kind of show-biz fantasy, and I wasn’t in the mood for that kind of crap. I looked at my watch. ‘I’m going to have to kick you out of here. I’ve got a heavy schedule.’
‘Sure, Mickey, sure.’
He reached for his hat and went to the mirror to be sure it was on exactly right. Then he turned to shake hands firmly and say a soft goodbye. There was something he still hadn’t said, and I plowed my brain to guess what it might be. What new bullshit was he going to hang on me now?
His dark, lustrous eyes focused and he said, ‘If an intruder was shot on my premises … what could happen?’
‘Stay out of it, Budd,’ I advised sincerely. ‘Buy your friend a subscription to Shooter’s Monthly and call it a day.’
‘Okay,’ he said, in a way that made it clear it wasn’t advice he was likely to heed. Then, hands raised Al Jolson style, he struck a pose. ‘What do you think of the snazzy outfit?’
‘You got a portrait painting somewhere in your attic, Dorian old buddy?’
‘Just termites,’ said Budd. He was in an entirely different mood now. Lots of actors are like that; they go up and down with disconcerting suddenness.
When Budd had departed I went and looked out the window. That was enough to make anyone want to buy a gun. It was indeed a lousy block. My neighbors were mostly immigrants who quickly became either entrepreneurial, destitute, or criminal. I shared this ancient office building with a debt collection agency, an insurance agent, a single mothers advisory center, and an architect. These law offices were the best in the building. Miss Huth’s reception area gave onto three rooms. Mine was the only one with a white carpet, but the others had two windows each. Equipped like that they could handle two suicides at a time.
I’d moved in right after my divorce, to share expenses with two Korean immigration lawyers who had a sideline in fifty-dollar flat-fee divorces. People all said we’d never get along together, they said Koreans were combative people, but I found Billy Kim and Korea Charlie to be congenial partners. We would share our business, each passing our most troublesome clients to the other. Then we’d compare notes and have some great laughs together. Korea Charlie was the founding member of the partnership. He was a fat old guy who knew everyone in the neighborhood and built up a colossal reputation getting green cards for local illegals. Then, just as everyone was saying that Korea Charlie was the richest, happiest lawyer in town, one of his grateful clients accidentally shot him dead during a drunken celebration in a bar in Crenshaw.
Now, apart from the token lawyer whom Petrovitch would assign to us to make the takeover legal, I had only one partner, Billy Kim, a thirty-year-old go-getter who was attending his brother’s wedding in Phoenix. He’d been due back this morning, but there was no sign of him so far and no message either. Either his brother had chickened out or it was one hell of a party.
On all sides of this block were single-story buildings that in any other city would have been temporary accommodation. From ground level LA may be a paradise, but from this height it’s hell. The paved backyards of these cheap boxlike buildings were littered with dented cars and pickups, and their rooftops were a writhing snakepit of air-conditioning pipes. Directly across the street was a parking lot surrounded with a chain-link fence; parked up tight against the entrance, a converted panel truck was selling soft drinks, tacos, and chili dogs. Now that we were to become a part of the Petrovitch organization I was going to press them to finance for us a proper office with Muzak, up-to-date magazines in the waiting room, distressed-oak paneling, and yards of antiqued leather books behind glass doors on stained wood shelving.
I tidied my desk and reminded Miss Huth that I was going to see my son. I didn’t give too much thought to the task of getting a gun for Budd. I figured by next week the desire for a gun would have worn off. Budd was like that.
I went down to the garage. That was the best facility of this ancient building: it had a lockup garage so I could come back to my car and find it complete with radio antenna and hubcaps. Since I drive a beautiful 1959 Cadillac, that means a lot to me. It was one of the reasons I came here. I wouldn’t move to another building unless it had an equally dry, airy garage with someone guarding it. This one was not really subterranean, it was a semi-basement with ventilation slots that let air and daylight in. Ventilation is important for a car: condensation can do more damage than the weather, especially in California. The story was that the landlord had wanted to make this lowest floor into accommodations but the city ordinances forbade it.
When I got down there I saw Ratface talking to the janitor. They both stopped talking as I went past them. I had a strong suspicion that they were comparing my shortcomings. They watched me without speaking.
‘You’re still dripping oil, Mr Murphy,’ the janitor called as I was getting into my car. I pretended I hadn’t heard him, but as I pulled away I glanced in the mirror and could see the dark patch shining on the garage floor. Okay, so it’s an old car.

My son, Daniel, is studying philosophy at USC – the University of Spoiled Children – and living with a girl named Robyna Johnson. They share an apartment in a rooming house off Melrose near Paramount Studios. Melrose is a circus, but the kids think it’s smart to be near where the movies are cranked. When you reach the studios, the first thing you see is that vast rectangular slab of blue sky that is the backdrop for the Paramount water tank. And if you know where to look inside the back lot you can spot the old Paramount Gate, the most evocative landmark still left of real Hollywood. That gate is the same way it was in the old days. I never see it without remembering when Gloria Swanson’s Rolls-Royce purred through it in Sunset Boulevard.
My son doesn’t live on the posh side of Melrose. Where he lives is as bad as where I work. They have steel gratings on the liquor stores and fierce guard dogs in the hallways. When I was a kid it was an Irish area and there was a great neighborhood atmosphere, but when Grace Kelly married into Monaco, the Irish here got big ideas and bank mortgages and bought homes with pools in the Valley, and the area filled up with weeds, rust, and sprayed graffiti. I waved to Danny’s landlady, Mrs Gonzales, as she dragged the curtain aside to see who it was. She was a whiskery old crone: she scowled and ducked out of sight.
Danny shared a two-room apartment on the second floor. The buzzer didn’t work, so I rapped on the door with my knuckles. They were watching a game show on TV, The Price Is Right: I could hear it through the door. The Price Is Right! After all that griping these kids are always giving me about materialism.
‘It’s your father,’ said Robyna, after she’d undone the mortise lock, slipped the bolts, and opened the door as far as the chain would allow. She stared at me for a long time before unhooking the chain to let me in. She never says, How nice to see you, or anything. I always get the same treatment: she snaps her head around, so her long, straight blonde hair swings in my face, and calls over her shoulder, ‘It’s your father,’ in a voice marine color sergeants use to announce the arrival of incoming artillery fire.
‘Hello, Robyna,’ I said affably. ‘Do you mind if I talk to Danny in private?’ She shook out her skirt – a long cotton one with African tie-dye designs – slipped her feet into jewel-encrusted sandals, picked up her makeup box, tossed her head to make her hair shake, and strode past without looking at me. She didn’t even say goodbye. ‘Come back, Jane Fonda, you forgot your muesli!’ I called.
‘Drop dead!’ she snapped over her shoulder as she flounced out and slammed the door.
‘Is your girlfriend always so charming?’ I asked Danny.
‘I don’t know,’ said Danny. ‘I don’t tell her to get lost the way you do every time you arrive. She pays half the rent, you know.’
The TV was still going, and Danny was searching to find the remote control to turn it off. Eventually he grabbed a pair of jeans from somewhere and draped them over the screen. He just couldn’t bear to switch the damned thing off: he’d always been like that about TV; he just had to have it going all the time.
‘Robyna must have the remote in her pocket,’ he said apologetically.
There was a smell of burning incense in the room. It had a sweet flowery smell. I sniffed here and there. Although I looked all around, I couldn’t see where the smoke was coming from. ‘She’s not on drugs, is she?’
‘You always ask me if she’s doing drugs,’ said Danny wearily. ‘We’re vegetarians.’
‘So maybe she passes on red meaty drugs.’
‘She won’t even drink tea or coffee because of the caffeine. No, she’s not on drugs.’ His search for the remote finally forced him to get up on his feet. Under some schoolbooks he discovered two paper plates containing a half-eaten burrito and a squashed package of tofu. He gave up trying to find the TV control and sank back, dropping his weight into the sofa with spring-shattering force. He’d wrecked all the best chairs at home doing that, but I tried not to remark on it this time. I hate to fight with him.
‘Is your mother here?’
‘Betty?’ He always called her Betty. He never said Mom or Mother even when he was small. I blamed Betty for that. She never disciplined him. That’s why he was slouching here with a stubbly face, long unwashed hair, and a dirty T-shirt printed with the slogan Go away, I’m trying to think. ‘You can see Betty’s not here; I don’t know where she is.’
‘How would it grab you if I told you she just now forced her way into my office and climbed out onto the window ledge?’
Danny took the news very calmly. I mean, this was his mother. He nodded. ‘She did that with Uncle Sean in Seattle. He called the Fire Department.’
‘So did I. I called the Fire Department, but she made herself scarce before they arrived. So of course they prowled through the office trying to find ways to give me a bad time.’
‘Why?’ He was always unnaturally calm with me. Calm in a studied and exaggerated way so I sometimes wondered if it was an effect I had on him. With other people he always seemed more animated. Did I make him ill at ease or something?
‘Why did I call the Fire Department?’ I said to clarify the question.
‘Why did they want to give you a bad time?’
‘It’s a long story. The sprinklers never did work.’ The more I thought about it the more angry I became. ‘Soon after we first moved in, Denise – remember Denise, my old secretary, who used to send you those religious cards with St Daniel and lions on your birthday? – when Denise felt like celebrating, she used to buy those throw-away barbecue packs and grill some steaks for our lunch. It’s a wonder she never set the office ablaze. A couple of times she threw out the charcoal while it was still hot and set fire to the trash. Now I come to think of it, I remember those sprinklers never did work; the whole building is like that. Why pick on me? Those firemen were out to make trouble, and that Huth woman was no help; she said no one had ever told her where the fire exits were. I’ll have to get rid of her. Thank goodness she didn’t discover that Betty was my ex.’
Danny looked at me solemnly. He doesn’t like me referring to Betty as my ex. ‘What did she want?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Betty only came to see me when she wanted money for something.
He pulled a face and ran his hands under the cushions as if he was still trying to find the remote.
I said, ‘Have you been encouraging her?’ Yes, yes, yes, of course. I should have guessed it was Danny who kept sending her around to dun me for money. They both thought I had some kind of bottomless pit replenished daily with bullion.
‘She had to have two root canals done, and she needs clothes and stuff. She doesn’t earn any money working for that aroma therapy work shop.’
‘Look at me. Look at me. If you’re going to go to bat for her, look at me.’
He looked up.
I said, ‘Are you doing her accounts or something? Why doesn’t she get a paying job?’
‘The aroma therapy workshop is a charity. It’s for poor people. No one pays. She wants to help people.’
‘She wants to help people? She works for nothing and I give her money. How does that make her the one who helps people?’
‘She’s really a wonderful person, Dad. I wish you’d make a little more effort to try and understand her.’
‘It’s always my fault. Why doesn’t she make an effort to try and understand me?’
‘She said you’re getting millions from the takeover.’
‘You two live in a dream world. There are no millions and there is no takeover. You can’t buy a law partnership unless you are a member of the California bar. Petrovitch picked up the pieces, that’s all that happened. He simply retained our services, put in a partner, and absorbed nearly a quarter of a million dollars of debt. I told you all that.’
‘She clipped a piece about Zach Petrovitch from the Los Angeles Times Business Section. It said in there that he’d paid a hundred million—’
‘But not for my partnership. I’ve heard all that talk. He picked up a Chapter Eleven recording company with a few big names on the labels and sold it to the Japanese. That all happened nearly three years ago. There’s been a goddamned recession since then.’
‘Petrovitch only buys companies he has plans for.’
‘Is this something they tell you in Philosophy One-oh-one, or did you switch to being a business major?’
‘You can’t keep that kind of pay off secret, Dad,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows.’
‘Don’t give me that shit, Danny. I’m your father, and I’m telling you all we got is a retainer with a small advance so I can pay off a few pressing debts. Who are you going to believe?’
‘You want a beer?’ He got up and went into the kitchen.
‘You haven’t answered the question,’ I called. ‘No. I don’t want a beer, and you’re too young to drink beer.’
‘I thought it was a rhetorical question,’ he called mournfully from the kitchen. I heard him rattling through the cans; I don’t think he’d ever thought of storing food in that icebox, just drink. ‘I’ve got Pepsi and Diet Pepsi; I’ve got Sprite, Dr Pepper, and all kinds of fruit juices.’
‘I don’t want anything to drink. Come back here and listen to me. I’m not a philosophy major; I haven’t got time to sit around talking for hours. I have to work for a living.’
I found a cane-seat chair and inspected it for food remains and parked chewing gum before sitting down. This was just the kind of chaos he’d lived in at home, like someone had thrown a concussion grenade into a Mexican fast-food counter. On the walls there were colored posters about saving the rain forest and protecting the whales. The only valuable item to be seen in the apartment was the zillion-watt amplifier that had made sure his guitar was shaking wax out of ears in Long Beach while he strummed it in Woodland Hills. Near the window there was a small table he used as a desk. There was a pile of philosophy books, an ancient laptop computer with labels stuck all over it, and a paper plate from which bright red sauce had been scraped. There was a brown bag too, the kind of insulated bag take-away counters use for hot food. I looked into it, expecting to find a tamale or a hot dog, but found myself looking at a stainless steel sandwich.
‘What’s this?’ I said.
Danny came out of the kitchen with his can of drink and a package of non-cholesterol chili-flavored potato chips. ‘It’s only a gun,’ he said.
‘Oh, it’s only a gun,’ I said sarcastically, bringing it out to take a closer look at it.
It was a shiny new Browning Model 35 9-mm automatic. I pulled back the action to make sure there were no rounds in the chamber. The action remained open, and from the pristine orange-colored top of the spring I could see it was brand new.
‘And what the hell are you doing with this?’ I took aim at Robyna’s save the whale poster and pulled the trigger a couple of times.
‘Relax, Dad. I loaned a Jordanian guy in my religion class two hundred bucks. He was strapped, and instead of paying me back he gave me the shooter and a stereo.’
‘You were ripped off,’ I said.
‘You’re always so suspicious,’ he said mildly. ‘A gun like that costs about five hundred bucks. I can pawn it for three hundred.’
‘How do you know it’s not been used in a stickup or a murder?’
‘His father had just bought it for him; it was still in the wrappings. So was the stereo.’
‘His father bought it? What kind of dope is his father?’
‘Don’t keep doing that, Dad. It’s not good for the mechanism.’
‘What do you know about guns?’ I said and pulled out the magazine and snapped it back into place a couple more times just to show him I wasn’t taking orders from him. ‘You’re talking to a marine, remember. Have you ever fired this gun?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Budd Byron was in the office today asking me how he could buy a gun. This whole town is gun crazy these days.’
‘What does he want a gun for?’
‘Budd? I don’t know.’ I looked at the gun. It was factory-new. ‘In the original wrappings, you say? In the box? Then this is part of a stolen consignment.’
‘It’s not stolen. I just told you I got it from a guy I know at college. He does Comparative Religion with me. Next week he’ll probably want to buy it all back. He’s like that. He’s an Arab; he’s a distant relative of Kashoggi the billionaire.’
‘Do you know something? I’m still looking for some Arab in this town who is not a relative of Kashoggi. My mailman mentioned that he is Kashoggi’s cousin. The guy in the cleaners confided that he is Kashoggi’s nephew. They’re all just one big happy family.’
The TV was still muttering away: the ads are always louder than the programs. ‘You’re in a crumby mood today, Dad. Did something bad happen to you?’
‘Something bad? Have you suddenly gone deaf or something? Your mother dropped by to throw herself out of my office window.’
‘That was just a cry for help. You know that.’ He ate some chips, crunching them loudly in his teeth; then, leaning his head far back, he closed his eyes and held a cold can of low-cal cranberry juice cocktail to his forehead.
He wouldn’t hear a word against Betty. Sometimes I wondered if he understood that she walked out on me – walked out on us, rather. Yet how could I remind him of that? I said, ‘Will you find out where your mother is crashing these days? If she keeps pulling these jumping-off-the-ledge routines, she’ll get herself committed.’
He came awake, snapped the top off his cranberry juice, and took a deep gulp. He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and said, ‘Yah, okay, Dad. I’ll do what I can.’
‘Tell her I’ll maybe look at her dentist bills. I’ll pay something toward them.’
‘Hey, that’s great, Dad.’
‘I don’t want you getting together with her and rewriting the accounts, trying to bill me for a Chanel suit or something.’
‘What do you mean?’ Danny said.
‘You know what I mean. Do you think I’ve forgotten you using the graphics program on my office IBM to do that CIA letterhead that scared the bejesus out of old Mr Southgate?’
‘He deserved it. I should have gotten an A in his English class. Everyone said so.’
‘Well, I had to calm him down and stop him from writing to his senator. You promised you’d be sensible in future, so leave it between Betty and her dentist, will you?’
‘She wouldn’t gyp you, Dad.’ He gently eased the gun out of my hand and put it back in the bag and put the bag in a drawer.
‘Well, I’ve known her longer than you have, and I say she might.’ I got up. ‘Leave her address and phone number on my answering machine. Maybe this afternoon?’ He knew where to get hold of her, I was certain of that.
He nodded and came with me to the door. ‘Is our Sunday brunch still on?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘The Beverly Hilton at noon. I’ll get a reservation.’ I gave him a hug; he was a good kid. ‘You can always come and use your room again,’ I told him. ‘I wouldn’t want rent or anything. I rattle around all alone in that house.’
‘We tried it twice, Dad.’ He bent down to open the door: three deadbolt locks they now had! What kind of neighborhood is that? ‘Could you let me have fifty until the weekend?’
I peeled off a fifty for him. ‘Don’t change to being a business major,’ I said. ‘You’re doing just great in philosophy.’

Before I drove away from Danny’s place I opened the trunk of my Caddie. Hell! There should have been a case of booze there. One of the commissars in Petrovitchgrad had left a message asking me to get some wacky brand of tequila. It was for the welcome party. She was organizing the refreshments, and this poison was apparently Petrovitch’s favorite drink. Miss Huth had worked her way through the yellow pages and found out a Mexican liquor store on Broadway was the only place that stocked it. They were supposed to have sent it around for the janitor to put into my trunk. I should never have trusted her with my Visa card number. Maybe it was a rip-off by the liquor store, or maybe it was the janitor. He was an unreliable bastard. Why hadn’t she double-checked it?
I looked at the empty trunk like the booze would suddenly appear there but it didn’t. The trunk of my lovely old gas-guzzling Caddie convertible remained empty, so there was no alternative to driving back to the office to pick it up. When I got there I swung into the entrance and down the ramp into the basement. Can you imagine it? Ratface was still there, talking with the janitor. What did they find to talk about all that time? I saw a vacant parking place nearer to the elevator than the lousy place they’d assigned to me. Ratface had parked his little car alongside it. It was a Honda Accord: a bumper sticker on it said MY OTHER CAR IS A FIRE ENGINE.
As I pressed the call button for the elevator, the janitor said, ‘If you’re going up for the tequila, I’ve got it right here for you, Mr Murphy. They delivered it this afternoon.’ He kicked the carton at his feet.
‘I figured you would have loaded it into my trunk,’ I said. The residents all paid the guy an extra ten a month in the hope that he would be helpful. Some of them gave him more than that. He made a fortune from us.
‘Ah, my back is playing up again, Mr Murphy,’ he said. ‘My doctor says I should be real careful about lifting and that kind of work.’ He said this slowly and carefully while both of them watched me struggling under the weight of a dozen bottles of tequila. That Mexican hooch was heavy; what do they put into that poison?
I cleared space for it in the trunk and then stood up and got my breath. ‘Maybe you should get a job with the Fire Department,’ I said. ‘You could take it easy there.’ Ratface glared at me. I lifted the crate, put it into my trunk, pulled the lid down, and watched it close automatically. I loved that old Caddie; it was a part of me. The trouble was, the old lady really was dripping oil and leaving a pool of it everywhere I stopped, and the way things were at present I didn’t have time enough to take her to the service station.
‘And that’s a parking place for the disabled,’ called Ratface.
I pretended not to hear him.

2
That was some bash, that party for Petrovitch. The little girl who organized it for Petrovitch Enterprises International was a professional party fixer. I didn’t know there were such jobs, even in Los Angeles. She’d rented the Snake Pit for the whole evening, and that takes money. Alternating with the Portable PCs, who had an album at number three that week, there was a band playing all that corny Hawaiian music. The waitresses were dressed in grass skirts, leis, and flesh-colored bras, and one wall was almost covered with orchids flown in from Hawaii. There were dozens of miniature palm trees standing in huge decorative faience pots. The ceiling was obscured by hundreds of colored balloons; from each one dangled a silver or gold cord, the end supporting an orchid bloom, to make a shimmering ceiling of orchids just above head height.
The place was packed. I had trouble parking my Caddie. I can’t get the old battle wagon into the spaces they paint for lousy little imported compacts. So I left it in a slot marked RESERVED FOR SECURITY and wrote Mr Petrovitch on a slip of paper that I propped behind the windshield. I didn’t want my new boss screaming for his fix of special-brand tequila and me blamed for his deprivation. I heaved it out of the car, put the crate on my shoulder, and staggered across the underground parking garage to where the entrance was located. It was so crowded there were guests talking and drinking and dancing right out there on the concrete. They were waltzing around on the red carpet and through the crushed flowers that had been strewn around, and I had to push my way past them to get inside the place. I gave the crate of tequila to the bar man, got a Powers whisky with soda and ice, and started to circulate. The last thing they needed was more booze. Most of them seemed tanked up to the gills. I was frightened to strike a match in case the air exploded.
‘Mickey Murphy! I saw you were on the guest list.’
The deep, lazy voice came booming from a corpulent individual named Goldie Arnez. He’d been watching two video monitors from cameras trained on the lobby to show the guests as they arrived.
‘What are we tuned to, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous?’
‘That’s about it,’ he said, taking his eyes from the screen to scrutinize me carefully.
When I first met Goldie he was slim – a movie stuntman, can you imagine? We used to work out together at Gold’s Gym, when there was only one Gold’s Gym and it was on Second Street in Santa Monica. That was where Goldie had acquired his nickname. The stuntwork dwindled as he wrestled with the scales, and the last time I met him he was a 250-pound bail bondsman with a reputation for playing rough with the fugitives he brought in. Now he looked like he’d gone to seed: where he used to have muscles, he had flab, and there were dark rings under his eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t have recognized him, except for that full head of brown wavy hair. He still had his hair – or was it a rug? In this light I couldn’t decide. ‘What are you doing nowadays, Goldie?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘No, I don’t know. Would I be asking you if I knew already?’
‘That’s my Mickey,’ he said. ‘You say good morning to the guy, and you get maimed in a riot.’
‘Cut it out, Goldie.’
‘I’m muscle for Mr Petrovitch.’
‘You’re what?’
‘Don’t be that way. You might need a buddy who can put in a good word with the man at the top.’
‘Muscle?’ I could see it wasn’t all flab; the bulge under his armpit had square edges.
‘I run a team of twenty.’
‘Does Petrovitch need twenty bodyguards?’
‘I’m not a bodyguard. I have guys to do the day-to-day work. I’m head of security for Petrovitch Enterprises International. I’m responsible for the vice presidents and everything in the continental U.S. It’s a big job.’ He gave me one of his business cards.
I looked at it and put it in my pocket. ‘Is that why you’re drinking Pepsi?’
‘Mr Petrovitch cracks down on drinking by staff on duty. He’ll tell you that.’
‘I might find that a little difficult to adjust to,’ I said.
‘Not after Mr Petrovitch has talked to you, you won’t.’ Goldie took a sip of his cola and looked me over. ‘It’s the cost. When he takes over a company he strips all the surplus fat from it and makes it into a lean and trim earnings machine.’ Goldie looked at me as he said it with relish. It sounded like something he’d read in a prospectus, and I didn’t like it. And what kind of lean and trim earnings machine was Goldie?
‘You want to lend me your phone, Goldie?’ I said, eyeing the cellular clipped to his belt. ‘I need to get hold of my partner in Phoenix. I’ll call collect.’
‘Haven’t you got a phone in your car?’ said Goldie.
‘Are you crazy? I drive a beautiful ’fifty-nine Caddie with the original interior and paintwork. I don’t want some guy drilling holes in her and bolting phones and batteries into the bodywork.’
‘There’s a phone upstairs,’ said Goldie. ‘Come with me, or you won’t get past my security guys.’
Goldie led the way to a messy little office with a fax machine and word processors and a bulletin board displaying half a dozen bounced checks, a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Pizza Hut, and a signed photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He lingered out in the hallway for a moment. I thought he was being discreet and allowing me a little privacy, but I should have known better. He came right in.
‘Make your call and let’s get out of here.’ He seemed to disapprove of my looking around the place, but that was just my natural curiosity.
I sat down behind the desk, picked up the phone, and was about to start hitting the buttons when I noticed there was an extra wire coming from the phone and going into a hole freshly drilled in the desktop, a hole marked by a trace of sawdust. ‘Goldie,’ I said, ‘you got a scrambler on this phone or something? What’s this wiring deal? Are you bugging someone’s calls?’
‘Don’t hit that button!’ he barked, showing an alarm in sharp contrast to his previous doleful demeanor. ‘Stay where you are. Put the phone down on the desk and let me come round there.’ He grabbed me by the shoulder as I got to my feet. Then he grabbed the scissors from the desk and cut all wires leading to the phone.
‘What is it?’
‘Jesus!’ said Goldie, talking to himself as if he’d not heard me. ‘The bastards!’
‘Is it a bomb?’
‘You bet it is,’ said Goldie. He followed the wires that went through the desk and kneeled down on the floor under it. I crouched down to see it too. He tapped a brown paper package that had been fixed to the underside of the desk. ‘See that? There’s enough plastic there to blow us both into hamburger,’ said Goldie. Carefully he stripped the sticky tape from the woodwork and revealed the detonators. It looked as if he had done such things before. ‘Maybe it was set to make a circuit when triggered by the buttons, or maybe it was one of those tricky ones that detonate with an incoming call.’
‘What’s it all about, Goldie?’
‘Say an extra prayer when you go to mass tomorrow morning,’ said Goldie. He was still under the desk fiddling with the bomb. ‘Go back downstairs and circulate. I can deal with this.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want the bomb squad?’
His glowering face appeared above the desktop. ‘Not a word about this to anyone, Mickey. If a story like this got into the papers, the shares would take a beating and I’d pay for it with my job.’
‘Whatever you say.’ I decided to leave my call to Phoenix for some other time and went back to the party for another drink. I could see why Goldie was so jumpy about publicity. The media crowd was well in evidence. Some of them I recognized, including two local TV announcers: the guy with the neat mustachio who does the morning show and the little girl with the elaborate hairdo who stands in for the weatherman on the local segment of the network news. They were standing near their cameras, paper napkins tucked into their collars like ruffs and their faces caked with makeup.
The one I was looking around for was Mrs Petrovitch. When I knew her we were both at Alhambra High, struggling with high school mathematics and preparing for college. High school friends are special, right? More special than any other kind of friends. In those days she was Ingrid Ibsen. I was in love with her. Half the other kids were in love with her too, but I dated her on account of the way she lived near me and I could always walk her home, and her dad knew my dad and did his accounts.
She lived only a block from me on Grenada. We used to walk down Main Street together, get a Coke and fries, and I’d think of something I had to buy in the five-and-dime just to make it last longer.
In my last year Ingrid was the lead in the senior play and I had a tap dance solo in the all-school production of The Music Man. I remember that final night: I danced real well. It was my last day of high school. It was a clear night with lots of stars and a big moon so you could see the San Gabriel Mountains. Dad let me have the new Buick. We were parked outside her house. I’d got my scholarship and a place at USC. I told her that as soon as I graduated I was going to come back and marry her. She laughed and said, ‘Don’t promise’ and put her finger on my lips. I always remembered the way she said that: ‘Don’t promise.’
Ingrid spent only one semester at college. She was smarter than I was at most subjects, and she could have got a B.A. easily, but her folks packed up and went to live in Chicago and she went with them. I never did get the full story, but the night she told me she was going, we walked around the neighborhood and I didn’t go home to bed until it was getting light. Then I had a fight with my folks, and the following day I stormed off and joined the Marine Corps. Kidlike, I figured I’d have to go to ’Nam eventually and it was better to get it over with. Now I’ve learned to put the bad ones at the bottom of the pile and hope they never show up. It was a crazy move because I was looking forward to going to college and almost never had arguments with my folks. And anyway, what does joining the service do to solve anything? It just gives you a million new and terrible problems to add to your old ones.
The next I heard of Ingrid was when her photo was in the paper. Budd Byron, who’d known us both at Alhambra, sent me an article that had been clipped from some small-town paper. It was a photo of Ingrid getting married. That was her first husband, some jerk from the sticks, long before she got hitched to Zachary Petrovitch. It said they’d met at a country dancing class. I ask you! I kept the clipping in my billfold for months. They were going to Cape Cod for their honeymoon, it said. Can you imagine anything more corny? Every time I looked at that picture it made me feel sorry for myself.
Soon after I met Betty, I ceremonially burned that clipping. As the ashes curled over and shimmered in the flames I felt liberated. The next day I went down to Saturn and Sun, the alternative medicine pharmacy where Betty worked, and asked her to marry me. As a futile exercise in self-punishment it sure beat joining the Marine Corps.
Then in the eighties I heard about Ingrid again when she upped and married Petrovitch. I knew the Petrovitch family by name; I’d even met Zach Petrovitch a few times. His father had made money from Honda dealerships in the Northwest, getting into them when they were giving them away, a time when everyone was saying the Japanese can maybe make cheap transistor radios, and motor bikes even, but cars?
The first time I met Petrovitch Junior he was with his father, who was guest of honor at an Irish orphanage’s charity dinner in New York. I guess that was before he knew Ingrid. At the end of the evening a few of us, including Zach, cut away to a bar in the Village. The music was great, and we all sank a lot of Irish whiskey. Petrovitch passed out in the toilet and we had a lot of trouble getting him back to the Stanhope, where he was staying. Cabs are leery of stopping for a group of men carrying a ‘corpse,’ and the ones that do stop, argue. I got into a fist fight with a cabbie from County Cork; it wasn’t serious, just an amiable bout with an overweight driver who wanted to stretch his legs. When I told him we were coming from the Irish orphanage benefit, he took us to the hotel and wouldn’t accept the fare money. The crazy thing was that when Petrovitch recovered someone told him I’d strong-armed the cabbie to take him that night. I suppose Petrovitch felt he owed me something. I never did explain it to him.
I moved over to the bar to sneak a look at Ingrid. She was standing with her husband at the end of the red carpet, welcoming guests as they arrived. I studied her through the palm tree fronds, making sure she didn’t see me. She looked as beautiful as ever. Her hair was still very blonde, almost white, but cut shorter now. She had on a long black moiré dress with black embroidery on the bodice and around the hem. With it she wore a gold necklace and a fancy little wrist-watch. I watched her laughing with an eager group of sharp-suited yuppies who were shaking paws with her husband. Seeing her laugh reawakened every terrible pang of losing her. It brought back that night sitting in the Buick when the idea of being married was something I didn’t have to promise. To hear that laugh every day; I would have sold my soul for that. So you can see why I didn’t go across to say hello to them. I didn’t want to be shoulder to shoulder with those jerks when talking with her. It was better to see her from a distance and shuffle through my memories.
‘Hello, Mickey. I thought you might be here,’ chirruped the kind of British accent that sounds like running your fingernails across a blackboard. I turned to see a little British lawyer named Victor Crichton. He was about forty, with the cultivated look that comes with having a company that picks up the tab for everything. His suit was perfect, his face was tanned, and his hair wavy and long enough to hide the tops of his ears.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ I said, in my usual suave and sophisticated way. Vic Crichton’s boss was Sir Jeremy Westbridge, the client who was giving me ulcers. His affairs were in such desperate disarray that I could hardly bear to open my mail in the morning.
‘Did I make you jump, old chap? Awfully sorry.’ He’d caught me off guard; I suppose I looked startled. He gave a big smile and then reached out for the arm of the woman at his side. ‘This is Dorothy, the light of my life, the woman who holds the keys to my confidential files.’ He hiccuped softly. ‘Figuratively speaking.’
I said, ‘That’s okay, Victor. Hi there, Dorothy. I was just thinking.’
‘Wow! Don’t let me interrupt anything like that!’ He winked at the woman he was with and said, ‘Mickey is Sir Jeremy’s attorney on the West Coast.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said. His wife was British too.
‘It sounds good the way you say it, Vic. But we’ve got to talk.’ I was hoping to make him realize the danger he was in. It wasn’t just a matter of business acumen, they were going to be facing charges of fraud and God knows what else.
‘He’s really an Irish stand-up comic,’ Vic explained to the woman, ‘but you have to set a comic to catch a comic in this part of the world. Right, Mickey?’
‘I’ve got to talk to you, Vic,’ I said quietly. ‘Is Sir Jeremy here? We’ve got to do something urgently.’
He made no response to this warning. ‘Always together. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Lennon and McCartney, Vic Crichton and Sir Jeremy. Partners.’
‘They all broke up,’ I said.
‘I wondered if you’d spot that,’ said Vic. ‘Split up or dead. But not us; not yet, anyway. Look for yourself.’
He waved a hand in the direction of the bar, where I spotted the lean and hungry-looking Sir Jeremy. He was a noticeable figure: very tall, well over six feet, with white hair and a pinched face. He was engaged in earnest conversation with a famous local character called the Reverend Dr Rainbow Stojil, a high-profile do-gooder for vagrants who liked to be seen on TV and at parties like this. I guessed that Stojil was trying to get a donation from him. Stojil was famous for his money-raising activities.
‘Don’t interrupt them,’ advised Vic.
‘Why not?’ I said. ‘We’ve got to have a meeting.’ Vic didn’t reply. He was drunk. I wasn’t really expecting a sensible answer.
Vic and his master were well matched. They were as crooked as you can get without ski masks and sawed-off shotguns. They called themselves property developers. Their cemeteries became golf courses; their golf courses became leisure centers, and leisure centers became shopping malls and offices. They had moved slowly and legally at first but success seemed to affect their brains, because lately they just didn’t care what laws they broke as long as the cash came rolling in.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘The game’s up with all this shit. I know for a fact that an investigation has begun. It’s just a matter of time before Sir Jeremy is arrested. I can’t hold them off forever.’
‘How long can you hold them off, old boy?’
He wasn’t taking me seriously. ‘I don’t know, not long. One, two, three weeks … it’s difficult to say.’
He prodded me in the chest. ‘Make it three weeks, old buddy.’ He laughed.
‘Look, Vic, either we sit down and talk and make a plan that I can offer to them—’
‘Or what?’ he said threateningly.
I took a deep breath. ‘Or you can get yourselves a new lawyer.’
He blinked. ‘Now, now, Mickey. Calm down.’
‘I mean it. You find yourself a new boy. Some guy who likes fighting the feds and the whole slew of people you’ve crossed. A trial lawyer.’
‘If that’s the way you feel, old boy,’ he said and touched me on the shoulder in that confident way that trainers pat a rottweiler.
Maybe he thought I was going to retract, but he was wrong. With that decision made, I already felt a lot better. ‘I’ll get all the papers and everything together. You tell me who to pass it to. How long are you staying in town?’
‘Not long.’ He held up his champagne and inspected it as if for the Food and Drug Administration. ‘We’ve come to hold hands with Petrovitch about a joint company we’re forming in Peru. Then I’m off for a dodgy little argument with some bankers in Nassau and back to London for Friday. Around the world in eight hotel beds: it’s all go, isn’t it, Dot?’
‘What about Sir Jeremy?’
‘Good question, old man. Let’s just say he has a date with Destiny. He’s modeling extra-large shrouds for Old Nick.’ He held out a hand to the wall to steady himself. Any minute now he was going to fall over.
‘What do you mean?’ I said, watching his attempt to regain equilibrium.
‘Don’t overdo it, old sport.’ He put his arm around my shoulder and leaned his head close to whisper. ‘You don’t have to play the innocent with me. I’m the next one to go.’
‘Go where?’
‘You are the one arranging it, aren’t you?’ His amiable mood was changing to irritation, as is the way with drunks when they become incoherent. ‘You buggers are being paid to fix it.’ He closed his eyes as if concentrating his thoughts. His lips moved but the promised words never came.
‘I think we’re boring your wife, Victor,’ I said, in response to the flamboyant way she was patting her open mouth with her little white hand.
‘Victor always gets drunk,’ she said philosophically. She didn’t look so sober herself. She’d drained her champagne and experimentally pushed the empty glass into a palm tree and left it balanced miraculously between the fronds.
Victor didn’t deny his condition. ‘Banjaxed, bombed, bug-eyed, and bingoed,’ he said without slurring his words. ‘Wonderful town, lavish hospitality, and vintage champagne. Very rare nowadays …’ He drawled to a stop like a clockwork toy that needed rewinding.
‘Better if you don’t drive,’ I advised him. At least he didn’t call it Tinseltown, the way some of them did.
‘Dot will drive,’ said Vic. ‘She’s wonderful in the driving seat, aren’t you, Dotty? Unless we can find a motel, that is.’ He slapped her rear gently, and she bared her teeth in an angry smile. He finished his champagne. ‘I think I need another drink, a real drink this time.’
‘You’ve had enough, Vic. We’ve got to go,’ she said.
She took him by the arm, and he allowed himself to be guided away. ‘When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Right, Mickey, my old lovely?’
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘See you around, Victor. ’Bye, Dot.’ He turned and, with one hand on her buttocks, shepherded her toward the bar. I wondered if he knew that Petrovitch had put a partner into my law business. If not, this didn’t seem to be the right time to discuss it. Victor waved a splay-fingered hand in the air. He didn’t look back. He seemed to know I’d be watching him go and calculating how much I was going to lose in fees next year. Oh, well, I hate crooks. I should never have become a lawyer.
The reception line was still going, but people were no longer coming through the door. This was a celebration for employees and associates, and these guests didn’t come late to a Petrovitch bash if they knew what was good for them. I decided to get a closer look at Peter the Great, whom someone seemed so keen to murder, and inched my way across the room to where the bright lights and TV cameras had been arranged just in case Petrovitch deigned to step over and tell the hushed American public the secret of making untold millions of dollars while still looking young and beautiful enough to run for President. He was dressed in a dark blue silk tuxedo with a frilly blue shirt, floppy bow tie, and patent shoes with gold buckles. He had a loose gold bracelet and lots of gold rings and a thin gold watch on a thin gold bracelet: more jewelry than his wife, in fact. He was tall and well-built and didn’t look as if he’d need the help of Goldie or any of his muscle men to look after himself. His face was bronzed and clear, almost like the skin of a young woman, and his eyes were blue and active, moving as if he was expecting physical attack. Maybe Goldie had told him about the bomb in the phone.
As I got near the people thronging around him, the thin elderly man at his side said, ‘And this is Mr Murphy of the law partnership downtown.’
‘Mickey!’ said Petrovitch. ‘It’s a long time.’ He extended his hand and gave me a firm pumping shake while grabbing my elbow in his other hand. It was another of those Hollywood handshakes, and with it he gave me a Hollywood smile and that very very sincere Hollywood stare too. I wonder if he did it the same way in New York. ‘How are tricks, buddy?’
‘What a memory you’ve got,’ I said.
‘You fighting the taxi driver, to make him take me to the hotel? How could I forget?’ Another big smile. ‘You drank me under the table. It doesn’t happen often.’ The thin elderly sidekick smiled too, both men operated by the same machinery.
‘Just hold it like that!’ It was a photographer crouching down low to sight up one of those shots that make tycoons look statuesque.
‘It’s okay,’ Petrovitch told me, indicating the photographer. ‘He’s one of our people.’ With that comforting reassurance, he grabbed my hand again and held it still so it didn’t blur, while turning his head away from me to give the camera a big smile. A flash captured this contrived moment for history.
‘Murphy,’ I heard the elderly man tell the photographer. ‘Mickey: business associate and old Marine Corps friend.’ The photographer wrote it down.
The thin elderly man smiled, and a gentle pressure upon the small of my back propelled me out of the shot as another business associate and old friend of Mr Petrovitch was given the handshake and smile treatment.
With the benediction still ringing in my ears, I shuffled off through the crush. I saw Goldie standing guard just a few paces away. He met my eyes and grinned. That guy really earned his salary, judging by the matter-of-fact way he defused bombs. Wondering how often such things happened to them, I went to the bar and got another whisky. ‘Old Marine Corps friend.’ What was that guy talking about? I looked around. This wasn’t really a party, it was a press call with drinks and music. Petrovitch had the clean-cut film-star image and the rags-to-riches story that America loves. Tonight he was showing once again that he knew exactly how to turn a few thousand dollars’ worth of tax-deductible entertaining into a message to his stockholders that sent his prices soaring when the rest of the market was struggling to keep afloat.
‘Did you get your press kit?’ A pretty girl in a striped leotard tried to hand me a bulky packet while her companion offered me a pink-colored flute of champagne.
I declined both. ‘I’m drinking,’ I said, holding my whisky aloft.
‘Everyone has to have champagne,’ said the girl, pushing the glass into my free hand. ‘It’s to toast Mr Petrovitch’s health and prosperity.’
‘Oh, in that case …’ I said. I took it, held it up, and poured it into a pot where miniature palms were growing.
The girls gulped, smiled, and moved on. Dealing with folks who don’t want to drink to the health and prosperity of Mr Petrovitch had not been part of the training schedule.
‘I saw you do that, Mickey.’
I looked up; it was Ingrid Petrovitch, née Ibsen, standing on the rostrum behind me. She looked ravishingly beautiful, just the way she’d been in my fevered high school dreams. She gave me a jokey scowl and waved a finger, the way she’d done back in those long-ago days when I’d pulled up at night in my father’s car and suggested we climb into the back seat.
‘Hello, Ingrid,’ I said. It sounded dumb and I felt stupid, the way some people do feel when confronted by someone they love too much. I’d always been a klutz like that when I was with her: I never did figure out why.
‘Hello, Mickey,’ she said, very softly. ‘It’s lovely to think that some things never change.’ She turned away and kept moving to where a line had formed to get a smile from her husband.
‘Ingrid …’
She stopped. ‘Yes, Mickey?’
‘It’s good to see you again.’
She smiled sweetly and moved on. I guess she was telling me I’d had my chance with her and blew it. And that was long ago. It was nice of her not to say it.

3
I drove back from the Petrovitch bash with a lot of worries on my mind. The Ventura Freeway, U.S. 101, runs west to Woodland Hills but it doesn’t run far enough or fast enough, because when you get there you might as well never have left the city.
When we first went to live in Woodland Hills it was a village. Betty loved it. It was country-style living, she said, a great place to bring up children. A village, did I say? Now it’s got all your user-unfriendly banks, plastic fast food, international high-rise hotels with atriums and shopping malls with floors made from Italian marble, indoor palm trees, and fountains with colored lights, not to mention vagrants sleeping out-doors in cardboard boxes.
They say this is a early-go-to-bed town, so who are all these guys doing the Freeway 101 assignment in the small hours? Newly waxed Porsches, dented Mazdas, Chevy pickups, stretch Caddies with dark glass and TV antennas – who are these guys? Tell me. That journey home took me the best part of an hour, crawling along in a pox of red lights. I tuned in to the news on the car radio. It was a litany of violence: a decomposing corpse found in a closet in Newport Beach, a liquor store stickup in Koreatown, a drive-by killing in Ramparts, and if that wasn’t enough you could join the crowds in Westwood flocking to see a movie about a cannibalistic serial killer. That’s show business?
As I got near my house I saw blue-colored flashes illuminating the trees. Uh-huh? There were two black-and-whites parked on my frontage. One of them still had the beacon revolving and its doors open.
I drove up and parked on my ramp. As I stopped and lowered the window, a young nervous cop came at me out of the darkness waving a handgun. ‘Are you the resident here?’ He was a thin kid – straight out of the Police Academy, unless I’m very much mistaken – growing a straggly mustache to make himself look old enough to buy a beer without flashing ID.
‘You got it, kid. You want to point that thing away from me?’
‘Mr Murphy?’ He looked up as the second car started up and pulled away.
‘That’s right.’ As I said it, another cop arrived panting from somewhere behind my house. He was a plump old fellow with his pistol in his hand. He was oriental-looking. You don’t get many oriental cops, do you? Hispanics, yes; black guys, even; but how many Asian cops do you see?
‘What’s going on?’ I asked. I went to the door and got out my keys.
‘There was a prowler,’ said the plump one. ‘A neighbor called it in. Saw someone in your yard. Do you want to go inside and see if he got entry?’
‘Confucius say, Cop with gun go first,’ I told him.
Before anyone could go anywhere there was the sound of a nearby door catch, and the prowler light illuminated the doorstep of my next-door neighbor, Henry Klopstock. He’d come out to watch. He was some kind of English teacher at UCLA. His wife liked to call him Professor Klopstock. ‘Is everything okay, Mr Murphy?’ He was leaning across the orange trees, the flashing lights illuminating his lined face and five-o’clock shadow and his slicked-down hair. When my son was dating the Klopstock daughter he was all smiles and Hello, Mickey. Then they split up – you know the way kids are – and suddenly he’s giving me the ‘Mr Murphy’ syntax.
‘Sure it is. Didn’t you hear the sirens? I always have a police escort now I’m running for mayor.’
‘Okay, okay. Sorry I asked,’ he said. I saw him exchange rolling eye glances with the Asian cop. So why ask dumb questions, right?
I went up the path and unlocked my front door and waited while the fat one stepped past me into the entry. Rex, my terrier, suddenly awoke and came scampering from the kitchen to growl at both of us.
‘It’s me, Rex,’ I said.
Rex crouched very low, crawled around, and watched resentfully. The cop looked at me, looked at Rex, and then stepped over him to jab the kitchen door with his nightstick. It moved just a little, but his second jab made the door open all the way. ‘Mind my paintwork, buddy,’ I said. ‘Try a little tenderness, like the song says.’
There was no one there, just the little safety lights that switch on automatically when it gets dark. He went from room to room, all through the house. I followed him. It wasn’t really a search and he didn’t do it like in the movies; he wasn’t agile enough. He knew there was no one there, and he was determined to make me feel bad about making him do it. He just plodded around, puffing, sighing, and tapping the furniture with his baton. He wound up inspecting the stuff I’ve got decorating all the walls. Broadway posters and signed eight-by-ten glossies of the stars. My dad left me his collection, and I added to it. It goes back to Show Boat. Forgive me, Dad; it goes back to Rose Marie. It’s the greatest. My dad got signed photos of everyone from Cole Porter to Ethel Merman.
The cop inspected these pictures and posters without enthusiasm. ‘Seems like your intruder didn’t get in.’ He said it like he was consoling me.
‘Is that your professional opinion?’ I said.
Having studied the titles of my books, the level of my whisky, the corn flakes supply, and the big colored photo of Danny that’s on the breakfast counter, he turned to me, gave a grin, and hitched both thumbs into his gun belt. ‘That’s right. You can rest your head on your pillow tonight and enjoy untroubled sleep.’
‘You must be the poet who writes for the fortune cookies,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Just tickets.’
‘For the police charity concert?’ I said. ‘Who are you having this year—’
‘Yah, Miss Demeanor Washington and Felonious Monk,’ he interrupted me. ‘That’s getting to be a tired old joke, Mr Murphy.’
I knew he was just trying to make me feel bad about having him go inside first. But what is a cop paid to do anyway? Don’t get me wrong; I like cops but not at the fold of a tough day, right? And not when they are doing a Lennie Bernstein with their nightstick.
‘Just you living in the house, Mr Murphy?’
‘You got it.’
‘Big place for just one person.’
‘No, it’s just the right size. Listen, wise guy, I’ve put this mansion on the market four times in a row with three different real estate dummies in different-colored blazers. Three times it went into escrow, and three times the deal fell apart. What else would you like to know?’
‘Nothing,’ said the cop. ‘You explicated it just fine.’ I followed him outside. Explicated: what kind of a word is that?
We were standing out front smelling the orange trees, and I was remembering that if I roust these guys too much they might Breathalyze me, so I was taken suddenly good-natured: smiling and saying good night and thank you, and without any kind of warning there comes a noise and a scuffle as some dumb jerk of a burglar jumps out of my best bougainvillea and runs down the side alley.
It was damned dark. The plump cop didn’t hesitate for a second. He was off after him and moving with amazing speed for his age and weight and leg length. I couldn’t see a thing in the darkness but I followed on as best I could, clearly hearing the clattering sounds of their feet and then the loud and fierce creak of my back fence as first the perpetrator and then the cop vaulted over it into my neighbor’s yard. Behind me, I heard the scratchy sounds of voices on the police radio: the second cop was calling for backup. Then he changed his mind and said they were okay. What did he know? He was in the car with the heater on.
The fugitive was scrambling across the backyards to the street on the other side of the block. I knew the scam. Some other perp would be arriving there in a car to pick him up. The newspapers kept saying it had become a popular modus operandi for these suburban break-in artists. The papers said the cops should be countering it with random patrols and better intelligence work. Those newspaper guys know everything, right? Sometimes I wonder why these guys and gals writing in the newspaper don’t take over the whole world and make it faultless like them.
Bam! Now I heard the noise of someone blundering into my neighbor’s elaborate barbecue setup. Crash, crunch, and clatter; there go the grills and irons, the gas bottle thumps to the ground, and finally the tin trays are making a noise like a collapsing xylophone.
‘Owwwww … errrrrr!’
I stood there hoping it marked the perpetrator’s downfall, but the cry had the tenor trill of the plump cop. ‘Watch out!’ I shouted as loud as I could shout, but I was too late. Even before I reached the fence there was an almighty splash and another cry of anguish with a lot of shouting and gurgling.
The other cop, the young thin one, came rushing over to me with his gun drawn. He looked at the fence. ‘What happened?’
‘Sounds like your partner went into my neighbor’s pool.’
‘Holy cow,’ he said quietly and glared at me. ‘You son of a bitch, you let him do that?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ I said. ‘It’s a pool, not a booby trap. We didn’t dig it out in secret and cover it with leaves and twigs.’
‘Are you all right, Steve?’ he called into the darkness. I could hear his partner wading through the water.
There was the sound of a man climbing onto dry land. ‘The bastard got away.’ The half-drowned voice was low and breathless as he came back along the alley and opened my neighbor’s side gate. Shoes slapped water; he was wringing it from his shirt. More water flooded off him as he squeezed his pants and continued cursing. He came very close to me, as if he was going to get violent: he smelled strongly of the pool chemicals that cut the algae back.
‘You’d better come in and dry off,’ I said. My neighbor was nowhere to be seen and all his lights were out. Professor Klopstock certainly knew when to make himself scarce.
‘Why don’t you drop dead?’ he replied. You’d think they would have been mad at my neighbor, but the wet one was acting like I’d switched off the pool lights and lured him on.
‘We’ll get back to the precinct house,’ the dry one said. ‘We’re off duty in thirty minutes.’
‘Suit yourself,’ I said. Now that we were standing in the dim antiprowler light from my porch, I saw how wet he was. Up to his waist he was soaked, but his shoulders were only partly wet. He must have gone in at the shallow end, where all the toys and the inflated yellow alligator are floating, and recovered his balance before going under.
‘I should book you, smart-ass,’ said the wet one.
Book me? ‘What for?’
‘Disorderly conduct,’ he said.
‘Next time you take a midnight dip,’ I said, ‘don’t count on me for the kiss of life.’
‘And next time you get burglarized, drop a dime to your interior decorator,’ he said. I guess he was mad that I’d told him not to chip my paintwork.
They both got into the black-and-white, with the wet one moving carefully, and drove away. Once they’d sailed off into the night I went inside, poured myself a drink, sank down on the sofa, and kicked off my shoes. With a picture window in this town, who needs television? I looked around me; I should make more serious efforts to sell the house. Maybe if we swung a new office from Petrovitch I could rent a small service apartment somewhere nearby. If I could find a place real close, I could leave my car parked at the office. Why hadn’t I sold years ago? I knew the answer. This is the house where I’d been happy. Betty had brought Danny back here from the hospital, and everything in the house reminded me of those days. Under the dining room table were two cardboard boxes containing ornaments and chinaware. When Betty first left me I decided to move out right away and started packing up the breakable stuff. But it was a dispiriting task and I soon gave up. Now the half-filled boxes were just collecting dust under a dining table I never used. I had to do something about my life; it was a mess.
What a tacky day I’d had. And then, just to make it complete, the phone gets up on its hind legs and warbles at me. ‘Is that you, Mickey?’ said a voice I recognized.
‘No, it’s his valet. I’ll put you through to the solarium.’
‘This is Goldie,’ he said. ‘Goldie Arnez.’
‘Yeah, I knew which one it was,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got a confusingly large number of acquaintances named Goldie.’
‘You slipped away without my seeing you go.’
‘Did I? I do that sometimes, when the hands are creeping toward the witching hour and I’ve swallowed too many of those sharp little sticks they spear the cocktail wieners on.’
‘Mr Petrovitch wants to talk with you.’
‘Put him on.’
A polite little chuckle. ‘Tomorrow. Nine A.M. sharp. At Camarillo airport. Bring all the papers concerning Vic Crichton’s deal with the British lord. The British companies and all.’
‘Camarillo?’
‘It’s a short drive down the freeway, Mickey. And at that time of day you should have the westbound side all to yourself.’
‘I would have thought a rich guy like that would have a hangar in John Wayne or Santa Monica, some place with a fancy restaurant.’
‘I got news for you. Rich guys like that have a chef right on the plane, cooking them all the fancy food they can eat.’
‘In the main building? Where will I find him?’
‘There’s no main building. You’ll spot his limo: white with tinted glass. Just make sure you bring the papers, like I said.’
‘I’m not sure I can do that. Those papers concern a client. There is a matter of confidentiality involved.’
‘Just bring the files.’
‘Like I’m telling you, Goldie. This is a matter of confidentiality, client-attorney confidentiality.’
‘Are you getting senile amnesia or something? One of the Petrovitch holding companies now owns your whole bailiwick. Remember, old buddy?’
‘That makes no difference in law. You can’t buy a law practice. All that’s happened is that we’ve taken on a new partner of Mr Petrovitch’s choosing. And I haven’t even met him yet.’
‘You play it any way you choose, Mickey. You were always a maverick. But if I were in your shoes I’d be at Camarillo airport with my notebook under my arm and my pencil sharpened.’
‘I’ll have to think about it.’ I was already thinking about it, and my thoughts were negative. That stuff went a long way back. Take the notebooks: Denise had filled them with that impenetrable shorthand of hers. Who knows what any of us might have said in some of those brainstorming sessions?
‘Yes, you think about it,’ said Goldie. ‘But don’t talk to Crichton or Lord Westbridge or any of their people. Got it?’
‘Did Petrovitch tell you to insert that clause into this tacky ultimatum of yours?’
‘It’s not an ultimatum.’ Then he amended it. ‘But, yes. As a matter of fact, Mickey, yes, he did.’
‘Tell him to get lost,’ I said.
‘I won’t relay that message. You be there in the morning, and if you still feel the same way you’ll be able to tell him in person.’
‘Okay.’
He was reluctant to hang up; he wasn’t sure he’d threatened me enough. ‘Better still, what say we meet in Tommy’s on Ventura? Do you still go there for breakfast?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Seven-thirty?’
‘Okay,’ I said. I guess Goldie wanted time enough to send the hounds after me if I didn’t show up.
‘Sleep on it, Mickey. If you want to talk to me anytime at all, day or night, the eight hundred number on the card I gave you is my cellular phone.’
‘Thanks.’ Goldie was the only man I knew with his own personal eight hundred number.
‘You’ll see reason,’ said Goldie.
When I’d sipped a little more of my whisky I had a sudden inspiration. I went to my dressing room – it’s a walk-in closet, really – and to the place where my personal safe is hidden behind a locked panel. My heavy-duty fireproof-steel money box was alive and well and locked up tight. There was nothing in it that could be of much value to a thief. There were my insurance papers, the deeds of the house, and a dozen or so three-and-a-half-inch floppies that I copied from my computer each week and brought back for safekeeping. But now that I looked again at it, a closer inspection revealed faint gray streaks along the edge of the wooden outer panel. I couldn’t think of any way those marks could have got there – I don’t let the cleaning lady come into the dressing room – so maybe the intruder had got inside. Maybe he’d just started on the combination lock when my neighbor’s 911 call had interrupted him. The sort of intruder who goes housebreaking equipped with watchmaker’s tools would have brought with him a police scanner to monitor the call and would have got out before the black-and-white arrived. Maybe he’d stayed outside, stayed real still, hoping everyone would go away before his pal came to collect him. Wow! So who’s been eating my grandmother?
I twirled the combination lock, opened the door of the safe, and looked inside. My stomach turned over. Flopped on top of a bundle of papers was an ugly brown withered hand, a severed hand. I jumped back like it was going to bite me. I looked again. There it was, like a huge tarantula poised to strike. It made me want to vomit. A hand! In a foolish and useless gesture I pushed the safe door closed while I went and got a flashlight from the garage.
With the light I could see right into the safe. Now that the light was shining on it I could see it was a glove, a heavy-duty protective glove used in factories and warehouses. I pulled the papers forward, holding papers and glove under the ceiling light to see it better. It was a leather glove, bent, battered, and whitened in use, the kind that might have been rescued from some industrial garbage bin. Even now it took me a moment or two before I could touch it. It seemed to be pulsating with life, but then I realized my hand was trembling. There was no message with it, but it was just the kind of prank that Goldie would pull on a guy who might not at first see reason.
This was getting a little too rich for my diet. I flipped open my notebook and called the Century Plaza, where Vic Crichton was staying. They put the call through to his suite and it was answered immediately. I said, ‘Can I speak to Vic?’
‘He’s not here. This is Mrs Crichton. What is it about?’
‘Dorothy, this is Mickey. We were talking tonight, remember? I know Victor was pretty smashed but drag him out of bed and order some coffee from room service, honey. We’ve got to talk.’
‘My name is not Dorothy. This is Mrs Crichton, and I’ve just arrived from London, and I’m waiting for him to get back. Who is this?’
Shit! All these British voices sound the same to me, especially after a long day at the office. ‘Murphy. I’m Sir Jeremy’s West Coast attorney. I’ll call again when you’ve had a chance to settle in.’
‘You say you saw Victor tonight?’
‘No. I mean, it must have been someone else. It looked very like him, but it gets crowded at the health club, and I was in the pool with the chlorinated water getting in my eyes.’
‘I planned to surprise him,’ said Mrs Crichton. ‘But there are no messages here, and the office number I have doesn’t answer.’
Surprise him; she’d do that, all right, and surprise his girlfriend too if they both went back to his hotel. ‘I’m sure he’ll show up,’ I said. ‘Will you ask him to phone Murphy? Tell him it’s a matter of life or death.’
‘Life or death?’
‘I’m exaggerating,’ I readily admitted. ‘This is Southern California; everything is a bit larger than life around here. And a bit smaller than death.’
‘I’ll tell him.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Crichton.’
I hung up, and then I began worrying whether some bastard had tapped my phone. I would have unscrewed the handset and looked for a hidden microphone, the way they do in movies, except that this was a Japanese phone with a handset of welded plastic.
‘What should I do about the paperwork, Rex?’ I said, but Rex had disappeared. He always was a go-to-bed-early kind of dog.
I felt like going to bed too, but the Westbridge files, three boxes of them, were in my downtown office, some twenty-five miles away. And Camarillo was forty miles in the other direction. Why did I pick up that lousy phone? Why didn’t I let Goldie leave his messages on my answering machine?
I had to have something to show that bastard Petrovitch. I mean, I wasn’t in a position to tell him to drop dead. When the deal went through and my check was cashed then maybe it would be different, but not right now. Goldie was right; no matter about the fine print, the fact was that Petrovitch owned me and the whole kit and caboodle. Maybe the written record was secret, but all those sheets of paper, on which it was typed or written, were owned by him. So what did I do? I went and climbed back into my Caddie.
By four o’clock in the morning I was sitting in my office sorting out all the Westbridge stuff with a big industrial-size shredder at my side. It was spooky in that place in the dead of night. In the street there were some strange people patrolling, I’ll tell you: hookers, drug dealers, and kids from the gangs, armed to the teeth and pupils dilated. The janitor was useless. He has an apartment as part of the deal but he didn’t budge from it. I could have rolled the whole building away without his coming down to see where we were headed.
I boiled some water and stole a little of Miss Huth’s instant and found where she stashed the chocolate chip cookies. Then I went through the papers sheet by sheet. I made three piles: one, don’t matter; two, grand jury for Vic Crichton; three, trouble for Murphy. And I’m telling you I made sure everything in the third pile was shredded into paper worms, shaken, and stirred too. As I sorted through that stuff I saw indiscreet little items that could have had me disbarred a dozen times over. I didn’t take a deep breath until only two piles remained. Trouble for Westbridge, Inc., was something I could endure.
Then I crammed all the totally innocuous stuff into my best pigskin document case. With that done I sprinkled a few trouble-for-Westbridge items over them just to make it look kosher and stuffed it tight and strapped it down. Then I took the more delicate Westbridge material – one three-quarter-full Perrier-water box of it – and put it into my trunk and drove back home with it.
I put it on a rafter in the garage together with a lot of other cardboard boxes that had formerly contained my desktop computer, my microwave oven, my coffee maker, and all that kind of stuff, because if you don’t keep the cardboard boxes the stores won’t fix items that go on the blink. Did you know that? They won’t fix them without the boxes.
The dust and dirt I dislodged from that garage made me dirty enough to need a good long hot shower. By the time I was through washing up there was no time for sleep. I changed into a sport coat and cords to show all concerned that this wasn’t a part of my regular schedule and then went along Ventura Boulevard to Tommy’s Coffee Shop.

4
Fancy Goldie remembering our breakfasts in Tommy’s. It’s one of those restaurants that open at dawn and close in the early afternoon. I parked at the back. The sun crept out of the darkness and peeked over the roofs, to be reflected in my lovely old Caddie. With its original gold-colored paint job, it was spectacular. I stood there admiring it for a long time; I love that car. Even the radio was original. It would have made a stunning color photo the way it looked that morning. Maybe I should buy myself a camera.
I went in through the back door. Already the dining room was crowded with men on their way to work. Brawny fellows in bib overalls and plaid work shirts, men who adjusted machinery, fixed appliances, and mended utilities; straight-speaking American heroes like my mother’s brothers.
Goldie was already there, sitting near the window, watching the cook cracking eggs and flipping hash browns on the shiny steel griddle. We said our hellos. Goldie looked tired. Judging by the clothes he was wearing and the blue chin, he’d been up all night. The smell of bacon got my appetite roused and I went ape and ordered sausages, bacon, fried eggs, pancakes with butter and syrup, toast, honey, and coffee. It was just like being back with my folks. The coffee was fine, the eggs went over easy, and it was the only place around there that opens at five-thirty in the morning.
‘Hello, Mr Murphy,’ said Cindy. She picked up Goldie’s empty plate and gave him a refill of coffee.
‘Boy, are you looking great, Cindy!’ I’d known Cindy Lewis for years. She was a hardworking, sensible woman with two grown daughters. Her husband had been a marine killed in ’Nam back in the early days. When Danny was very young she’d regularly come in to baby-sit for us.
‘It’s work that keeps me in shape,’ she said, while she watched me eating. ‘I tell the young ones that but they don’t listen. People have forgotten how to work. My next-door neighbor is a nice old Japanese gentleman who works at Northrop. That poor man can’t even go into his own front yard to water his flowers and plants without people thinking he’s a gardener. They can’t believe he gardens for himself; they pester him all the time with offers of work.’
Goldie nodded soberly. I had a feeling he was going to doze off at any moment.
‘Can you beat that?’ I said, but oh, boy, I could well believe it. The two dumb jerks doing my garden knew as much about gardening as they knew about nuclear physics, and they were charging me an arm and a leg. They popped in for ten minutes of grass-cutting every Friday morning and didn’t even take the clippings and leaves away afterward. I tried to remember exactly where Cindy lived. I had driven her back there a million times. Next-door neighbor, eh? I mean: how much could they be paying him at Northrop?
‘I’ve been waiting for you to look in, Mr Murphy; you can settle a bet for me. It was Frank Loesser wrote ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ Wasn’t it? I was arguing with my young brother; he thinks he knows everything. Back me up, will you? I’ve got ten dollars riding on it.’
‘Too bad. You lost your money, Cindy. Words by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney.’
She didn’t seem too devastated at losing her ten bucks. She shook her head in admiration. ‘He should go on one of those TV quiz shows,’ she told Goldie. Goldie nodded. She had an exaggerated respect for anything she perceived as education.
I dredged my memory: ‘Written for a show called Americana sometime in the early thirties.’
Cindy refilled my coffee cup. ‘I can’t remember a darn thing these days,’ she admitted cheerfully. ‘I keep forgetting to tell you about your car, Mr Murphy.’ She poured coffee for the guys at the next table and then came back to me. ‘Maybe somebody else told you already. That old car of yours, it’s dripping oil everywhere.’
‘I know; it’s nothing,’ I said.
‘I noticed it when you drove away last week. A big pool of oil.’
‘It’s nothing that matters,’ I said. ‘Probably a gasket.’
‘Why don’t you get yourself a nice new car? Now your company has been bought out and everything.’
‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘That’s a valuable vintage car.’
‘Those Japanese cars are very reliable. My grandson has one. He’s got a great deal: ninety-nine dollars a month. It’s a lovely little car. Bright green. Four doors, radio, and everything. So comfortable and reliable.’ Goldie was looking at me with a stupid smile on his face.
‘And I haven’t been bought out.’ Maybe I said it too loudly.
‘I didn’t mean anything.’ She poured coffee for me.
‘Everybody keeps telling me I’m rich, except I don’t get the dough. So don’t go around saying I’ve been bought out.’
She looked at me and at Goldie and nodded. I could see what she was thinking. She was thinking I was making millions of dollars and hiding it away somewhere. ‘I thought I’d better tell you about the oil,’ she said, and walked away.
‘Stupid woman,’ I told Goldie. ‘Japanese cars. I don’t want to hear about Japanese cars.’
Goldie said, ‘Did you bring everything?’
‘I brought everything,’ I said. Goldie nodded.
I devoured the whole breakfast and even wiped the plate with bread. Was it a sign of nerves? I always eat too much when I’m tense. I wish I was one of these skinny joes who go off food when they are under stress, but with me it works just the other way. Anyway, it was a delicious breakfast: cholesterol cooked just the way I like it.
Then I reached into my leather case and brought out the glove I’d found in my safe. I put it on the table. Goldie looked at it without emotion. ‘Is this yours?’ I asked him.
‘Could be. I’ve got one just like it at home.’
‘You son of a bitch.’
‘Now we’re quits,’ said Goldie. ‘Don’t fool with my phones in future.’ He raised those heavy-lidded eyes of his to look at me.
‘I didn’t plant that bomb, Goldie.’
‘You just happened to want to make a call? You just happened to notice the wiring? Is that it?’
‘Of course it is. I didn’t plant that bomb.’
‘Maybe not, but I think you know who did. And you made sure I found it. I get the message, Mickey. Is this something you dreamed up with Budd Byron?’
‘What’s Budd got to do with it?’
‘He’s the one you promised to get a gun for, remember?’
‘This is too much! Are you bugging my office?’
‘It’s not your office any longer. You work for us now.’
I got to my feet and put some money on the table. Goldie reached out and grabbed my arm. ‘These are big boys, Mickey. This isn’t a Monopoly game, it’s real life. Ask yourself, pal. When big corporations are pushing hundreds of millions of dollars around the board, they are not deterred by some little guy reading aloud the instructions on the box lid.’ He looked at me. ‘They’ll squash you like a bug.’
‘Keep your guys out of my house,’ I said. I pulled away from his grip, picked up the glove, and tossed it at him. ‘You pull a routine like that again, and I’ll fix you in a way you won’t like.’
‘Turn off at the water tower,’ said Goldie. ‘It’s a white limo with tinted glass, parked near the main hangar.’

Camarillo airport is a onetime military field with six thousand feet of concrete runway, one hundred and fifty feet wide, and that’s more than enough to land Petrovitch’s plane even if old Petey himself is at the yoke nursing a hangover. I knew the field. For years, when driving on Route 101, I’d stolen a glance at the old blue-and-white Lockheed Constellation that marked the end of the runway.
I recognized the freeway exit ramp. I used to take Danny up that way to buy strawberries. Danny loved strawberries. I remember the first time he saw the strawberry fields – miles of them all the way to mountains – he could scarcely believe it was all real. Betty liked them too. We regularly bought berries there and took along a big tub of ice cream and had a feast in the car.

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