Cat and Mouse (9 page)

“Nope.”

“Maybe the kids are right. Try before you buy is the way they go these days.”

“We did, too. At least I did. But we never called our prenuptial pussy a meaningful relationship.”

“An adulterous husband and a bad father, that’s what I’ve been. I’m going to make it up to her, Brock.”

“Did you tell her that on the phone?”

“I did.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said. “Welcome to the club.”

He smiled. “You must have
some
wife!”

“More than I can handle,” I admitted.

I phoned her before dinner and told her I wouldn’t be home tonight. She told me that Corey was still being held but Nowicki was sure he would soon be released on minimum bail. Otherwise, all was quiet on the San Valdesto front.

Nowicki must have learned from Harris or McClune what Aram had told them about Big Bear’s most recent kill. Neither Harris nor Mallory was likely to want his public image tarnished by jailing an innocent young man who had been framed. They could reasonably assume that what I had learned could be disputed successfully in court. But never the word of a fellow officer with Aram’s reputation.

We started with the farthest address after dinner, a duplex outside of Santa Monica on National Boulevard, near the old Douglas aircraft plant.

This was the address of the poet on the list, a name I’ve forgotten now. When he invited us into his living room, there were four other youths there who retreated to the kitchen. They could have been fellow poets; they were all thin and looked hungry.

The remaining bard had little to tell us. He, like Fernando, did not have a high opinion of Big Bear, nor of Duane. The only reason, he explained, that he had gone to Duane’s parties had been economic; he stuffed himself there and his host had let him take leftovers home. It was his devout belief that Duane’s mother’s money could be put to better use by supporting the arts.

In the car, Harley asked, “Do you read much poetry?”

“Not often.”

“My wife does,” he said. “I’d better bone up on it.”

“Don’t go too far, Harley. One step at a time.”

Nobody answered the bell at our second address.

The third was a small building in Venice. An outside stairway led to the second-floor entrance. We could hear an argument going on inside before Harley knocked on the door.

When the door opened, a short but very wide and ugly man in a tan jacket and maroon slacks glared at us. “What the hell do you want?” he asked.

“A lad named Deke Bishop,” Harley answered. “Is he in?”

“Get lost!”

“I’m here,” a voice from behind him said.

The man turned and said, “Shut up, punk!”

The turn had been his error; Harley put a hand on his back and sent him stumbling into the room. When he turned around again, Harley grabbed him by the throat with his left hand and was about to land a right-hand haymaker.

“Don’t!” I said.

He shoved the man against the wall. “You stay right there, Shorty,” he said, “or I’ll throw you down those steps outside.”

I asked young Bishop, “What’s all the fuss about?”

“I owe him some money.”

“For what”

“I don’t want to say.”

“Drugs?”

He looked at Shorty and back at me. “Are you guys cops?”

“We’re working with them,” I said. “But we don’t always work the same way they do, as you must have noticed. My impetuous partner is Jasper Belton’s father and that is why we are here.”

He said nothing. He looked at Shorty and Harley and back at me.

“How much do you owe him?” I asked.

“Thirty dollars.”

I took a ten and a twenty from my wallet and showed them to Shorty. “Come with me,” I said, “and this will be yours. My friend and I prefer to talk in private.”

He nodded.

I walked down the steps with him to his car at the curb in front of mine. His was a green Pontiac Grand Prix. I told him, “Stay away from that kid. You came awful close to winding up in intensive care tonight. I can’t always control my partner.”

He nodded again.

I jotted down his license number on the back of our list. “I have your number now. My name is Brock Callahan. You can check me out with Captain Aram Apoyan at the Santa Monica station.” I gave him the thirty dollars. “Now go!”

He left. I went back up the steps. Deke Bishop was sitting on his bed at the far end of the room.

Harley said, “Nothing new here. And Deke doesn’t want to tell me that man’s name. He’s a pusher.”

“I have his license number. What is he selling you, Deke?”

“Nothing. I quit a month ago. But I still owed him.”

“Not any more. I’m sure he won’t be back.”

“If you’d give me your address,” Deke said, “I could pay you off at ten bucks a week. I’m working now.”

“No need, son. You stay clean and I’ll be more than repaid.”

“I promise,” he said.

Back in the car, Harley said, “Thanks for stopping me. That’s all I need, to wind up in the can for assault.”

“You’re welcome. I was almost as wild when I worked down here.”

“And then you moved to San Valdesto and I to Sun City. That should have cured us.”

“Not in San Valdesto, as you have reason to know.”

“Jesus, yes! What’s happening to this country, Brock?”

“A national epidemic of self-interest.”

“Whatever. We’re nowhere, aren’t we? Only one name left and I’ll give you ten to one it’s another dead end.”

“Probably. I may as well go home and wait for him to call.”

“Your case is different. He’s out to get
you
. But I’m out to get
him.
I don’t want to wait.”

We were getting out of the car on the parking lot when a green Pontiac Grand Prix pulled in.

“If that’s Shorty’s car,” I said, “I hope he’s not armed.”

I
T WAS SHORTY. HIS HANDS WERE VISIBLE AND
neither one held a gun. “Could I talk with you guys?” he asked.

I nodded. “What’s your name?”

“If you got my license number you can get my name. Do you want to see my driver’s license?”

“We do.”

He took out his wallet and handed it to me. His name was Leonard Pelch.

“How did you know we were staying here?” I asked.

“I followed you. How else? Look, I’ve already had three raps and I’m out on probation now. You give my name to Apoyan and I’m right back where I don’t want to be. I knew you son, Mr. Belton. But I never sold him anything. I’m a dealer, not a pusher. All I do is supply the demand.”

“We’ll buy that for now,” Harley said. “What do you want from us?”

“I thought maybe I could help you. I’ve been working this town for twenty years. I’ve seen that creep the kids call Big Bear, the guy your son left town with. I don’t know his real name, but I have friends who might. They figure this is
their
turf. That’s probably why he took off for San Valdesto.”

I shook my head. “He came up there to kill me. I think he killed Jasper because Jasper was going to inform on him. Apoyan thinks that’s the same reason he killed that woman he was living with, Jane Meredith.”

Pelch stared at me. “Christ! Maybe I’d be better off if you finked to Apoyan. I didn’t know the guy was
that
heavy!”

“If you can help, Lenny, neither Apoyan nor Big Bear will learn anything from us.”

“What if I try and can’t deliver?”

“Then we’ll give you an E for effort. You know our names.”

“Are you the Callahan who played for the Rams?”

“One and the same.”

“Your word’s good enough for me,” he said. “That goes for you, too, Mr. Belton.”

“That’s a sweet thought, Lenny,” I said. “But if we find out that you’re conning us—”

“I should live so long!”

“It wouldn’t be long,” Harley assured him.

Lenny left. Harley said, “I think I understand now what you meant about self-interest. But we have to have some of that in us, don’t we?”

“If we want to survive,” I admitted. “Should we have a nightcap?”

“Why not? We earned it today. Maybe even two?”

We had one. The bar was full of loud men and middle-aged women. “I wasn’t planning any moves,” Harley said, “but I thought we could at least look at some of the young ones. Let’s go up and see what’s on the tube.”

There was, as usual, nothing worth watching on the tube. We went to bed, each in his own.

Jan phoned before breakfast. She gave me the good news that Corey was out on bail and living at our house. She had paid the five hundred dollars for a five-thousand-dollar bond and Corey was working it off. We were also saving two-thirds of what the guards had been costing us; she had retained only one watch, from eleven at night to seven in the morning. And she was back at work.

“Don’t you think that’s risky?”

“No. Bernie drives me down every morning on his way to the station and brings me home every afternoon.”

“Considering how much you like Bernie,” I said, “I’m not sure I approve.”

“We have kept our relationship on a high intellectual plane, sir,” she said. And added, “So far. Anything new down there?”

I told her I had planned to come home this morning but we had received some information last night that might help us here.

“Luck,” she said. “Don’t you worry about Bernie. And I won’t worry about all those girls you used to court down there.”

“Until I met you. Remember that!”

“That’s what I’m remembering.”

Harley suggested at breakfast that I stay in the hotel in case Pelch called. He would try to learn something from the neighbors about the resident of the third house—the unanswered ring.

I wanted to suggest that we switch roles. But it had been his idea. “Drive carefully,” I cautioned him.

I bought a copy of the
Times
and went up to the room. I couldn’t concentrate on the print. All the people I had met, all those names, kept running through my mind. A tidbit here, another there, learning almost everything about Big Bear but his true name. He had to be on the run, either an escapee from prison or a man who had violated his parole. He hadn’t revealed his true name to anyone we had questioned; if there was a price on his head, a reward for his capture, Lenny’s criminal associates were not likely to have learned it.

I phoned Aram and asked him if he had gone through his mug shots. All of them, he told me, and they had reviewed all the wanted posters they had. They were still keeping a watch on the tobacco store in town that sold Corinth cigarettes.

The man had to be sadistic. Why the warning? Why this cat and mouse? Without the warning I would have been an easy target and his mission would now be accomplished. But the dead don’t suffer; that is reserved for the living. He wanted me to sweat.

I went back to the
Times.
The front page informed me that the Valley Intruder had pleaded innocent to all charges. The sports page revealed that the Dodgers were on a losing streak, the Angels breaking even, a win for each loss. The financial page gave me the sad news that, like the Dodgers, I was also on a losing streak.

At ten o’clock I told the clerk that I would be out at the pool if any call came in. I took a bottle of Beck’s with me.

They were mostly kids in the pool, laughing and splashing in the shallow end, innocents. And tomorrow, even if they stayed innocent, the ghost of that mushroom cloud would be hovering overhead. That could be the major reason that their high school siblings were so heavily into drugs.

I was in the room when Harley came back. It had taken him almost two hours to locate our last juvenile hope and only minutes to learn we now knew no more than we had known.

“We still have Lenny,” I pointed out.

“Do you trust him?”

“I trust his sense of self-interest. Patience, man!”

He stretched out on the bed. “It was so simple in the Corps. Your superior told you what to do and you did it—or wished you had. They run an orderly world. But this—this dog eat dog—” He took a deep breath.

I thought of pointing out that prisons also ran an orderly world. But I said, “It’s called free enterprise. You’ve been out in it for five years, Harley.”

“I know. I must be a slow learner.”

“Let’s eat lunch.”

“I’d rather drink it,” he said. “But that’s another problem I had better watch. It was the only diversion we had in Sun City.”

Lenny phoned when we were back in the room. There was a man named Vince Columbini, he told me, who ran a combination restaurant, bar, and bookie joint in town who might have some information on Big Bear. The place was named The Hangout. He gave me the address.

“But he won’t be there until eight o’clock tonight. He had to go to Ventura on business. He remembers you. He’s a Rams fan. It could be nothing—but I’m still asking around.”

“That’s good of you. Thanks, Lenny.”

When I relayed the information to Harley, he suggested, “Why don’t we take a run on the beach and then come back for a swim?”

“I didn’t bring my running shoes or swimming trunks.”

“There’s a sports store a little more than a block from here. And for the swimming you could use my jock strap and your underwear shorts.”

“They’ll probably have swimming trunks there.”

He nodded. “And my jock strap would probably be too big for you.”

“What a funny, vulgar person you are!” I said.

They had swimming trunks and running shoes. I also bought a sweat shirt and wore it with a pair of well-worn cords I had brought for possible undercover work.

The afternoon had turned cool; the beach was thinly populated. Mr. Macho Marine set a fast pace for the outgoing two miles. I trailed behind, giving him a false sense of security.

On the return run, I edged closer, waiting for him to falter. His stride grew ragged in the last half mile. I turned on my supercharger and beat him by almost ten yards.

“You sure fooled me,” he admitted. “A man your size!”

I smiled modestly.

“Let’s go back and take a shower and splash around in the pool,” he suggested. “We could use a change. I’m getting tired of running into dead ends.”

We splashed around in the deep end while the young kids splashed around in the shallow. Then we stretched out on pads in the returning sun.