EMPLOYEES ONLY sign. In the background, a female vocalist shouted over power chords.
Joan Jett or someone trying to be her. Big Hair wore a tight black T-shirt and red jeans. A slogan on the shut: "No Sex Unless It Leads to Dancing" His arms were white and hairless, more vein than muscle. Lumpy fibroid dope scars in the crooks said he'd probably had police experience.
Milo said, "Were you working here twenty months ago, sir?"
"Sir" made the kid smirk. "Off and on." He managed to slouch lower.
Price lists were tacked to the surrounding walls. Day rates for sandbags, Western dollies, sidewalls, Magliners, wardrobe racks, Cardellini lamps, Greenscreens.
Surprisingly cheap; a snow machine could be had for fifty-five bucks.
"Remember renting to an outfit called Thin Line Productions?"
I expected a yawn, but Big Hair said, "Maybe."
Milo waited.
"Sounds familiar. Yeah, maybe. Yeah."
"Could you check your files, please?"
"Yeah, hold on." Hair opened the double doors and disappeared, returned waving an index card, looking ready to spit. "Yeah, now I remember them."
"Problems?" said Milo.
"Big problems." Hair wiped his hands on the black T-shirt. The grubby steel ring through his upper lip robbed his expression of some of the injured dignity he was trying to project.
"What'd they do?" said Milo.
"Stiffed us fourteen grand worth."
I said, "That's a lot of equipment."
"Not for Spielberg, but for assholes like that, yeah. We gave 'em everything. Mikes, props, fake blood, filters, misters, eye chamois, coffee makers, cups, tables, the fuckin' works. The big items were a dolly and a couple of cameras- old gear, no studio would touch 'em, but still they cost. Supposed to be a ten-day rental. They had no history with us and it was obviously like a virgin voyage, so we demanded
double deposit and they gave us a check that we verified was covered. I got I.D., everything by the book. Not only didn't they pay up, they fucking split with the equipment. When we tried to cash the deposit check, guess what?"
He bared his teeth. Surprisingly white. Behind them, something glinted. Pierced tongue. No click when he talked-the voice of experience. Were pain thresholds rising among the new generation? Would it make for a better Marine Corps?
I said, "What made you think it was a virgin voyage?"
"They putzed around, didn't know what they were doing. What pisses me off is I guided them, man, told them how to get the most for their money. Then they go and screw me."
"You got blamed?"
"Boss said I did the transaction, I was assigned to find 'em, try to recover. I couldn't find shit."
"You say 'they,' " said Milo. "How many people are we talking about?"
"Two. Guy and a girl."
"What'd they look like?"
"Twenties, thirties. She was okay-looking, blond hair- light blond, like Marilyn
Monroe, Madonna, when she was like that. But long and straight. Nice body, but nothing special. Okay face. He was tall, older than her, trying to play hip."
"How old?" said Milo.
"Probably in his thirties. She was maybe younger. I wasn't really paying attention.
She didn't say much, it was mostly him."
"How tall was he?" said Milo.
"About your size, but skinny. Not as skinny as me, but nothing like you either."
Smirk.
"Hair color?" said Milo.
"Dark. Black. Long."
"Like yours?"
"He wished, man. His was curly, like a perm, maybe went to here." He touched his shoulders.
"Platinum blond for her," said Milo, writing. "Long and curly for him. Maybe wigs?"
"Sure they were," said Hair. "It's not exactly hard to tell, man."
"What kind of clothing did they wear?"
"Regular. Nothing special."
"Any other distinguishing marks?"
Hair laughed. "Like '666' on their foreheads? Nope, unh-uh."
"Could you identify them if you saw them again?"
"I dunno." The pierced tongue slid between his upper and lower teeth. The mannerism formed his mouth into a tragedy-mask frown. "Probably not. I wasn't really paying
attention to their faces. I was concentrating on getting them the most for their money."
"But maybe you could recognize them?"
"Why, you have a picture?"
"Not yet."
"Well, bring one if you get it. Maybe, no promises."
"The fact they were wearing wigs," said Milo. "That didn't bother you?"
"Why should it?"
"Maybe they were hiding something." Hair laughed. "Everyone in the industry hides something. You never see a chick with a natural rack anymore, and half the guys are wearing wigs and eye shadow. Big fucking deal-maybe they were acting in their own flick, doing it all. That's the way it is with a lot of these indie things."
"They tell you anything about the flick?"
"Didn't ask, they didn't say."
"Blood Walk," said Milo. "Sounds like a slasher flick."
"Could be." Boredom had returned.
"They rented fake blood."
"Couple gallons. I picked out the best we had, nice and thick. Then they butt-ream me like that. Boss loved that."
"Any hint it might've been porn?"
"Anything's possible," said Hair. "I know most of the porn people, but there's always new assholes trying to break in. I don't think so, though. They didn't have that virgin porn feel."
"What's the virgin porn feel?"
"Stoned-happy on Ecstasy, big fucking adventure. They didn't say much-thinking about it, they didn't say hardly nothing at all."
"Boss take it any further than having you look for them?" said Milo.
"What do you mean?"
"Did he run a trace on them? Hire a collection agency?"
"He put 'em out to collection and when that didn't work, he wrote it off. We had a good year, I guess he can piss away fourteen grand."
"Does this kind of thing happen all the time?"
"Getting ripped off? Not all the time, but yeah, it happens. But not usually for this much. And usually we collect something."
"Do you still have their file?"
"I didn't throw it out."
"Could we please see it, Mr.... ?"
"Bonner. Vito Bonner." He wiped his hands again. "Let me go back and check. They rip someone else off? That why you're here?"
"Something like that."
"Man," said Bonner. "Talk about stupid. We warned the other companies in the neighborhood. Burbank and Culver too." A black sprig of false hair tickled his chin and he slapped it away. "I think we warned the Valley, too. So anyone who rented to them after that deserves to get cornholed."
We sat in the unmarked and studied the file. The tab read THIN LINE: BLOOD WALK, BAD
DEBT. The first page was a letter from an Encino collection agency reporting an extensive search, no results. Next came the rental application. Thin Line's address was listed on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. Venice phone exchange with the notation that it traced to a pay phone.
"Bit of a drive to Hollywood," I said. "Especially with rental outfits close by in
Santa Monica. They didn't want to foul their own nest."
Milo pored over the form, nodding. The signature at the bottom was hard to read, but a black business card stapled to the file folder said:
Griffith D.Wark
PRODUCER AND PRESIDENT
THIN LINE PRODS
The pay-phone number in the lower left corner. White printing on black.
Old-fashioned camera logo in the lower right-hand corner.
"Bogus phone," he said. "Scam from the get-go... Wark. Sounds like a phony moniker."
"Griffith D. W," I said. "Ten to one it's an inversion of D. W. Griffith. I'll also bet the W in 'D. W.' was Wark. Not very subtle, but old Vito didn't catch it."
"Old Vito probably knows more about Maglites than film history." He flipped to the next page. "Here's the bank verification on the deposit check-B. of A. branch out in
Panorama City. These guys were all over the place."
He studied his Timex. "Too late to call the manager. I'll drive by the Venice address, see if they really did have a place there; then I'll get the file over to the lab just in case some old latents from known bad guys show up. Tomorrow, it's on the horn to every other prop house in the county, see if Mr. Wark talked anyone else out of gear."
"You like the film thing now," I said.
"Work with what you've got," he said. "I'm an old stink-hound: when something smells bad, I go nosing."
"The casting ad could have been another scam-get wannabes to pay for auditioning."
"Wouldn't surprise me. Hollywood's one big scam, anyway-image fiber alles. Even when it's supposedly legit. One of my first cases, back when I was doing Robbery, was-"
He named a well-known actor. "Got his start as a student, doing artsy stuff using gear he stole from the university's theater arts department. When I caught up with him he was a real fresh-mouth, no remorse. Finally, he agreed to return everything and the U decided not to take it any further. A few years later, I'm watching TV and this asshole's up for an Oscar, some social-issues film about prison reform, making a holier-than-thou speech. And what about-" He named a major director. "I know for a fact he got his foot in the door by selling coke to studio execs. Yeah, this Wark found the right business for a psychopath. The only question is how relevant his
mischief is to my cases."
I got home just after six. Robin's truck was in the carport. The house smelled wonderful-the salty bouquet of chicken soup.
She was at the stove, stirring a pot. Her hair was loose, tumbling down her back; black sweats accentuated the auburn. Her sleeves were pushed up to her elbows and her face looked scrubbed. Steam from the soup had brought up some sweat. Down by her feet, Spike squatted, panting, ready to pounce for a scrap. The table was set for two.
When I kissed her, Spike grumbled. "Be a good sharer," I said.
He grumbled some more and waddled over to his water bowl.
"Winning through intimidation," I said.
Robin laughed. "Thought we'd eat in. Haven't seen enough of you lately."
"Sounds great to me. Want me to prepare something?"
"Not unless there's something else you want."
I looked into the pot. Golden broth formed a bubbling home for carrots, celery, onions, slivers of white meat, wide noodles.
"Nothing," I said, moving behind her, cupping her waist, lowering my hands to her hips. I felt her go loose.
"This," I said, "is one of those great fantasies-he chances upon her as she cooks and, lusty stallion that he is..."
She laughed, let out two soft breaths, leaned back against me. My hands rose to her breasts, loose and soft, unfettered by the thin fleece of the sweats. Her nipples hardened against my palms. My fingers slipped under the waistband of her pants. She inhaled sharply.
"You shrinks," she said, placing her hand over mine. Guiding it down. "Spending too much time on fantasy, not enough on reality."
17.
I WOKE UP the next morning thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Argent's claim that Claire had chosen psychology because she wanted to nurture people. Yet she'd opted for neuro-psychology as a specialty, concentrating on diagnostics, avoiding treatment.
On research diagnostics, charts and graphs, the hieroglyphics of science. She'd rarely ventured out of her lab. On the face of it, she'd nurtured nothing but data at County.
Until six months ago and the shift to Starkweather. Maybe Robin was right, and the move represented getting in touch with her altruism.
But why now? Why there'?
Something didn't fit. My head felt like a box full of random index cards. I circled the office, trying to collate. Robin and Spike were out, and the silence chewed at
me. There had been a time, long ago, when I was content living alone. The knots and liberties of love had changed me. What had Claire experienced oflove?
The phone ring was glass shattering on stone.
