The Monet Murders (30 page)

So I was back to the proverbial square one. The key to the mystery was still whether the painting over Watson's mantel was real or not. And making the switch was the only way to find out one way or the other. If I switched the pictures and the one I got was real, I could figure some way of returning it and letting Watson go on his merry way, ignorant and ignorantly. If it was a phony, then I could get Kowalski or maybe the Feds and probably the insurance company involved. I could walk away with a clear conscience.

So by three fifteen I had decided that making the switch was still worth doing. But not for potential profit, probably, and definitely not the way we had planned. That way still looked like amateur burglary, and what was it Perry had said? Only amateurs get caught.

Just then, Myrtle rolled over and opened her flawless eyes.

“Are you awake?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“I have been thinking. I don't want you to break into Watson's house. It seems wrong to me. And too dangerous.”

“I've come to the same conclusion, honey. I'm not going to do it.” Truthfully, I didn't care all that much whether it was right or wrong; I just didn't think it made any sense. Do those two things go together? Sometimes, maybe.

“I'm glad,” she said and smiled and sighed and came close and cuddled in my arms. Even at that hour of the night, she smelled like springtime. And her body felt like nothing I
could put into words, even though, as I've said before, I read a lot.

I called Perry first thing in the morning and told him the deal was off and that I had the beginnings of an idea about how to achieve the same results with much less risk.

“Lemme know if I can help,” he said.

“Count on it.”

“The old girl's not gonna be happy about the silver, you know.”

“Life's not all beer and skittles.”

“Brother, don't I know it.”

Next, I called my FBI friend back in Youngstown. “Marion. It's Riley.”

“Riley! Good to hear from you. How's California?”

“Sunny. Same as last time you asked.”

“Does it ever rain there?”

“Only when necessary.”

“Nice duty. Well, what's up?”

“Just a question. Who in the government watches out for illegal aliens? You know, like Mexicans crossing the border in the desert so that they can come up here and pick tomatoes.”

“I forget which agency used to do that, but in the last couple of years we established the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That's their pigeon, as the Brits say. I've been reading English spy novels.”

“Good for you,” I said sincerely. I liked that stuff too. “I assume they have an office in L.A.—the Immigration and what-do-you-call-it?”

“INS for short. L.A.? Are you kidding? Sure.”

“Know anyone there?”

“No. But I can make some calls.”

“I'd appreciate it.”

Something Perry had said triggered that call. The girls, and I use that term loosely when it came to Della, had said the Japanese houseboy seemed ill at ease and nervous, and Perry had suggested he might be an illegal. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But he was at least a foreign national, which meant that the Feds could have some legitimate interest in questioning him. Checking his visa and that sort of thing. So if I somehow made a connection with the local INS boys, maybe we could pay a visit to the Watson place when Watson was at the office. While the INS guys were sweating Hirohito, I could slide into the drawing room and make the switch.

It was a decent plan, but it had a flaw—I'd need to get friendly fast with the INS, friendly enough to have them do me a slightly irregular favor. True, they might bag an illegal, but that was a long shot. Marion would have done it. Kowalski might have done it. But I was new to the INS. I doubted they'd do it.

No. It was a bad idea, what Perry called The Chinese Way.

But pretty soon a good, or at least better, idea pulled into the station, right on schedule. Perry and I could pose as INS. All we needed was a couple of believable ID cards. That way, Perry could have the pleasure of terrifying the poor houseboy while I made the switch. No complications with the Feds, no time wasted.

I called Perry back.

“You remember when you said ninety percent of the Japanese coming up from Mexico were illegals?”

“Sure. That figure may be low.”

“How do they get jobs then?”

“Phony visas, of course.”

“That's what I thought. You wouldn't happen to know anyone who puts these phony papers together, would you?”

“What do you think?” He sounded mildly insulted. I suppose it was like asking an English professor if he'd heard of Shakespeare.

“Sorry.”

“There's a guy in Pedro named Blinky Malone who specializes in that sort of thing.” Like many Angelenos, he pronounced it “Peedro.”

“Friend of yours?”

“We've done business. Leave it at that.”

“Why do they call him Blinky?” I figured Perry would appreciate being fed a straight line.

“I don't know, but if I were you I wouldn't ask him.”

“I'll remember that. Could you arrange to have Blinky whip up a couple of government ID cards?”

“Sure. What would you like? FBI? U.S. Navy? Driver's License? Girl Scout merit badge?”

“Immigration and Naturalization Service.”

“How soon do you need them?”

“Soon as possible.”

“Like today?”

“Today would be good.”

“Might cost a little extra, for the rush job.”

“That's okay.”

“One for me and one for you?”

“That's right.”

“Okay. What names?”

“Anything but ours.”

That afternoon, Perry came by with two ID cards, each showing an impressive seal of the United States and the words “Immigration and Naturalization Service” embossed on a green background that featured an eagle with a wide wingspread. It was, as usual, fast service from Perry and his network of shadowy characters. Whether the cards were copies of actual INS ID's or just the creation of Blinky's fertile imagination didn't really matter. They only had to fool one rather nervous Japanese houseboy. Which should be easy enough. Each card featured a picture of some guy who might have been me and Perry. The pictures were intentionally blurry, and the likenesses were close enough. The name on my card was Herman Clapsaddle. Perry's said Emile Phengfisch.

“I always liked the name Emile,” he said.

“Yes, but what about these last names?”

“Well, that's kind of an inside joke. I knew a guy in the Navy name of Herman Clapsaddle. Pennsylvania Dutchman from around Lancaster. He married a girl named Ethel Phengfisch from Blue Ball, and I used to tell him he married the only girl in the world who was happy to change her name to Clapsaddle.”

“I see.”

“You said not to use our real names.”

“Right.”

“So, Agent Clapsaddle, what's the plan?”

That night around eight o'clock, we were parked on the street opposite the gate of Charles Watson's house. Perry was dressed in his only suit, a garment that had been stylish at some point but now looked a little small on him. And shiny. His hand-painted tie looked like something Monet might have produced on a bad day, but in a sense it was appropriate, given our mission. Taken all together, Perry looked like just the kind of low-level G-man who'd love to roust a foreigner.

Looking at the wall from where we were parked, I was glad we weren't going to try to scale that thing. It was smooth plaster over brick, and the top was rounded-off concrete, and you could see the glass shards glistening in the light of the streetlamp. There was an iron gate closing off the entrance.

Around eight fifteen, Watson's car came down the driveway and pulled up to the gate, which swung open when Watson activated a switch from his car. He was driving a freshly polished Cadillac convertible, and you could almost see the cloud of cologne trailing behind as he pulled out and sped off down the road. The gate swung shut behind him. I almost felt sorry for the poor sap—going to meet his dream girl, who, like most dream girls, wouldn't be there when he arrived. “Fled is that music . . .” and so on.

We waited another fifteen minutes or so just to make sure Watson didn't come back for some reason. It was unlikely. The way he'd peeled out of his driveway showed he was in a hurry.

When we figured the coast was clear, we got out and walked to the gate. There was a small box mounted on the wall with a telephone inside. I picked it up.

“Yes, please?” said the voice. It was obviously Hirohito. I won't try to imitate his way of speaking. Reading dialectic has always seemed to me to be pretty tedious, except in Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. They can pull it off. I won't try.

“Federal officers. Open the gate.”

There was a long pause.

“Mr. Watson no home,” he said, finally.

“It's not Watson we want to talk to. It's you. Your name's Satchiko, isn't it?” The girls had pulled that out of him.

“I am Satchiko, yes.”

“Well, then, open the gate.”

There was another pause.

“You wish to speak to me?” he said, just to be sure, or maybe buying time.

“That's right. We're from the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It's a routine check. Nothing to worry about.”

More silence.

“Come back tomorrow. Too late now.”

“Listen, pal. Either open this gate and let us in or we call for backup, and you'll have to explain to your boss why his gate got smashed in.”

“I do nothing wrong. My papers good.”

“Maybe. But we're here to check, and we're going to do it one way or the other. You can cooperate, or you can go downtown in handcuffs. Believe me, you won't like it downtown. You may be a gardener, but downtown you'll learn there are other ways to use a rubber hose. So it's either the easy way or the hard way. We don't care which.”

He digested this.

“Not in trouble?”

“Not unless you don't open this gate. I'll give you ten seconds.”

He thought it over some more.

“Wait, please.”

We heard the buzzer sound on the gate, and it swung slowly open. We walked up the driveway to the house.

“Nice work, chief,” said Perry. “I liked the part about the rubber hose.”

That didn't surprise me.

The front door was one of those heavy imitation Spanish numbers. As a matter of fact, the whole house was imitation Spanish. Of course, most of the houses were imitation something or other. The bigger the house, the better the imitation, usually, although there were some godawful-looking mansions here and there. You wouldn't be surprised to see something with a gothic tower attached to a half-timbered “Jolly Olde England” cottage. As often as not, these things sprouted up because some producer had given carte blanche to a wife just to get her off his back.

You can say that money can't buy taste; most of the people who say that don't have any—money, that is. But there's no denying that it can buy you a scared-looking Japanese houseboy-cum-gardener like the one peeking cautiously from behind a crack in the front door after we rang the bell. We flashed him our INS ID cards and pushed on in.