Obedience (7 page)

He snorted. “I was still painted half white when they came running at me off that pier.”

That reminded Dave. “What kind of guns did they have?”

Cotton’s forehead wrinkled. He blinked. “Guns. No guns. Not that night. I didn’t see no guns.”

Dave grinned. “Good.” He pushed a fold of bills into the breast pocket of Cotton’s blowsy shirt. “Expense money. If you need more, I’ll wire it. But don’t phone me. Phone Tracy Davis at the San Pedro County district attorney’s office. Her name and number are on there.”

Cotton peered at the paper again, and checked his watch. “Jesus. LAX. Take me forever to get there from here. My car got repossessed. And Opal sold hers.”

“Pack your clothes,” Dave said. “I’ll drive you—if you don’t-mind hiding on the floor behind the seat.”

Cotton eyed him. “Don’t want us seen together, right?”

“If we haven’t been already, why take the chance?”

D
RIVING THAT WRECK OF
a car had left him with aches. He edged stiffly between the crowd of candlelit diners at Max Romano’s restaurant to his table in the far corner, where Tracy Davis waited for him. He read his watch. Seven fifty-five. The glass she was turning by its stem on the thick white linen tablecloth had half an inch of white wine in it. She had made wreckage of a little loaf of fresh-baked bread, a small plate of salad. She looked up at him with a smile she didn’t mean. He dropped wearily into a chair across from hers.

“Airport traffic,” he explained. “Sorry.”

“Here’s the list you asked for.” She reached down and got her shoulder bag from the floor beside her chair. “But I’m not sure you want to go on with this.” She set the bag in her lap and rummaged inside it.

“No? Why is that?” Dave started to lift a hand to attract attention, and saw Max Romano waddling toward him. For a time, here, Max had been scared onto a diet by doctors, but he was getting fat again. The skeletal Max, beautiful suits hanging off him, had unsettled Dave. He had looked sick, miserable, dying. He was close to eighty. Maybe he was sicker now and in more danger, but he looked splendid, his sleek old happy self. His gold teeth glittered, and the diamonds on his rings sparkled. He’d had to store the rings while he starved himself. They kept falling off. Now they were held securely in place by pudgy flesh again. He set a big squat glass down in front of Dave. Glenlivet over ice.

“You were going to retire,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to agree with you. You look pale, my friend.”

Dave worked up a smile for him. He nodded at Tracy Davis. “This young lady talked me out of quitting. Tracy Davis, Max Romano. Max and I go back forty years. Ms. Davis is a public defender.”

Max shook her hand and gave her a smile but he didn’t smile at Dave. He looked gravely disappointed, and shook his head, where now only a few thin strands of once glorious hair lay across a bald scalp. “I would have hoped at least it was not a dangerous case. But you are carrying a gun.”

“To make it less dangerous,” Dave said. “Swordfish in the kitchen tonight, Max?”

Max nodded. “And for the young lady?”

She laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.” She eyed the menu through those green-rimmed glasses for only a moment, handed Max the menu, and said, “The same, please.”

“Vichyssoise to start?” Dave asked her.

“Sounds marvelous,” she said. “But I don’t deserve it.”

Max said. “You shall have it, anyway,” and left them. It was good to see him walk briskly again. When he was thin, he’d moved slowly, feet dragging, shoulders slumped. Their waiters name was Avram. He’d come to work here from Israel—it seemed like only yesterday. He’d been a boy. Dave was shocked to see gray in his hair now, as he brought fresh bread, spinach salad for Dave, and filled Tracy Davis’s glass with wine again.

Dave drank some of the good scotch, shut his eyes, let the whisky start reviving him, then lit a cigarette and gave Tracy Davis an inquiring frown. “Why won’t you deserve it? Why won’t I want to go on with the case.”

Glass to her mouth, she gave a brief laugh with regret in it. “Because you’re going to think even less of my client now than you did before. Andy wasn’t wounded in combat. He got caught in a barroom brawl in Saigon, and fell on a broken bottle, trying to escape. He cut his arm badly, was afraid of the MPs, and tried to take care of it himself. Infection set in, and by the time medics saw it, it couldn’t be saved.”

“You didn’t mislead me,” Dave said. “You told me he was a coward.”

She sawed glumly at the little loaf on its wooden board. “I could have done without glaring proof.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Dave said. “Whatever his drawbacks, Andy Flanagan didn’t kill Le Van Minh. Not the way things are adding up.” He put out his cigarette, worked on his salad, told her about his day. Her eyes were wide. “I see now why you wanted this.” She handed him the folded paper she’d got from her bag. “I don’t know how complete it is. It’s mostly guesswork, to be honest. The police suspect this place and that, but when they raid, they’re always too late. They can’t get informers into the Vietnamese community but they can’t help think the Vietnamese have informers in the police department.”

Dave watched Avram set before them bowls of creamy soup cradled in crushed ice. “No Vietnamese officers?”

She shook her head. “That’s what’s so baffling.”

Dave reached across for the list, put on his reading glasses, read the names and addresses, folded the paper again, and tucked it into an inside jacket pocket. He put the glasses away, and gave her a smile. “It’s a start,” he said. “Thanks for your trouble.”

“You’re the one who’s gone to all the trouble.” She picked up a spoon and tasted her vichyssoise. “Heavenly,” she said. She tilted her head, looked at him doubtfully. “Lindy Willard? Honestly? I thought she was dead.”

“She’s alive.” Dave tried his soup. “Cotton leaving her bed when he did may keep her that way. But I hope she finds a buyer for the
Starlady
tomorrow, and clears out.”

“She could go to New York too, couldn’t she?” Tracy Davis said. “Sing in nightclubs there?”

“She’s taken against flying,” Dave said.

Mel Fleischer opened the door himself. It was a heavy carved door of pale reddish wood, with black, hand-forged hardware. Fleischer was sixty-five, a successful banker. Once lean and patrician, he was jowly now and paunchy. He and Dave were of an age, but the years were treating Dave differently—turning him reedy and brittle. Dave’s friendship with Mel dated back to high school. A horizontal friendship, fumbling and funny to remember, but the affection had been real and had never waned.

Mel’s house crowned a ridge near the
HOLLYWOOD
sign in the hills overlooking the city. The house was 1920s Mediterranean, thick chalky-white walls, red tile roofing, a round tower for a circular staircase of glazed painted tiles, unmistakably California. Nothing else would do for Mel Fleischer. California was the true love of his life. He collected paintings by California artists.

Some of the young ones he helped with money. He sat on the board of the L.A. County Museum, and owned shares in galleries along La Cienega Boulevard and in Beverly Hills.

“Dave, good. I’m glad you’re early.” He enclosed Dave in a bear hug, and led him out of the circular entry hall down terra cotta tile steps into a vast living room. “I can’t think how long it’s been since you were here.” Thick black rough-hewn beams crossed overhead beneath a pitched roof. Against the white walls hung big handsome paintings, brown hills under wide skies; horses in long, sloping meadows, mountains in the background; the rickety trellis of the old Angel’s Flight tramway in Downtown L.A.—each picture carefully lighted. But Mel had left space for bookshelves, all the same. Dave smiled to himself again.

“Too long,” Mel said. “Sit down, sit down.” He waved a graceful hand, and started off down the long room. He was genuine and funny, but there’d always been something queenly about his bearing, a hint of the Ronald Firbank cardinal. The ragbag look of his fashionably loose slacks, broad-shouldered blouse didn’t change that. Dave grinned. Mel called back, “Makoto’s still in the shower. What will you drink to pass the time until he makes his spectacular entrance?”

“Brandy, please.” Dave sat on a seventeenth-century chair, all black lathe-turned wood and gold-shot red brocade, complete with fringe. “It’s generous of you to lend him to me for a night. It’s good of him to take the time.”

“He’s happy not to have to be reading student essays on
The Imaginary Invalid.
” Glassware chimed in the shadowy distance. “He says they’re no better than they were five years ago. And very little different. Sometimes I find him staring at the printouts that list his students. Looking for familiar names. He’s sure those who sat in his classes long ago have in some mysterious way come round again.” Mel handed Dave brandy in a snifter. He dropped onto a couch of the same style as Dave’s chair, lifted his own glass, smiled. “Here’s to old times.” He tasted the brandy, and looked wounded in his feelings. “You might have brought me Cecil to help pass the lonely night.”

“He’s working, and if he wasn’t, he’d insist on going with Makoto and me. What’s wrong?”

An imperious finger pointed. “You’re wearing a gun.” Mel looked severe. “You didn’t say this would be dangerous.”

“It won’t be.” Dave stood, shed his jacket, unbuckled the holster, handed it to Mel. “Here, you keep the gun.” He put his jacket on again. “I’m happy to be rid of it.”

The gun horrified Mel. He dropped it on the couch. A step sounded on the stairs. The circular tower echoed. Mel turned to the short, muscular young man who came in, “Don’t you know my dear old friend here is insanely reckless? He’s nearly gotten himself killed a dozen times. Makoto, I refuse to let you leave this house with him.”

“Relax,” Makoto said, “it’s only for a couple of hours. All we’re going to do is lose a little of Dave’s money.” When Dave had met him, ten years back, Makoto’s English, learned in a Japanese classroom, had been hard to understand. Now there wasn’t a flaw in it. He’d been a college student then. Now he was an instructor, teaching French literature. His passion at that time had been rollerskating, and he had dressed for it. Now he wore a dark suit and tie, dark shoes, very conservative. He came back into the lamplight, carrying a drink. He asked Dave, “Do I look okay?”

“Just right,” Dave said. “If no one tries to strike up a conversation with you in Vietnamese, you’ll be perfect.”

“I’ll zap ’em with French.” Makoto leaned by a rounded, adobe-style fireplace, and sipped his Coke. “Vietnamese speak French. At least, they used to.”

“We’ll hope we don’t have to lean on that,” Dave said. “But it’s nice to have it. In case.”

Mel said fretfully, “I just don’t understand this at all. Dave, what are you up to? You were going to retire. Now here you are plunging into murky opium dens in search of the infamous Dr. Fu Manchu. Will you never grow up?”

“Thanks for the brandy.” Dave rose and gave Mel’s shoulder a comforting pat. “Don’t worry. At the first sign of trouble, I’ll drag Makoto away. I promise.”

“I could lose both of you at one blow.” Mel pushed up off the couch. “I’ll wear a groove in this floor pacing till you’re back safe and sound.” He wrung his hands. “I’ll be listening to the radio for news bulletins, with my heart in my mouth.” He blinked back imaginary tears, and hugged Makoto hard. “You be careful, now. Do you hear me?”

“See you at two-thirty,” Makoto said, kissing him, and led Dave quickly out into the night.

Makoto braked his sleek new Accord in front of Mel’s house and checked his watch. He grinned at Dave. “Made it,” he said. “I always like to keep my promises. Even though he’s probably sound asleep.”

Dave was dead tired. He pushed open the door on the passenger side, got out, and stretched. Over the shaggy dark ridge of the hills came a glow from the boulevards of the San Fernando Valley to the north. Above, the sky was thick with stars. The air was cool and crisp. It was quiet. He shook Makoto’s hand, thanked him, walked to the rickety Valiant—it wouldn’t have done to drive it on this expedition—eased his weary self behind the wheel.

Framed in the lighted doorway, Makoto lifted a hand in good-night, stepped inside and closed the door. Dave coaxed the rattly engine of the old car to life, and started down the narrow, parked-up shelves of street, lit by intermittent lamps shining through tree branches. Unlikely as it seemed, all these hairpin curves would finally get him out of the hills. He had to believe that. He wanted very much to be home. Makoto would have driven him, but that would have left the Valiant parked in front of Mel’s house. Shocking. Unthinkable.

With Makoto at his side, he’d run into no trouble gaining entry to the Vietnamese clubs on Tracy Davis’s list. Old mansions, back rooms of shops, in Monterey Park, at the beach, in the heart of L.A. In five clubs in three hours tonight, he had seen as much green baize as in his whole life, had played more poker hands than in the Army, had rolled more dice, and stared half hypnotized at more roulette wheels than in all the movies of the 1930s. Makoto and he between them had dropped almost a thousand dollars. That had been vital. Baiting a trap, you should look as if you’re doing something else. With serious intent. Maybe they’d overdone it. Porcelain-skinned, dark-eyed, mustached little men in tight tuxedos had four times out of five smiled, bowed, shaken their hands, and invited then back as they’d left.

They hadn’t overdone it. He knew this a half hour later when he creaked the Valiant up the steep grade of Horseshoe Canyon Trail, and the jittery headlights showed him a black stretch limousine parked at a tilt on the broken road edge opposite his driveway. He geared the Valiant down and climbed toward the parked car slowly, squinting ahead, trying to make out whether or not anyone was inside it. The streetlight was behind him, down where two trails met, and the branches of trees shadowed it, so he got no help from there. The Valiant’s yellow beams glanced off a dazzlingly clean windshield. Heart thudding, he drove past the limousine. If anyone was inside, he couldn’t see him.

Thirty yards up the trail, he swung the Valiant in at Wilma Vosper’s driveway, backed it up, sat in the middle of the road, motor idling, frowning. Wilma Vosper’s raggedy little dog began to bark inside the house. He didn’t want to wake her up, and he eased the Valiant down the trail and halted it beside the drop into his bricked yard. He didn’t want to look, but he looked. And made out the boxy shape of Cecil’s van parked in its usual place, beside the long row of French windows that walled the front building. Sometimes these days when half the crew at the television station was away, he worked very late. Why couldn’t tonight have been one of those times?