Ultimate Thriller Box Set (106 page)

Carol turned the light off again.

“Why did you do that?” I asked.

“Because right now you look a lot better in the dark,” She came up behind me and tenderly caressed my back. She’d never touched me like that before. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “I have to go to work.”

“You’re in no condition to work.”

“You could be in a coma and do my job,” I said and shuffled off to the bedroom.

“Then you’re certainly qualified,” she replied.

I was changing carefully into my uniform when Carol came into the bedroom and, without saying a word, helped me put on my pants and button my shirt. It was the most intimate moment of my adult life. For some reason I couldn’t figure out, I wanted to cry, but I brought all my manly resources to bear and controlled myself. When she was done, she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

In the glow of my clock radio, I could see the concern on her face when she spoke.

“I’ll be waiting for you tomorrow.”

And I knew, no matter what, she would be.

Chapter Nine

It was after one a.m. by the time I got to Bel Vista Estates with some burgers from McDonalds for Clay and me. Clay took one look at me and offered to work the next shift in my place, but I told him I needed the money.

I also told him I’d been mugged, which is why I looked like shit.

He asked me where it happened, and when I told him it was in a parking structure, he demanded to know which one, so he could scope it out for a redesign to enhance safety.

After Clay left, I checked the surveillance tapes. Lauren came home around two Friday afternoon and didn’t come out again. I wasn’t surprised.

I spent the rest of the night swallowing Advils, guzzling Pepto Bismol, and going over the events of the previous day in my mind.

I wondered how he discovered that I was following him. As much as I tried, I couldn’t isolate the fuck-up, maybe because it wasn’t just one thing, but my entire performance. Maybe I was the fuck-up.

I wondered why he was driving a brand new Ford Focus, which didn’t strike me as his kind of car, not that I knew him that well. I knew his foot pretty good, though, and it seemed like it belonged in a pickup truck or a used Firebird.

I wondered how he knew Lauren Parkus and what he could know about her that she was afraid of.

And I wondered how I would find him so I could do to him what he did to me.

By sunrise, I didn’t have any better understanding than I did before, but I promised myself that by the end of the day, I would.

It would require a radical change in approach. So far, all I’d been doing was following people. So I decided that today, on my day off, I would blaze a trail of my own.

***

“Jesus Christ, Harvey, you’re a security officer,” Sergeant Victor Banos said after I told him what I told Clay. “You should have been able to take the guy.”

“He caught me by surprise.”

“You still should have taken him,” Victor said. “I would have taken him. I know how to handle myself.”

“I bet you do,” I said. “Probably half a dozen times a day, too.”

“You’re a worthless piece of shit, Mapes. You don’t deserve to wear the badge.”

“It’s not a badge,” I said, “It’s a patch.”

“What’s the fucking difference?”

I walked out before he could humiliate me any further. I was almost at my car when Cyril Parkus drove out of the gate and came up beside me in his wife’s Range Rover.

“What happened to you, Harvey?” Parkus asked.

That question was becoming my theme song. It was a shame Sammy Davis, Jr. wasn’t around any more to do the vocals.

“I took the elevator when I should have taken the stairs,” I replied. “Look, Mr. Parkus, I don’t have anything to tell you right now.”

“What do you mean?” he snapped. “She did something yesterday, and I want to know what it was. That’s what I paid you for.”

“Your wife is being blackmailed,” I replied. “If you give me a few hours, I can tell you who’s doing it and maybe even why. Just stay close to her today; don’t let her leave the house alone. Then come up with an excuse to meet me at Denny’s around six.”

He studied me for a long moment. “I hope you know what the fuck you’re doing, Harvey.”

So did I. Because at that precise moment, watching him make a U-turn and drive back up to the house, I didn’t have the slightest idea how I was going to pull off what I’d just promised.

***

I rushed back to Thrifty in Northridge and went through the photos right there at the counter.

Even with Lauren’s eyes hidden by her sunglasses, her anger and her fear still came through, maybe even stronger than it did when I saw her on the Pier. Pictures are funny that way.

I pulled out my magnifying glass and studied the guy who kicked my ass, hoping to spot a tattoo or fraternal ring or something else I might use to find out who he was. No such luck.

I’d have to rely on the license plate and come up with some scam to get the DMV to spit out his name and address for me.

In theory, anyway, that was a good idea. What I really needed was a plugged-in techno-buddy who could hack into anything anywhere. Just about every private eye, secret agent, and suave adventurer has a buddy like that these days.

My buddy could have a name like Joe “Hard Drive” Hardigan.

But I didn’t have a buddy like that yet.

I also didn’t have a picture of the license plate. I had a picture of the back tires and a chunk of the car’s bumper.

There was something on the bumper, though, that caught my eye. I looked at it under the magnifying glass. It was a tiny green sticker, a stylish rendering of the letter “S” and a code number underneath: “UC2376.”

It looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I figured it was a parking permit of some kind, but from where? The UC could stand for the University of California, and could come from any of their campuses statewide, though the guy who beat me up didn’t look like a student to me.

The sticker could also be a parking permit for a factory, an office building, a government office, or even a gated community like the one I guarded. The possibilities were endless.

As I walked outside to my car, it occurred to me again how unusual I thought it was for the blackmailer to be driving a new Ford Focus, a practical economy car. It’s the last car a guy like that would buy.

So I decided to assume that the car wasn’t his.

Which meant it could be stolen, though if you’re gonna steal a car, it would be something nicer than Ford Focus, even if all you were gonna to do with it was take a joyride. There’s no joy in riding in a Ford Focus, believe me.

If I assumed it wasn’t stolen, that he’d borrowed it, then maybe it belonged to his employer. Perhaps the sticker meant it was a fleet car of some kind.

And then it hit me, just as I reached my little Kia Sephia.

It was a rental car.

Right away, I knew my deduction was right. I knew it because it matched the evidence, it was logical, and it fit my astute observations of his character.

And I knew it because the tiny green sticker on his bumper was the same as the one on my car.

***

The lady behind the counter at the Swift Rent-A-Car office on Ventura Boulevard looked like she’d been manufactured at the same plant where they make stewardesses, bank tellers, telephone operators, and Barbie dolls.

She was blond, blue-eyed, and her body had all the right measurements so she could fit into her pre-tailored, green rent-a-car gal uniform. I was hoping she’d be just as robotic and predictable as her appearance promised.

“May I help you?” she chirped.

I strode up in a new polo shirt and khakis I bought at K-Mart.

“My name is John D. MacDonald, and I’m a best-selling author of mystery novels. I’m doing some research for my next book, and I was hoping you could help me with a technical question about the rental car industry.”

I said it all quickly, in a nervous blurt, just the way I’d memorized it. I also whipped out a new paperback reprint of Nightmare in Pink and held it in front of me like an ID.

“What does the D stand for?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

I wasn’t prepared for improvisation. I’d come up with a very detailed script, and already she was deviating from her part.

“The D,” she repeated. “People don’t usually mention their middle initial unless they are very proud of it.”

“What about Captain James T. Kirk? He tells everybody about his middle initial, even aliens who don’t understand English and certainly don’t give a damn.”

“Tiberius.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what his T stands for,” she explained. “Would you like to know what Doctor McCoy’s middle name was?”

“Actually, what I’d like to know is what this means.” I handed her the photo of the blackmailer’s bumper.

“What for?” she asked.

“My hero, Travis McGee, is tossed out of a car. And just before he passes out on the road, he sees that sticker with the logo and number. I was wondering what he could deduce from that clue.”

“He didn’t know the people in the car?”

“No,” I replied testily, “they were thugs.”

“What about the license plate?” she said. “Wouldn’t he look at that, instead of a tiny bumper sticker?”

“There are no plates.”

“Weren’t the thugs worried that by driving around without plates, a cop might pull them over while they’re holding McGee hostage?”

“They are on a rural country road where there are no cops.”

“They didn’t have to drive on other roads first to get to the rural road?”

“No.”

She shrugged. “I’d rethink the whole situation, if I were you. It doesn’t sound too plausible to me.”

“Could you please just tell me what the numbers on the sticker mean?”

“The first three characters identify the rental location,” she said. “The remaining numbers identify the vehicle.”

“So what, for instance, could you tell me about this car?”

“Whose car is it?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you,” I replied angrily without thinking. An instant later, I realized my mistake and hurried to repair it. “I took this picture of a stranger’s car as research. I’m trying to go through the same steps my hero would.”

“You going to jump out of a car, too?”

“I already have.” I lifted my shirt to show her the bruises and bandaging. “As you can see, I take my research very seriously. I’d really appreciate your help.”

She smiled now, the first genuine smile since I walked in the door.

“The car came from our rental desk at the Universal Sheraton,” she replied. “The UC stands for Universal City.”

There’s no real city there, just the Universal Studios Tour. The blackmailer must have decided to do a little sightseeing while he was here. Since LA has no real sights, you have to go someplace where they manufacture them.

“What can you tell me about who rented the car?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Because you don’t have the information, or because you just don’t want to tell me?”

“Because it’s confidential.”

“So, you have the information.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“So, it would be possible for my hero to get it.”

“I don’t see how,” she said.

“What if, for instance, he seduced the woman behind the counter?”

“You gonna try that as research, too?” she asked.

“Would it work?” I replied.

“No chance in hell, John D.,” she replied.

I smiled. “What if I told you what the D stood for?”

I also wasn’t beyond begging.

“Dann,” she said. “That’s with two Ns.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what the D is for,” she said. “He wrote twenty-one Travis McGee novels before his death in 1986. My dad was a big fan, though I never understood that ‘wounded bird’ crap.”

I felt like I’d just been kicked in the ribs again.

“If you knew I wasn’t John D. MacDonald, why did you help me?”

“I wasn’t going to, until you lifted your shirt.”

“Thanks,” I tossed her the book and walked out. I was almost out the door, when I paused for effect, then turned around.

“Horatio,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“That’s Doctor McCoy’s middle name.”

And with that I smiled and walked out, feeling pretty cool.

I knew watching all that TV would pay off someday. My good mood lasted all the way, until I got to my car.

I still didn’t know who the blackmailer was. All I knew was that he rented his car at the Universal Sheraton. So, I figured, odds were that was where the guy was staying.

But what the hell was I going to do now?

I thought about it a minute. Spenser would walk the parking structure until he found the car, then he’d find a place to hide out and wait. When the blackmailer came for his car, Spenser would beat him up and make him talk.

I was in no condition to do that now.

I was no condition to do that before my beating.

So, I asked myself what Jim Rockford would do.

***

I stopped by Target before going to the Universal Sheraton and bought a hammer, a gym bag, and a red sweat suit.

I visited a gas station, went into the restroom, and changed into my uniform again; then I put the red sweat suit on over it.

I went back to the car and drove to Universal Studios, not the part in the Valley where they make movies, but the amusement park, hotels, and shopping center above it, on the hills along the Cahuenga Pass.

I was lucky the blackmailer wasn’t staying at Disneyland, or the task ahead of me would have been a lot harder. They’ve got more hotels there, thousands of guests, and tighter security.

I paid seven dollars and fifty cents to park in the tour lot, then walked down the hill and across the street to the Sheraton’s parking structure.

It took me two hours of wandering through the five-story parking structure before I finally found it. The Ford Focus was parked near the stairwell on the third floor. The bumper sticker matched the one in my photo.

I double-checked it against the photo a couple times to make absolutely sure, then I looked around. I didn’t see anyone or any security cameras and I was fairly certain there wasn’t going to be a car alarm in a rented Ford Focus. So I grabbed the hammer from the gym bag on my shoulder, took one more look, and then smashed the passenger’s side window of the car.