“Now don’t you fret, my love. You know I’ve been buying some of those old fleabag rooming houses and commercial properties south of Market now that the Yerba Buena Center is up and running-”
“Well, yes, but…”
“There’s some radical homeless advocates who want to see it all upgraded to low-cost housing rather than torn down for new, significant development, and they have made some silly threats. So I just thought it prudent to provide you with around-the-clock protection until the problem is solved.”
There had been angry shouting matches in the Board of Supes over his permits, but the guards had really been to send Martin Prince the message that he was no stupid mark like the little beaner. A statement. A sort of deadly chess game.
He walked in the California sunlight down cleaned-up Market Street toward Montgomery, thinking that he liked the analogy. Almost poetic.
Down in Southern California, Dante was picking up his Avis rent-a-car at the Burbank airport. His elation at learning about the connection between Gounaris and the Mafia’s Abramson had subsided. The bubble had burst. So all the Abramsons were the same guy? Even if confirmed it didn’t prove anything at all about Abramson or anyone in the Mafia being involved in Atlas Entertainment, let alone the murder of Moll Dalton.
Even at ten in the morning, it was blazingly hot in the Valley; as soon as he got into the car he had the windows shut and the A/C cranked up. He drove in on Airport Way, thinking that in three and a half months he had accomplished exactly nothing to unravel the connection between the murders of Moll Dalton et al
Not that he had been three and a half months idle. He had been so busy with the real business of the Organized Crime Task Force that if any leads had developed he wouldn’t have been able to follow them up anyway. Rumors of a possible San Francisco link with the New York Chinese gangs smuggling freighters full of illegal Chinese immigrants into California. A goofy tip that an organized band of Latino ex-cons was extorting money from Valley farmers in some scam involving water rights, portable Johns, bogus green cards, and reporting legal workers to la Migra as illegals.
He passed over the Ventura Freeway; directly ahead was the old Burbank Studios-now Warner Studios-with its distinctive old-fashioned tan water tower. Alameda merged with Riverside to carry him through determinedly quaint Toluca Lake.
Three and a half months, nothing further from Raptor, no more hits in the organized crime community. No further leads developing. Nothing on the slim leads he already had.
Dante cut over to Moorpark, which was faster than the Ventura Freeway it paralleled, drove west.
None of the used tens, twenties, fifties handed to Hymie the Handler by Jack Lenington had turned up at any U.S. bank. Not one. Unless Lenington had buried them in a fruit jar in the backyard-not likely-he had maintained an offshore numbered account. Which made his corruption more sophisticated than originally thought, but it didn’t tell a damned thing about why he had been snuffed. Or if his death was in any way at all connected with that of Moll Dalton.
Dante turned south on Woodman, crossed Ventura’s tacky commercial blare of fried chicken joints and Chinese take out, at Valley Vista jacklegged uphill past bungalows, gardeners, and greenery irrigated so lavishly that Northern California water was running off in the gutters. Unseen smog stung his eyes.
Everyone had closed their books on the Spic Madrid killing, and Popgun Ucelli was staying home in Jersey, calling no one more exciting than a local steak house for occasional reservations, and his bookie for occasional bets. The Feebs monitoring his tap were eating well and having good luck following his ponies. No plane trips. No calls from a contractor offering him a hit.
Also, alas, no more trips to Vegas by the Mafia dons.
No corpses falling out of cabinets in locked rooms.
No bodies dead of exotic poisons.
No dogs doing curious things in the night.
No need for Dante’s deerstalker hat and magnifying glass.
Benedict Canyon Lane was a dead-end offshoot up in the hills where, he had finally learned from SAG, Moll Dalton’s mother was living as Gloria Crowley, a name she seemed to have picked out of a hat. He made the right turn into her street, seeing, up beyond the houses, the barren California hills where coyotes skulked that in drought times came down to dine domestic on pet pusses and pooches.
He began checking the house numbers painted on the curbs, squinting in the glare, hoping to talk to Moll Dalton’s mother cold. No advance notice. If you connected, you got them fresh before they’d had a chance to start image-polishing.
He had better connect. Under the name of Green, he had made an appointment with St. John for three o’clock, the earliest he could get. He hoped St. John would be stunned by what Dante Stagnaro, alias Mr. Green, brought with him from his interview with dead Molly’s living mother.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Over the ridge in Beverly Hills, three men were sitting down to lunch in Hubley’s very swank Four Seasons. Dooley, with his back to the window, was a tall lanky writer who wanted to direct. He had a big nose and mean close-set eyes and a receding mane of hair that would have come down to his collar if he had been wearing a collar. Instead, he wore baggy fatigue pants, a rusty leather jacket, and a kelly-green T-shirt with HUNGRY? EAT THIS! in red letters across the lower abdomen. He had long arms and big basketball-player hands he used a lot when he talked.
“I’ve written three USA and Showtime originals this year, and script-doctored seven others, and I have to make an appointment to call my fucking agent,” he complained. “Way he sees it, I’m stealing 90 fucking percent of his money.”
Valli, the second man at the table, was a middle-aged actor turned producer; he had a high voice and a first- look production deal with Universal. His face was bland as mashed potatoes with a couple of rodent droppings stuck in them for eyes. His jeans were prestressed and his cashmere sports jacket had a red AIDS ribbon in the lapel. Between them the two men grossed close to a million dollars a year.
“You know what we call writers,” sniffed Valli. “The first draft of a human being.”
Dooley was buttering a roll with a lot of wrist action. “An empty cab pulled up and a producer got out.”
“Now you boys see why you need me,” interrupted St. John in a suave voice, eyes dancing with delight. “Both of you.”
As host, he was dressed impeccably in a narrow-shouldered three-piece charcoal Shetland wool and a Sulka tie that had cost $200 on Rodeo Drive. He was ready for action.
It had been almost four months since he had called Martin Prince in Vegas and told him about Stagnaro’s visit. Nothing had happened since then, nothing at all, yet everything had changed. His perception of who he was and what he was had changed. His perception of Prince and his minions had changed.
“I need personal management,” said Dooley.
“Packaging,” said Valli.
“Of course you do, dear boys,” beamed St. John. “And a great deal more besides.”
Since his realization that Prince and Gounaris had been involved in Molly’s death, he had conceived a daring scheme in revenge: to set up a personal-management and packaging entity. It would give him clout and power in this town on his own recognizance, not something that was tainted with mob money. The daring part was that he hadn’t told Mr. Prince about it. He had lain awake a lot of nights in a sweat of fear while planning it, but something had driven him on despite his terror. The only way he could hurt Prince was financially, and only in secret.
So he leaned across the achingly white tablecloth toward the writer and the producer, and spoke in his richest, most compelling courtroom voice.
“Let’s look at the menu, gentlemen. Then, while we eat, I will tell you why you need us so badly.”
Otto Kreiger’s secretary buzzed him just as he ended a twenty-minute phone call with a drug dealer he was representing on First Amendment grounds.
“Mr. Ed Farrow from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency is holding on line two, Mr. Kreiger.”
Fucking Farrow again. The only possible hurdle to be cleared at Sixth Street, one that had surfaced only a
