He looked confused some more and then he beamed. “Inspired.”
“Yeah. Gimme five hundred with my name and the detective and another five hundred that say The Elvis Cole Detective Agency. Put the phone number in the lower right corner and the address in the lower left.”
“You want cards for Mr. Pike?”
“Mr. Pike won’t use cards.”
“Of course.” Of course. He nodded and beamed again, and said, “Next Thursday,” and left.
Maybe I could find Mort by next Thursday. Maybe I could find him this afternoon. There would be advantages. No more trips to Encino. No more Ellen Lang. No more depression. I would be The Happy Detective. I could call Wu and have him change the card. Elvis Cole, The Happy Detective, specializing in Happy Cases. Inspired.
I went down to the deli, bought an Evian water, drank it on the way back up, then went through Mort’s finances. As of two weeks ago Monday, Morton Lang had $4265.18 in a passbook savings account. There was one three-year CD in his name worth $5000 that matured in August. I could find no evidence of any stocks or other income-producing investment in either his name, Ellen’s name, or in the names of the children. Irregular deposits totaling $5200 had been made into savings over the past six months. During the same period, $2200 was transferred to checking every two weeks. Figure $1600 note and taxes, $800 food, $500 cars, another $200 gardener and pool service, another $500 or $600 because you got three kids and you live in Encino. Forty-five hundred a month to live, next to nothing coming in. You only start dealing with a Garrett Rice when you’re scared.
I dialed ICM. They gave me to someone in the television department who had known Morton Lang when he worked there fourteen months ago. He had known Mort, but not very well, and if I was looking for representation perhaps he could help me out, ICM being a full-service agency representing artists in all media. I dialed Morton’s Lang’s clients. Edmund Harris wasn’t home. Kaitlin Rosenberg hadn’t spoken to Mort in three weeks, and I should tell him the play was going fine. Cynthia Alport hadn’t heard from him in over a month and why the hell hadn’t he returned her calls? Ric-with-no-K Lloyd hadn’t returned Mort’s call of six weeks ago because he’d changed agents and would I please pass that along to Mort? Darren Fips had spoken with Mort about two weeks ago because the contracts had never arrived but Mort hadn’t gotten back to him and Darren was getting damned pissed. Tracey Cormer’s line was busy. Fourteen minutes after I started, the rolodex cards were back in their stack and I still had no useful information. I dialed Kimberly Marsh, thinking maybe she hadn’t run off with Mort after all, and got her answering machine. I called Ellen Lang, thinking maybe she’d found something in the phone bills, or, if not, maybe she just needed a kind word. No answer. I called Janet Simon, thinking maybe Ellen Lang had gone over there, or, if not, Janet might know where she had gone. No answer. I got up, opened the glass doors, and went out onto the balcony to stand in the smog.
All dressed up and no place to go.
The phone rang. “Elvis Cole Detective Agency. Top rates paid for top clues.”
It was Lou Poitras, this cop I know who works out of North Hollywood Division. “Howzitgoin, Hound Dog?”
“Your wife’s here. We’re having a Wesson oil party.”
There was a grunt. “You workin’ for a guy named Morton Lang?”
“His wife. Ellen Lang. How’d you know?”
It got very still in the office. I watched Pinocchio’s eyes. Side to side, side to side. “What’s going on, Lou?”
“Bout an hour ago some Chippies found Morton Lang sittin’ in his Caddie up near Lancaster. Shot to death.”
There was a loud shushing noise and my fingers began to tingle and I had to go to the bathroom. My voice didn’t want to work. “The boy?”
Lou didn’t say anything.
“Lou?”
“What boy?” he said.
After a while I hung up and took out the photo of Morton Lang. I turned it over and reread the description his wife had written. I looked at the picture of the boy. Maybe he was with Kimberly Marsh. Maybe he was fine and safe and away from whoever had shot his father to death. Maybe not. I opened the drawer and took out my passbook and the check and the deposit slip. I put the passbook back and closed the drawer. I tore the deposit slip in quarters and threw it away. I wrote VOID across the face of the check. Her first check. I folded it in two and put it in my wallet and then I went to see Lou Poitras.
9
I parked in the little lot they have next to the North Hollywood Police Department headquarters and went around front to this big linoleum-floored room. There were hardwood benches on two of the walls, a couple of Coke and candy machines, and a bulletin board. A poster on the bulletin board said POLICE FUND RAISER-A NIGHT OF BOXING
ENTERTAINMENT-COPS VERSUS FIREMEN! SPECIAL EXHIBITION BOUT: BULLDOG PARKER AND MUSTAFA HAMSHO. Beside the poster a skinny white kid with stringy hair spoke softly into a pay phone. He leaned against the wall with one foot back on a toe, his heel nervously rocking.
I went around two Chicano men in Caterpillar hats with green jackets and dirty broken work shoes and through a reinforced door, up one flight of stairs, and down a short hall into the detectives’ squad room. Also known as Xanadu.
The detectives live in a long gray room with all the desks against the north wall and three little offices at the far end. Across from the desks are a shower, a locker room, and a holding cell. Days of Our Lives was going on the locker room TV. Two brown hands were sticking out through the holding cell bars. They looked tired. Poitras’ office was the first of the three at the far end.
Lou Poitras has a face like a frying pan and a back as wide as a Coupe de Ville. His arms are so swollen from the weights he pumps they look like fourteen pound hams squeezed into his sleeves. He has a scar breaking the hairline above his left eye where a guy who should’ve known better got silly and laid a jack handle. It lent character. Poitras was leaning back behind his desk as I walked in, kielbasa fingers laced over his belly. Even reclined, he took up most of the room.
He said, “You didn’t bring that sonofabitch Pike, did you?”
“I’m fine, Lou. And you?”
Simms was sitting in a hard chair in front of Lou’s desk. There was another chair against the wall, but it was stacked high with files and folders. First come, first served. Simms wore street clothes: blue jeans and a faded khaki safari shirt with an ink stain on the pocket and tread-worn Converse All Stars. “You get promoted?” I said.
“Day off.”
Lou said, “Forget that. Gimme the kid’s picture.”
I handed him the little school picture of gap-toothed Perry Lang. He yelled, “Penny!” and flipped the photo over to read the back, jaw working.
Penny came in. There was a lot of dusty red hair and tanned skin. She had to be six feet tall. “Sheena, right?” I said. She ignored me. Lou gave her the little picture. “Color-copy this, front and back, and have a set phoned up to McGill in Lancaster right away.” When she left, Simms looked after her. So did I.
“She’s new,” I said.
Simms smiled. “Uh-huh.”
Poitras looked sour. “You two try to control your glands.”
“You get anything new on the cause of death?” I said.
“I called the States up by Lancaster after we talked. They say four shots, close range. ME’s out there now.”
“What about the boy?”
“McGill up there, he’s okay. McGill said there was nothing in the Caddie to indicate the boy was in the car
