I went out to the secretary’s office and checked her calendar. There weren’t any special notes or appointments scheduled for Mr. Rice. There weren’t even any unspecial ones. I looked up Garrett Rice in her rolodex and pulled the card. It had his home phone, which I already had, but it also had his home address, which I didn’t. I gave him a call, let it ring twenty-two times, then hung up. Maybe he was taking an early lunch.
I called my office and had the answer machine play back the messages. There weren’t any. I didn’t like that. After last night, the Eskimo should’ve called. I punched another line and dialed my house.
One ring. “Pike.”
“There’s an address book upstairs on the left side of the phone. I need Cleon Tyner’s home number.”
“Wait.”
In a few moments the upstairs extension lifted and Pike gave me the number.
“Ellen okay?” I said.
“She likes to wait on people.”
“It’s all she knows how to do.”
“She’s cleaning the house. If you came back now, she’d probably wash your car.”
“Have her check the Cherokee. It looked a little dirty on my way out this morning.”
Pike gave me Hard Silence. Then: “How’d it go with the cops?”
I told him.
“Special Operations,” he said. “That’s shit.”
“Close enough to smell bad.”
“Poitras is good. Poitras won’t shit you.”
“Poitras doesn’t like it any more than me. Someone up the line yanks the deal from Poitras, this asshole O’Bannon tells me to back away. Nobody knows anything. If it’s a buy-out then they’re selling the kid to let Duran handle us himself.”
“What’s Cleon got to do with this?”
“He was working for Garrett Rice. Only I can’t see Cleon on the other side. I can’t see him selling muscle to take down a dope deal. You know Cleon.”
“People change.”
“You haven’t changed since 1975.”
“Other people.”
I hung up, then dialed Cleon Tyner. A woman with a hoarse bar singers voice answered.
I said, “I was trying to get Eartha Kitt for the Sands, but everybody says Betty Tyner is sexier.”
She laughed. “Oh? And how would everybody know?”
“Her walk, her talk-”
“The way she crawls on her belly like a reptile?”
I said, “Now you’re embarrassing me.”
She laughed louder, the strong healthy laugh of a woman at ease with herself. We spent a few minutes bringing each other up to date and trading friendly insults before she said, “Well, since you ain’t asked me to marry you yet, I’ll bet you’re calling for that shiftless brother of mine.”
“Amazing. The woman not only is fantastic in bed, but she mind-reads, too.”
“How you think I got to be so fantastic?”
“Practice?”
She suggested an anatomical impossibility. “Cleon’s working. He ain’t been here for a couple of days.”
“He go out of town?”
“I don’t know, babe. He just said something about staying with the client. Said the man was walking sideways he was so scared.”
We shot the breeze another few minutes, with me promising to give a call soon, and her saying I’d better, then we hung up. The door in the next office closed, and the blonde secretary walked by, carrying a large blue purse. She didn’t glance in and she didn’t see me sitting in the dark at Sheila’s desk, staring at Garrett Rice’s address.
I opened the door enough to see that no one was on the walk, then let myself out and drove to Garrett Rice’s house in the hills above the Sunset Strip.
Rice lived in a low-slung white stucco modern on a little cul-de-sac off Sunset Plaza Drive. It was the sort of place that went for half a million plus today, but if you were lucky enough to be working in the sixties it didn’t cost you more than eighty or ninety thou. I drove into the cul-de-sac, circled, then parked at the curb in front of Rice’s house. Each house was set back enough to have some sort of gate and some sort of motor court and some sort of lush greenery, mostly ivy and banana trees and giant ferns. There were walls between each house and tall skinny cyprus so you wouldn’t have to see the next guy’s roofline, and none of the houses had very much in the way of windows looking out toward the street. Easier to forget the world if you didn’t have to see it. They probably gave great block parties, though.
I walked up through the little motor court to Garrett Rice’s door. There was a little white form envelope from the LAPD thumbtacked to the jamb. Inside there would be a little white form note informing ( Mr. Garrett Rice) that (officer’s name written in) wished to speak with him and requesting that (Mr. Garrett Rice) call (officer’s phone number) at his earliest opportunity. I had seen these notes before. I wondered if Elliot Ness ever saw them. Probably what killed him.
I rang the bell. No answer. I knocked. Still no answer. Across the street a woman in pink frou frou slippers and a pretentious silver housecoat watched me from her drive as a Yorkie sniffed at the thick ivy in front of their house. I nodded at the woman and smiled. She nodded back but didn’t smile. Probably too early to smile. Can’t smile when you’re still in the housecoat.
There was no car in the motor court, no way to see into the garage, and nothing parked on the street but my Vette. Cleon drove a black ’83 Trans Am. I didn’t know what Garrett Rice drove. I went back to my car, climbed in, and thought about it.
Poitras said the cops had tried to see Rice two days ago. That meant the little call-back note had been posted for two days and Rice hadn’t seen it. Or maybe he had, but wanted the cops to think he hadn’t, and left it there.
Or maybe Garrett Rice, who was so scared he asked Cleon Tyner, not the most social of people, to move in with him, had blown town. That made sense if he had had the dope, and then moved it. Cashed in and ran from Duran. He’d still be scared enough to want a muscle like Cleon along so he could sleep at night. He’d sport for the plane fare and head for parts unknown. Sure. That made sense. But Cleon being part of it, that didn’t. Betty had once chased the dragon with a lounge owner from Riverside. Cleon found out when she ended the chase in the Riverside ER. The lounge mysteriously burned. The lounge owner’s Caddie mysteriously blew up. The lounge owner himself mysteriously disappeared. Cleon Tyner suffered neither dope nor dopers. So. Dilemma, dilemma.
The woman in the silver lame housecoat came out into the street and stared at me with her hands on her hips, then pointed at a little sign planted in the ivy by her drive. Every house on the street had one, a little red sign that said Bel Air Patrol-Armed Response. I stuck my tongue out at her and crossed my eyes. She gave me the finger and went back into her compound. Another close brush with dangerous, affluent-class life-forms.
I took a deep breath, let it out, and started my car. I was tired of sitting and thinking and getting nowhere. I also didn’t want to lose time hassling with a Rent-a-Cop with the kid still out there. I blew the horn as I swung around the cul-de-sac-twice-then drove away.
Scared hell out that Yorkie.
26
At the bottom of Sunset Plaza I parked behind a gelato place and used the pay phone to call Pat Kyle at General Entertainment and ask her if she’d heard anything more about Mort or Garrett. She asked if she could call me right back. I gave her the number on the pay phone, then hung up, bought a cup of double chocolate banana, and enjoyed the extra butterfat.
The minutes ticked by, slow and heavy. I took small bites of the gelato and thought about the girl behind the
