“Where’d you lose it—just out of curiosity?”
“On the fourth level of the Santa Monica Place mall with its windows up and doors locked.”
“Then they’ll find it this afternoon,” Stallings said. “Want me to rent you another car?”
“Get something grander—since Artie might have to put in an appearance as the mysterious Mr. X.”
“I’m Mr. X,” Stallings said. “He’s Mr. Z. What about a Mercedes—a big one?”
“Perfect,” Durant said.
When Durant returned to the table, he found Wu sitting with his clasped hands resting on the leather-bound notebook. “Booth’s getting us another car,” Durant said. “A Mercedes.”
Wu nodded and said, “His name was Carlos Santillan. He would’ve been thirty-one in May. He owed seventy-six thousand on his house, around twenty-six hundred on that old Cadillac, and both monthly payments amounted to around nine hundred and something. He was single but the person to be notified in case of accident or death is Rosa Alicia Chavez, whose address is just four doors up from his house on the other side of the street. She must be the woman who came running to see what’d happened. Miss Chavez is twenty-six.”
“How do you know?”
“He wrote her birthday right after her address and phone number.”
“He write everything down?” Durant asked.
“His car and house were insured by Allstate. He banked at Security Pacific. He was a 1978 graduate of SaMoHi.”
Durant frowned, then nodded. “Santa Monica High School.”
“He was five-eleven,” Wu continued, “weight one-sixty-one, had brown hair, brown eyes, and was scheduled to have his teeth cleaned in two weeks.”
“He did write it all down,” Durant said.
“Everything. A week ago yesterday he had an appointment to pick up Mr. And Mrs. Goodison at Cousin Colleen’s Bed and Breakfast Inn
in Topanga Canyon. There’s nothing in his notebook about where he was to take them. I don’t think he knew.”
“Maybe he talked to somebody about them?” Durant said. “God knows they’re weird enough.”
“By somebody, you mean Rosa Alicia Chavez.”
Durant nodded.
“If we tried to talk to her, she’d yell for the cops,” Wu said. “At least I hope she would.”
“Did his notebook list any organizations he belonged to—a union, business association, maybe a fraternal order?”
“You mean one that might provide his survivors or heirs with a small death benefit?”
“Say, two thousand dollars,” Durant said.
“I think the ILOA might,” Wu said. “That’s the Independent Limousine Operators Association, which just this moment sprang into existence.”
“Who d’you think—Otherguy?”
“Otherguy could handle it nicely,” Wu said. “But Booth would do even better. He’s older and more, well, grandfatherly, although I don’t think he’d appreciate the description.”
“Sure he would,” Durant said. “Booth likes being the oldest. He’s got fifteen or twenty years on us and Otherguy and a lot more than that on Georgia. And although he enjoys being the in-house patriarch, the real reason he likes hanging out with us is because he thinks we’re all fellow anachronisms.”
“The hell he does,” Wu said. “You ever think of yourself as an anachronism?”
“No, but some days I do feel kind of quaint.”
“Yes, well, some days so do I.”
Twenty-three
The first thing Georgia Blue had done that morning, even before she drank any coffee, was call the Department of Motor Vehicles and use a cold formal tone and some Secret Service jargon to demand and receive the name and address that belonged to the LUXRY 3 license plate.
She handed the information to Durant, who had just poured his first cup of coffee in the late William Rice’s elaborate kitchen that was almost large enough for a small hotel. Durant looked at the slip of paper, grunted his thanks and headed for the deck, where he could drink the coffee alone without having to talk to anyone.
Blue found a Thermos in a kitchen cupboard, poured two cups of coffee into it, picked up a mug and carried both mug and Thermos into her bedroom. She drank one cup of coffee, showered, ran a comb through her hair, which had grown nearly half an inch since the Philippines, and again put on the Anne Klein dress and the Joan & David shoes. She then sat on the bed next to the telephone, poured her second cup of coffee, picked up the phone and tapped out a number she had written down the night before.
After the call was answered by a cheery “Jack Broach and Company,” Georgia Blue said, “My name’s Margo Dawson and I’m a vice-president with the Mitsu Bank in Beverly Hills. The reason I’m calling is to find out if we might land some of Jack Broach’s business.”
“You’d have to talk to our comptroller, Mr. Corrigan.”
