Stalking The Angel

hundred thousand dollars, but that was probably playing it small. Maybe I should put a one and write zeros until my arm fell off and endorse it. Elvis Cole, Yachtsman.

I folded the check in half, put it in my wallet, and took a Dan Wesson.38 in a shoulder rig out of my top right- hand drawer. I pulled a white cotton jacket on to cover the Dan Wesson, then went down to my car. The car is a Jamaica-yellow 1966 Corvette convertible that looks pretty snazzy. Maybe with the white jacket and the convertible and the blank check in my pocket, someone would think I was Donald Trump.

I put the Corvette out onto Santa Monica and cruised west through Beverly Hills and the upper rim of Century City, then north up Beverly Glen past rows of palm trees and stuccoed apartment houses and Persian-owned construction projects. L.A. in late June is bright. With the smog pressed down by an inversion layer, the sky turns white and the sun glares brilliantly from signs and awnings and reflective building glass and deep-waxed fenders and miles and miles of molten chrome bumpers. There were shirtless kids with skateboards on their way into Westwood and older women with big hats coming back from markets and construction workers tearing up the streets and Hispanic women waiting for buses and everybody wore sunglasses. It looked like a Ray Ban commercial.

I stayed with Beverly Glen up past the Los Angeles Country Club golf course until I got to Sunset Boulevard, then hung a right and a quick left into upper Holmby Hills. Holmby is a smaller, more expensive version of the very best part of Beverly Hills to the east. It is old and elegant, and the streets are wide and neat with proper curbs and large homes hidden behind hedgerows and mortar walls and black wrought iron gates. Many of the houses are near the street, but a few are set back and quite a few you can't see at all.

The Warrens' home was the one with the guard. He was sitting in a light blue Thunderbird with a sticker on its side that said TITAN SECURITIES. He got out when he saw me slow down and stood with his hands on his hips. Late forties, big across the back, in a brown off-the-rack Sears suit. Wrinkled. He'd taken a couple of hard ones on the bridge of his nose, but that had been a long time ago. I turned into the drive, and showed him the license. 'Cole. They're expecting me.'

He nodded at the license and leaned against the door. 'She sent the kid down to tell me you were on the way. I'm Hatcher.' He didn't offer to shake my hand.

I said, 'Anyone try storming the house?'

He looked back at the house, then shook his head. 'Shit. I been out here since they got hit and I ain't seen dick.' He shot me a wink. 'Leastways, not what you're talking about.'

I said, 'Are you tipping me off or is something in your eye?'

He smirked. 'You been out before?'

'Uh-uh.'

He gave me some more of the smirk, then ambled back to the Thunderbird. 'You'll see.'

Bradley Warren lived in a French Normandy mansion just about the size of Kansas. A large Spanish oak in the center of the motor court put filigreed shadows on the Normandy's steep roof, and three or four thousand snapdragons spilled out of the beds that bordered the drive and the perimeter of the house. There was a porchlike overhang at the front of the house with the front door recessed in a wide alcove. It was a single door, but it was a good nine feet high and four feet wide. Maybe Bradley Warren had bought the place from the Munsters.

I parked under the big oak, walked over to the door, and rang the bell. Hatcher was twisted around in his T- bird, watching. I rang the bell two more times before the door opened and a woman wearing a white Love tennis outfit and holding a tall glass with something clear in it looked up at me. She said, 'Are you the detective?'

'Usually I wear a deerstalker cap,' I said, 'but today it's at the cleaners.'

She laughed too loud and put out her hand. 'Sheila Warren,' she said. 'You're a good-looking devil, aren't you.' Twenty minutes before noon and she was drunk.

I looked back at Hatcher. He was grinning.

Sheila Warren was in her forties, with tanned skin and a sharp nose and bright blue eyes and auburn hair. She had the sort of deep lines you get when you play a lot of tennis or golf or otherwise hang out in the sun. The hair was pulled back in a pony tail and she wore a white headband. She looked good in the tennis outfit, but not athletic. Probably did more hanging out than playing.

She opened the door wider and gestured with the glass for me to come in. Ice tinkled. 'I suppose you want to see where he had the damn book.' She said it like we were talking about an eighth-grade history book.

'Sure.'

She gestured with the glass again. 'I always like to have something cool when I come in off the court. All that sweat. Can I get you something?'

'Maybe later.'

We walked back through about six thousand miles of entry and a living room they could rent out as an airplane hangar and a dining room with seating for Congress. She stayed a step in front of me and swayed as she walked. I said, 'Was anyone home the night it was stolen?'

'We were in Canada. Bradley's building a hotel in Edmonton so we flew up. Bradley usually flies alone, but the kid and I wanted to go so we went.' The kid.

'How about the help?'

'They've all got family living down in Little Tokyo. They beat it down there as soon as we're out of the house.' She looked back at me. 'The police asked all this, you know.'

'I like to check up on them.'

She said, 'Oh, you.'

We went down a long hall with a tile floor and into a cavern that turned out to be the master bedroom. At the end of the hall there was an open marble atrium with a lot of green leafy plants in it, and to the left of the atrium there were glass doors looking out to the back lawn and the pool. Where one of the glass doors had been, there was now a 4 X 8 sheet of plywood as if the glass had been broken and the plywood put there until the glass could be replaced. Opposite the atrium, there was a black lacquer platform bed and a lot of black lacquer furniture. We went past the bed and through a doorway into a his dressing room. The hers had a separate entrance.

The his held a full-length three-way dressing mirror and a black granite dressing table and about a mile and a half of coats and slacks and suits and enough shoes to shod a small American city. At the foot of the dressing mirror the carpet had been rolled back and there was a Citabria-Wilcox floor safe large enough for a man to squat in.

Sheila Warren gestured toward it with the glass and made a face. 'The big shot's safe.'

The top was lying open like a manhole cover swung over on a hinge. It was quarter-inch plate steel with two tumblers and three half-inch shear pins. There was black powder on everything from when the crime scene guys dusted for prints. Nothing else seemed disturbed. The ice tinkled behind me. 'Was the safe like this when you found it?'

'It was closed. The police left it open.'

'How about the alarm?'

'The police said they must've known how to turn it off. Or maybe we forgot to turn it on.' She gave a little shrug when she said it, like it didn't matter very much in the first place and she was tired of talking about it. She was leaning against the door-jamb with her arms crossed, watching me. Maybe she thought that when detectives flew into action it was something you didn't want to miss. 'You should've seen the glass,' she said. 'He brings the damn book here and look what happens. I walk barefoot on the carpet and I still pick up slivers. Mr. Big Shot Businessman.' She didn't say the last part to me.

'Has anyone called, or delivered a ransom note?'

'For what?'

'The book. When something rare and easily identifiable is stolen, it's usually stolen to sell it back to the owner or his insurance company.'

She made another face. 'That's silly.'

I guess that meant no. I stood up. 'Your husband said there were pictures of the book.'

She finished the drink and said, 'I wish he'd take care of these things himself.' Then she left. Maybe I could go out and Hatcher could come in and question her for me. Maybe Hatcher already had. Maybe I should call the airport and catch Bradley's plane and tell him he could keep his check and his job. Nah. What would Donald Trump think?