Stalking The Angel

When Sheila Warren came back, she had gotten rid of the glass and was carrying a color 8 X 10 showing Bradley accepting something that looked like a photo album from a dignified white-haired Japanese gentleman. There were other men around, all Japanese, but not all of them looked dignified. The book was a dark rich brown, probably leather-covered board, and would probably crumble if you sneered at it. Jillian Becker was in the picture.

Sheila Warren said, 'I hope this is what you want.' The top three buttons on her tennis outfit had been undone.

'This will be fine,' I said. I folded the picture and put it in my pocket.

She wet her lips. 'Are you sure I can't get you something to drink?'

'Positive, thanks.'

She looked down at her shoes, said, 'Ooo, these darn laces,' then turned her back and bent over from the hip. The laces hadn't looked untied to me, but I miss a lot. She played with one lace and then she played with the other, and while she was playing with them I walked out. I wandered back through to the kitchen and from there to the rear yard. There was a dichondra lawn that sloped gently away from the house toward a fifty-foot Greek Revival swimming pool and a small pool house with a sunken conversation pit around a circular grill. I stood at the deep end of the pool and looked around and shook my head. Man. First him. Now her. What a pair.

Whoever had gone into the house had probably known the combination or known where to find it. Combinations are easy to get. One day when no one's around, a gardener slips in, finds the scrap of paper on which people like Bradley Warren always write their combinations, then sells it to the right guy for the right price. Or maybe one day Sheila flexed a little too much upper-class muscle with the hundred-buck-a-week housekeeper, and the housekeeper says, Okay, bitch, here's one for you, and feeds the numbers to her out-of-work boyfriend. You could go on.

I walked along the pool deck past the tennis court and along the edge of the property and then back toward the house. There were no guard dogs and no closed-circuit cameras and no fancy surveillance equipment. The wall around the perimeter wasn't electrified, and if there was a guard tower it was disguised as a palm tree. Half the kids on Hollywood Boulevard could loot the place blind. Maybe I'd go down there and question them. Only take me three or four years.

When I got back to the house, a teenage girl was sitting on one of four couches in the den. She was cross- legged, staring down into the oversized pages of a book that could've been titled Andrew Wyeth's Bleakest Landscapes.

I said, 'Hi, my name's Elvis. Are you Mimi?'

She looked up at me the way you look at someone when you open your front door and see it's a Jehovah's Witness. She was maybe sixteen and had close-cropped brown hair that framed her face like a small inner tube. It made her face rounder than it was. I would have suggested something upswept or shag-cut to give her face some length, but she hadn't asked me. There was no makeup and no nail polish and some would have been in order. She wasn't pretty. She rubbed at her nose and said, 'Are you the detective?'

'Uh-huh. You got any clues about the big theft?'

She rubbed at her nose again.

'Clues,' I said. 'Did you see a shadow skulk across the lawn? Did you overhear a snatch of mysterious conversation? That kind of thing.'

Maybe she was looking at me. Maybe she wasn't. There was sort of a cockeyed grin on her face that made me wonder if she was high.

'Would you like to get back to your book?'

She didn't nod or blink or run screaming from the room. She just stared.

I went back through the dining room and the entry and out to my Corvette and cranked it up and eased down the drive. When I got to the street, Hatcher grinned over from his T-bird, and said, 'How'd you like it?'

'Up yours,' I said.

He laughed and I drove away.

Chapter 3

Three years ago I'd done some work for a man named Berke Feldstein who owns a very nice art gallery in Venice on the beach below Santa Monica. It's one of those converted industrial spaces where they slap on a coat of stark white paint to maintain the industrial look and all the art is white boxes with colored paper inside. For Christmas that year, Berke had given me a large mug with the words MONSTER FIGHTER emblazoned on its side. I like it a lot.

I dropped down out of Holmby Hills into Westwood, parked at a falafel stand, and used their pay phone to call Berke's gallery. A woman's voice answered, 'ArtWerks Gallery.'

I said, 'This is Michael Delacroix's representative calling. Is Mr. Feldman receiving?' A black kid in a UCLA tee shirt was slumped at one of the picnic tables they have out there, reading a sociology text.

Her voice came back hesitant. 'You mean Mr. Feldstein?'

I gave her imperious. 'Is that his name?'

She asked me to hold. There were the sounds of something or someone moving around in the background, and then Berke Feldstein said, 'Who is this, please?'

'The King of Rock 'n' Roll.'

A dry, sardonic laugh. Berke Feldstein does sardonic better than anyone else I know. 'Don't tell me. You're trying to decide between the Monet and the Degas and you need my advice.'

I said, 'Something very rare from eighteenth-century Japan has been stolen. Who might have some ideas about that?' The black kid closed the book and looked at me.

Berke Feldstein put me on hold. After a minute, he was on the line again. His voice was flat and serious. 'I won't be connected with this?'

'Berke.' I gave him miffed.

He said, 'There's a Gallery on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills. The Sun Tree Gallery. It's owned by a guy named Malcolm Denning. I can't swear by this, but I've heard that Denning's occasionally a conduit for less than honest transactions.'

''Less than honest.' I like that. Do we mean 'criminal'?' The black kid got up and walked away.

'Don't be smug,' Berke said.

'How come you hear about these less than honest transactions, Berke? You got something going on the side?'

He hung up.

There were several ways to locate the Sun Tree Gallery. I could call one of the contacts I maintain in the police department and have them search through their secret files. I could drive about aimlessly, stopping at every gallery I passed until I found someone who knew the location, then force the information from him. Or I could look in the Yellow Pages. I looked in the Yellow Pages.

The Sun Tree Gallery of Beverly Hills rested atop a jewelry store two blocks over from Rodeo Drive amidst some of the world's most exclusive shopping. There were plenty of boutiques with Arabic or Italian names, and small plaques that said BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. The shoppers were rich, the cars were German, and the doormen were mostly young and handsome and looking to land a lead in an action-adventure series. You could smell the crime in the air.

I passed the gallery twice without finding a parking spot, continued north up Canon above Santa Monica Boulevard to the residential part of the Beverly Hills flats, parked there, and walked back. A heavy glass door was next to the jewelry store with a small, tasteful brass sign that said SUN TREE GALLERY, HOURS 10:00 A.M. UNTIL 5:00 P.M., TUESDAY THROUGH SATURDAY; DARK, SUNDAY AND MONDAY.

I went through the door and climbed a flight of plush stairs that led up to a landing where there was a much heavier door with another brass sign that said RING BELL. Maybe when you rang the bell, a guy in a beret with a long scar beside his nose slithered out and asked if you wanted to buy some stolen art. I rang the bell.

A very attractive brunette in a claret-colored pants suit appeared in the door, buzzed me in, and said brightly,