tempted. I get a lot of sales from people who are just looking.”
“At you?” Jerry said.
She expertly smothered a sarcastic retort that was in her head. “Thank you, Jerry, but I really do mean the cars.” Jimmy was the one who had said he was shopping, so she never really diverted her attention from his eyes. “What sort of car are you thinking about?”
“I’m not really sure of a model. I want something that will be kind of cool, but not, you know, ridiculous.”
“You’re not an SUV guy, are you?”
“No. I hate driving those big-ass things.”
She feigned a chill of delight. “I’m so glad we got that out of the way.” She wasn’t, because the profit margins were highest on SUVs. “So you really do mean cool. I know what you’re after—something sleek and sexy. Come on and I’ll show you something that ought to fit.”
She led them to a low, streamlined, dark blue car with a front end that swept upward almost from the pavement back in a single curve over the roof and down to the road behind. Under the rear bumper were four chrome tailpipes, and a big silver
“What is this?”
“It’s a Lexus IS F. It’s got a five-liter, eight-cylinder engine that packs four hundred horsepower. See? Four doors, a very nice interior. It turns out only fifteen hundred RPMs at sixty.”
He looked troubled. “I don’t know.”
Sandy put her arm around Jimmy. “Just tell me you think it’s as beautiful as I do.”
“I do,” he said. “What’s it like to drive?”
“Have you got a few minutes to find out?”
He gazed at the blue car and her blue eyes and said, “Yeah. I’ll make time.”
“I’ll get the keys.”
The brothers watched her walk back to the showroom. Jerry said, “I’d like to give
“No,” Jimmy said. “Jerry will sit in the back. He makes me nervous.”
They got into the car and Jimmy started the engine, then very tentatively pulled forward a few feet.
She said, “If you go out La Cienega toward the airport, you can get on the freeway.” She watched him pull the car off the lot and accelerate.
Jimmy said, “You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
“Yes. You know, I really appreciate that I only met you socially one time, and you remembered me when it was time to look for a car.”
“Not that. It was about something else.”
“Gee, I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I’m dating somebody pretty steadily right now.”
“He can forget that if you can,” Jerry said from disturbingly close to the back of her head.
She considered turning around in her seat to give him a glare, but she had begun to sense that there was something wrong with the Gaffney brothers, and it might not be to her advantage to make her discomfort overt.
“It wasn’t that,” Jimmy said. “Last time I saw you, we talked about a guy named Joe Carver. I wondered if you had seen him since then.”
“Who was he, again?”
“I asked you if you or your friends had noticed any guy who was suddenly throwing around a lot of cash in the Hollywood clubs, probably somebody who hadn’t been in town long. You said it was Joe Carver.”
“Oh, yeah. We talked about other things too, but I remember.”
“Have you seen him around since then?”
“You know, I saw him about three times right after that, but then he disappeared.”
Jimmy turned up the entrance ramp to the freeway and accelerated so quickly that she was pinned in her seat for a moment. When the car’s speed leveled off, she recovered her focus. “Feel that power?”
“Pretty good,” said Jimmy. “I like the way it feels, the way it steers.”
“It’s like a sports car with guts, and it still has terrific comfort and a good ride. I can tell you that if you drive up in this, a woman is going to be persuaded from the beginning that you’re somebody to pay attention to. And it costs less than a Jag sedan or a Mercedes. She won’t know that, of course. Practically nobody has one of these yet.”
Jerry reached over the seat. “I’d like you to take a look at this.”
She looked warily at his hand. In it was a small black wallet that had a gold police badge and beside it a laminated ID card with Jerry’s picture and the words “Detective Sergeant Allan Reid.”
“I thought your name was Jerry.”
Jimmy’s irritated voice said to Jerry, “Is that necessary?”
“I think it is.”
Sandy said, “I take it you’re not really looking for a car.”
“No, ma’am. We’re looking for an armed robber. And anybody who might be helping him or concealing his whereabouts.”
“It’s a shame you wasted your time with me, then. I don’t know anything about that. Can you take me back to the lot, please? I need to sell some cars.”
“I’m afraid we need to talk with you about this today,” said Jerry. “Since this apparently isn’t a comfortable place for you to talk, we’ll do this at the station.” He said to Jimmy, “Detective Foley, can you aim this thing for the Parker Center?” He leaned back in his seat, and she could see a shoulder holster with a gun.
“Oh my God,” Sandy said. “There’s no reason to arrest me. I swear I haven’t seen him since about four weeks ago at that club.”
Jerry said, “This isn’t an arrest—at least not yet. You’re part of an important undercover investigation. We need to know where this man is, Miss Belknap. As of last night, it became a matter of life and death.”
“Life and death?”
Jimmy became Detective Foley. His voice was deep and terse. “One of the victims was shot last night. The one who pulled the trigger wasn’t Joe Carver. It was a companion.”
“What kind of companion?” She thought she knew.
“A young woman,” Jerry said. He stared at her, his eyes narrowing. “How tall are you?”
“I’m five-five.” She looked as though she were in danger of fainting. “Why?”
“I was just trying to eliminate you.”
“I’m not the one. I never robbed a bank. I never would. And besides, I was working yesterday from nine in the morning until well after the banks closed—around nine at night.”
“Where did you go then?”
“Home to change, and then out to a club. It was Wash, in Hollywood.”
“Anybody see you there?”
“I don’t know. Sure. There were hundreds of people.”
“Anybody who will remember?”
“I was with my boyfriend.”
Jerry took a pen and a small address book from his pocket, and pretended to write. “Boyfriend. That’s convenient. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Paul Herrenberg.”
“Address?”
“Nineteen eighty-five North Vermont, Apartment Three.”
“What time did you get home last night?”
“I … uh, don’t remember the exact hour. It was pretty late.” There was a thin glow of sweat beginning to appear on her forehead and upper lip.
Jerry read her face. “Did you really go home, or did you go to his house?”
