'Guard service?'
'I checked the records at the department,' Bailey said. 'There's no guard service listed.'
Sheboygan twitched as he puffed smoke, then waved his hand through it. 'Sounds like a piece of cake.'
'Go for it, baby,' Bailey said. He gave Sheboygan's beard a playful tug.
'Do you want to see the goodies afterward?'
Travis Bailey shook his head. 'I trust you. Just take everything to Emil. He'll have buyers lined up.'
'I don't know what Emil has told you,' Sheboygan said, 'but there was no fucking Picasso ink drawing inside that place I did last week. The Rolex and the furs were there. There was silver that he hadn't even told me about. I got it all and took it straight to him. He looked at me like I was an asshole or something. 'Where's the Picasso?' he says, like I got it in the trunk of my car or something. He accused me of holding out and I don't like it. As far as I'm concerned he's nothing but a goddamn punk…a red-assed punk. I swear to God there was no Picasso anywhere in that house. I went through every room.'
'I trust you,' Bailey said with a tone of confidence, 'and don't let Emil Kreuzer get to you. He's just a little money- hungry. After you turn the goodies to cash, give me one ring at my apartment and well meet. Make sure you bring me small bills. It looks funny for a cop to carry hundreds.' He smiled.
Sheboygan grinned. 'You ain't a cop,' he said. 'You're just a crazy low-class motherfucker who carries a badge.'
'You didn't talk to me like that when I caught you red-handed peddling silverware,' Bailey said. 'You used to talk real nice to Detective Bailey. You used to say yes, sir, and no, sir.'
Sheboygan twitched. 'Now I say three bags full, sir.'
Both men chuckled.
It was 2:00 A.m. The freeway was almost empty.
It took Carr less than twenty minutes to get from Ling's to his Santa Monica apartment.
He trudged up the steps, unlocked the door and headed for the refrigerator. Inside, a milk carton, a head of lettuce that he knew had been there for ages and one pickle left in ajar. He ate the pickle and tossed everything else in a trashcan. His stomach growled. He dismissed the thought of going for a hamburger and staggered wearily into the bedroom. Having tossed his clothes in a pile, he crawled into the unmade bed and closed his eyes.
The telephone rang. Carr grabbed it off the nightstand.
'I'm sorry if I woke you up,' Sally said. 'I really am. But I can't sleep. I want to come over.'
Carr ran a hand through his hair. 'Right now?'
'You have someone else there, don't you?'
'No,' Carr said.
'If you do, please tell me and I'll just hang up. It's that Korean cocktail waitress, isn't it?…I'm sorry. It's none of my business…'
'There's no one here,' Carr said.
'I'm sorry I called. I really am. I hope you won't have trouble going back to sleep.' The phone clicked.
Carr hung up and fell back onto the pillow.
A short time later the doorbell rang. Carr awakened, but didn't move. It rang again. He crawled out of bed and stumbled to the door.
'It's me,' Sally said, hearing him move across the living room floor.
He opened the door. Sally was dressed in a jogging suit. Her auburn hair was pulled back and he could tell that, despite the hour, she had put makeup on. He smelled something perfumy as she walked past him into the bedroom. He followed and got back into bed.
She stood at the window. 'I suppose now that I've made a fool out of myself and come over here in the middle of the night you're just going to go back to sleep and leave me standing here,' she said wistfully. Carr didn't say anything. Sally waited a few minutes before she moved closer to the bed. 'You don't care enough even to talk to me for a few minutes.'
He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the bed. They kissed. His hands tore at her clothing. They made love for what must have been an hour. Afterward Sally lay next to him, rubbing her hand lightly across the hair of his chest.
'You live as if there's no future,' Sally said softly. 'You don't save money. You hate to make plans. I have to force you to buy new clothes. You're driving the same car you had when I met you nine years ago. You could probably get a loan, but you won't buy property. You might as well be a corporal living out of a duffel bag. Your television didn't work almost all of last year. Are you aware of that? Are you aware that it took you a year to have your television fixed?'
'I don't like television.'
'That's not the point,' Sally said. 'The point is that you're living as if there's no tomorrow. Our relationship is an endless succession of one-night stands.' With this, Sally rolled away from him. 'I've never tried to change you,' she said after a while. 'Not that I wouldn't have liked to, it's just that you're probably the most stubborn and unchangeable person I've ever met. It's because you've been in an all-male environment since you were seventeen years old…the army, Korea, your career with the Treasury Department…you're in a paramilitary organization. Are you aware of that?'
'I guess you're right,' Carr muttered. His eyelids were heavy. In the darkness, he felt Sally stir. She rested her head on his shoulder.
'I love you,' she said in an almost inaudible whisper.
'I love you too,' he said. Sleepily, he wrapped his arms around her. He thought of their first date years before. Sitting at a table in a restaurant Carr couldn't afford, they had treated each other with deference.
'It's as if our whole relationship is
Her skin was soft and he could feel the outline of her breasts against him. In the darkness, he thought she wiped her eyes. He considered asking her if she was crying, but didn't.
When Carr woke up the next morning Sally was gone.
He daydreamed about walking along the beach with her, and their frequent Sunday-afternoon routine of dinner at her place. She always cooked too much. Finally he forced himself out of bed.
In the bathroom, he realized he'd forgotten to buy shaving cream again, so he shaved with bar soap. Having showered and dressed (thank God he had one clean white shirt left), he went into the kitchen.
He boiled water and poured it into a cup. Dug through the cupboard and found the instant coffee container. There was less than a teaspoon in the jar. Regardless, he emptied the jar's contents into the boiling water. He mixed the water with a spoon; it turned barely brown. Having forgotten his search for something to eat the night before, he went to the refrigerator and saw that he was out of milk for the coffee. 'Damn,' he said out loud. He slammed the door shut. Fed up, he tossed the semi-coffee in the sink and rinsed out the cup, tore off a piece of brown paper bag. With a broken pencil he found in a drawer he wrote a shopping list.
Having checked the stove, he returned to the bedroom and slipped a holster and bullet pouch on his belt. He shoved his revolver into the holster and shrugged on a suit coat on his way out the door.
As he reached the freeway, he realized that he'd left the shopping list on the sink.
Travis Bailey, carrying a pump shotgun on his shoulder in duck-hunter fashion, led Carr and Kelly, who carried a black lunch pail, through the two-story Beverly Hills home. Carr figured that the living room alone was as big as his entire apartment. In it, pastel sofas had been picked to match the abstract art originals that covered the walls (or vice versa?). In the corner, an enormous aquarium built into the wall. It was equipped with fluorescent rocks and multicolored lights. In front of the facing wall, a bar with an inlaid-tile counter top.
Bailey spoke as if he were in a library. 'Kelly, you've got the front door. Carr, you cover the bedroom window and the side of the house. I'll handle the rear. I've got a little stool so I can sit below counter level behind the bar…'areas of responsibility', so to speak. Agreed?'
The T-men nodded. Bailey stepped behind the bar next to the sliding glass door.
Carr and Kelly sauntered down the long hallway. Kelly took his post at the front door. 'I don't like the whole operation, he whispered.
'Neither do I,' Carr said.
Kelly pulled off his suit coat and hung it on a coat rack next to the front door. He adjusted the volume of the Treasury radio which was clipped to his belt, pinned his gold Treasury badge to his shirt pocket and rolled up his
