Oh, you simple, simple twit. Interesting? “You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“No. I mean, why shouldn’t we—?”
“I hope you’ve got an airbag glued to your chest, kid.” I didn’t look at Dallas. Her smug look would’ve killed me.
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re gonna play bumper cars with the media and the police and tabloid slime and the FBI and maybe Interpol, you’ve gotta wear an airbag. It’s a state law. Look it up.”
“Well…is Dallas there?”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t asked where “there” was, so how good a private dick could he be?
“Could you put her on, please?” he asked.
I handed her the phone. Dallas said, “Hello,” and, “That’s right, Gregory,” and, after a half minute or so, not looking at me, “Two thousand’s fine.”
I closed my eyes. Gregory Rudd, a card-carrying wet blanket for every occasion, was on the case, and I was a monkey’s uncle.
* * *
On my way over to Skulstad Meats I could still see that look of satisfaction on Dallas’s face. She didn’t rub it in, but in the next hour or so I was, in effect, going to be working for her.
But, first things first.
I walked in and smiled at Rachel Cabrera. She was looking very good, very healthy. As leggy as ever. Her legs might’ve even grown half an inch overnight.
“Oh…Mr. Angel,” she said, startled. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d caught my recent stunning success on TV.
“Call me Mort,” I said. “How about that dinner? Think it over, huh? Zozo’s?”
Without waiting for a reply, I marched back to the bullpen where Skulstad kept the sharpies who kept his books. Unless you’re a gang member, fear isn’t normally a gratifying thing to see in people’s eyes, but I’d seen it with the IRS which has definite ganglike qualities, and I was counting on it now.
Nor was I disappointed. All the media insinuation had made it seem possible, even likely, that I was capable of murder most foul. And at six-four, two hundred thirty pounds after a big meal, who, here, was going to stop me if I suddenly ran amok?
I perched on the edge of Betty Pope’s desk since she was head of accounting. I swung a leg. If one wants to intimidate, a little disrespect goes a long way. No one knows where it’ll stop.
I had their undivided attention without saying a word. Jonnie and I had probably been the subject of much conversation over coffee and doughnuts that morning. They’d all narrowly escaped with their lives the other day, and here I was again, like an enduring Egyptian curse.
“Someone here isn’t playin’ by the rules,” I said.
Tomblike silence.
“Someone—or maybe more than one—knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
Betty, Phil, and Iris stared at me with huge eyes, Betty eyeing a pair of scissors, Phil blinking a mile a minute, Iris ready to pass out or run. I leaned a few inches closer to the lot of them. Invading space is a useful intimidation technique—IRS manual, Eighth Edition, page 915.
“Whoever that someone is, or someones,” I said ominously, “I want it to stop, now.”
No one said a word.
“So let’s call the game even. Whoever knows what I’m talking about, I want you to give ten thousand dollars to Mr. Skulstad. Put it in an envelope, deliver it to him anonymously. Today is Tuesday. Do it by, say, quitting time Thursday, or I’ll be back.” Hell, the line worked for Schwarzenegger. I figured it’d work for me.
“If that doesn’t happen,” I added, smiling significantly, “heads will roll.”
I gave each of them a final look and walked out. That last line might’ve been over the top given yesterday’s events, but I couldn’t resist, so I guess Dallas is right about me.
I poked my head into Skulstad’s office. “I’ll phone later in the week, maybe Friday.” He looked up and stared. I ducked back out, then wrote my phone number on a fluorescent lavender Post-it on Rachel’s desk and stuck it to her monitor screen.
“In case you get hungry,” I said.
She gawked at me, open-mouthed. I strolled out, got back in my portable Japanese hibachi, and drove over to my place on Ralston Street.
The forty dollars was gone. “Thanks. K,” her latest note read. Fresh fruit was in a bowl on the kitchen counter, milk and bread in the fridge, a new tube of toothpaste in the bathroom and a brand-new hot-pink toothbrush upright in the holder. K, of course, was gone.
Sonofabitch.
I grabbed an apple, left another twenty dollars and a reminder for her to do the windows, then went back to the Grand Sierra.
By now the dame was into me for sixty bucks. Spade would’ve called her a dame, so that’s what I did. First chance I got I was gonna call her kiddo, right to her pretty face.
* * *
I walked into the room at 10:15. Dallas had the crossword done and was dressed, ready to go. Dazzling, even in the wilted outfit she’d worn the other day. She was going to stay at least one more night there, maybe more, but she wanted to get clothes and a few other things from her place—Jonnie’s house, that is. I pointed out the obvious risks, and the fact that she could bop on over to Macy’s and have a ball shopping for new things, one of her favorite pastimes, but she didn’t want to do that. The media trolls might have abandoned Jonnie’s place. She had clothes in drawers there, washed and folded. And she wanted me to tag along, just in case.
“That mean I’m on the payroll now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.”
“Neither do I.”
On the way over to Jonnie’s in the Toyota, she turned to me and said, “About last night, Mort.”
Uh-oh. “Yeah?”
“Well, with you and Kay. I know it’s a little late to be saying this, but I didn’t mean to get in her way.” She hesitated a moment, then said, “If.”
“No problemo.”
“I mean, if things are
