The Sleepy Bear Motel was doing its usual landmark business in midday quickies. Mr. Needle-nose's Corvette was in its usual parking space. It wasn't raining, so the usual bum wasn't in his usual phone booth. I grabbed my usual space and settled into my usual wait. My eyelids sagged into their usual half-mast position. God, surveillance was exciting.
Someone rapped on the window. I looked up to see a tired-looking Chicana peering in at me. She was wearing a red dress that somehow managed to be both low-cut and high-cut.
'Hi, handson,' she said. 'You wan' a date?'
I lifted my arm and checked my watch, a complicated electronic affair given me for my birthday by my ex- girlfriend, Eleanor. It told me the time, the date, the day of the week-everything but the humidity. 'I've already got one,' I said. 'November eleven.'
She took an apprehensive look at the sky. It might rain yet. 'You know wha' I mean,' she said. 'Half-hour, fifty bucks. We can do it here.' She thumbed over her shoulder in the direction of the Sleepy Bear. Then she looked down and said, 'No, Dulcita, no' yet. Down.'
'You can do it here,' I said. 'Keep me out of it.' I leaned sideways to look out the window. A white toy poodle sat at her feet, looking up at her. It had a neat little red bow tied to its collar.
'What's with her?'
'She goes wi' me. They don' mind. She's always real good.' The poodle sensed she was being talked about and wagged her tail wildly. 'Aren' you, sweetie?' the girl said. 'Querida mia.' Then she looked back up at me. 'Fifty bucks, no big deal. I promise you have a good time.'
'No, thanks,' I said.
'So why you parkin' here?'
'I'm out of gas,' I said. 'Just waiting for the Auto Club.' I looked up at room 207 and suddenly thought about how much I disliked Ambrose Harker. I pulled a wad of his money out of my pocket. 'How about I just give you the fifty?' I said.
'For what?' She unsnapped her little white handbag and looked into it, as if the answer to how low she would go was inside, next to her face powder.
'For going away. For hitting the next block.' I peeled off five tens and waved them at her. The little dog sat up on its rear legs, front paws in the air.
'Honey,' she said, 'you don' want nothin'?'
I passed the money to her. 'Darling, we're both too pretty to die. Haven't you heard about AIDS?'
She looked at the bills and then back up at me. 'You for real? This is jus' for me?'
'This is for just taking care of yourself. Be careful, okay?'
Her eyes narrowed. 'Gimme a hunred,' she said.
'For what?'
'So my man don' hit me.'
'What about tomorrow?'
'Tomorrow is tomorrow. I already did fi' hunred today. Si' hunred is enough, Dulcita and me can go to bed.'
I gave her another fifty. 'Go to bed,' I said. 'But if I see you on Sunset again today, I'll take the money back and call the cops. Got it?'
'Don' be funny. I been working since three a.m. All I wan' is dreamlan', you know?'
The door to room 207 opened.
'Lean inside the car,' I said.
She did. 'What do you want?' she asked a little apprehensively. Up close, I realized she was no more than eighteen or nineteen. A little gold crucifix dangled at her throat.
'Your perfume,' I said.
She looked alarmed. 'You wan' my perfume?'
Needle-nose came down the stairs and walked past us on his way to the Corvette. If he registered Alice it didn't show, and he couldn't get much of a shot at me with Dulcita's mistress filling the driver's window.
'I don't want your perfume,' I said, watching him in the rearview mirror. 'I like it. I want to know what it is.'
'You got some nose,' she said. 'Is flea shampoo, for Dulcita. I washed her this mornin' in the dark. Ho, perfume, says the guy. Like I say, you got some nose.' She laughed and suddenly looked a lot prettier.
The Corvette caught and pulled out. Needle-nose didn't look back.
'Well, it smells good on you,' I said.
Her face was about a foot from mine. She did smell good. 'You know,' she said, 'you' pretty cute.'
'You're not exactly chopped liver yourself. Why don't you get a job?'
'Don' start with me, okay? I do the bes' I can.'
'Go home, then,' I said. 'Go to bed, like you said.'
'Ri' after I feed Dulcita. Listen, thanks. He be aroun' pretty quick now, so I gotta be on the sidewalk. He see me yakkin', he gets upset, you know? Like he starts to play with his knife, shinin' up the blade and stuff. Thanks for the hunred.'
She headed for the sidewalk, a little brown girl in a red dress on a gray day, with a white dog at her heels. She took up an alert stance at the curb and combed the oncoming traffic for her pimp. Dulcita sat at her feet and gave herself a professional-looking scratch behind the ear. A car honked twice.
It was Sally Oldfield's Courtesy Cab, a different number this time but the same company. After a moment the door to 207 was thrown open and Sally hurried out and down the steps. She threw the driver a radiant smile and got in back. She sure in hell was happy about something. She'd been in the room thirty-eight minutes, same as yesterday.
As the cab door closed, I saw a flash of red on the sidewalk. The Mexican girl had picked up Dulcita and tucked her under a slender brown arm, and now she was wading out into the traffic. Pulled into the curb across the street was a white Cadillac convertible with gold wire wheels and a spare mounted behind the trunk. Very fancy. The driver's window slid down and I saw a skinny, sharp-featured white guy with hair so blond he looked albino. He was, presumably, the hooker's man.
Sally Oldfield's cab made a right onto Sunset and headed back toward Monument Records, where another five hours of listening to the radio awaited me. I hadn't brought a book. I sighed and snapped on my turn indicator.
The Mexican girl was standing on the passenger side of the Cadillac. She was saying something, trying the door handle. It wouldn't open. She looked very unhappy.
I let an opening in the traffic go by and watched the white car. The passenger window went down about eight inches and the man at the wheel stuck out his hand. The girl looked even more unhappy, shook her head, and tried the handle again. No go. It was locked.
She slipped an arm over the top of the open window and tried to unlock the door inside. The driver hit the button, and the window went up and clamped onto her arm. He let the car roll forward at about five miles an hour.
The girl stumbled on her high heels and fought her way to her feet again. She slipped off the curb and cracked her head on the roof of the car. Dulcita trotted anxiously along at her heels, barking.
After half a block the driver of the Cadillac hit the brakes. The girl straightened up, crying, as he put the window down and extended a waiting hand. She rubbed the arm that had been caught in the window, then reached into her purse and handed him a wad of money. He rolled the window back up, put on a pair of mirrored shades, and took off into traffic.
The girl stood at the curb, looking at nothing. She was still crying. Dulcita sat down at her feet.
I'd really had enough surveillance for one day. Nothing was going to happen anyway; Sally Oldfield was back at Monument now and she'd stay there until quitting time, when I'd trail her home again. And if I was wrong, and something did happen, maybe Harker would fire me. Maybe I'd quit even if he didn't fire me. I could always start looking for Mrs. Yount's cat.
The next thing I knew, I was two cars behind the white Cadillac, heading east on Sunset. The pimp made a right onto Cahuenga. So did I. Then we both made a left on Franklin and headed for the hills.
The second girl was an emaciated blond in a thin blue dress who looked like she was freezing to death on the corner of Franklin and Highland. No argument this time, just more money passed in through the passenger's
