CHAPTER 5
Rachel Miller got us good. Al and I had been snookered, plain and simple. Without exchanging a word, we walked back to our car, got in, and drove away. It wasn’t something either one of us wanted to discuss or write down in a report or even remember. It was the oldest trick in the book, and a couple of homicide squad veterans had no excuse for being taken in by it.
“I guess you don’t want to call Sergeant Watkins and put out an APB on the lady.” Big Al’s comment was laced with sarcasm.
“We’ll just let it pass,” I said.
“We sure as hell will,” he agreed.
If word of the incident leaked out, I knew we’d be the laughingstock of the department, enduring weeks of pointed ribbing from all the other detectives on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building. Neither one of us was tough enough for that. No way Jose!
We drove up and down the streets of the neighborhood, trying to spot Rachel Miller, but there was no sign of her. She had vanished completely, totally, although the Buick and the U-Haul remained parked exactly where Daisy had left them. Knowing that Rachel had not only ditched us but that she’d done it on foot rubbed salt into the wound.
We stopped at the stop sign at Forty-eighth and Fremont and waited for the break in traffic. “Why do you think she took off like that?” I asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does to me,” Al grumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s exactly what you’d expect from a dame kooky enough to love that stupid bird.” Al was still packing a grudge against Buddy. He wasn’t any too happy with me, either.
“So what do you want to do now?” he asked. “Try getting a line on the wife, go back to Cedar Heights and talk to the neighbors, or track down the carpet installer?”
It was an impressive list of possibilities. Multiple choice. I picked one.
“Let’s stop by the carpet company on the way back downtown. I remember seeing it down by the Fremont Bridge. It’s on our way.”
Behind us a car honked impatiently for us to move. We were blocking traffic. Al glowered at the driver in his rearview mirror, but he turned left and got back on Fremont going south.
I could remember back when the Damm Fine Carpets building used to house a fire extinguisher company, although I had forgotten the exact name. I had driven past it for years, and I remembered hearing stories that the place had originally served as a Model T Ford assembly plant.
Now, though, all trace of both Model T’s and fire extinguishers had been obliterated. The place sported a brand-new coat of brilliant yellow paint, and the company’s name, emblazoned in six-foot-tall block letters, ran the entire length of the building. The only reminder that the shell was a relic from a bygone era was the old-fashioned metal grillwork in each of the small glass windows.
We parked in a “customer only” parking place and went inside the compact showroom. It was ten to three when an eager salesman zeroed in on us. We must have looked like live ones. “Can I interest you in some carpet today?” he asked, rubbing his hands together.
I shook my head. “Actually, we’re here looking for the owner. Is he in?”
The man shrugged and glanced down at his watch. “Mr. Damm isn’t available right now, not for ten minutes or so.” He pointed toward one side of the room, where we saw a counter with a woman sitting behind it. “That’s Mr. Damm’s secretary. You’ll have to talk to her.”
We walked over to the counter. The secretary was a reasonably attractive sweet young thing in her early twenties. She had that funny, nerve-wracking blink of people who have yet to master the art of comfortably wearing their contact lenses. The most noticeable thing about her, however, were her fingernails. They were at least two inches long. Each. It crossed my mind that typing couldn’t be a major part of her job description. A brass plate on the counter told us her name was Cindy.
“We’re here to see Mr. Damm,” I said when she looked up at me and blinked.
“Was he expecting you?” she asked.
“No, we’re here on police business.” I held out my ID. She took it, holding it close to her face to read it. Even with the contacts, she must have been terrifically nearsighted.
“He’ll be out in about…” She held her watch up to her face. “In about five minutes now. You can talk to him then. If you’d like to have a chair…”
She motioned us into two blue side chairs across from the counter, and we settled down to wait. It wasn’t long before a tiny alarm on the secretary’s watch went off. She got up and hurried to a door halfway down a short hallway behind her. I had known there was a doorway there, and from the outside it looked ordinary enough. When she opened it, however, I could tell it was anything but ordinary.
The inside of the door was covered with fur. Fake white fur. The kind you’d expect to find on a soft, stuffed Easter bunny in some little kid’s Easter basket. The secretary disappeared into a room, closing the door behind her.
I nudged Al. “Did you get a load of that?”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “This must be our lucky day,” he said.
Moments later the secretary reappeared. “Mr. Damm will see you now,” she announced. “In his office. This way, please.” Since she stood holding the fur-lined door open and motioning for us to enter, that had to be the place. We got up and walked inside.
Outside the door, the interior of Damm Fine Carpets looked like any other fluorescent-lit, modern storefront and warehouse, but walking through the door into Richard Damm’s office was like entering another world. I had never seen an office anything like it. It was dark for one thing, the heavy, oppressive darkness of a dim bar or darkened theater when you first come in from outside and your eyes haven’t adjusted to the light.
Big Al and I stopped long enough to get our bearings while the door swished shut behind us. The better part of the wall to the right of the door was made up of a huge, dimly lit fish tank complete with a wide variety of colorful fish. Beside the aquarium, in one corner of the room was a small fountain where beads of water cascaded down in a circle around a statuette of a naked lady.
At the far end of the room was a seating area-a conversation pit I think they call them-facing a complex home entertainment center. The back of a man’s head was barely visible over the top of the couch. He was seated directly in front of a color television set that was playing the credits to some afternoon program. On either side of the set were a series of four VCRs, all of them with red lights glowing.
By now, our eyes had adjusted to the light enough so that details of the room gradually became clearer. The secretary had called it an office, but there was no sign of a desk or a file cabinet. Directly across from us was a fully equipped, well-stocked bar, and to our left was a tiny efficiency kitchen. The place didn’t look like an office at all. It was a home away from home.
There were no windows in the room. The carpeting, plush white, not only covered the floor, but ran halfway up the walls wherever walls were visible. It reminded me of a padded cell. For all I know, it was a padded cell.
Richard Damm didn’t bother to get up. “Come on in,” he called. “I always watch ”General Hospital‘ during lunch, but it’s over now.“
He was fiddling with a remote control. The program credits disappeared and a movie came on. He had evidently stopped a video in midstream, because the action was already well in progress.
It was one of those Debbie-Does-Dallas kinds of porno flicks, one the first amendment never should have protected in the first place. I thought Big Al’s eyes were going to pop right out of his head when he saw what was happening on the screen.
I suppose I shouldn’t make fun of Al. I wasn’t exactly immune myself. When the sound track got too graphic, Damm finally turned off the volume, but not the machine. Without bothering to take his eyes from the movie, he motioned for us to sit down. “I’m Richard Damm,” he said shortly. “What can I do for you?”
The owner of Damm Fine Carpets was your basic low-brow voyeur with all the class and style of a K-Mart
