Hacker grunted.
The sun was maybe twenty degrees above the horizon now, and the trees cast long shadows across Vanowen. Made me think about what the Valley had once been like.
“Right on Hadley,” Hacker said. “It’s a couple more streets.”
“So,” I said, “you’re not working for Wattles. You’re working for Trey.”
“Yeah?” Hacker said.
“Trey’s got a problem and hires you to find somebody to fix it. You go to Wattles for help. Wattles asks Janice, who says I’m smart, and Wattles sets me up.”
“Think that’s how it happened?”
“You tell me.”
He chewed on it for a second. “More or less.”
“And what do you get out of this? Trey paying you?”
“Not much.”
“This is like what? A good deed?”
“What’s a cop’s job?” Hacker asked.
“Gee, I don’t know. To ensure a good third act?”
“To cut down on crime, smartass, or most kinds of crime, anyway. Some kinds of crime, crime that don’t make headlines and don’t hurt too much and gets committed by generous suspects who deal in cash of small to moderate denominations, we can leave alone. It’s like a fringe benefit, you know?”
“I’ve never heard the specs detailed so succinctly before.”
“So what I’m doing right now,” Hacker said, “I’m cutting down on crime.”
“You want to explain how?”
“Nah. I’ll let Trey do that.”
The house was a fantasy out of Pearl S. Buck. Sprawling over maybe 10,000 square feet, it was set back from the road and shielded from vulgar curiosity by a used-brick wall, half-covered in ivy, that was at least ten feet tall. Eleven, if you counted the wrought-iron spikes bristling on top. Before laying eyes on the house, I had to stop at a gate the mysterious color of copper patina, and which may actually have been copper patina. A little iron door next to the gate opened, and a guy came out. His face and neck were thin but his suit was bulked up in a way that suggested a layer of bullet-proofing. He looked first at me and then at Hacker, containing his enthusiasm nicely. Hacker rolled down his window and said, “Lollipop,” and the guy nodded and went back through his little door.
A moment later, the gates opened inward.
I said, “Lollipop? What a sweet name.”
“Code word,” Hacker said. “Changes every few hours. I got it when I phoned.”
The drive, which was surfaced in tan gravel, wound its way through a man-made landscape of hills, ponds, willows, little Asian gazebos, and the occasional Chinese bridge. The whole thing looked like it had been copied off a dinner plate, but it was pretty in a finicky, over-managed way.
I said to Hacker, “Do I get a fortune cookie?”
“You just behave. Trey doesn’t fuck around, and remember, I brought you here. You get anybody in the house upset, you’re gonna have Wattles and me after you, too.”
“Holy Moly.” I stopped the van where Hacker told me to, to the left of the house where it wouldn’t intrude on the view of Imperial China from the front windows, and we hiked back to the front door, which was standing open. The doorframe was entirely filled by a very wide gentleman of Hispanic ancestry wearing black from head to toe. The width was the product of years on the weight bench, years that had bulked his shoulders and chest and built muscles at the sides of his neck. It wasn’t Gold’s Gym bulk, either; it was California Prison System bulk. His shirt was one of those ’60s-inspired mutants without a collar, and the gold chain around his neck was probably heavy enough to tow a car. His expression said he could eat me for breakfast without a knife and fork.
“Living room,” he said. Then he backed away in front of us, doing the whole hallway in reverse as we came in. He never looked behind himself, and he never blinked: just kept his eyes fixed on mine.
I said to Hacker, “Can I say anything about this?”
“No.”
At long last, the living room yawned to our left, two steps down into a sea of beige half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. A white grand piano had staked out the far rear corner, maybe fifty feet from us, and various pieces of precious and semiprecious furniture had flung themselves casually around the room. There was nothing as common as an arrangement. It looked like they might change positions on their own after everyone went to bed. There was a lot of white wood, and most of the upholstery was the soft yellow of Danish butter.
“Wait in the conversation area,” the Man in Black Without a Collar said.
“The conversation area?” I asked, but Hacker had already grabbed my arm and was hauling me toward a grouping that included two eight-foot couches, a chaise fit for an odalisque, and a low coffee-table of bleached, distressed wood. I detoured left to look more closely at a very large, very skillful, and commensurately terrible oil portrait that hung between two windows. In front of a steamy, bleached-out landscape that could have been Renaissance Italy was a man with a romantically cleft chin, an impossibly perfect flop of Byronic hair, and eyelashes as long as palm fronds. He wore what looked like a silk shirt, dramatically white and just a little blousy, and a gold wristwatch that probably weighed two pounds, but his primary accessory was a heart-attack blond, all eyes and cheekbones, with the kind of bone structure that had undoubtedly made the painter start moving lights around and wishing for more talent. The woman wore a period gown, maybe 17th century, with seed pearls sewn all over the front of it. Her golden hair hung in Botticelli ropes over her shoulders, almost to her lap.
“Please,” someone said. “Have a seat.”
I turned to see the maiden in the painting-this time in the flesh, but wearing contemporary clothes-gracefully enter the room. She wore the 21st century as decoratively as she’d worn the 17th. The heavy blond hair was looped up and held in place by a couple of thick pins of deep green jade, and old jade, at that. She wore the kind of distressed jeans they distress by rubbing money on them and a T-shirt that said HELLO, RUST BELT! in what looked like real rust and probably cost $300. Around her slender neck was a crimson dog collar in patent leather. It fastened with a gold buckle, and gold tags dangled from it. She was barefoot. In her hand was a bottle of white wine, cold enough to sweat.
“Chardonnay, Mr. Bender?” Then she gave Hacker a bigger smile than he deserved and said, “Hello, Lyle. One for you, or do you want Scotch?”
I said I’d like the Chardonnay, and Hacker opted for Scotch. The Man in Black Without a Collar came in carrying a tray on which were three glasses and a bottle of Scotch. He carried it as though he wished it was an Oldsmobile or something else that would justify all that upper-body work.
“I’m Trey Annunziato,” the blond woman said, holding out her free hand. I shook it, and she settled onto the chaise with one bare foot tucked beneath her, and patiently waited for me to finish looking at her. Up close, she was the kind of thin that’s just a little more than intentional, the kind of thin that speaks to a life of boneless skinless chicken breasts, salad with dressing on the side, sashimi rather than sushi, and personal control issues. The bones of her face, perfect as they were, could have used a little softening, and the ball joints on the outside of her wrists were as prominent as marbles implanted beneath the skin. The eyes were chocolate brown, an odd contrast with the pale hair, and the whites had a faint bluish cast, like skim milk. She held up the hand with the bottle in it, and The Man in Black Without a Collar took it. “Would you do the pouring, Eduardo?” she asked. Her tone was sweet enough, but I noticed she didn’t feel any need to look over at him.
Eduardo poured.
“Well, haven’t we put
“I’m used to crooks,” I said.
“Well, of course. I mean, being one, and all. But still, most of us prefer to choose our company, and you’ve been hauled from place to place, I’m afraid.” There was something studied about the way she moved and talked, accentuated by the semi-British construction of her sentences, even though she avoided the dread mid-Atlantic vowel syndrome. “Please, Eduardo.” She held up a hand and he put a glass into it,
