To Die in Beverly Hills

phoned him he'd give me permission … may I ask what you need the house for?'

'I can't tell you all the details right now, but it involves the people who tried to kill you. If we can use the house for a few days we might be able to catch them.'

Hartmann nodded. 'Call me tomorrow at the bank. I'll have it all arranged.'

'Sorry to have disturbed you.'

Jerome Hartmann shut the door.

The Beverly Hills Detective Bureau was busier than usual.

There had been an armed robbery at one of the Rodeo Drive jewelry stores and the office was buzzing with activity. Detectives filled out reports as they interviewed the witnesses: a well-dressed young woman, a middle- aged jeweler who still looked pale, a turbaned man wearing a tailor-made suit. Because it was almost time for shift change, uniformed officers roamed in and out of the office, stalling their return to patrol duties.

Travis Bailey stood in the corner of the room sharpening his pencils in an electric sharpener. As he checked each point, he wiped the excess lead on a tissue, then tossed the tissue in the wastebasket. After honing exactly fifteen pencils, he wrapped them with a rubber band and returned to his desk. He opened a drawer and placed the sheaf of pencils in its proper place, then closed the drawer.

'Hold the line,' Delsey Piper said, and pressed the hold button on her telephone. 'Line three.' She looked at Bailey. Bailey picked up the receiver on his desk.

'It's me,' Emil Kreuzer said.

'Where are you calling from?' Bailey's tone was less than friendly.

'In a phone booth of course. We need to get together.'

'I can't get away today.'

'Could you make time for the score of a lifetime? I mean of a lifetime?'

Bailey looked around the room. 'I might be able to get away for a few minutes,' he said casually. 'Meet me at the department store.' He hung up the receiver.

He looked at Delsey, still at her desk. 'We have to go see an informant.'

Bailey checked an unmarked sedan out of the motor pool and drove a few blocks to an exclusive, five-story department store. He drove into the underground garage and parked. 'You wait here,' he said.

'Can't I go with you? You keep telling me you'll let me meet some of your informants, and then you never do.'

'Next time.'

'That's what you always say.'

Bailey climbed out of the car and entered the store through a bank of glass doors. Inside, he made his way through a cosmetics department staffed with immaculately groomed women of all ages and a circular platform featuring a display of male and female mannequins wearing see-through plastic coats and black leather tights. He took an elevator to the fourth floor, then wound through the fur department to a restaurant furnished with small white tables and cane-backed chairs. They were surrounded by trellises wrapped with artificial greenery.

Emil Kreuzer was the only male customer. He waved Bailey over. A waitress dressed in a puffed-sleeve uniform came to the table and took Bailey's order for coffee.

'I hope this is important,' Bailey said after the waitress had left.

'I'll run it down to you and you tell me what you think. Yesterday I did my hypno thing on this movie star's wife-'

'Name?'

'Fay Peckham, wife of Greg Peckham.'

'Go ahead.'

'After I do the hypno thing I have conversation with the bitch. Somehow or another we get on the topic of gold coins. She tells me she and good ol' Greg are collectors; that they have lots of U.S. gold coins, numismatic pieces worth lots of bucks. I do the I happen to be a coin collector myself act and after a while she gets up and goes in the den. A minute later she comes back out with a tray of Krugerrands and Austrian Coronas. She tells me that her husband has been collecting for the past ten years and has his collection insured for three hundred thousand. The dumb bitch trusts me.'

'How do you know the whole collection is in his house?'

'If you'll let me finish, I'll tell you.'

Bailey nodded.

'While I'm sitting there jawing with the bitch, the doorbell rings. She goes to the front door. While she's signing for a package or something, I zip into the den. What do I see? A wall safe! The woman is so dumb she actually left the safe open. I got a glimpse of something beautiful. I'm talking about trays of gold coins. I almost came in my pants.'

'You're telling me you saw the coins?'

'I saw them. And when I asked her about her next appointment, she told me all about her trip to Cannes. They'll be gone a week starting today. The safe is one of those little ones. Just have your man take an axe. He can chop the safe out of the wall and take it with him.'

The waitress came to the table, served the coffee and hurried off.

Bailey tasted the coffee. 'This may not be the best time to put Bones to work,' he said. 'Things have heated up lately.'

'I take it you've read the newspaper?' Kreuzer sipped coffee. 'It sounds to me like the Feds are chasing their tail in Chicago.'

'Anyone can plant a newspaper story. As a matter of fact, it's the kind of thing that Carr would do.'

'It's one of the best scores I have ever seen. It's not like taking ten percent on furs and silver. This is gold. Cash to cash. But, of course, it's whatever you think. You're the expert, so to speak.' Kreuzer chuckled, then stirred his coffee with a tiny spoon.

'How did you meet the woman?'

'A coffee klatch referral. She attended one of my hypnosis demonstrations.' Kreuzer drank almost the entire cup of coffee and looked into the cup. Placing it to his lips again, he threw his head back and drained it. As he did so, Bailey noticed that Kreuzer had thick fingers. A diamond pinky ring he wore was half hidden in flesh.

'Alarms?'

Kreuzer shook his head. He pulled a white card from his pocket and handed it to Bailey.

Bailey read it. It was Peckham's address. 'Dogs?'

'No dogs.'

'It sounds too easy,' Bailey said. 'I don't like things that sound too easy.'

'Of course, it's not like we're tiptoeing in the house. And with gold coins, we don't have to worry about talking to a fence. They're untraceable. Any coin store in the world would be happy to buy them with no questions asked. Three hundred grand is a lot of bucks. A load of bucks.'

'I'll think about it.'

Bailey finished his coffee and Kreuzer paid the bill. 'Whatever you think,' Kreuzer said amiably as they strolled past mannequins wearing sable and chinchilla coats. They reached the bank of elevators and Kreuzer pressed the down button. A vacant elevator arrived; they stepped on and pressed different floors. Nothing was said as they descended.

'I hope you go for it,' Kreuzer said when the elevator stopped at the ground floor. 'I really do. I have a real good feeling about it.'

'We'll see.' Bailey stepped off the elevator into the underground garage and made his way to the unmarked police car. Delsey Piper was leaning back against the headrest with her eyes closed.

Bailey got into the car and started the engine. He backed out of the parking space and steered toward the street exit.

'What did your informant have to say?' she asked without opening her eyes.

'Routine info. Someone's planning a burglary in Beverly Hills. He'll find out more and get back to me in a few days … blah blah blah.'

'What are we going to do about it?'

'There's not much we can do about it.'