Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

Heat of the Moment by James Lincoln Warren

© 2007 by James Lincoln Warren

James Lincoln Warren’s historicals regularly appear in our sister publication, AHMM. For his EQMM debut, he penned his first contemporary crime story. “The last thing the fiction world needs is more P.I.s based in L.A.,” he says, “but I live in L.A. and it seemed that not to take on the daunting task of continuing the tradition would be an act of cowardice.” Here’s his splendid addition to the P.I. canon!

“I tell you what I think,” Tarkauskas said, leaning back in his chair. It was an expensive chair, like everything else in his office. The view of the Hollywood Hills from the picture window behind him was expensive. His golden tan was expensive. His perfectly coiffed blond hair and fit physique were expensive. He stopped to light a cigar. It, too, was ex-pensive: a Ramon Allones from Havana. It was also illegal, which I guess must have made it all the more savory.

“Do they allow smoking in here, Mr. Tarkauskas? Not that I mind, of course.”

Tarkauskas took a deep drag. The circle of ash at the end of his corona was uneven, burning quicker along one side than the other.

He blew the smoke toward my face.

“Who’s going to tell me different?”

I shrugged. “You were saying...”

“That’s right. I was saying. I was saying that I think you’re nothing but a slick spick in Armani. Fifty years ago you would’ve been a pachuco in a zoot suit with a switchblade on the end of a long chain and thought it was classy, but now you read GQ and pack a Sig Sauer in a suede shoulder rig and think you really got class.”

“I’m unarmed. And Ferrari isn’t a Spanish name, it’s Italian. Like the car.”

“So you’re a Guinea greaseball instead of a beaner greaseball. Either way, you’re a cheap thug dressed up like a pimp on Easter.”

It’s times like these I wish Malone were here instead of me.

“Right,” I said, making a point of not raising my voice. “And you’re a bohunk neo-Nazi who should be wearing a white sheet with a pointed hood to fit his head. What of it? And let me tell you, moron, you don’t smoke a fine cigar like that as if you were some dumb dopehead bogarting a joint.”

He leaned forward and pressed a button on his desk. “I didn’t get rich by being a moron.”

“No, you got rich by being a thief.”

Two minutes later I was being shown the sidewalk by two oxen with shaved heads managing to walk upright in cheap suits. Summer can be brutal in Los Angeles.

That interview went well.

At least I didn’t have far to go. The interview had been in West Hollywood at a highrise on Sunset, and our office is on Pico Boulevard in Beverly Hills. As luck would have it, my partner, Custer Malone — yes, his real name, so let’s just say that his parents weren’t very racially sensitive, a flaw I’m glad to say he didn’t inherit, but please, no “Old Cuss” jokes — anyway, Malone was waiting for me there and I had to fill him in on my spectacular performance. He sat at his desk, wearing Levis and a guayabera (evidence he had been doing field work someplace where a suit and tie would have made him conspicuous), his feet wrapped in his shiny oxblood Lucchese boots. I never tire of telling him Lucchese is an Italian name.

“Shucks, Red—” he calls me “Red” not because of my coloring, which is dark, but because my first name is Carmine — “he played you like a Cajun on a fiddle.”

“What do you mean? He’s a jerk.”

“ ’Course he’s a jerk,” Malone said sagely in his Texas drawl. “That’s the point. Didn’t they ever teach you to play poker back at the old Fifth?”

He meant my old precinct. “In Chinatown, it’s Pai Gow. In Little Italy, they play Scopone.”

“Well, no wonder. I’m talkin’ poker, son.” Malone is only about eight years older than I am. When he gets paternalistic like this, I think of him as the Senator, an image that isn’t hurt by his snow-white hair. “Now, I’m not talking about that no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em so popular on TV these days. A real poker player varies his game, and when he hooks a fish, he keeps coming back for more.”

“So what are you talking about?”

“Your real professional poker players don’t usually play in casinos, Red. They play privately and keep below the radar. They seek out folks with more money than sense, and then they got a guaranteed income for life. So what do you think happens when another good poker player shows up at a game that’s already somebody’s goose?”

“Goose?”

“As in the laying golden eggs variety.”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Malone nodded in that laconic way of his. “The player already there does everything in his power to drive the other guy out. It’s your basic alpha-male bull hockey: ‘These milk duds belong to me.’ He looks for a weakness, tries to piss off the newcomer and get him off his game. Racial slurs usually work pretty well. No matter how well the newcomer does, he’s not likely to come back.”

“Damn.” I suddenly felt like a fool. “Tarkauskas saw me coming.”

“Yep. But don’t worry. I put Zavala on his tail. Something’ll turn up.”

Jessica Zavala’s one of our ops. She’s a heart-faced knockdown-gorgeous Latina, and nobody’s fool. If anybody could finesse a smartass bigoted gangster, it was her.

“You knew something like this was going to happen.” I tried to keep any hint of admiration out of my voice. Sometimes I think Malone has the second sight.

“Bound to. He’s a player.” He tapped a file on the desk marked “Darryl Tarkauskas” in a Sharpie scrawl. “Son of a gun sure makes for an interesting read.”

Tarkauskas came to the attention of our company, California Operatives, Inc. (more colloquially, “Cal Ops”), when a chubby twenty-four-year-old computer geek was missed by his mother.

His dad, Barry Pincus, was a fifty-two-year-old attorney who specialized in family law. “Family law” sounds very wholesome, but believe me, it isn’t. It’s like being a divorce lawyer, only your clients are more vicious and less civilized. We had done a few background checks and some other routine investigative work for Pincus, and when his son Buddy hadn’t been heard from in over a week, Barry’s wife Helene called Cus Malone, mainly I guess because he was the only private detective she’d ever heard of. Barry wasn’t too thrilled that she called us in, but he knew better than to cross Helene.

Malone and I decided to send Stanley Stowicz, one of our more experienced ops, to interview Helene Pincus, because he has a very reassuring way about him and always manages to have a good rapport with nice middle-aged Jewish ladies. This time, it was a mistake. She sent him packing. By the time Stowicz got back to Cal Ops, he was fuming.

“She called me a clerk,” he said. “Twenty-six years a private detective, never a complaint, and you know before I came here, I worked for Continental, and Pinkerton also? — and yet she has the chutzpah to call me a clerk. Me! Says she’ll only deal with the boss.”

“Guess she wants the best,” said Malone drily, quickly adding: “I’m kidding, Stowicz.” He pulled out his PDA, checked it, and frowned. “I’m booked solid the rest of the afternoon — appearance downtown. How about it, Red? Feel like visiting the old yenta?”

“I’ll go,” I said. “Don’t take it personally, Stan. We all know what an asset to the firm you are.”

“You’re welcome to it,” he replied. “Yenta is right. Give me somebody polite, instead, like a hopped-up biker on crank, maybe.”

But Mrs. Pincus didn’t want to meet me at her Fairfax District condo. When I called, she asked me to meet her in the Palisades at her son’s home. A lot of the streets in Pacific Palisades are as tangled as a can of bait as they switch back on themselves up the hills north of the Pacific Coast Highway. It took me longer than I expected to find the house. It was one of those flat-roofed modern things painted a startling white with glass bricks and steel rails everywhere.

There was a spectacular two-story ocean view from the living room. A loft bigger than my entire apartment overlooked the room itself. In spite of its size, the house had the appearance of a bachelor’s place, like a set from a James Bond movie — all steel, chrome, and glass. Spare and clean.

Helene Pincus was an expensively dressed woman in her forties, her hard blue eyes unsoftened by liberally applied makeup. She had probably been extremely handsome in her twenties.

Her first words to me were, “You look like a Vegas lounge singer. Where’s the cowboy?”

“Mr. Malone had to be in court and couldn’t make it. I’m Carmine Ferrari. Stan said you wanted the boss, and Mr. Malone and I are partners.”

“What’s your background?”

“Six years as Cus Malone’s partner here in L.A., eight years with the NYPD before that. Bachelor’s and master’s from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.”

She nodded curtly. “Come upstairs. I want to show you something.”

I followed her up a series of carpeted steel slats coming out of the wall to the loft. She led me into what was obviously the master bedroom suite. It was very nice, with a 42-inch LCD HDTV mounted on the wall, a domed skylight big enough for Mount Palomar, and sliding doors leading to a teak deck. The king-size bed was made up. The walk-in closet contained jeans, black dickies, aloha and hip polo shirts, one cheap blue Men’s Wearhouse suit, and an assortment of expensive sneakers and Doc Martens. From the clothes, I judged Buddy to be about five eight, weighing somewhere around two hundred and twenty pounds. There were framed science-fiction-film 1-sheets and colorful travel posters of the Grand Canyon on the walls. The whole setup was fussily neat.

“I hate this room,” she said, crossing her arms. “It has all the charm of an operating theater. So, Mr. Ferrari, you’re a detective. What do you make of it?”

“He likes Star Trek.”

“Buddy is twenty-four. His idea of a nutritious meal is a pizza with extra cheese and a six-pack of light beer.”

“You’re saying that it’s too clean.”

She nodded. “He was nineteen when he graduated from Stanford, summa cum laude. After he was accepted to do his master’s at Caltech, he moved back in with us, before he dropped out and got this place. Don’t think I’m just being a Jewish mother when I say he’s a genius. Brilliant, math whiz, and all that, but a pig, much as it pains me to admit it. He wouldn’t pick his briefs up off the floor where he dropped them unless he ran out of underwear.”

“He probably has a cleaning lady.”

She frowned. “As I said, he’s twenty-four — a young twenty-four. When he was a teenager, he was the kind of kid who put a ‘Keep Out’ sign on his door. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, at least not that I know about. Somebody cleaned up here, all right, but I don’t think it was any cleaning lady.”

“Then who?”

She turned on her heel and I followed her back out to the loft. She sat down in a Danish leather-and-chrome settee in front of a glass coffee table and I sat opposite her. She pulled out a case from her purse, deftly removed a cigarette, and lit up.

“He’s been gone over a week,” she said, sucking on her cigarette. “The message on his business phone says he’s away on business.” She gave a sharp little bark of a laugh, totally without mirth. “What Buddy knows about business would fit in a thimble. When he says he’s taking a business trip, it usually means he’s schlepping to Las Vegas or Hawaii with one of his friends to get away from it all. But he’s never been gone this long before. Not a whole week.”

She took another drag and looked around, noticing there wasn’t an ashtray.

“Tell me about Buddy’s business,” I said.

She shook her head, dumped her ash on the glass of the table, and looked directly in my eyes. “What do I know from computers? When Buddy decided to set up the business, he asked Barry for a good entertainment lawyer. Barry suggested this Armenian, Haig Yarjanian. I don’t like him. Too Hollywood. You should start with him.”

“Entertainment lawyer — whatever for?”

She shrugged and smashed her cigarette butt out on the surface of the table. “Like I should know?”

Los Angeles has one of the most diverse ethnic populations of any city on earth, and you can take it from me, because I’m from New York. L.A. has the third-largest global concentration of Jews, and the largest populations of Koreans and Iranians in the world outside their countries of origin. The immense size of the black and Latino communities is well known. Little Tokyo downtown and the Sawtelle neighborhood on the Westside have been Japanese for almost a century. East Hollywood and Glendale are Armenian enclaves. And then there are the Chinese, Vietnamese, Russians, Ethiopians, Indians — you name it.

Because of this, Cal Ops has a policy of trying to have as many “ethnic” employees as possible. Malone’s idea, and a good one, because you never know which neighborhood you might need to send an op to, and a P.I. needs to blend to be effective. So you’d think that we’d have an Armenian on the payroll.

Unfortunately, we didn’t. Not counting Malone and me, we only employ four ops. Besides Stowicz and Jessica Zavala we have Nora Moon (Korean-American) and John Jett (black). Consequently, Malone decided he would tackle Yarjanian all on his lonesome.

There are uniforms that aren’t really uniforms — like the lawyer in a camel cashmere sport jacket, red power tie, navy dress slacks, and black tasseled loafers. For a Texas Ranger, the uniform consists of a spotless white shirt with two Western-style button-down breast pockets, a conservative tie with a perfect Windsor knot, a dark three-button whipcord suit with a single vent, a broad white Stetson sporting a classic stovepipe block, and, of course, boots. Not forgetting the hip-mounted Colt Gold Cup.

The Senator mostly gave up the Stetson, it being a little out of place in L.A. except at the Rose Parade, but otherwise retained his dress habits. He likewise retained the habit of recording his interviews, then immediately transcribing them. You can use contemporaneous notes when giving evidence in court, and Malone is nothing if not methodical. Rule Number One at Cal Ops is, Document everything.

When he got back, I listened to the tape.

MALONE: Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Yarjanian.

Malone had found a publicity photo of the lawyer. I studied it as I listened. In it, Yarjanian stood in his office next to a famous basketball player, smiling broadly, his eyes nonetheless exuding a vulpine coldness. He wore his wavy hair long, almost to his shoulders, and in spite of being dwarfed by the hoop artist, you could tell he was tall. He looked about thirty-eight, forty.

YARJANIAN: Anything to help the family, Mr. Malone. Barry Pincus is a dear friend.A lovely man.

MALONE: I know you can’t divulge anything that might compromise attorney-client privilege, but Mrs. Pincus thought you might be able to help us find her son.

YARJANIAN: Well, I only did a little work for Buddy, all of it a matter of public record. It was important work, sure. But Pleiades has its own house counsel now, so I wouldn’t know about that.

MALONE: Pleiades?

YARJANIAN: The company Buddy put together with Darryl Tarkauskas.

MALONE: Sorry, but this is the first I’ve heard about it. What kind of company?

YARJANIAN: Computer entertainment industry. The future, baby. Within ten years, TV and film will be toast. Listen to me. If you’re smart, you’ll catch the wave. I can set you up with some excellent opportunities—

MALONE: That’s the sort of thing I have to let the investors in the agency handle. I’ll mention it to them. But getting back to Buddy—

Of course, Malone didn’t mention that he and I were the only so-called “investors” in Cal Ops.

YARJANIAN: Right. Anyway, Buddy came to me because he thought he could make a lot of money with an invention of his. He already had the patent, but he needed investors and a connection for content.

MALONE: What kind of invention?

YARJANIAN: Video data compression. You’ve heard of MP3? It’s a way to reduce the size of digital audio files. That’s audio data compression. Instead of having to replace a tape or a CD in your Walkman, you get an iPod the size of a credit card and listen to hours and hours of music in MP3 format. There’s also video data compression, but Buddy invented a new process that was vastly better than any other standard. His idea was to market entire libraries of movies on a little gizmo you could fit in the palm of your hand. He didn’t want the kind of trouble that went with the whole Napster file-sharing debacle, and so he came to me. But I told him without the product — his so-called “vPod” — there wasn’t much I could do. You ever make a pitch to Hollywood?

MALONE: Can’t say as I have.

YARJANIAN: Well, you got to have something to make a buzz with. A fat kid — sorry — with just an idea and no demonstration model isn’t likely to win over too many of the hotshot MBAs who decide where to put the money. He has to have something to show them first. That means he needed a partner in the manufacturing segment. I tell you, I thought about investing myself. Glad I didn’t, now.

MALONE: Why didn’t you?

YARJANIAN: I’m very good at what I do, Custer — can I call you Custer? — but manufacturing, that’s a whole different gig. Finding a factory, suppliers for parts, labor, distribution. Major probs. Buddy needed a venture capitalist. I’m a lawyer. I told him I could help with getting the content, you know, licenses for movies, maybe, but otherwise it was out of my league. But I did say I would make a few calls. That’s how he got together with Darryl. I’m glad Buddy found somebody interested, but I was a little pissed off when they decided to get house counsel, especially after I’d put them together. But I guess I see their point.And Pleiades is a real mess.

MALONE: So who is this Darryl — what did you say his last name was?

YARJANIAN: Tarkauskas. Like I said, he’s a venture capitalist. Used to be big into junk bonds. Now he produces schlock teenage slasher pics for the direct-to-video market.

MALONE: Tell me about Pleiades.

YARJANIAN: You know they didn’t even let me handle the incorporation? That’s gratitude for you. But it’s probably just as well, given their problems.

Pleiades Computer Corporation was in trouble from the beginning. Buddy might have been a genius, but he was a moody kid completely unequipped to enter the cutthroat world of high-tech business. The company began to hemorrhage as deals fell through one after another, including the costly manufacturing plant they had tried to set up in Baja. Yarjanian seemed to relish giving Malone every embarrassing detail.

At the end of the interview, Yarjanian gave Pleiades Computer’s business address on Sunset Boulevard to Malone. And then the parting shot.

YARJANIAN: I wouldn’t worry too much. I’ve heard that Buddy has a habit of disappearing for a few days with one of his nerd compadres when the stress gets too much. Las Vegas, Hawaii, the Grand Canyon, that kind of thing. I bet he turns up.

MALONE: What would it mean for Pleiades if he doesn’t?

YARJANIAN: That’s a good question. Buddy owns the patent outright. He’s only licensing it to Pleiades.

The next day, Buddy did turn up.

Dead.

Two-thirds down the South Rim of the Grand Canyon along a rough trail several miles off the literal beaten path. He was found by a couple of experienced hikers. Cell phone coverage is iffy out there, but they had walkie-talkies and conveyed the news of their grisly discovery to a friend back up on the Rim. She in turn called the authorities.

The body was partially decomposed thanks to the heat and the fact that he’d been there for ten days, but there was no doubt he had died of natural causes. Heat stroke. The second most common cause of death, after falling, in one of the deadliest and most beautiful places on earth. I remembered the posters in his bedroom. It made me sad.

Malone was able to get them to fax us a map showing where the body had been found.

Buddy’s death was ruled an accident.

Since we hadn’t found out anything useful and Barry Pincus was a regular client, Malone and I decided we should waive our fees for the little work we had put into it. If Cus had just sent the Pincuses a letter explaining what we were going to do, and if Pincus weren’t a probate lawyer, that would have been the end of it. But being the sentimental cowboy white-hat that he is, Malone had to call and express his condolences personally. And being the professional courthouse mouthpiece that he is, Pincus asked a few questions on cross.

It started with Malone on his desk phone saying, “If there’s anything I can do...”

He frowned and motioned me to sit down.

“Mr. Pincus, I’m going to put you on speaker.” He pressed the button and put the handset down.

“Mr. Ferrari is with me now, Mr. Pincus.”

“Hello,” Pincus said brusquely.

“This is Carmine Ferrari,” I said. Not knowing what else to say, I continued, “I’m so sorry about Buddy.”

“He was a good boy. Helene is shattered. Nothing will bring him back, but I want to know if you found the money.”

Malone’s eyebrows went up. He looked at me, a quizzical smile on his lips. “I’m sorry, Mr. Pincus, but Mr. Ferrari and I don’t know what money you’re talking about.”

“Buddy died intestate. I don’t know how a son of mine could be so stupid, especially after coming into some money, but there it is. He wasn’t married, no kids, and so Helene and I are his heirs. Now, according to the shyster nafkeleh at Pleiades, Buddy was flat broke. Everything belongs to the company except the house. What, I just fell off the turnip truck? I tell you, Malone, Buddy was worth millions. I want to know where that money went.”

Malone looked at me with a grave expression. “Excuse me a minute, Mr. Pincus.” He pressed the mute button on the phone.

“Well? What do you think, Red?”

“Maybe one of us better have a chat with Darryl Tarkauskas,” I said.

“I agree. And there’s something else been bothering me, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Didn’t Buddy always go off on these mini-vacations with some old amigo? What was he doing all alone like that when he slipped out of the saddle?”

“I don’t know. But if we’re going to continue, I think we’d better think twice about giving Barry Pincus a free ride.”

“Right.” He pushed the speaker button. “Mr. Pincus, we think that’s a very good question. Let us look into it for you.”

“You bet your sweet ass,” Pincus said, and that ended the consultation.

The next day I went to go see Tarkauskas.

I should have figured that the Senator only used me to get a rise out of Tarkauskas. Figuratively speaking, I was the bird dog flushing out the game, while Jessica Zavala sat in the blind with the shotgun.

In this case, the “shotgun” was a radio receiver mounted in Jessica’s silver Honda Accord (actually her company car). Private investigators are not allowed to apply for wiretaps, and California law prohibits recording telephone conversations without a court-issued warrant or the consent of all parties. But if you have a conversation over a publicly assigned radio frequency, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy, and anybody can legally listen in. Difficult with cell phones, but easy with wireless handsets on landlines, such as Tarkauskas had in his office.

Malone had no sooner shared his wisdom about playing poker when Zavala reported in. Malone put her on speaker.

“He just made a call to a fitness center in the Valley and asked for some girl named Amber, like she’s a personal trainer or something,” she said. “He’s too smart to say much over the phone, but he did tell her Mr. Ferrari had been here, and that they needed to talk. She sounds like a total bimbo.”

“Did they schedule a rendezvous?” Malone asked.

“She went, like, pick her up after work?” Zavala said, sarcastically affecting a Valley Girl accent, “—And they’d, like, talk in the car?”

“No good. Keep on him when he leaves, and let me think about how I can get them to have their powwow somewhere we can overhear them.”

“Right, boss.” She hung up.

“Johnny did a righteous job on Tarkauskas’s background,” Malone observed. John Jett had been a detective with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department before joining us, and his local connections were golden. “Did you know the boy’s got property in Palm Springs? Now I think that’s mighty interesting.”

He looked me in the eye. “How’s about you look into Buddy’s friends, the ones he didn’t take with him to the Grand Canyon? I only ask you because you get on so well with Helene, and I reckon that’s where we should start.”

“Grazie, paesan,” I said, deadpan. “But this time I’m taking a gun.”

Theodore Morganstern had known Buddy since fourth grade, and the two had remained best friends all through high school. When Buddy left for Stanford, Ted had gone to SC and gotten a degree in film. He now worked as a computer animator for a local independent production company. He was as gangly as Buddy had been plump. He affected a sandy moustacheless goatee, loose jeans, and a Von Dutch T-shirt. The only thing missing was a skateboard.

“You know he offered me a job at Pleiades,” he told me, trying to keep his fried eggplant focaccia sandwich from falling apart. We were at a chichi bistro on Washington Boulevard in Culver City, the kind of place where the young turks of The Business show up to prove they’re beyond cool. “I turned him down, man. I didn’t want any job to get in the way of our friendship, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Very noble of you,” I said. “Still, I’ll bet you let him pay for the trips you guys took together.”

“It’s like this bond we had,” Ted replied. “Whichever one of us got rich first, he’d, like, help out the other. Dude didn’t pay for everything, you know, just the ride and the hotel. I like my work and they pay me pretty well.” He took a bite from his sandwich and eggplant snot dripped wholesale onto the Formica tabletop.

“Did he use a travel agent?” That’s where I’d find records of his trips.

Ted shrugged. “Usually he booked the hotel on-line, but we didn’t bother with airline tickets because of the Hawker.”

“The Hawker?”

“Company jet, man. A Raytheon Hawker 1000. Sweet.”

“Ah. Why didn’t you go with him to the Grand Canyon?”

He shook his head, all the while chewing like a goat, and swallowed. “Never asked me.”

“Wasn’t that unusual?”

He laughed. “Man, how stupid are you?”

I kept my temper. “Not very.”

“Why do you think he didn’t ask me? Because he met a chick. A very hot chick, like, Buffy in a bikini or whatever, you know, definitely not the kind you’d take home to meet Mom. Hell, I wouldn’t have asked me, either.”

“Are you sure she went with him?”

“Like he’s going to tell me, Hi, Ted, hey, I’m going to take a few days off and go to Arizona to get lucky. No, I can’t be sure. But it stands to reason.” He snagged another huge bite.

“This girl have a name?”

He smiled again, nodded, swallowed. “Too bad he didn’t tell me what it was, though. Our bond wasn’t that close, capisce?”

“How about ‘Amber’?”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Thanks, anyway,” I said, getting up. “Oh, and — ciao.”

My caustic farewell was lost on him. He just smiled and cheerily said, “Later, dude!”

When I got back to the office, Stan Stowicz was minding the store. “Where you been?”

“Interviewing a possible wit on the Pincus case,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

Stowicz pursed his lips and shook his head. “Don’t know. Malone took a call from Jessica and took off.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Was I supposed to?”

“Tarkauskas must be on the move.” I reached for my cell and speed-dialed Zavala.

She picked up on the first ring. “Hello.”

“Ferrari. What’s the situation?”

“Subject left early, and I trailed him to Victory Fitness in Van Nuys, where he met this Amber. Cute little blonde, but dresses like some puta. So I called Malone, and he met me there, then we split up after subject took the girl home, and he followed subject. We didn’t get to hear what they talked about. Anyway, now I’m on surveillance outside the girl’s apartment in Sherman Oaks. By the way, her last name, at least according to the apartment directory, is Gerhardt.”

“Good. Keep me informed, okay?”

“You got it, boss.”

Next I dialed Malone. No answer. I called Malone’s wife Brenda at her TV studio. She’s a producer for a cable reality show on forensic science. She hadn’t heard from Cus but promised she would have him call me as soon as she did.

There was nothing to do at that point but wait. Stowicz cleared his throat.

“What is it, Stan?”

“The Pincus matter. Malone had me look into this patent business.”

“What did you find out?”

“Somebody’s lying.”

“Quick. Call the Action News hotline.”

“Very funny. Seriously, I talked some more with that Armenian lawyer, and also with house counsel at Pleiades Computer. The Armenian said that young Pincus owned the patent and licensed it to the company against future profits. House counsel—”

“The shyster nafkeleh.”

Stowicz did a double-take. “What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“Well, house counsel said the company owned the patent, that they purchased it from the Pincus boy outright, but for an undisclosed amount. Still, it must have been a pretty big sum. So where’s the money?”

“Well, that’s the sixty-four-dollar question, isn’t it? If Yarjanian is right, that explains why there was no cash. But if house counsel is telling the truth, which seems unlikely — what did you say his name was?”

“Her name. I didn’t, but it’s Amber Gerhardt.”

“Amber Gerhardt.”

“What? You look like you swallowed some air.”

“Stan, what’s a nafkeleh?”

“Shandeh. A nice New York boy like you, and you don’t know? It’s Yiddish for ‘little whore.’”

“Bound to be Buffy in a bikini.”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Yes, I am.”

My phone sang “Ch’ella mi creda libero.” Well, not sang, exactly, but I set the ringer to play the tune. It’s from La Fanciulla del West. After Sinatra, Caruso is my guy. But anything by Puccini will do.

“I was right. She’s a hooker,” said Zavala triumphantly after I’d answered. “She just got picked up in a stretch Caddy, dressed in a clingy silver lamé camisole, leather miniskirt, and stiletto heels that would do a dominatrix proud. And she’s got a suitcase, so I guess it’s a long date. I’m following. But I haven’t been able to get through to Malone.”

“You’re close — she actually belongs to the world’s second oldest profession. Stay with her. I’ll talk to Cus. Be discreet.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

She hung up.

There was something still tickling at the back of my mind. Suddenly I had it. “Stan, do me a favor.”

“As long as I get paid. What?”

“The wit I mentioned told me he and Buddy always traveled together in an executive jet. Either Pleiades owns the airplane, or part of it, or they lease it. It’s called a Raytheon Hawker 1000. Call around to the local general aviation airports — start with Van Nuys, since it’s the biggest — and see what you can dig up.”

“Your wish is my command.” He sat down and reached for the phone.

I sauntered over to Malone’s desk. He had left a yellow legal pad on the blotter. There was something written on the top page. The top word was all in caps and underlined:

Below that, but in smaller script, was: H2O?

Cus had left his long-distance phone log next to the pad. Remember, Rule Number One is document everything, so I wasn’t too surprised to see it there, except for the fact that he usually kept it under the phone. He had made several calls to different numbers in the 928 area code, one for longer than fifteen minutes, that very morning.

I’m a detective. I did what detectives do. I asked about it. “Hey, Stan, where’s nine two eight?”

“Between nine two seven and nine two nine. What do you mean, where’s nine two eight?”

“Never mind.” I pulled out the fax showing where Buddy had died and read the transmission machine’s phone number. 928.

The area code for northern Arizona.

“All right, Carmine, I’ve got your information on the plane,” Stan said. “A Raytheon Hawker 1000 executive jet hangared at Van Nuys, jointly owned by four companies, including Pleiades Computer. Because it’s a jet, it usually flies at altitude, over 18,000 feet, and that means they have to file flight plans.”

“So there’s a record of Buddy’s trip to the Grand Canyon.”

“Sorry. One of the other companies was using it that week. The plane was mostly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.”

So Buddy had kept the Grand Canyon trip a secret. Not hard to see why. Going off to get lucky in Arizona with the kind of girl you wouldn’t introduce to Mom. Not only that, but the girl wasn’t some tech groupie, she was house counsel, an employee. Office romances can get sticky.

Then it struck me. I speed-dialed Zavala again.

“Tell me you aren’t at the airport in Van Nuys,” I said.

“What are you, psychic?”

“Did you see who’s with Ms. Gerhardt in the limo?”

“You are psychic,” she said, her voice a little in awe. “I was about to call you and tell you. It’s not a john like I thought. She’s with subject.”

Tarkauskas.

“Jess, they have to file a flight plan. Find out where they’re going. A donut will get you a dozen they’re headed for Flagstaff. Call me as soon as you find out.” I hit End and dialed the airline. There was a flight at six to Phoenix, with a connection to Flagstaff. I made the reservation and read off my credit-card number to the reservation clerk.

“Stan, you’ve got to drive me to LAX. And see if you can get ahold of Mr. Malone after you drop me off. Tell him I’ve gone to Arizona. And tell him he was right.”

Some airlines won’t let you pack any handguns at all in your baggage. America West follows federal guidelines requiring the weapon be declared, unloaded, and stored in the manufacturer’s hardshell container, locked, in your regular unlocked suitcase. You’re allowed eleven rounds per weapon, likewise locked in a separate container. Arizona recognizes my California CCW permit, and frankly, it’s real easy to get a gun there, so I had to think twice about packing, if you’ll pardon the expression. But I didn’t know if I’d have time to get another gun, so I packed my main piece, intending to wear it on my belt holster once on the ground, and a little.380 AMT backup, which would go in an ankle holster. I hoped they wouldn’t get ripped off en route.

I wasn’t sure I’d need a gun, but it seemed like a good idea.

I was almost aboard the jet going to Phoenix when Zavala got back to me. My hunch was right, as I knew it would be. Tarkauskas and Gerhardt had filed their flight plan for Flagstaff. They would get there before me, of course, but if they were going there for the reason I thought, they wouldn’t be able to do anything until morning.

My guns came through safely. In Flagstaff, I rented as nondescript a car as I could find, a dark green Ford Escort. Discreet enquiry (a detection trade term of art, that, by which we mean being sneakier than an alley cat at a canary convention) had led me to find out that Tarkauskas had likewise rented a vehicle, predictably a black Escalade, so I spent some time riding around Flagstaff looking in hotel parking lots until I found their car. Then I hunkered down to wait. I knew they’d be up early.

It was before dawn when I saw Tarkauskas, Amber Gerhardt, and one of his bovine thugs climb into the Cadillac. It was the first time I’d actually seen Gerhardt, but this time she wasn’t dressed up like a slutty starlet condescending to get loaded in a trendy nightspot. Instead, she was in a khaki ensemble that included a military-cut short-sleeve shirt and a pair of tight shorts revealing her shapely bronze legs, and looked like a stripper’s take on Indiana Jones — the effect was only partly spoiled by her big Wolverine hiking boots. Zavala was right, she was cute in a kittenish way, more like a high-school cheerleader than some sultry, sophisticated vixen already out of professional school. I would never have pegged her as an attorney.

I let them get a couple of blocks ahead before I started to follow them. I knew their destination, after all. Grand Canyon National Park, the place where Buddy cashed in.

Once they exited I-40 to AZ-64 North, I fell further back until they were out of sight. There wasn’t anywhere else they could go. I picked them up again near the entrance to the park.

The ranger on duty there asked me if I was carrying any firearms. I lied and said no. There’s an old saying that sometimes it’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission, and I didn’t want to spend several hours in conversation with park rangers debating whether packing heat really was a good thing.

I followed them to a convenience mart in Grand Canyon Village, and while I was there I bought a cheap nylon knapsack and four one-liter bottles of water that just fit inside, being careful to keep a counter or two between myself and them the whole time. The goomba wanted some beer and Tarkauskas told him not to be an idiot, an order which was clearly impossible for the goomba to obey. They left. I climbed back into the Escort and headed out right behind them as they pulled out, leisurely going eastward past the road back to civilization, onward for several miles until they stopped at Yaki Point.

I drove past them for a couple of minutes and then doubled back. Yaki Point marks the trailhead of the South Kaibab Trail, the most direct route down from the South Rim to the Kaibab Bridge and Phantom Ranch at the bottom. In the pellucid morning light, the view was awe-inspiring. You can’t be an atheist in the Grand Canyon.

There were clouds at several altitudes, big cottonballs of roiling cumulus, shining pink and ochre and dazzling white, like titanic sheep grazing in a sea-blue pasture, and speeding above them were high threads of coral-tinged silver mare’s-tails. The layered buttes and plateaus of the Canyon’s brittle walls, softened by the mist, rose out of the morning fog, reminding me of the strange crags and mountains in Chinese paintings. The warm air caressed me, as comforting as a child’s sweet-scented blanket.

In the parking lot, I found their black Caddy SUV sitting like a lump of tar on the asphalt. They couldn’t be more than three or four minutes ahead of me on the trail.

They had come to destroy evidence of murder, I was certain. Malone had figured out how they had done it, and that it somehow involved Buddy’s backpack — Buddy had not been found with a backpack, but the idea of taking a long hike in the Grand Canyon without one is absurd. That’s what his note on the legal pad had meant.

I wasn’t sure about Malone’s question about water — maybe he thought they had dumped the backpack in the Colorado River, expecting it to be lost. Anyway, it was a sure bet that they were now going after it. I didn’t know if they would bring it back with them or get rid of it somewhere in the wilderness, but I couldn’t take the chance. I had no choice but to follow.

I had brought a handheld GPS receiver about the size of a cell phone with me from L.A. Not fancy, but I can read a lat/long, and I had the map the park rangers had faxed to Malone showing where Buddy’s corpse had been found. I’d taken the precaution of entering the location as a way point in the little receiver. I made sure it was working and then went after them.

I wasn’t half an hour down the trail when I realized that somebody was quickly cranking up the thermostat. I’d had to sprint a little to get Tarkauskas and company within sight, and now I was starting to regret it, even though I had no choice. I could tell that they were using the goomba as a pack mule while Tarkauskas and the girl carried smaller packs.

My shirt stuck to my back beneath the cheap knapsack, and I felt perspiration drip from my armpits down my sides. A fine mist of sweat glistened on my arms. It didn’t take me long to polish off the first liter of water. I realized I should have brought a hat.

A couple of hours farther down and the headache started. I almost missed it when they left the trail. Checking my GPS, I could see that they were headed toward where Buddy had been found some miles to the west. For some reason the LCD on the little unit was hard to read. Man, it was hot. I drank another liter, careful not to be too greedy.

I followed them along the thin, winding trail leading down into the baking vertical wilderness, careful to remain just hidden. Once I missed my footing and went down like a blubber boy doing a belly flop in a community swimming pool. Luckily I wasn’t near the precipice, but I waited for several minutes before picking myself up, in case they had heard me, and when I did stand up, I felt a surge of sickening vertigo that nearly sent me down again. I squatted until I felt better, and reached for another bottle of water.

Somehow I’d lost track of how much I’d drunk. The last bottle was only about one third full. I polished it off. What time was it? My watch wouldn’t stay in focus, but I finally realized it was about 2:30 P.M.

I had to hurry to pick up their trail. I couldn’t believe the temperature. Engine blocks don’t get that hot.

I was mentally drifting, putting one foot in front of the other, when I nearly knocked Tarkauskas over the edge.

He recovered quicker than I did. He stared at me, his face hard with surprise, and he shouted, “Amber! Trouble!”

I pulled out my gun and leveled it at his chest.

He smirked. “The Sig Sauer, I see.”

“It’s a Beretta, cacasenno,” I said. It was hard to hold the gun steady. “I told you I was Italian.”

Amber Gerhardt somehow appeared beside him. I switched my aim point to her.

“Look at him,” she said. Her voice irritated me. It was high and nasal. She laughed, a bubbling schoolgirl giggle, and it made me even angrier. My head was buzzing.

“Just let him drop,” she said.

“Amber, we can’t,” Tarkauskas said. “Not twice. We’ll get caught.”

“All we have to do is make sure that this body is never found,” she said. “It was only dumb luck that somebody found Pincus.”

I dropped to one knee. It wasn’t on purpose.

“The wop’s got a partner, Amber. He’ll come looking.”

“Let him look,” she said contemptuously. “If you hadn’t hooked up with that Jew-boy in the first place, none of this would have been necessary.”

“But Buddy was worth millions.”

“Yeah. Millions of somebody else’s money,” she said, “or have you forgotten who provided us the startup capital in the first place, and what they’ll do to us if they find out it was all pissed away?”

“But did you have to bring him out here to die? Jesus, that’s cold. Even for me.”

“Shut up. You know as well as I do that I had no choice. Do you think I enjoyed having that fat slob pet me like I was some Thai bar girl or something? He would have dragged us all down, Darryl, and you know it. He spent money like a sailor.” She laughed again, in that completely out-of-place giggle. “I don’t think Mr. Ferrari — it is Mr. Ferrari, isn’t it? — is doing so well.”

“I’m fine,” I said, but it didn’t quite come out. Blackness impinged on the edges of my vision.

“I don’t think so,” she said, reaching for my gun. Somehow I wasn’t fast enough to pull the trigger.

When I opened my eyes, I was facedown in the dirt. I managed to look up again. Everything was blurry, but I could make out the goomba with Tarkauskas and Gerhardt.

“I’m thinking we just pitch him over the edge,” she said. “That way, his cause of death will be different from Buddy’s. People fall off cliffs all the time out here.”

She looked at my gun. “You know, this is nice. Sexy.”

I reached for the AMT, but too slowly. The goomba stopped me and ripped the little weapon from my ankle holster and smacked the top of my head with it. It hurt, but wasn’t much worse than my headache.

“Naughty, naughty,” Amber said, as if I were some toddler. She squatted beside me and pointed the Beretta in my face. “Time to say goodbye, lover.”

I heard a shot.

Then I remember swinging in the air. The chop of moving helicopter blades percussed in the far distance. Hands eagerly grabbed me and pulled me into a small room, where it was mercifully cool. Shade at last. I passed out again.

“Dang, son, you’re alive.” No mistaking that voice. I opened my eyes.

“Hello, Malone.” I was in a Flagstaff hospital bed.

“The correct phrase is, ‘Howdy, pardner’,” he said, smiling. “Gave me quite a scare. What the Sam Hill were you thinking, going off like that?”

“I was following your lead. The backpack. I knew they had to go get the backpack.”

He shook his head. “Now that’s just plain ignorant, Red. Why do you think they would want to recover evidence at that very moment?”

“Because — because—” and then suddenly, I knew. My Italian ire rose. “Because you sent them after it.”

“Right in one. I set them up, Red. As you know, Buddy was found dead of heat stroke and without his backpack. Where was the water he should have been carrying in his saddlebags? Somebody must have taken it away, knowing he couldn’t survive the canyon’s heat without it.”

“How do you know he couldn’t have survived?”

“ ’Cause I’m from Texas, and I’ve spent a little time out in the desert now and again. I don’t think there’s too many deserts in New York, so you probably wouldn’t know what it takes to survive in one. Well, it takes a human body at least two solid weeks to acclimate to a desert climate. Buddy certainly didn’t do that. I also told you I thought it was interesting that Tarkauskas had a home in Palm Springs.”

“So you told Tarkauskas that the authorities were looking for the backpack, that they suspected foul play.”

“Didn’t tell him, just let it be known. I was pretty sure he’d try to keep it from the law. So I baited the trap and he fell for it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I was pretty angry by then. After all, I’d nearly lost my life on the most moronic of quixotic quests.

“How was I to know you were going to gallivant off to Arizona? I thought I had the operation under control. It’s not like this is our only case — I expected you’d stay in L.A. until you heard from me. You could have knocked me down with a flour tortilla when we — the park rangers and me, that is — saw you tailing our quarry. You were too close behind them for us to risk pulling you off. We had to wait.”

“Until I was half-dead from heat stroke,” I said. “Thanks a lot, pardner.”

“Now don’t be like that. You got them to confess.” He slapped my thigh. “Good work.”

“Confess?”

“Parabolic listening dishes recorded everything. I’ve done stuff like this before, you know, back in Lone Star country. But when that Gerhardt girl put your gun in your face, I knew it was time to call the game, so I put a shot right across her scrawny-ass bows.”

“So everything’s wrapped up nice and neat.”

“It is now. I don’t know that they ever would have found the backpack, anyway, so your intervention was well timed. And to prove it, I brought you a get-well present.”

He pulled out a portable CD player with a set of light headphones. “Enjoy, son.”

So do you think it was Sinatra, or Caruso, or anything by Puccini? Hell, no. It was The Best of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Cus said he wanted me to learn to appreciate real music.

If I could have gotten out of bed, I’d have killed him. But by the time I got back to L.A., I was feeling a bit more generous. So I got tickets for the opera and gave them to Brenda, and she made him sit through an entire production of Madarna Butterfly. She wept like a teenager for Cio-Cio-San’s troubles while he had to stay awake the whole time or face her implacable wrath.

We Italians get revenge.