The Monkey

24

The morning sky was a rich orange when I left the bed. Ellen was up, wearing the socks and the big terry robe. She had the washing machine going, doing two towels and the clothes she had been in since Ralph’s, and had started breakfast by the time I was showered and dressed.

“I called Janet,” she said.

“What a way to start your day.”

“I asked her to tell the girls that I was in San Francisco and that I’d have to be there a few days. Do you think that’s all right?”

“It’s smart if you don’t go home.”

She nodded.

“You could stay here.”

She nodded again.

“That okay with Janet?”

The young pretty part of her momentarily surfaced. “I’ll call her and ask.” Definite progress.

The cat door clacked and the cat came in, his fur misted with dew. He saw Ellen, went to her ankle, sniffed, and started to growl.

I said, “Get away from there.”

The cat sprinted back through his door. Clack-clack.

There was a knock, then Joe Pike walked in. He was misted with dew, also. “Couple of black-and-whites cruised you just before sunup. Other than that, nada.”

I introduced him to Ellen.

She said, “You’re the one in the pictures.” There were pictures up in the bedroom of me and Pike after billfish off Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baha.

“I’m the only one in the pictures,” he said. Enigmatically. Then he left.

“He’s like that,” I said.

“Mr. Pike is your partner?”

“Unh-hunh.”

“He was out there all night?”

“All night.”

“Why?”

“To watch over us, why else?”

Joe came back with an Eastern Airlines flight bag and a brown leather rifle case and without the field jacket. He put the rifle case in the entry closet, took a Colt. 357 Python in a clip-on holster from the flight bag, and put it on his hip. He took two boxes of. 357 Softnose out of the bag, then rezipped it and put it in the closet next to the rifle. The boxes of extra ammo he brought to the coffee table by Ellen Lang. She watched every move the way a canary watches a cat, her eyes going from his tattoos to the gun at his waist-it was the big Python, with the 6-inch combat barrel-to the polished sunglasses. Pike was in uniform: faded Levis’, blue Nikes, white sweat socks, steel Rolex, sleeveless sweat shirt. When he had everything where he wanted it, he looked at her again. “I’m sorry to hear of your trouble,” he said.

She tried out a small, faltering smile. “Would you like something to eat?”

“It’s nice of you to offer. No. Not right now.”

He stood close, dwarfing her with his size and his energy and his capacity for violence. He did it without thinking about it. He could do it to almost anyone I knew, even men much taller and much heavier. Anyone except Lou Poitras.

Pike went into the kitchen. Ellen watched him, large-eyed and uneasy. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “The Amal militia couldn’t touch you with him here.”

She kept her eyes on Pike. Joe was standing in the kitchen, staring at a closed cabinet, unmoving. It was easy to imagine him standing all night like that.

“I’m going to swing by your house before I go to the cops,” I said. “Can I bring back some clothes for you?”

“Yes. If you would. And my toothbrush. It’s the green one.”

“Would you like to come with me?”

She glanced at the floor. “I don’t want to go back there right now.”

The drive to Encino was easy. This early, traffic down the valley side of Laurel Canyon was light and the freeway west seemed empty. I parked in Ellen’s drive and let myself in the front door. There is no quiet the way a house is quiet when its family is gone.

I found an empty Ralph’s bag in the kitchen and brought it back to the master bath. I packed her green toothbrush in it, along with a bottle of Almay roll-on that was probably hers, and a Personal Touch shaver. I opened the counter drawers and stared into them a while, wondering what she might want. I took out three little white Georgette Klinger face cream jars, two lip gloss tubes, a marbled plastic box of Clinique blush, a Clinique eye liner pencil, and two silver tins of Clinique eye shadow, and put them in the bag. You never can tell. Out in the bedroom, I selected panties, bras, a pair of white New Balance running shoes, three light tops, two pairs of cotton pants, and one pair of Jordache jeans. Mort’s insurance policy was in the same box where I had found his banking papers. He had purchased a $200,000 policy three years before but had borrowed against past premiums. Its current value was written down to $40,000. Not a lot, but she wasn’t broke. She’d have to plan. I put the policy back in the box and went through the room for Mort’s. 32. Nothing. I went through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing. I went through the kids’ rooms. Zip.

At twenty minutes after eight I parked beside the North Hollywood station house and went up to the detectives’ squad room. Poitras was standing by a desk, talking to Griggs in a low voice. Griggs was sipping coffee from a mug that said #1 DADDY and nodding. When Poitras saw me he said something else to Griggs, then jerked his head back toward his office. He didn’t look happy. “Come on,” he said.

“Top of the morning to you, too, Louis.”

A thin blond man sat in the hard chair in Poitras’ office. He wore brown slacks and brand-new tan Bally loafers with little tassels and a brown coarse-knit jacket with patches on the elbows. He had a dark beige shirt and a yellow tie with little white camels. Silk. He glowed the way skinny guys glow then they get up early and play three sets at the club. I made him for Stanford Law. Poitras dropped into his chair behind the desk and said, “This is O’Bannon.” When Poitras looked at O’Bannon his flat face hardened and his eyes ticked. “From Special Operations.”

O’Bannon didn’t offer to shake my hand. He said, “From the California Attorney General’s office, attached to Spec Op.”

Spec Op. Stanford Law, all right. “You say that to girls when you try to pick’m up?” I said.

O’Bannon smiled the way a fish smiles when it’s been on ice all day. “No, only to smart guys who’ve been tagged for two bodies up in Beachwood Canyon. You want to push it?”

They make’m tough up at Stanford.

“I thought not. Tell me about your encounter with Duran.”

I started at the beginning, when Ellen Lang and Janet Simon came to my office. O’Bannon stopped me. “Poitras filled me in on the background. Just tell me about your contact with Domingo Duran.”

I started again. I told him how the Eskimo and Manolo picked me up in my office and brought me out to the bull ranch, and I told him what happened out there. Listening to myself describe Duran and reconstruct the dialogue and sequence of events, I came out sounding pretty good. It’s easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around. At one point we got up and went out into the squad room where they have a big map of L.A. and the surrounding counties so I could ballpark the ranch. O’Bannon wrote down everything I said. He reminded me of Jimmy Olsen, only nastier.

When I finished, O’Bannon stared at me like I was the biggest disappointment of his life. “That it?”

“I could make up more if you want.”

“Did the Lang woman have any direct contact with Duran?”

“The Lang woman’s name is Ellen, or Ms. Lang.”

O’Bannon gave me you’re-wasting-my-time eyes. I get those a lot.

“No, no direct contact.”

He folded his note pad and put it in his inside jacket pocket, unconcerned that it might ruin the line. Daring, he was. Gotta be daring for Spec Op. He said, “All right. We may need to talk to her later.”

I looked at Lou. “Later?”

O’Bannon nodded. “There a problem with that?”

“I figured maybe we could do a little better than later. You know, with her son missing and all.”

O’Bannon pulled a brown briefcase from beside the hard chair. “There’s no ‘we.’ This is a Spec Op case now. You’re out. We’re handling the investigation.”

Poitras’ jaw worked and he picked at something invisible on his desk. He said, carefully, “Somebody downtown decided Special Operations was better suited to cover Duran.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

His voice came out ugly. “What the hell does it sound like, Elvis? You took an IQ reducer since last night? We’re out. You’re out. That’s the end of it.”

I said, “O’Bannon, there’s a nine-year-old kid out there. You don’t need a goddamned investigation. I’m handing you the scam and the setup and the bust.”

O’Bannon took a manila file folder off the end of Poitras’ desk, put it in his briefcase, snapped the brass latches. It was a Gucci case. He hefted it, then turned and looked at me the way prosecutors look at jurors when they’re showing off. “Spec Op will handle it, Cole. You’re out. You’re not to approach Duran, nor to proceed with this in any way. He’s off limits. You go near him, I’ll yank your license for violating the Private Investigators Act of California. You got that?”

“I’ll bet you can’t get it up, can you, O’Bannon?”

He tried to give me the sort of glare he’d seen fighters give on TV. Then he walked out.

The big redheaded secretary was talking to Griggs down by the rec room door. She watched O’Bannon pass and shook her head. I didn’t move for a very long time and neither did Poitras. Then I got up, carefully shut Poitras’ door, and went back to my chair. “Who shut it off, Lou?” I said, softly.

“It ain’t been shut off. Other people are handling it, that’s all.”

“Bullshit.”

Poitras’ eyes were small and hard. Kielbasa fingers worked against each other with no purpose. Someone knocked at the door. Poitras went red. He yelled, “Beat it!”

The door opened anyway and Griggs came in. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, arms crossed. Only a couple of hours into the morning and he already looked rumpled and tired.

I said, “It’s still kidnapping, Lou. You can pass it to the feds.”

Griggs said quietly, “You know the rules, bo. You pass it up the line, up the line has to refer it.”

“Did Baishe bring them in?”

“Goddamn it, it wasn’t Baishe,” Lou said. “You got Baishe on the brain. Forget him. He was for it.”

“What do I tell Ellen Lang?”

“Tell her it’s a Special Operations bust. Tell her someone from Special Operations might come talk to her.”

“Later.”

“Yeah. Later.”

“Is that what I tell Duran when he calls?”

“You’re off Duran. That’s the word. You go around Duran, O’Bannon will use those two bodies up Beachwood to grind you up.”

“They grow’m hard up at Stanford Law,” Griggs said. “Only a hard guy could wear a tie with little white camels like that, right, Lou?”

Lou didn’t say anything.

I said, “This smells like buy-off, Lou. Like Duran picked up the phone.”

Poitras leaned back in his chair and swiveled to look at the file cabinet. Or maybe he was looking at the pictures of his kids. “Get the hell out of here, Elvis.”

I got up and went to the door. Griggs gave me sleepy eyes, then peeled himself away from the door and opened it.

I looked back at Lou. “The cops up in Lancaster happen to find a Walther. 32 automatic in Lang’s car?”

“How the hell do I know?”

“He had one.”

“Good-bye.”

I walked out. The door closed behind me, and I heard something heavy hit something hard. I kept walking.

The redhead was gone. I walked out past the rec room and the holding cell and into the stairwell. I met Baishe coming up. His face looked softer and older. He stopped me on the stairs. “I got a prowlcar making extra passes at Duran’s place. That’s the best I can do.”

We nodded at each other, then he went up to the squad room and I went down and out to my car.