T. Parker - Laguna Heat

“I hope Dorothy didn’t shake you up too bad. She’s a great gal, but the liquor reaches the danger limit by about noon. Apt to say some pretty irresponsible things sometimes. Been social director here from way back.”

“No problem, really.” They shook hands again before Datilla veered hurriedly off toward the A Dock lounge.

Shephard was met by a red-vested valet at the guard house. He described his car and handed over the keys. Mink, he noticed, was still on duty, sitting alone on a stool. Shephard approached and offered a cigarette, which Mink accepted.

“Find a place?” the guard asked.

“Had a long talk with Joe. No openings, but I’ll wait.” Shephard lit a cigarette of his own, and decided to go fishing. “By the way, he asked me to tell you that Barnes and Kaufman canceled.”

Mink responded wonderfully, reaching immediately for the clipboard. “Who?”

“Barnes and Kaufman, Bank of Newport. They were set for three.”

“Not through this gate they weren’t.”

So Joe Datilla didn’t like Tom Shephard and Dorothy Edmond together, Shephard thought. And why hadn’t he fired Mink, anyway?

“Never mind, I must have gotten the message wrong... Joe told me he got a Cadillac stolen Monday. Bad news when the thieves find their way into a club like this.”

The guard shook his head and slammed down the clipboard. “Easy stealin’ a car with no guard to watch it,” he said flatly.

“Heard the guard had some banking,” Shephard said optimistically, careful to attach no blame.

“Banking nothing,” said Mink. “Joe told me to take the day off. It was my shift in the garage. Miss a day and lose a car. What luck. But the boss says jump, I ask how high. I needed a day off anyway. Who doesn’t? Hell, he signs the paychecks.”

The valet arrived with Shephard’s car, screeching to a stop in the outbound lane beside the guard house.

Shephard tipped the boy heavily, lost in speculation. He turned south on Coast Highway, back toward Laguna, and stopped at the first pay phone he could find. At the end of half an hour, Dorothy Edmond time, he dialed her number. He was surprised to find her listed. The whiskey voice at the other end was unmistakable.

“Yes?”

“Dorothy Edmond, Tom Shephard.”

“Who?”

“Tom Shephard. Just talked to you there at the club.”

“I’m sorry but you didn’t. I’ve been sitting in this apartment all day. Are you a crank?”

Shephard wanted a minute to consider the possibilities, but he didn’t want to lose her.

“No, honey,” he answered quickly. “Are you?”

She hung up.

He listened for a moment for any signal of intrusion on the line, but heard none.

When he called back, the line was busy, and when the operator broke in for him, she got only static. Off the hook, she said. Try later?

Chief Hannover was pissed. His voice over the office line was shrill, and when Shephard found him at his desk he was sitting upright, wide-eyed, and had managed to gnaw the end of a yellow pencil down to wood. He kicked out a chair to Shephard and slid backward in his own. Hannover was dressed as usual in an expensive suit that looked cheap on him, a three-piece gray silk outfit that seemed to shine, troutlike, at the wrong places. He leaned back to reveal dark crescents of sweat seeping onto the armholes of the vest. His hair, slightly too long, was held in place with spray. When Shephard sat, Hannover pounced on his desk intercom and ordered Cadette Annette to hold all calls for “one quarter of an hour.” This done, he slid again on his chair, eyeing Shephard.

“I’ll have to lapse into the colloquial in order to get my point here across with as much brevity as possible,” he said, then fumbled in the box on his desk for a cigarette. Shephard lit it, and one for himself. Hannover squared himself in the chair. “We are fucked. Mayor Webb called me at home last night and we had a long talk. God, can that woman talk. To put it bluntly, Shephard, she’s terrified, both personally and professionally. She herself received” — Hannover broke off the sentence to scoot forward, pick up a slip of paper, and wave it at Shephard — “thirty-six telephone calls between nine and noon today. All from horrified citizens wanting to know what is happening in their quaint little seaside town. And in turn, she asked me that same question. Shephard, you’re familiar with the fate of Inca bearers of bad news?”

“They were beheaded.”

“I felt quite like one of those unfortunates today when I tried to explain to her that we haven’t even established a motive as yet. Luckily, we’ve progressed as a civilization since the times of beheadings. Instead, there has been a subtle improvement, which allows the offending messengers to erect a temple of truth or a cloud of smoke, as necessary, to trumpet or obscure their position. Of course you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

“A press conference.”

Hannover drew deeply on his cigarette, then looked at it. His voice was deep and smoke-choked. “You’re going to handle it, Shephard. Two of the three networks are sending news crews, the Times, Register, Pilot, and all the local papers will be there. You don’t look happy.”

“I don’t like reporters. And they don’t like me.”

“I can understand that. But as detective in charge, you are the best man for the job.”

“What about Pincus in Community Relations? It is his job...”

“No one believes Pincus,” Hannover said glumly. The Community Relations Office had been his idea, a “liaison between the department and the community it serves.” But the recently hired Pincus had turned out to be lazy, happy, and deeply indecisive, turning calls over to the chief rather than fending for himself. “The Times won’t even talk to him anymore. So it’s your show, Shephard. I know the press kicked you around a little up in L.A., but I’ll tell you right now that the Orange County press is a different animal. Not so... carnivorous,” he said, pleased with his word choice. He smiled at Shephard briefly. “I want to give you some basic parameters between which you should stay.”

While Hannover talked about parameters, Shephard’s mind wandered back to reporter Daniel Pedroza of the Times, who had hounded him so thoroughly after the shooting. He had become like a shadow, waiting for Shephard outside the station when he arrived at work, lingering in the parking lot at quitting time, tying up his phone line with innumerable calls, filing a mountain of stories. The stories called the integrity of Shephard and of the entire department into question. When Shephard quit returning the calls and refused further interviews, Pedroza had even showed up at his house one night. In fact, the night after Louise had said she was leaving him, and Pedroza had asked if they might talk about some “more personal aspects” of his post-shooting trauma. Shephard had hurled a near-empty wine bottle at the reporter, then read the next day of his “violently irrational” behavior. Pedroza hadn’t mentioned the wine bottle.

Even Daniel Pedroza, however, was no match for the ACLU lawyer who had grilled Shephard at the inquest. The attorney had implied that the murder of Shephard’s mother had stamped upon him a deep and malevolent hatred for “alleged criminal types.” Deep in the bowels of L.A.’s City Hall, sweltering in the late September heat, Shephard’s heart had pounded with such anger that he was sure it was being picked up by the reporters’ tape recorders.

“Are we clear on those?” Hannover was asking. “Play them back, Shephard. It’s important we present a united front at this point in time.”