Robert Crais - The Monkey

I ate more pancake. “Is this your contribution to the case?”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“A small clue, perhaps. A small note, a small eyewitness. Anything, really. I’m easy to please.”

“We’ll see.”

I got up, found two bananas in the living room, and brought them back to the table. I put one by Pike and sliced the other over my pancakes. Pike didn’t touch his. He said, “I don’t see how you stand dealing with these screwups.”

“People didn’t screw up, we’d be out of a job. Screwups are our business.” I liked the sound of that. Maybe I should call Wu, have him put it on the cards.

Joe said, “Guy like Mort, laughing when they laugh, nodding when they nod, sucking up the slimeballs.” The cat came in off the deck, hopped up onto the table, and stared at Pike. He held out a bit of egg. The cat ate it with delicate bites. “I know this Mort. I’ve known men like him. I don’t like people with no will and no commitment and no pride.”

“Your problem is your lack of a clear-cut opinion.”

Joe stopped feeding the cat, so the cat walked across the table and sat beside me. I ignored him.

“It’s never that simple,” I said. I told him about Carrie, about the photo album, about the pictures of Mort and Ellen and the kids around the pool.

Joe said, “Everybody’s got pictures. People pose for pictures. I’ve got pictures of me and my old man with our arms around each other, smiling, and I haven’t spoken to the sonofabitch in twelve years.”

I didn’t say anything. I had pictures, too. I finished off the pancakes and the eggs and speared the last slice of banana. “Mort gave himself up,” I said.

Joe Pike sat erect at the table, chewing, mirrored lenses immobile, lean jaws flexing, one veined, muscled arm in his lap, the other against the table, elbow not touching. He swallowed, finished his coffee, wiped his mouth. Impeccable. He said, “No. He gave nothing. He lost himself. The distinction is important.”

After a while I gathered the dishes, brought them into the kitchen and rinsed them. When I finished, Pike was back out on the deck, holding the cat, staring off toward Hollywood. I went out to the rail. He didn’t turn around. “Somebody screws up, I clean up after them. That’s why people come to the agency. That’s what I’m good at. You’re good at it, too.”

“Hell of a way to make a living,” he said.

“Yeah,” I turned and went back inside. “Come on, Yukio. Let’s take that ride.”

Pike had parked his red Jeep Cherokee off the road by the carport. It was one of the older, full-size models, blocky and tall and resting on immense knobbed tires. It dwarfed the Corvette. Three years ago we’d taken it north into the mountains, fishing. I’d used the fender for a shaving mirror. You still could. I shook my head. “Hate a man lets his car go to hell.”

Joe nodded, looking grim. “Me, too.” He wiped a finger along the Corvette. It came away dark.

“The wind,” I said. “Blows the dirt right through the carport. Hell on the rolling stock.”

Joe stared at his finger like it was something from Jupiter, then grunted and said, “You amaze me.”

We dropped down Laurel Canyon and swung east on Hollywood Boulevard. It was warm and sunny and Hollywood was in full flower: a wino sat on a bench eating mayonnaise from a jar with his finger; four girls with hair like sea anemone smoked in front of a record store while boys in berets and red-splattered fatigue shirts buzzed around them like flies; young men with thick necks, broad backs, and crew cuts drifted in twos and threes past the shops and porno parlors-marines on leave, come up from Pendleton looking for action.

Ah, Hollywood. Down these mean streets, a man must walk who is himself not mean. How mean ARE they???? So mean… well, just ask Morton Lang…

We turned north at Western and climbed past Franklin toward Griffith Park, then right on Los Feliz Boulevard, winding our way past the park into the cool green of the Los Feliz hills. On a clear day, when the sun is bright and a breeze is in from the sea and the eucalyptus are throwing off their scent, Los Feliz is one of the finest places on earth. The hills are lush with plants and the right houses have a view all the way to the ocean. Hollywood legends lived and died here in homes built by Frank Lloyd Wright and Richard Neutra and Rudolf Schindler. People who made fortunes in oil or off the railroad built mansions that are now bought by gay couples, renovated, and resold for fortunes themselves. But with poor Hispanic areas to the south and east and the Hollywood slimepit to the west, New Money now buys above the Sunset Strip and points west. Los Feliz has seen its day.

Pike left Los Feliz Boulevard for a narrow, overgrown street that wound its way higher in tight curves, climbing steeply in some spots, leveling or dropping in others. Traffic thinned to nothing, just us and a woman in a champagne-colored Jaguar. Then she turned off. Three quarters of a mile from where we’d left the boulevard we cruised past the sort of stone gateposts I had always imagined guarding Fort Knox. Pike pulled to the curb and killed the engine.

It was so quiet the engine’s ticking sounded like finger snaps. Pike got out and walked to the gate. It was black and ornate and iron. It probably weighed as much as the Corvette. There were crossed swords over some kind of coat of arms centered on the gate. The tips of the swords were bent. Sometimes I felt bent, too. Maybe it was phallic.

I got out, opening the door easy, like when I was a kid sneaking out to do something bad and not wanting anyone to hear. This place did that to you.

An eight-foot-high mortared stone wall grew off the gateposts. It was overgrown with ivy and followed the street both uphill and down to disappear around the curves. There were eucalyptus and scrub oak and olive trees inside the wall and out. Old trees. Gnarled and gray and established and quiet. I walked over to the gate and stood by Pike. The drive rose rapidly and disappeared behind a knoll. You couldn’t see the house. You couldn’t see anything. The trees were so thick it was dark. Ten o’clock in the morning and it was dark. “That does it. From now on I carry a crucifix and a sharpened stake.”

Pike said, “The Nova came here. Other side of that knoll there’s a motor court and the main house. Garage for eight cars. There’s a pool in the back with a poolhouse, a tennis court to the northeast of it, and a guesthouse. Main house has two levels. These walls follow the topography. This gate is the only way in or out, unless you go over.”

I looked at him. Pike shrugged. “I took a look.”

“I suspect you went over.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“You get the Nova’s tag number?”

“Unh-hunh.” He handed me a slip of paper with a license number written on it.

“I suspect the guys driving the Nova, they don’t own that place.”

“Unh-unh. Had a few other guys walking around in there. Big necks.”

We walked back to the Jeep. I leaned against the fender. Pike didn’t mind. “Dom,” I said.

“Unh-hunh. On the gate, that sword with the bent tip. It’s called an estoque. It’s what the matador uses to kill the bull.”

I looked at him.

“I checked the address. Domingo Garcia Duran.”

I looked at him some more.

Pike’s mouth twitched. “You said you wanted a clue.”

Joe dropped me back at the house to pick up the Corvette, then I drove in to the office. I parked in the basement and rode up alone, listening to an instrumental rendering of Hey, Jude that John probably would not have liked. I unlocked the outer door and went in. Nobody sapped me. Nobody stuck a gun in my face. I went to my desk, put the Dan Wesson in the top right drawer, sat, and stared out the glass doors.