Robert Crais - The Monkey

Griggs came back on the line. “Fein’s a goddamned dope dealer.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re supposed to stay the hell away from this Duran thing.”

“I know.”

I could hear him breathing into the phone. In the background, I could hear other cops talking and phones ringing and typewriters tapping and a deep, coarse laugh. Cop sounds. The sort of sounds Griggs would miss if he had to stop hearing them. Griggs said, “Try 11001 Wilshire, Suite 601. That’s in Westwood.”

“Thanks.”

“Cole, the wrong people find out I gave you this, it’s my badge.”

“Gave me what?”

Griggs said, “Yeah” and hung up.

The counter girl was holding a cup in one hand and a scoop in the other, waiting for the guy in the pressure suit to make up his mind. He kept asking to taste the different flavors, then making a big deal about a place in Santa Monica that made this place look like shit. The two Persian women glanced at him.

The counter girl put down her scoop, looked my way, and chewed her fingernail. I hung up, walked over, smiled at the counter girl, and said, “The double chocolate banana was excellent, thank you.” Then I turned to Captain New Wave. I was very close to him. “Do you dance?” Smiling.

He had a healthy tan and coarse black hair and a gold Patek Philippe watch. There’d be the health club and handball and somewhere along the way he would’ve taken judo and been pretty good at it. His eyes flicked to the guy he’d come in with, wondering, what the hell is this?

“Not with boys,” he said. Tough, but uncertain. In over his head and just beginning to realize it. He had walked through a door and now he was in something and it could go in any direction, and in any direction he’d lose.

I put my hand in the small of his back and pulled him close. He should’ve stepped back sooner, but he hadn’t because he was tough. Now he couldn’t. One of the Persian women stood up.

“Try the double chocolate banana,” I said softly.

He wet his lips, again glancing at the man he’d entered with. The man hadn’t moved. I pulled him tighter, letting him feel the gun.

“The double chocolate banana,” I said.

“The double chocolate banana.”

“To her.”

“Chocolate banana.” To her.

“Please.”

“Please.” To her.

“Good. You’ll like it.”

I let him go. He started to say something, wet his lips again, then stepped back.

The counter girl was frozen with wide bumblebee eyes. More scared now than when it started. Some days, you can’t win.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been hell the past few days.”

She nodded and gave me a shy, quiet smile, more young girl than grown-up woman, which is the way it should be when you’re sixteen. Everything’s gonna be okay, the smile said.

I leaned over the counter and put one of my cards by the cash register.

“If anyone ever bothers you,” I said, shooting a glance at the guy in the spacesuit, “let me know.”

I walked out the door, went to my car, and drove west along Sunset toward Westwood and Barry Fein.

11001 Wilshire is a nine-story high-rise done up quite nicely in gray and white and glass, what the big ads in the real-estate section of the Times call “a luxury address.” There is a circular drive of gray cobblestone running up beneath a tremendous white and gray awning to the large glass lobby and two waiting doormen. A Rolls and a Jaguar were parked by the glass doors. In the lobby was a security officer behind an elaborately paneled security station who probably took great pride in collecting the mail and calling the elevator and giving the arm to peepers and process servers and similar social debris. It was not a place where you could go to a call box, press a lot of buttons, and count on someone buzzing you in.

I turned up one of the little side streets that ran north through a pleasant residential section, parked by a sign that said Permit Parking Only, and walked back to the high-rise. On the east side of 11001 there was a parking garage with a card key gate leading down, elegantly landscaped with poplar saplings and California poppies. I sat on the ground by the poplars. It was getting hotter, but the smog was manageable. After about ten minutes, the gate groaned to life, folded up into the roof of the building, and a long forest green Cadillac nosed out onto the street. By the time the gate closed, I was in the garage.

There were two cars parked in the slot for 601, a powder blue Porsche 928 and a steel DeLorean. Barry Fein was home. I looked for the elevator and found it on the other side of the garage, but it was one of those security jobs that didn’t have buttons down in the garage, just another card key slot. There would be stairs, but the stairs would go up to the lobby and the guards and I wasn’t ready for them yet. I went back to the gate, pressed the service switch, and let myself out.

It was a six-block walk to Westwood Village along elm-shaded sidewalks.

If you ignore the surroundings, Westwood Village could be the center of a college town in Iowa or Massachusetts or Alabama. Lots of fast food vendors, restaurants, collegiate clothing stores, bookshops, art galleries, record stores. Lots of pretty girls. Lots of young guys with muscles who thought playing high school football and being able to lift 200 pounds made them memorable. Lots of bicycles. In a drugstore next to a falafel stand I bought a box of envelopes, a roll of fiber wrapping tape, a stamper that said PRIORITY, an ink pad, and a Bic pen. On the way out I spotted a little sheet of stick-on labels that said things like HANDLE WITH CARE. I bought that, too.

Back at the car I tore an old McDonald’s Happy Meal box into strips, put it in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote Mr. Barry Fein on the front. I put the wrapping tape along all four edges, then across the flap on the back, making sure to keep the fiber bands even. Even in crime, neatness counts. I stamped PRIORITY twice on the front and twice more on the back, then put a sticker that said DO NOT BEND where you normally put the stamp. I looked at it. Not bad. I bent it twice, then put it on the ground and stepped on it hard. Better.

I walked back to 11001 Wilshire and went in to the guard at the reception desk. “Got something here for Mr. Barry Fein,” I said.

The guard looked at me like I was somebody else’s bad breath and held out a hand. “I’ll take it.” He’d crossed the line into his fifties a couple years back. He had a broad face and a thick nose that had been broken more than once, and eyes that stayed with you. Ex-cop.

I shook my head. “Unh-unh. Hand delivery.”

“Hand deliveries are made to me.”

“Not this one.” I waved the envelope under his nose. “My ass is in the grinder as it is. Guy tells me, get this to Mr. Fein and be careful with it, right? Like a dope I drop it and some asshole kicks it and the wind picks it up and I gotta chase it half across Westwood against the traffic.”

He was impressed. “This is as far as you go.”

I put the letter in my pocket. “Okay, you’re a hard ass and you don’t give a shit if I get chewed. Call Fein. Tell him it’s from Mr. Garrett Rice. Tell him that even though he wants this you’ve decided that he shouldn’t have it.”

The guard’s eyes never moved.

I said, “Look, Sarge, either you call Mr. Fein now or Mr. Rice is gonna call him when I bring this thing back, and then my ass won’t be the only one in the grinder.”

We stared at each other. After a while his mouth tightened and he picked up the phone and pressed three buttons. One of the doormen had come inside and was looking at us. The guard put down the phone and scowled at me, not liking it that I’d showed him up.