Robert Crais - The Monkey's Raincoat

"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.

It was already hot out in the parking lot. I pushed down the top on the Corvette, climbed in, and sat thinking about Perry Lang and his mother and how O'Bannon might want to talk to her. Later. That was probably okay with Perry. He was probably having a good time. The Eskimo was probably showing him how to eat seal fat and Manolo was probably giving him piggyback rides and Duran was probably teaching him the correct technique for a veronica, with temple. Of course, when Duran called and I told him he was now a Spec Op, he'd probably get pissed and stop the lessons. Then it wouldn't be very much fun at all. I took out my wallet, looked at my license for a long time, then folded the wallet again and put it back in my pocket. Screw you, O'Bannon.

I peeled out of the parking lot and laid a strip of Goodyear rubber halfway down the street.

Ten minutes later I was parked across from the Burbank Studios and walking back toward Garrett Rice's office. The backhoe and the bulldozer were tearing up the little parking lot and kicking up a lot of dust that I had to walk through to get to the stairs. Rice's door was closed and locked. I knocked and looked through the glass panel next to the door. The outer office was dark, Rice's inner office darker still. I went to the next office.

The door was propped open, and an almost-pretty blonde in a green LaCoste shirt was fanning herself with a Daily Variety behind the desk. She raised her eyebrows at me, something my mother had done quite a bit. I said, "Has Mr. Rice been in?"

"I don't think so, today. Sheila left about a half hour ago."

"Sheila the secretary?"

"Unh-huh. You an actor?"

"Look sorta like John Cassavetes, right?"

She stuck her lips out and shook her head. "No, you just have the look, that's all. I know the look. Hungry."

"A man is defined by his appetites."

Her eyes smiled. "Unh-huh."

I gave her one of my better smiles and walked loudly back to the stairs, waited a few seconds to see if she'd stir, then eased back to Rice's door, picked the lock, and let myself in.

Nothing much had changed since the last time I was there. The furnishings were still cheap, the dead mouse stain still marked the couch, the plants still clung to life. There were crumbs beneath the couch cushions, along with three pennies, a nickel, two dimes, and a Winston cigarette. The top three drawers of the file cabinet held yellowing scripts and news clippings, and articles and short stories that had been snipped from magazines. The bottom drawer was actors' resumes and correspondence and interoffice memos. More than one of the memos warned Rice against any further evidence of copyright infringement.

Behind the memos there was a mason jar of marijuana, two packs of Zig Zag papers, and three porno magazines. One titled Lesbian Delight , another Women in Pain , and the last Little Lovers . Little Lovers was kids.

I took a deep breath and stood up and felt tired. You feel tired a lot in this business.

I shredded Little Lovers into a metal waste can and brought the can over to the window looking out at the water tower. There was a book of matches in the top drawer of the desk. I put the can beneath the window and burned away the images of the children and what some animal had made those children do. If Rice walked in, maybe I'd burn him, too.

When I finished with that I went through the rest of the desk. There was no cocaine. No clues to Garrett Rice's whereabouts. No unexpected or surprising evidence. In the middle drawer on the right side of his desk there was a small yellowed envelope postmarked June 1958. It was a handwritten note from Jane Fonda, saying how much she had enjoyed working with Garrett during a recent summer stock production and that Garrett was one of the most professional stage managers it had been her pleasure to meet. It was signed, Love, Jane . The edges of the note and the envelope were smudged and gray, as if Rice took it out and read it often.

I went out to the secretary's office and checked her calendar. There weren't any special notes or appointments scheduled for Mr. Rice. There weren't even any unspecial ones. I looked up Garrett Rice in her rolodex and pulled the card. It had his home phone, which I already had, but it also had his home address, which I didn't. I gave him a call, let it ring twenty-two times, then hung up. Maybe he was taking an early lunch.

I called my office and had the answer machine play back the messages. There weren't any. I didn't like that. After last night, the Eskimo should've called. I punched another line and dialed my house.

One ring. "Pike."

"There's an address book upstairs on the left side of the phone. I need Cleon Tyner's home number."

"Wait."

In a few moments the upstairs extension lifted and Pike gave me the number.

"Ellen okay?" I said.

"She likes to wait on people."

"It's all she knows how to do."

"She's cleaning the house. If you came back now, she'd probably wash your car."

"Have her check the Cherokee. It looked a little dirty on my way out this morning."

Pike gave me Hard Silence. Then: "How'd it go with the cops?"

I told him.

"Special Operations," he said. "That's shit."

"Close enough to smell bad."

"Poitras is good. Poitras won't shit you."

"Poitras doesn't like it any more than me. Someone up the line yanks the deal from Poitras, this asshole O'Bannon tells me to back away. Nobody knows anything. If it's a buy-out then they're selling the kid to let Duran handle us himself."