“Logo,” Boy edited.
Carlo crumpled his face like a fender. “Huh? No, man, a logo’s a wolf. Dis on da jacket, dis what you see on da TV.”
“Understood,” Boy assured him.
“Dey all useta be football players, now dey work da sports department at da network. Dey on guard, man.”
“Guarding Skeeks?”
“For da pikchas, man. Dey know about you guys and your papers, dat you do da pikchas. Dey say, ‘No way.’ ”
“You could slip past—”
But Carlo was shaking his woolly head, sending clouds of formaldehyde to compete across the table with essence of Jemmy. “Dey search me, man. Dey find da camera, dey drop-kick my ass back to Peru.”
Boy sighed. While he loved a challenge, of course, he preferred his challenges to be easier than they looked. He said, “Carlo, one understood you had something to sell, something more than the picture, not something less.”
“Dis is more. But you gotta pay, man.”
“We’ll pay what it’s worth,” Boy assured him.
Carlo thought about that, then decided to risk it. Whispering so low that Boy could barely hear him, he said, “Somebody offed da dog.”
More gibberish. But then Jim Jemmy, utterly shocked, cried, “Skeeks was murdered?” and all became clear.
To the entire restaurant. Bouncing in his chair, Carlo cried, “Cool it, man! Jesucristo!”
“Oh, I beg your pardon!” Jim covered his mouth with both hands.
Boy said, “Class. Students. Let us have order here. Carlo, what do you mean? Do you have proof?”
“I done da cleanup, man, I know what I’m cleanin’. Dat dog got poisoned. I heard da doctors, dey don’t wanna tell nobody.”
“Why not?”
“Couple scandals last year, man. Dat place, movie stars keep deir dogs and cats and gerbils and all deir pets dere while dey go away, make a movie, come back, it’s dead, man, wrong food, wrong medicine. Dey afraid dey gonna get blamed.”
“So no one knows this interesting news,” Boy concluded, “except the veterinarians, and you, and us.”
Carlo looked sullen. “And all dose people at d’udder tables.”
“I am sorry,” Jim said.
“I think we can ignore that,” Boy decided. “This is a restaurant in Los Angeles, after all.” Reaching into a side pocket, he brought out a wad of bills folded in half and held with a red rubber band. Removing the rubber band, he peeled off five $100 bills and handed them to Carlo. “This is for our exclusive use of your information.”
“That’s OK,” Carlo agreed. The money disappeared.
Boy took a tiny camera that looked like a cigarette lighter from his other pocket. “If by chance you do happen to get Skeeks’ final photo, there’ll be another $1000 in it for you.”
But Carlo wouldn’t touch the camera. “Dem sports guys from da network, man,” he said, “in dem raspberry coats, man, dey big. Big and mean.”
Sneering, Boy said, “You’re afraid of men in raspberry coats?”
“You look at ’em, man,” Carlo said. “You’ll never eat a raspberry again.”
Back at the Galaxy nest in Venice, Boy debriefed his team, standing to demonstrate die quality of command and also because he had a long splinter in his bum. Trixie’s news was that Skeeks had been rendered unfit for fatherhood as a youth, before his fame could protect him from such indignities; ergo, no progeny. The others had also been busy gleaning data, and this is what Boy learned:
Skeeks did have an owner, a holding company in Houston called Shunbec International. Several of the Shunbec principals were deeply involved in the S&L mess, and Skeeks had been just about their last viable asset. On the other hand, the beast had been insured like the Hope diamond.
Closer to home, the comedian Bill Terry was known to be unhappy, in his sober moments, at playing second fiddle to a dog. Without the dog, of course. Bill Terry wasn’t even dog meat, but actors have been known to have egos. Other news about Terry was said to be on its way from headquarters in Florida.
Keeping Terry comparatively calm and happy was his live-in girlfriend, Sherry Cohen, a co-producer of Skeeks who was credited with being most of the brains behind the show. She’d been a television professional for 15 years and had persuaded the network to hire Bill Terry despite his drinking problem. “I’ll take care of that,” she had reportedly told them, and so she had. If there was one reason the show had lasted five years, other than the pitiable state of the American mind, it was Sherry’s control of Terry.
Another human close to Skeeks was his housekeeper, Mayjune Kent, a former Miss America runner-up who had a successful career as an auto show model, standing in long gowns on all those turntables, until a crazed fan threw acid in her face, reasoning that since he couldn’t have her, no one else should. The fan received a very light sentence, since Mayjune publicly and often forgave him, saying, “He only did it for love.”
However, when the fan was released from prison 17 months later, Mayjune ran over him in a rented automobile, explaining she’d been blinded by tears of joy at seeing him a free man. She was put on trial, nevertheless, for manslaughter and given probation and assistance in finding employment. Several human employers had agreed they could overlook her history, but when they met her they realized they’d never be able to overlook that face. Skeeks was the only employer in southern California able and willing to give the unfortunate young woman housing and a decent job, and Mayjune was said to be devoted to the animal.
“Well, children,” Boy said, “you have done reasonably well. Material for several stories here, particularly if Bill Terry has been cheating on Sherry Cohen or vice versa. However, none of this matters if we don’t get the body in the box, and I am assured that any number of homicidal ex-footballers stand between us and that goal. When the going gets tough, as you’ve heard, the tough proceed, and I do believe one has found the answer.” Then he dropped his bombshelclass="underline" “One has learned, through an unimpeachable source, that Skeeks was murdered.”
“No!” everybody cried. “Who? Why? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Boy replied. “Don’t know yet. Don’t know yet. Yes. The veterinary hospital is keeping the fact quiet for its own reasons. We know and no one else.”
Jim Jemmy blushed.
“How,” Boy asked rhetorically, “may we use this information? One is glad you asked. We shall find the murderer, in the next 24 hours. Anyone close enough to poison the beast can get close enough to take his picture. We shall confront the murderer and demand the photo as our price for silence.”
Trixie’s jaw dropped. “You mean, we won’t print the story about the murder?”
“Of course we will. But the photo first. I didn’t say we wouldn’t publish, I said we’d say we wouldn’t publish.”
“Oh, that’s all right, then,” Trixie said.
“This is a manhunt,” Boy told his team, “or possibly a womanhunt. Go, seek, find. And, Trixie?”
“Yes?”
“I’ll want you in my office. You do have tweezers, one hopes?”
The voice of Don Grove, a Florida-based member of the team, murmured in Boy’s ear, and Boy took notes as he rode along in the backseat of the limo steered randomly around Santa Monica by their driver-stringer, Portnikuff. “I’m going over the wall now,” murmured Don, and some blocks away he was doing it, slipping into Dungowrie, half a square block of expensive Santa Monica real estate, residence of the late Skeeks.
As Boy rode and listened, Don penetrated deeper into the place, describing what he saw. Within the tall tan stucco walls stood a modest two-story Mission-design house, a U-shaped swimming pool, a number of short specimen palm trees and a space Don described as looking like a miniature golf course, actually Skeeks’ exercise area, with bouncing balls on strings, slicks that threw and returned themselves and a small sandbox of carrion for the star to roll in, replenished weekly.