That truck was probably empty right now. The voice-activated four-track tape recorders didn’t have to be checked or reloaded for hours. More important to the program was moving the truck now and then, so as not to attract undue notice in these well-off surroundings.
Toward that end, sometimes Roger would bring in one of at least two other vehicles and alternate-Ace Roofing Company, Acme Carpet Cleaners, Southland 24-Hour Plumbing amp; Heating.
All it required was occasional new paint jobs, a few magnetic business-logo signs, and, presto, the surveillance fleet was ready to snoop (no truck bore Pryor’s own logo, though).
I got out and stretched. In my sport shirt and slacks, I looked not at all suspicious, and of course the Jag was right at home. I crossed the street, which had very light traffic, and walked up to the van and circled it.
Nobody in front, of course.
I knocked at the back door. If someone was in there, my knocking might be ignored, so I had to keep it up a while-long enough for any occupant to get worried that my metallic banging would attract more attention than just dealing with whoever was out there.
No response.
Nothing to do but head back to the Jag, where I sat on the passenger side so that it looked like I was waiting for the driver. I angled the rearview mirror to keep the white van in sight, and about fifteen minutes in, I laughed, thinking that this was the first time I’d felt like a private eye in years.
Not that it felt good or bad-butt-in-the-seat surveillance is always boring as hell-but it did seem right. I took my paperback of The Carpetbaggers from the backseat. I picked up where I’d left off, flicking my eyes to the rearview about three times a page. It was a stupid goddamn book but I couldn’t stop reading it, except when a red Mustang convertible with some giddy girls in their late teens pulled into the mouth of the Tudor’s drive and two got out and two others stayed in the car and all four were in bikinis, their hair wet, towels over arms. They were probably legal age but I wasn’t proud of the thoughts I was having. Wasn’t ashamed, either.
That teenage tail almost made me miss the guy in the gray repairman’s coveralls who was approaching the rear of the van. He parked another vehicle somewhere down the street, no doubt.
As I was climbing out of the Jag, the girls giggled and pointed at me-at my age, I never knew whether it was a compliment or not-and the guy (who might have been Roger, but his back was to me and it was half a block down) was working a key in a rear lock.
He climbed in, shut the double door.
I crossed the street and jogged over.
I could hear him moving around in there as I raised my knuckles to the metal and knocked. After only two raps, the doors parted and presented a sliver of a pleasant-faced Roger-in the mode of dealing with a curious neighbor. He seemed about to say “Yes” when he frowned, then a half smile formed though his shaggy eyebrows kept frowning.
“Nate?” he asked.
“It’s not my stunt double.”
He froze while trying to process my presence. His hair a golden, thinning blond, his face a broad, bland oval with a well-creased boyishness, he was about forty and five ten or so, with a modest paunch. He looked convincing in the repairman uniform, which even had a sewn-on Hollywood TV Repair insignia. Actually he had a long-ago legal degree he never used, which had gotten him into the FBI.
“What the hell are you…? Get up in here.”
He shut me in.
It was predictably warm, though a good-size floor fan was going, up near the divider closing off the front from the back, the path of the blades cooling both us and a three-tiered metal rack with eight reel-to-reel upright recorders churning, amidst various electronic gadgets and gauges, a few lineman headsets tossed casually here and there. This was at my left as I crouched inside the windowless rear doors. At my right was a small, well-worn yellow-and-gold nubby upholstered couch, which my host plopped down on, leaving plenty of room for me.
“Want a cold one?” he asked, digging in a cooler just beyond the couch. He demonstrated what he was offering by holding up a sweating can of Schlitz.
“Why not?”
He church-keyed it open and I took that one while he fished for another.
“What’s the occasion?” he asked. Very good-naturedly, and if I hadn’t been in the business myself, and hadn’t known Roger, I’d have missed the suspicion. “You never bother dropping by my little penthouse on wheels when I’m doing a job for you. And I’m not doing a job for you.”
I sipped the Schlitz. With the beer, and the floor fan, it was like sitting on a back porch somewhere in the dead of summer.
“That’s the funny thing,” I said. “I just told a client, oh… not an hour ago… that I’d be getting back to her with details on how my man would be around tomorrow to put a bug on her phone.”
He laughed. “Do tell. And I’m that man? And you spotted the truck, and decided to save yourself a phone call?” He sipped the beer.
“Here’s the thing,” I said, and wiped foam off my upper lip. “My client? It’s Marilyn Monroe.”
I’ll give him this much-he didn’t cough beer out of his nose or anything, and the eyes flickered only a little, not even enough to make the shaggy eyebrows wiggle.
“I thought she lived over on North Doheny,” he said casually.
“No you didn’t.” I gestured with a hitchhiker’s thumb. “You know she lives down this highfalutin alley. Are you bugging her phone, or her bedroom, or her whole damn house?”
He gave me another half a smile, then shook his head and gave me a hooded-eyed look. He brushed a little spilled foam off his gray coveralls. “What if I said this was a divorce case?”
“I’d say you’re full of shit. Who hired you, the studio?”
He shook his head, and the smile widened into a give-me-a-break-buddy grin. “Look, Nate-I have a client. And it’s not you. There’s such a thing as ethics and professional courtesy and conflict of interest and, you know, all kinds of factors at play.”
“This afternoon,” I said, “or tomorrow, I would have given you a call, telling you Marilyn wants her phones tapped. Wants tapes of all her calls. And you’d have said, ‘Sure.’ Or would you have told me no, because you already were doing a job involving her? That kind of ethics and professional courtesy and conflict of interest, Roger?”
His face went expressionless; then one caterpillar eyebrow jerked. “I could claim that… but you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Right.”
“So… are you going to screw it up for me, and tell Marilyn she needs somebody to come in to sweep for bugs? Least you could do is give me the job.”
“Answer my question, Roger. You already have her phone tapped?”
“No.”
“The house…?”
“No. Just the bedroom. Master bedroom. I can pick up some stuff from other rooms from there. Small house for a big star.”
“Who’s your client?”
He shook his head, drank his beer, then leaned back with folded arms and a defensive posture. “No. I can’t do that.”
“Let me give you your options. First, I can tell Marilyn her house is bugged and help her get rid of the pests… and no you don’t get the gig. After which the A-1 can, in future, find some firm other than Pryor Investigative Services, Inc., to use for its surveillance work. How much do you bill us on the average year, do you suppose?”
“… And the other option?”
“You can tell me who your clients are, and I will give Marilyn a bullshit story about how she needs to be discreet in her pillow talk, because once she has her own phone tapped, it’s easy for somebody else to listen in.”
“Well, that’s true, actually.”
“And I will send you in to do the phone-tap job for me, as promised.”