“Who?”
“You know who, Lace Armitage.”
“Didn’t Artie tell you?”
“Artie didn’t have her over for coffee this morning. What was she wearing?”
“How’d you like a gift subscription to Modern Screen Romances?”
“I’ve got one. What was she wearing?”
“Well, she was wearing blue-and-white-checked pants and a white shirt that was unbuttoned down to here and no brassiere, and she seemed to think that since I wasn’t married or anything I might be a little gay.”
“You went into your macho act then, I bet.”
“Yeah, I did a little, I’m afraid.”
“Get anywhere?”
“You mean into her panties?”
“Now, this is my kind of conversation,” Artie Wu said as he came in from the dining room carrying a tray of sandwiches. He put the tray down on a glass-and-chrome coffee table. “Whose panties are we getting into?”
“Lace Armitage’s,” his wife said.
“Remember what they used to say at Princeton back in the ’50s when we’d come in from a date?” Wu said.
Durant nodded. “ ‘Get any tit?’ ”
“I don’t believe that,” Agnes said.
“Quincy and I never said it, of course, but the cruder types did.” Wu looked around. “Where’s my drink?”
“Over there,” Durant said.
Wu picked up a plate that held one of the sandwiches, handed it to his wife, and moved over to the drinks tray. He took a sip of his martini and looked at Durant, who was just biting into his sandwich. “I got a call,” Wu said.
Durant chewed and then swallowed. “Who from?”
“McBride.”
“And?”
“He’s had an offer for his map.”
“How much?”
“Five thousand.”
“Well, now,” Durant said. “Who’s buying?”
“The moneylender.”
“Solly Gesini?”
Wu nodded and took another sip of his drink. “There’s just one stipulation to the offer.”
“What?”
“Gesini wants our names.”
Durant smiled without either showing his teeth or putting any humor into it. “Things seem to be moving right along, don’t they?”
“They do indeed,” Artie Wu said.
It was two o’clock by the time Durant and Wu arrived at the address on Alabama Avenue in Pelican Bay. Located three blocks from the beach, Alabama avenue was lined with blighted palms and aging apartment buildings. Number 256 was a seven-story, thirty-nine-year-old, weary-looking structure that called itself the Catalina Towers.
They drove by in Durant’s Mercedes, turned right at the end of the block, and found a place to park on Fifth Street. They got out of the car locked it, and started walking back toward the Catalina Towers.
Wu examined the apartment buildings, most of which seemed to be losing their battle to hang on to a few shreds of respectability, although several of them had tried to camouflage their decline with coats of pastel paint and cheaply remodeled entrances. But nothing could be done to disguise the tenants. A lot of them were oldsters in their sixties and seventies who, primly dressed, sat outside in the sun and watched with reproving eyes and pursed lips as their neighbors hurried into and out of large, shiny cars. The hurrying neighbors seemed mostly to be young, pretty women who wore too much eye shadow.
Wu looked around again as they approached the Catalina Towers. “Faded splendor,” he said. “Otherguy’s kind of neighborhood.”
“He never was much for high overhead.”
“Who shall we be?” Wu said as they turned into the walk that led to the apartment’s entrance.
“I think we’re probably from the finance company,” Durant said.
“Here for the car?”
“Why not?”
Inside the small lobby, Durant and Wu approached the counter that enclosed the switchboard. Behind the counter sat a canny-looking old gentleman with glittery blue eyes and pure white hair so long that he wore it in a ponytail bound by a red rubber band.
Wu and Durant leaned on the counter for a moment, looking around the lobby. It was empty.
The old man cleared his throat. “Help you gents?”
Artie Wu turned and smiled. “Like to make an easy twenty bucks?” The old man thought about it. “Who do I have to mug?”
The old man turned his mouth down at the corners and nodded knowingly. “Repo, huh?”
“That’s right,” Durant said.
The old man examined them with the shrewd eyes that seemed never to have needed glasses. “Well, you guys are big enough,” he said. “Who’s the victim?”
Artie Wu took a folded letter-size sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, glanced at it quickly, and then looked at the old man, “Maurice Overby.”
The old man snorted. “Him.”
“He giving you any trouble?” Durant said.
“Nah, he’s just an all-around prick. Car?”
“Car,” Wu said. “How’d you know?”
“Well, it’s always either the car or the TV. Although sometimes you guys come for the stereo, too. You start fucking around with that stereo stuff, adding all those woofers and tweeters and what have you, and before you know it you’re in over your head. Speaking of which, you said something about twenty bucks.”
Wu slid a twenty-dollar bill across the counter to him. The old man picked it up, folded it lengthwise, folded it again and yet again, and then tucked it into his watch pocket. “Maybe the old lady won’t find it there before I get it spent on something nice. Maybe a blow job. Got a twenty-year-old hooker living here who’s sorta sweet on me. Gives me cut rates when she’s feeling good.”
“Sounds cozy,” Durant said.
“Yeah,” he said dreamily. “Twenty years old. Well, hell, I guess you guys wanta go on up. Apartment 522. Try not to start a ruckus, but if you have to bust him a couple, I sure as shit ain’t gonna say nothing.”
“Thanks for your help,” Artie Wu said, giving the counter a farewell slap.
He snorted again. “For twenty bucks I’ll do almost anything. Make it fifty and I’ll do even that.”
Durant gave the old man a small salute and a good-bye grin, and the two men moved down the hall, got into the waiting elevator, and rode it up to the fifth floor. When they reached Apartment 522, Wu knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” a man’s voice called.
Wu made his voice go down an octave. “It’s the FBI, Mr. Overby. Open up.”
There was a silence followed by some scurrying noises and then the faint sounds of a woman’s voice that seemed to be protesting something. After that the door opened slowly until it was stopped by its security chain. A man peered out cautiously. Artie Wu jammed his foot in the space.
“Ah, shit,” said the man who had opened the door.
“Hello, Otherguy,” Wu said cheerfully.
“I’m busy,” Overby said. “Come back tomorrow. Maybe next week.”
“You don’t want to lose the chain, do you?” Durant said. “Artie’s picked up a few pounds since you last saw him. All he has to do is lean on it and bang, you’re out a new chain.”
“Well, shit,” Overby said. “Get your goddamned foot out of the door Artie, so I can close it and get the chain off.”
Wu withdrew his foot. The door closed and then reopened. Wu and Durant went in. Overby, a medium-tall man of about forty with a sour look on his hard, seamed face, stood barefoot in the middle of the apartment’s living room dressed in what obviously was a hastily donned white shirt and a pair of expensive fawn slacks. The shirt was unbuttoned, and its tails hung down over the slacks, whose fly was unzipped.
“We didn’t interrupt anything, did we, Otherguy?” Durant said, looking around the room, which had an indisputably furnished look to it. There were a couch covered with some kind of green, shiny fabric; a couple of overstuffed chairs that failed to match either the couch or each other; some scarred occasional tables; another table in the dining area with four chairs around it, only three of which matched; a few ugly lamps; and on the white walls a couple of prints, one of a China Clipper under full sail and the other of some snow-covered mountain peaks that looked, to Durant, like Colorado. On the floor was a brownish wall-to-wall carpet that bore the scars of spilled drinks and careless cigarettes.