“And plumbers? Anyone follow you to the set?”
“No. And Joey drove, so I’m not alone.”
“What time do you get off?”
“Eleven,” I said. “Bing’s estimate. That’s early for us, but it’s a holiday.”
“You busy?”
“At eleven? You overestimate my social life.”
“How about if I pick you up at your apartment? You up for that? Midnight.”
My heart thumped and was still. “For… debriefing?”
“Call it that if you like. I’m calling it a date.”
We finished at nine-thirty. I called Simon, but I got voice mail, the first time I heard his recorded message. It was also the first time I left a message. My message was rambling, explaining that I could meet him earlier, unless I didn’t hear from him, in which case midnight was fine. His message was two words: first and last name. It didn’t seem fair.
“Bing’s losing it,” Joey said, gathering Fredreeq’s makeup supplies. “All night, same table. No camera moves. We’re not going for the Emmy, but would it kill him to do an establishing shot? And the after-hours club on the schedule-canceled. Paul doesn’t know what’s going on, and Paul knows where all the bodies are buried.”
I looked at Paul, packing his lights into their compact cases. He was Annika’s age-didn’t he have a family to be with on Thanksgiving? And Isaac? I watched him wrap up his sound equipment. Isaac would be the only child of parents long ago departed to the afterlife. Isaac would go home to a squalid apartment, a hamster, a stack of Scientific Americans. For fun he’d use his equipment to listen to his neighbors. He caught my eye. I looked away.
Or he could be a drug lord. Paul too. Paul would be a junior drug lord. A drug princeling. I wondered why the world of drugs used such aristocratic terms: drug lords, drug barons, drug czars. Other criminals didn’t get that kind of respect. There were no assault earls or homicide dukes. I was pondering the possibility of a greeting card on the topic when my phone rang. It was Cziemanksi, working, as I was.
“Slow night here,” he said. “Hey, I’m still feeling bad about the dinner I owe you.”
“I absolve you. Listen, Pete-we’re friends, I can call you Pete, right? I have kind of an odd question: why would the FBI get involved with a drug operation? Why wouldn’t that be the DEA, or the police?”
“It’s a question of degree. A guy shooting up on the street is LAPD. An epidemic of new crack houses around town might involve DEA. Drug traffic in and out of Asia, South America, Europe, crime syndicates-that brings in FBI and CIA, with bigger resources. In theory we all share information and work together seamlessly.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Any big drug lords out there right now?”
“You mean like Tcheiko? And Forio, but he’s dying of cancer. Joe Juarez they’ll never get-he’s got his own army, never leaves the jungle.”
“Tcheiko. What’s his story?”
“Interesting one. Convicted last year on racketeering charges, then escaped. Left the Feds standing there with their dicks in their hands, pardon the language. Two agents died and a couple more wished they had. Careers died. Escapes are bad. No one’s supposed to escape.”
I said, “So catching him might involve the DEA as well as the FBI?”
“Everyone wants a piece of this guy. Someone’ll get him, too, because he’s cocky. By the way-” There was a pause. “Happy Thanksgiving. I did a little checking, and you still want the address of that pickup you were interested in buying, grab a pencil.”
“The-what?-oh. Oh!” He’d called the DMV for me. “You’re a saint, Pete.”
“No, we’re friends. I don’t know anything about the truck, how many miles on it, so forth, so you’re on your own, if you catch my drift. And you didn’t hear about it from me. I have mixed feelings about this. I can’t check it out myself, for… reasons. So you have to promise me to take along someone who knows… trucks.”
I glanced at Joey, sitting on a table, long legs swinging, reading a copy of some glossy periodical called the Robb Report. I smiled. “I promise.”
“Vic Mauser. That’s the guy’s name,” I said. Joey’s old Mercedes zipped west toward the Brentwood address Cziemanski had given me. “Sounds like an assault rifle. Shouldn’t we wait until daylight to do this? And what is it we’re doing, by the way?”
“Surprising him,” Joey said. “We won’t get a signed confession, but if we do this right, we’ll find out if he knows about Annika.”
“How?”
“By asking. He doesn’t expect it, so there’s this window of opportunity while he gets his story together where we’ll see it in his face. We only get one shot, but it’s perfect. Thanksgiving: wine, football, L-tryptophan, the stuff in turkey that makes you sleepy. He’s mellow.”
“He didn’t look mellow three days ago,” I said. “You really think he spent today giving thanks?”
“You think only nice people do holidays?”
I felt a qualm of conscience. “What about your Thanksgiving, Joey? Where’s Elliot?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “Atlantic City. Elliot thinks holidays are sappy. It’s okay, I got calls from four hundred family members, which more than compensated. You know, I bet Cziemanski can’t check out Vic Mauser himself because it’s not his case and it wouldn’t be cool. I’m also guessing he asked around and found out the sheriff’s guys don’t think much of the Annika-Rico connection. That’s why he went out on a limb and got us this address.”
“What about the FBI?” I asked. “Do you think-oops.”
Joey’s head swiveled to me. “Your boyfriend’s in the FBI? Not the DEA?”
“Oh, God. I can’t believe I just said that. I promised I wouldn’t-”
“Oh, boy, a Fed. A fun Fed, better than DEA. My cousin Stewart’s FBI, so- Look, Chenault. What’s the number?”
We parked on Barrington and walked to Chenault, a small street ending in a cul-de-sac, as Joey reassured me about my indiscretion. “It’s their own fault. Anyone who’s known you five minutes can see you’re not wired for deception. Where’s Vic’s pickup?”
“They must have underground parking,” I said as we reached the building. “Unless he’s out assaulting someone.”
“Wollie, check this out.” Joey pointed to the intercom box, with its dialing instructions and list of tenants. Code 004 was Mauser/Wooster.
“Vic Mauser… lives with Bing Wooster?” I said, confused. We tried on the possibility of Bing being gay. It wasn’t a good fit. And Vic, even on short acquaintance, suggested severe heterosexuality. “This is stupid,” I said. “Sane people don’t go knocking on the doors of dangerous strangers, and how do we even get into the building-”
“Look, if he’s lying, we pretend to believe him and walk away. There’s no reason for him to shoot us in the back. And relax. We’ll get in. I have a plan.”
Joey’s plan involved a tenant turning up with a key or a visitor letting us in with them. When this didn’t happen she began punching codes. The intercom squawked. Joey squawked back, “It’s me!” On the fourth try, someone hit the buzzer.
We found 2E. We looked at each other. Joey pressed the doorbell.
A woman answered the door. She wore maroon jeans and an argyle sweater. Her hair was red, not Joey’s Irish setter red, but a short, fluffy tangerine. She looked like she’d packed sixty years of living into forty years of life. “Yeah?”
“Hi,” I said. “We’re looking for Vic Mauser?”
She frowned. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Penny?” a male voice yelled. “What’s the story?”
“Someone to see you,” she yelled back, not taking her eyes from me.
“Who?!”
“I don’t know!”
There was a short curse. I imagined the goateed man hauling himself out of a sofa, with unbuttoned trousers and unbuckled belt, dining recovery measures.