We swung over the low stone wall that circled the compound, Lisette swearing under her breath as she struggled with her tapered skirt. Hunkering in the deeper shadow behind a big bougainvillea bush, we did our best raccoon imitations.
The pad’s bachelor was in residence and scared of the dark. Lamps glowed behind the drawn curtains and the patio lights glared.
“You find the garbage can,” I whispered. “I want another look at his car.”
“How come I get the glamour job?” she hissed back.
“Hey, Princess, you wanted in on this posse, remember? And you don’t hear Jay Silverheels bitching to Clayton Moore about his job assignments.”
I felt a baleful look aimed at me. “The Lone Ranger doesn’t get to make out with Tonto, either!”
“This is Hollywood. You might be surprised.”
I had pretty much all I needed, but there were a last couple of nails I wanted for the coffin. Keeping low, I crossed to the rear of the garage. The T-handle on the sliding door resisted a moment, then turned. He’d been convenient and hadn’t locked up.
I eased the door up a couple of feet and rolled under. The interior of the garage was stuffy with the waste heat radiating from a big block engine. The car sitting in the darkness matched the pad, a sleek '58 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible, fresh off the showroom floor. The top was up, but the driver’s window was rolled down. It took only a moment’s groping to reach through and find the faint, lingering patch of dampness on the backseat. That was one.
Outside, Lisette whistled a soft two-tone.
I rolled under the garage door once more and circled to where the Princess had made her find. A hip young bachelor couldn’t have his garbage can just sitting out in front of God and everybody. His was concealed behind a bamboo screen between the garage and the property wall. I shoved the screen aside and, preserving the prints, I eased the lid off the can, using the crooked tip of my little finger. The lid clattered a little as I set it aside. I used a quick flare of my cigarette lighter to examine the can’s contents. There was the other.
“And?” the Princess whisper-demanded.
“He’s dead.” I didn’t bother to speak softly. I didn’t much care if he heard us now.
Nearby I heard a sliding glass door rumble open on its tracks. “Is anyone out there?” a voice demanded.
I unzipped my windcheater, clearing the gun shoved under my belt. I didn’t think it would be one for the shooting board, but you never knew.
It was a notch bulldozer-carved into the flank of the Santa Monica hills, a future home development site for confident folks who didn’t believe in brush fires and earthquakes.
But on the previous evening, it had just been a boss place to go parking.
The lights of the L.A. basin rolled away from the foot of the Santa Monicas like a Persian carpet of stars and the air was warm, even at half past midnight. Half a dozen couple-occupied cars sat spaced out along the unfenced edge of the overlook and half a dozen low-playing car radios intermingled in a sensual whisper.
“Earth Angel” by the Crew-Cuts issued from the darkened interior of the ‘46 Ford, and, given the way the old sedan was slow-dancing on its suspension, I was about to put my foot right through one of those “moments to remember.” Too bad, but then my night had been bitched as well.
I rapped on the rear fender. “Hey, Gilly. I need words with you, man.”
There was a muffled explosion of profanity from the Ford’s backseat, a lot of it shrill and feminine. I withdrew politely to the back bumper, giving the involved time to pull down, zip up, and tuck in. A minute or so later Gilly Bristol backed out of the driver’s side rear door whispering frantic apologies to the backseat’s other occupant.
He scuffled back to where I was parked on his back bumper, a lean, dark-haired kid fighting the good fight against acne. Like me, he was clad in the uniform of the day, Levis and a white T-shirt. “Jesus, Kev,” he moaned, drooping down on the bumper. “I was on second and slidin’ for third!”
As a responsible adult I should have lectured him on respecting his young lady’s reputation and saving himself for marriage, but then if Gilly had viewed me as a responsible adult, he probably wouldn’t be talking to me. Beyond that, if he was old enough to fink for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, he was old enough for a lot of other stuff.
Bristol owed me. I’d finagled him out of six months in the county youth farm on a joyriding rap and now he was making it even.
“My heart bleeds, man,” I replied, “but I been chasin’ you around these hills for half the friggin’ night. The word from the bird is you got me a name.”
“Yeah.” I saw his silhouette nod. “Tod Carroll, a senior at my school. He drives a red ‘fifty-four Chevy convert and lives in that new development above Brentwood. I got you somethin’ else, too.”
Gilly dug in his pocket and came up with a twist of Kleenex. Through the tissue I could feel a cluster of capsules and flat, dime-sized tablets. “The goofballs go for a dollar and the bennies are fifty cents a pop,” he reported. “Carroll makes the scene at all the parties around here on the weekends.”
“You got anything on his connection?”
“Nah, but his old man owns that big drugstore in the shopping center off Stone Canyon.”
“You think his old man could be part of the action?”
The kid shrugged. “I dunno, daddy-o. I’m only in good enough to buy from the guy. But he’s always holding.”
I’d already gotten a bearing on the Carroll kid from another of my high-school stoolies. This nailed it down. “Okay. Now you back way the hell off. From here on, this Carroll guy is strictly radio-active. Stay away from him! Got it?”
“Got it.”
I stowed the drugs in my jeans and drew the ten bucks I’d had ready. “You did good, man. Go buy your chick a deal for her charm bracelet.”
Gilly absorbed the pair of Lincolns and I could see his grin glint in the dark. Then his grin faded as we felt an angry flounce radiate from the Ford’s backseat. “Oh man, I’m gonna be startin’ from home plate again.”
“Then you better get swingin’ before your battery goes dead.”
I circled wide around the other parkers, keeping my footsteps light on the compacted gravel. Car, my bad Black Widow Chev, sat out near the road in a deeper puddle of night beneath a ‘dozer-spared smoke tree. The view was almost as good and the privacy was better. The glowing tip of a Fatima extra-length hovered in the front seat. “And?” a soft voice inquired over the Nat King Cole Trio.
Lisette wears shadow well. With her glossy brunette ponytail and black sweater and skirt she was a darker patch of dark in the dark, a glint of silver earring marking her place.
“A bad or a worse.” The Princess materialized for a moment under Car’s dome light as I slid in behind the wheel, her shoes kicked off and her feet tucked under her. She disappeared again as I slammed the door and let the night flood back. “The bad’s a kid ripping off his old man’s drugstore to sell to his classmates. The worse is the old man’s supplying.”
I took an envelope and a pencil stub out of the glove compartment. Switching on the dome light again, I sealed the drugs in the envelope and wrote the time, date, and location on the outside. My name and my badge number, L.A. County 748, went over the sealed flap.
I tossed the envelope back into the glove box. Tomorrow it and my report would go to narcotics detail and I’d be out of it. That’s how plainclothes intelligence works. Somebody else makes the busts. You just set ’em up to be knocked down.