“Bertram Skinker,” she said, “1310 Janet Drive, West Hollywood 90068.”
“Thank you,” I said, writing it down.
“Don't mention it. Ah, ah,” she said, “not on the floor.”
At two o'clock I was driving Alice up and down Janet Drive. Janet was a quiet, curving street just barely on the wrong side of Doheny, within envy distance of Beverly Hills. West of Doheny was the Land of Oz, distinguished by desirable zip codes and real-estate values that were accelerating at the speed of light.
Janet Drive was short and almost unpleasantly sweet. There were only twelve houses on each side, mostly small one-story affairs hiding behind privacy walls and growths of nitrogen-rich bougainvillea. They probably cost five thousand dollars to build in the forties, and they were now going in the high threes, as in three hundred thousand. All the houses were painted one of the two current decorator colors, either clamshell white or industrial gray. Thirteen-ten was out of sight behind the full battlement, both an eight-foot-high privacy wall and a flourishing hedge of champagne-colored bougainvillea. I parked, climbed out, and wished for cheap locks.
Inside the privacy wall, one glance at the door reaffirmed my worst fears. Birdie knew about locks. There were three, and only one of them was junk. The one that worried me most was a Medeco double dead bolt, anchored both in the wall to the left of the door and in the concrete slab on which the house had been built. It worried me so much that I walked around the house to check out the back door.
I couldn't get to the back door. Both sides of the house were surrounded by yet another wall, this one more than ten feet tall, and on the right the wall was gated. The gate was as tall as the wall and secured by a heavy combination lock. I knew nothing about combination locks.
So I went back to the front door. Something, presumably Woofers, yapped in a dog version of Morris Gurstein's voice as I worked on the first two locks. They went without too much trouble, leaving me confronted with the Medeco. The Medeco took me almost forty minutes, while Woofers shrilled at me and I wondered whether Birdie worked banker's hours on Fridays. If he did, if he came home and caught me, I might literally be killing Aimee. That is, if she weren't already dead and buried.
Finally the lock groaned and turned to the right, and the arms of the dead bolt shuddered out of position. I realized that I was perspiring profusely. I pushed the door inward and looked down, braced for Woofers' onslaught. Even a little dog can lacerate an ankle, and I didn't want to leave blood on Birdie's floor.
What I was looking at was expensive fuchsia-colored wall-to-wall carpet. Woofers, once the door had creaked open, had beaten a hasty retreat. I went in with new courage and closed the door behind me.
“Whoooo,” I said in a falsetto that rose and fell like a graph of the Doppler effect. “Whoo-oo, Woofers.”
Woofers declined to appear. Instead, something that sounded like a fly being unzipped issued from the room at the end of the entrance hall. It took me a moment to place it as an attempt at a growl. I mustered up my courage and looked around.
Mounted high on the walls, antique masks from Bali or someplace else in Indonesia stuck faded tongues out at me. All the other art in sight was Japanese, mostly celebrating the suicidal spirit of the samurai. In between the bloody prints-decapitations and Japanese swords being swung against invincible ghosts-the walls were covered in a rough, nubby silk of a neutral beige that brought into bright relief the colors of the silk flowers, perfectly arranged, that sprouted from hammered brass vases on the long mahogany table against the right-hand wall. To the left was a door that led into a yellow kitchen with accents of blue in the tiles above the sink, accents that were picked up by the decorator rug on the floor.
The little zipper sound came from underneath a white sectional couch in the living room. Its sections were arranged artfully around a beveled-glass-and-wrought-iron coffee table, and in the center of the coffee table was a beautifully carved wooden head from Java, a graceful girl, or perhaps a boy, wearing an ornate headdress. Her/his features were round and smooth and as impassive as a diplomat's. There was no way to know what that face had seen.
I sat on the couch, and the growling stopped. Propping my feet on top of the coffee table as ankle insurance, I said, “Woofers. Hello, Woofers. Good doggie.” The growling began again, but it sounded questioning. “Good old Woofers,” I said, “the guardian of the castle. Best dog in the world. What a good dog.”
Now there was a tiny thumping against the bottom of the couch. She'd traded ends, going from the larynx to the tail, always a positive sign. Still talking, I got up and headed for the kitchen, stepping around an area rug from China that must have cost two thousand dollars, and the tempo of the thumping accelerated.
When I opened the refrigerator the thumping turned into a positive thwacking. Birdie lived on bran, celery, and wheat germ, but there were three speckled brown eggs standing in line in a military fashion inside the refrigerator door. I found a saucer in one of the immaculate cupboards and broke an egg into it, and put the saucer on the floor. “Woofers,” I said, “food for the good dog.”
I held my breath, and then she trotted in, her nails clicking on the tile like a tiny parody of Yoshino's high heels. She was a perfect Yorkie, her hair shampooed and polished and layered and cut, two little fuchsia ribbons tied in bows through the fur above her ears. She stopped and cocked her head at me with a last twinge of uncertainty. At a certain point, the only thing to do with dogs is to stop trying. “Up to you,” I said negligently, going back into the entrance hall. The sound of a lapping tongue followed me.
Birdie's bedroom was virginally perfect. The plum-colored sheets on his queen-size bed were linen, and a dust ruffle shimmered to the floor. The floor in here was bleached oak. Scattered here and there was an occasional area rug, each the result of a year's work in some third-world country. A Yoshitoshi print of a would-be shogun having his head lopped off faced a David Hockney of a boy diving into a pool that was bluer than Paul Newman's eyes. By the time I'd looked at it closely enough to realize that the Hockney was an original, Woofers was at my heels. There was a small Sam Francis over the bed, also an original. For a secretary, Birdie was doing okay.
Entrance hall, kitchen, living room, two little bathrooms, the bedroom. A dining nook off the kitchen. A tiny library with a computer on a pine desk just beyond the bedroom. That seemed to be it. Woofers followed me slavishly from room to room, a hummingbird's tongue hanging out one side of her mouth. The house, the decorations, the dog: everything was perfect. And yet, that couldn't be the whole story, not unless I was radically wrong about everything. I went through the drawers in the kitchen and then the ones in the bedroom, discovering only that Birdie preferred Henckel cutlery and silk underwear, and then I sat on the bed. I'd been sitting there a minute or more when I realized that I was looking at the door to his closet.
Birdie had a great many Philippine shirts, all of them smaller than the rag I use to polish Alice once a year, and more shoes than a millipede. There were also some antique Japanese kimonos. His clothes hung in color-coordinated glory, like customized color bars on some tailor's television screen. I was reluctant to disturb anything, which was why it took me so long to push the clothing aside and find the door on the other side of the closet. The outside of the door, the side facing me, was extravagantly bolted and barred, but all the bolts and bars were open.
I reached for the doorknob. Behind me, Woofers whimpered.
The door opened inward, away from me, revealing a dim and narrow flight of stairs. They led down. I reached inside and found a light switch.