He pocketed the first ball as if he was trying to get it out of the way so we could move on to something interesting, and then he sank another the same way. He chalked up sparingly and made two more. He was running the table, all right. I rested the butt of my cue on the floor and studied him. He held his shoulders high and wore his black hair slicked straight back. He would have been a handsome man if the bones of his face hadn’t been a little too big and the skin over them too tight. His wore narrow gray boots with heels, tight black trousers that buttoned up the front and had no belt-loops, a yellow shirt, a bolo tie, and a charcoal gray jacket, cut short, like a bolero jacket. All of his clothes looked as if he’d spent money to have them made that way on purpose. He was a real desperado. He looked as much like Zorro as anyone could look who didn’t have a sword and a flat black hat. Most coke hounds blink like fury, but he blinked only once in a while, slowly and sort of precisely, like a falcon. I wondered how much hop you had to run through to get that way. It wasn’t hurting his game any. He sank the white with no more fuss than the other balls and laid his cue gently on the felt. I opened my wallet, counted out thirty-two dollars, and added it to the thirty-two on the edge of the table. Without taking his eyes from mine, he picked it up and held it off to the side. The other man I’d been playing said, “Well — Well, thanks, Billy,” and put it in his pocket.
“Now we been introduced,” Billy said.
17
Metz
He led me back out to the pool. There were twice as many people out there as I’d seen at midnight. Someone had lit the patio torches and turned off the colored floodlights, and all you could see was shadows. When the shadows talked they looked like they were conspiring, and when they danced they looked like black flames. Billy led me to a bench by a fitted fieldstone wall that ran along the back of the property. We sat and watched the dancers. “Pretty good brawl, huh?” he said.
“I’ve seen worse,” I said.
“You’re looking for two three pounds.”
“No.”
“That’s what Maddy said. Her hearing’s usually pretty good.”
“That’s what I told her. I came to talk to you, Billy, not your women. My name’s Rose.”
“Yeah? That the punch line?”
“Jesus, what’re they teaching you kids these days? Stu Rose.”
“I never heard of you.”
I shook my head, amused. “Well, let’s just say if you were running this luau anywhere up the Valley, you’d’ve heard of me a while ago.”
“Yeah? Well, we’re not up the Valley, dad, and you’re not buying, you say. So what’s the grift?”
“You picked an interesting spot, Billy. Right in Scarpa’s back garden. Or haven’t you heard of Lenny Scarpa either?”
“I hear way too goddamn much about Lenny Scarpa. You and him good buddies?”
“No,” I said truthfully.
“I’m not a sociable boy, dad. Why’re we talking?”
“Maybe we’ve got nothing to talk about,” I said. “Maybe you’ve got all the supply you want. All the organization you want. Maybe you’re never short of kale when you get a shot at a nice score. Maybe you want to stay small forever.”
“You raise a lot of dust, don’t you, daddy?”
“Talk English. And wipe your upper lip.”
He didn’t wipe it, but he had to stop himself.
I said, “I’m on your patch now, so I guess I’ll let you call me daddy once in a while. But your patch ends where the driveway does. And at high tide my patch might slop right over yours. Why don’t we try a little manners and see how it goes?”
He didn’t say anything. We watched the dancers.
“You’re Billy Metz,” I said.
“Who’d you think I was?”
“All I knew was Billy, but I make you now. William R. Metz. Production design at Paramount. You were really up there for a while. They bounced you last fall and nobody liked to say why.”
“I walked,” he said.
“Catherine the Great’s palace in Scarlet Monarch. That big, ah, that kind of desert fortress in A Sound of Distant Drums. Lemme think.”
“I was there seven years, dad. I did a lot of stuff.”
“You were good,” I said. “Really good. I could do something like that, I wouldn’t fool with anything else.”
“Time comes you get tired of drawing little pictures.”
“We might agree on one thing, Billy. Scarpa’s had it his own way in Santa Monica an awful long time.”
“I’m not looking to be adopted. I like it on my own.”
“You’re brand-new, son. Fresh out of the cellophane. It doesn’t work that way, not without a setup. You got to come in with somebody. Why not me?”
“You talk a lot.”
“I like to talk, don’t you?”
Metz stood.
“Let’s go somewhere,” he said.
We walked toward the house. When we came through the French doors, I looked around and said. “Gimme a minute. Jesus, I should’ve dropped bread crumbs.”
“One off each bedroom,” he said, waving. “Take your pick. I’ll be out front.”
I nodded and headed off down the hall. The first bedroom had some folks getting acquainted on the bed, but I didn’t feel like excusing myself and I kicked the heel of his shoe. He looked around. “Out,” I said, and they buttoned up and got out. I picked up the phone on the bedside table. It was past two in the morning. Scarpa answered on the first ring. “Yeah,” he said.
“Where do you want him?” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Santa Monica.”
He thought a moment. “There’s a little park, just south of the pier, called Crescent or something. Right by the end of Pico, where it meets the water. Half an hour.”
He hung up, and I went out to find Metz. He was at the front door, ready to go.
I’d spoken too soon. He had the hat, too.
We walked outside without a word. He nodded when he saw my car. “Nice ride,” he said.
“There’s a story behind it,” I told him. “Tell you on the way. You know a place called Franco’s, down by the pier?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t like bars.”
I swung out the driveway and headed for Lincoln Boulevard. “It’s a decent little shack, for after hours.”
“I don’t give a goddamn. You run the Valley, why’re you driving this wreck?”
“Long story, Billy. Long story, but I don’t mind telling.”
“I mind listening. Look, let’s just pull into the first place we see.”
“You’re a jumpy fella, Billy. You should sniff less and drink more. We’re going to Franco’s.”
“I don’t need to go to Franco’s. What, the house give you a percentage?”
“It’s a good place to talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
“I want you to meet an associate of mine.”
“Aw, hell,” he said disgustedly, “you’re one of Scarpa’s boys,” and slipped his hand into his jacket.
You’d expect a powder hound to be quick, and he was, but quick doesn’t mean good, and I had a hold on his right wrist by the time he’d got a hold on his iron. We were on Lincoln by then, doing maybe forty. I eased it up past fifty. I didn’t want anybody getting giddy and jumping out. I could tell he had his finger on the trigger, but I wouldn’t let him draw, so his finger wasn’t much good to him unless he felt like shooting a chunk off his hip. I jammed my thumb in between the tendons in his wrist and started working it around. He let out a thin noise between his teeth. “I never broke a guy’s wrist this way,” I said. “Want me to try?”
He backhanded me a few times lefty in the face. It wasn’t worth writing down in my diary. “You’re a jumpy fella, Billy,” I said again. “Let go the gun.”