I had been in many rooms like this one since coming to L.A., but I had never seen a white man living in one. That was a real eye-opener for me. In America anyone could be poor and downtrodden. I would have spent more time thinking about that, but I was worried about someone deciding to cut my throat for finding out.
“What’s happened to you, Brian?” Martin Friar asked his supplier of black women.
“Who’re your friends?” Motley replied, sitting heavily on a wooden lawn chair.
“Robert,” I said, holding out a hand. “And this is my friend Frank.”
When Brian Motley grinned, you could see that he’d recently lost most of an upper front tooth.
“Bob, Frankie,” he said. “Sit, sit. I found this couch three blocks from here. Can you imagine somebody throwing out something so sturdy? You know, there’s people in China take somethin’ home like this an’ pay for their kids’ education with it.”
We all sat.
Martin was visibly shaken by the condition of his friend.
There was a half-empty pint of Thunderbird wine on the tree-fiber floor. Brian took a swig from it, considered offering us some, and then decided that his generosity would be wasted.
“What can I do for you, Marty?” he asked.
“What has happened to you, Brian?”
“Same thing happening to you,” the wine-soaked white man said. “Only you haven’t got to this stop yet.”
“What are you talking about?” Friar asked. “What do you mean?”
“They got fifteen thousand out of me before they cut me loose,” he said. “All I had to do was give ’em you and three others.”
He giggled.
Then he took a swig of wine.
“Was that Sterling?” I asked, and for the first time Brian Motley’s eyes showed something akin to fear.
“I didn’t tell you that,” he said.
“No, but I’ll tell him you did when I find him.”
“That’s a lie!” Brian shrieked. He jumped up from his chair, but Fearless pushed him back down with enough muscle that he decided to stay put.
“It’s a lie,” he said again.
“Yes,” I admitted. “And I’d be happy to omit that prevarication if you would tell us how we could get to the man.”
From rage to suspicion is a long jump. Mr. Motley’s head bounced like a child’s rubber ball running out of steam. Then he said, “What?”
“We know about Angel, or Monique,” I said. “We also know about Hector LaTiara...”
That name struck home. Motley’s head now made a viperlike motion: serpentine without the fangs.
“He’s dead,” I said. “Killed in his own apartment.”
At this point Motley began breathing through his mouth. I didn’t know what that meant. Was he frightened that someone might kill him too or was he excited that a dark cloud over his head had gone away?
“What do you want from me?”
“Sterling.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m still going to be looking for the man. And when I do find him, I will tell him that it was you who sent me. That is unless you really do.”
The wine garbled my words in Motley’s ears. He had to think about what I’d said for a moment or two.
“I need much money,” he said at last.
“How much?” I asked.
“Two hundred,” he said. “No. No. Three, three hundred. Three hundred dollars in fives and tens.”
“Can you do that, Mr. Friar?” I asked.
“I don’t have it on me, and my bank will be closed by the time we get there.”
“I got it if the man take twenties,” Fearless offered.
He pulled a large wad of cash from his back pocket. This didn’t surprise me. Fearless often carried large amounts of cash. He never trusted banks.
“Bank ain’t nuthin’ but a robbery waitin’ t’happen,” he always said.
While Fearless peeled off the bills, I said, “Sterling.”
“What do you want to know about him?” Motley asked, licking his lips for every third twenty Fearless thumbed.
“I wanna know the scam, his address, and his full name.”
Fearless had finished counting.
Motley looked at the money like it was a glass of water and he’d spent seven dry days in the Gobi Desert.
“Lionel Charlemagne Sterling,” he said. “He was once a member of the Santa Anita racing commission. He also belongs to the Greenwood Golf Club.”
“He’s the one you gave Mr. Friar’s name?” I asked.
“First I met Monique,” Motley admitted. “She brought me to a few card games and showed that she was always a winner. I put some money with her, and she won a few times. Then she told me about a big game. I put up six thousand dollars... Only one of it was mine. She lost and Hector came to me. He made me take more, ten thousand more. Then, when I told him I couldn’t take anything else without getting caught, he said he wanted other names. What else could I do?”
“You could have been a man,” Martin Friar suggested.
I wondered what the righteous Mr. Friar would have done if gangsters had threatened his lifestyle and his family for the cost of a few names.
“Where does Sterling come in?” I asked Motley instead.
“Hector brought me to him when I said I couldn’t steal anymore. He told me that they’d cut me loose if I played along. I gave them what they wanted, but my superiors found out about the money I took. They didn’t want a scandal, but they fired me and blackballed me. I can’t work. I can’t live. My wife won’t have me after those women. All I can do now is get on a bus and go back to Sacramento to my family.”
He reached for the money, but I put my hand in the way.
“Write down the list of names you gave to Sterling and his address,” I said.
“I don’t know where he lives,” Motley said, his voice quavering.
“I can find him,” Friar said in that man-in-charge voice of his.
“Okay,” I said. “Get a pencil and write down the names.”
Chapter 35
We left Motley to pack his toothbrush and wine bottles. I had no doubt that he’d return to a previous life of white poverty in central California. There he’d live out his days, drinking rotgut and jumping at bumps in the night.
Friar had us drive him to a phone booth. There he called the Greenwood Golf Club and simply asked for the address and phone number of Lionel Charlemagne Sterling. The whole transaction took less than three minutes. They would never have let me in on those numbers. Then again, they wouldn’t have let me play golf there either. But a man like Friar, even though he was not a member, was well-known to them.
“Mr. Friar,” I said to our new friend, “you’ve been a good partner so far, but right now I believe that we need to go our separate ways.”
“I might be of help to you when you face Mr. Sterling.”
“Naw, man,” Fearless said. “These men serious about their bidness. They got guns an’ knives an’ they know how to use ’em too. I can cover one man, but two be a stretch.”
There was something in Fearless’s delivery. When he talked, any man halfway near sane listened.
“Will you keep me informed?” Friar asked me.
“When we get your money back, you’ll get it,” I said. “And we might need some’a your kinda help by that time.”
We drove Martin Friar back to his office and then made our way to Spalding Drive in that part of Beverly Hills that lay south of Wilshire Boulevard. North of Wilshire and beyond was where the truly wealthy people lived. The south was for their Passepartout-like aides. These men were senior vice presidents with no chance for promotion or small-business owners who didn’t have the vision, or the backing, to go large.