Pike said, 'Take your fun where you find it.'
I hung up, then called Lucy at home. She answered as if she were perched by the phone. I said, 'It's me.'
'Let me change phones.' I waited. Ben was probably there.
When she came back on the line I told her about my conversation with Tracy Mannos, and what I had found in Stuart Greenberg's phone log. When I finished, she said, 'I'm coming out there.'
'Maybe you should talk to Tracy first. Tracy knows what you're up against, and I think she knows how to handle it, but this is pretty flimsy evidence.' In fact, it wasn't evidence at all, but I didn't want to be a defeatist.
She didn't say anything for a while, and then she said, 'I am not going to simply allow this to happen. Richard has no right to use his influence to affect my life. If I do nothing, and Tracy fails, then I'll feel all the worse.'
I didn't answer.
'I'm mad as hell, but I'm also a professional. Now that I know what I'm dealing with, I have no doubt that we can win. These are just two old-boy assholes trying to keep the little woman in her place.'
Pretty much what Tracy had said.
'Well, this is the wrong little woman.' She was quiet for a moment, but I guessed she was thinking. 'I don't care what Richard told you, it's not about Ben. Richard was a lousy father from day one, and he's still a lousy father. This is about me, and about power. That's why I divorced the sonofabitch.' She was mad, all right. 'He's an arrogant, self-involved prick, and if he thinks he can pull a stunt like this on me, I'll cut him a new asshole and stuff his head in it.' Whew.
I said, 'Luce?'
'What?' She almost shouted it.
'Please don't give yourself a stroke.'
She fell absolutely silent, and then she laughed. 'Wow. I'm really mad.'
'Glad I'm not on the receiving end.'
'Not you, Elvis. Not ever.' She laughed some more, and it was good to hear her laugh. Good to hear her sound so strong. 'I have to come out there and do this, even if it makes everything worse. Even if it costs me this job. You see that, don't you?'
'Sure.' I told her about the safe house, gave her the number there, and told her to call Joe with her flight information. After we hung up, I said, 'Richard, prepare to be sawed.'
It took me a little better than an hour to go through the house and put my things in order. I guess if I were a more accommodating person, I could find value in government agents doing such a thorough job.
After all, these were our tax dollars at work.
CHAPTER 21
I drove down the backside of Laurel Canyon into Studio City the next morning, going maybe fifteen miles out of my way to avoid detection. If I couldn't slip the Russians and the feds by slick driving, maybe I could wear them out with LA's morning rush-hour traffic.
The condo Pike had found for a safe house sat in the rear of a quiet, two-level garden building just off Coldwater Canyon near the Studio City Park. It was a classic ranch-style building of the kind constructed in the late fifties, all dark-stained wood and used brick, with mature pine trees lining the sidewalk and a parking lot for residents in the rear. Just the kind of place where unsuspecting inhabitants would never dream that the new people in the corner apartment were being stalked by homicidal maniacs from Seattle.
I parked at the curb, gathered the catalogs I'd taken from Clark 's duffel bag, then wandered through the garden courtyard until I found the right door. I rang the bell at ten minutes after nine. Charles's muffled voice came from behind the door as if he'd been waiting there. 'Go away.'
I said, 'Charles.' What a way to start your morning.
The door opened and Pike was there, tall and expressionless. I gave the big grin. 'Well, Joseph, bet you had a fun evening.'
Charles eyed me from the safety of the kitchen. 'It was a joke.'
Pike's head swiveled toward him and Charles ducked out of the kitchen and into the living room. Fun evening, all right.
The entry led past the kitchen to a dining area and the living room beyond, stairs climbing one wall of the living room to open to the second floor. The condo was large and spacious and fully furnished, as if whoever owned the place was away on a short trip. Thriving green plants dotted the room, and the plants were healthy and firm and devoid of yellow. Maybe I should ask whoever owned them for lessons. I nodded at Pike. 'Nice. Better than the Airstream.'
Pike shrugged. Guess it didn't matter to him either way.
Teri and Winona were at the dining room table, and Charles had assumed a position in front of the television. Watching one of those morning exercise shows on ESPN. Kiana Tom doing ab work. Winona said, 'Did you find our daddy yet?' Everyone was dressed and clean and ready to start their day of waiting for the detective to find their father.
'Not yet, hon. But I'm hot on his trail.' Hope is everything.
Teri said, 'Would you like breakfast? Joe and I made cottage cheese pancakes.'
'No, thanks. I ate before I left home.'
She looked disappointed. 'There's fresh coffee.'
I let her pour a cup, sipped some, then nodded. 'Good.'
Teri smiled and seemed pleased.
Joe said, 'We can talk upstairs.'
I followed Pike up with the coffee into one of the three bedrooms. It had been made up as a home office with desk and telephone and fax machine, but there was nothing around to indicate the owner's identity. Maybe Pike owned the place. For all I knew, Pike owned most of Los Angeles. He said, 'What'd you find?'
'Twenty thousand bucks in counterfeit hundreds and these.' I showed him the catalogs. Several pages were dog-eared, and quite a few items had been marked on the dog-eared pages, including two different grades of offset plate blanks from a firm in Finland, a high-end Hitachi digital scanner from a discount mail-order house in New York, a four-thousand-dollar Power Mac from a mail order firm in Los Angeles with a commercial graphics software platform that cost almost as much as the computer, something called a dual-side regulator from a commercial printing firm in London, a high-volume paper shear from the same company, and sixty liters each of indigo #7 and canyon orange #9A oil-based ink, as well as lesser amounts of forest green #2, classic red #42, black, kiss blue #12, and yellow AB1, all of which came from three different ink manufacturers, two in Europe and one in Maryland. Pike said, 'He's printing, all right.'
'Yeah, but what?' Hundred-dollar bills are green and black. 'Why would he need indigo and orange?'
Pike took out his wallet and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill. Walking around money. 'Maybe you have to mix them to get the different shades of black. Maybe he uses them to reproduce the security fibers.'
'Maybe if we just took all this stuff to your pal Marsha Fields she could tell us.'
Pike put his hundred away. 'The new hundreds are too hard to copy. If he's making hundreds, he'll make the older series.'
'If?'
Pike flipped back through the catalogs. 'This is almost forty thousand dollars' worth of material. Wonder where he's getting the money to pay for it.'
I was wondering that, too. He almost certainly wasn't sending counterfeit cash through the mail, and he knew better than to try to buy money orders or certified checks at a bank or at American Express. I said, 'If he ordered this stuff, it had to be delivered. Maybe Clark 's wherever that is.'
Most of the companies had an 800 number for phone orders, so I took a flyer and called the Los Angeles computer wholesaler first. A young woman with a Hispanic accent answered, 'Good morning from Cyber-World! What would you like to order?' Bright and cheery and wanting to help.
'I placed an order a couple of days ago and the machine hasn't arrived.' Just another customer on just another day.
'Why, let me track down that bad boy!' Wanting to make my phone shopping experience a happy one. 'Your name, please.'