Odelle was suddenly between me and the painter.
“You do not talk to Mr. Dali like that,” she said very, very softly.
“Yes I do, Odelle. And if you touch me again, this time I will shoot you.”
I grinned at her and Dali said, “Odelle, Odelle, Odelle. You are a porcelain vase. You are not a … a … maleante, a …”
“… thug,” Gala supplied from the steps.
She stepped into the room, a tiny wraith in a leopard-skin cape with a crimson velvet collar, and moved to her husband. She took his hand and patted it reassuringly.
“He talks of murder,” Dali said, dragging the word murder out into three syllables.
“Dali doesn’t like to hear of death,” Gala said, turning to me. Odelle moved out of the way. “Death is not surreal.”
“I’m going home,” I said.
“You must find Dali’s painting, my clocks,” Gala said, stepping in front of me as I moved toward the door.
“The Highway Patrol has one of your clocks. Culver City police have another, and I don’t know where the hell the third one is.”
Gala looked puzzled.
“Ah,” said Dali behind me. “Sardines. Yes.”
“Where did you eat sardines?” I asked, turning back him.
“I hate sardines,” he said with a shudder, hugging himself. “I painted a can of sardines once because they came to me unbidden in a dream. I do not eat sardines.”
“In Carmel,” Gala said. “At the party when we moved in. You ate one on a cracker. Odelle, you remember, you were-”
“No!” shouted Dali, shaking his head. His hair went wild and his long pointed mustaches quivered. “That never happened.”
“It never happened,” Gala agreed. “Mr. Toby Peters, find Dali’s painting.”
I looked at Odelle, whose eyes were moist with concern. Those eyes, which a minute earlier were dripping blood, were moist and begging me for mercy.
“You got a Pepsi here?” I asked. “Or a beer?”
“Odelle,” said Gala, and Odelle went clumping off down the hall.
“Why would anyone kill two guys, leave goofy clues, and ruin two of your paintings?”
“He is an artist,” Dali tried, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “You must find the last painting. If it is not returned …”
“And the clocks,” Gala added.
“Cops in Culver City have one of the clocks. Cops in Mirador have another. The only way you’re going to get them back is to admit they’re yours, and then the cops start asking you questions. You want to go down to the Wilshire Station and answer questions?”
“But it was only a … a … chiste,” said Dali.
“A joke?” I said. “What are you …?”
“Tell him,” said Dali, smoothing down his hair.
Gala looked at her husband, then at the painting, and then at me as Odelle trotted back in the room, spilling beer from a cup shaped like an inverted skull. She held it out to me. I took it and drank deep while Gala Dali made up her mind.
“Dali,” she said to her husband, “this time you have gone too far.”
“It’s the only place I ever wanted to go,” Dali replied.
“A man,” Gala said, turning to me. “We paid him to take the two paintings. We were going to call the newspapers and tell them about it and give interviews, but he took three paintings and the clocks and now people are being murdered. That does not please Dali.”
I finished the beer and handed the empty glass to Odelle, who took it gratefully.
“I can understand that,” I said. “You think you can tell me something about this guy? Novak, right?”
“Novak?” Gala looked at me curiously. “No, his name was Taylor.”
“How did you find this Taylor?”
“He …” Gala began, but before she could finish a bullet shattered the window and blew a hole in the middle of the back of the naked woman in Dali’s painting. I jumped for Dali and pushed him out of the chair and to the floor.
“Get on the floor,” I called back to Gala and Odelle, who stood there in a trance. Odelle held the empty skull cup in front of her.
The second shot went into and through the chair in which Dali had been sitting a few seconds earlier.
“Turn off the goddamn lights, then,” I shouted.
Odelle moved to the light switch; Gala let out a scream and dropped down toward Dali and me on the floor. The third shot missed her, but not by much. The lights in the living room went out as Odelle galloped into the hall and hit the switch.
Darkness. No more bullets. Dali was mumbling something in Spanish. Gala answered him in French. They were both holding onto me.
I got free and crawled to the shattered window. In the darkness I could hear someone running away from the house.
“Stay down,” I warned, getting to my feet and going for the door. My leg was sending desperate signals that running was not one of my options. Whoever fired at Dali was on foot. Maybe I could get in my car and find him before he got to his car, assuming he was going for a car and wasn’t one of the neighbors who’d had enough of the Dalis.
A car pulled into the driveway. I opened the front door. Behind me, somewhere in the dark, I could hear Odelle hyperventilating like the Twentieth Century Limited. Barry Zeman, complete with tux and black tie, was getting out of a Stutz Bearcat.
“Peters?” he asked.
“Peters it is,” I said, moving for my car.
“What happened?” he asked, looking at the broken window and the darkened house.
“No time,” I said. “Dali will tell you.”
I crawled into the passenger side of my car and shuffled over to the driver’s seat.
“Where was Jim running?” he asked through my open window.
“Jim?” I echoed, turning on the ignition.
“Jim Taylor, J.T., my chauffeur,” he said, looking toward the street. “I just saw him running from the house.”
“Was he carrying anything?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Which way?” I asked, inching the car past him.
Zeman pointed to the left.
“What-?”
“Later,” I said, clanking into the night.
Downhill, wide open on a flat road with nothing coming, the Crosley could hit forty miles an hour. But I wasn’t in that kind of a hurry. I turned left on the street. I didn’t know what Taylor looked like; I’d only seen him from the back in the garage the day before, when I first met the Dalis. But there weren’t many people walking the streets of Beverly Hills at this hour, and the guy I wanted was carrying a rifle or something big enough to hold a rifle.
I coaxed the Crosley into doing its best. I didn’t want to panic Taylor. I wanted to spot him, slow down, follow him till I could nail him just before he got in his car.
I almost missed him. There aren’t any cars parked on Beverly Hills streets-you park in the driveway or the garage. Only intruders park on the street, and the cruising cops are on them before they can get an autograph or break into Fred Astaire’s pantry.
A few parties were going on, with cars parked in their respective driveways. I crept past the second party I came to in time to observe a Ford parked behind a white Rolls back into the street. The driveway lights caught the top of the driver and I could see he wasn’t dressed for a Sunday night party in Beverly Hills. I stopped in the middle of the street and turned off my lights.
The guy in the Ford screeched off toward Sunset. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like at least even money that Taylor was in the Ford. I started my car again and moved forward with the lights out. The Ford turned on Elm and I went after him, hitting the lights after I made the turn. If he kept running, I couldn’t catch him, but if he kept driving this fast, chances were good the Beverly Hills cops would be around a bush and on his tail. He was two blocks ahead of me, crossing Carmelita, when he decided to slow down. When he made the left onto Santa Monica I was about a block behind him, feeling sure that, barring the long-feared attack of the Japanese Kamikaze fleet, I should be able to stay with him till I came up with a plan.
First, an admission. Being in the traffic on Santa Monica, following a killer with a gun, felt good, solid. No riddles, puzzles, goofy paintings, just a good, clean killer with a rifle. I was comfortable.