Rice drove across Laurel Canyon, coming down into the Valley just as full daylight hit. When he reached Ventura Boulevard, he recalled verbatim the facts he'd heard through the ventilator shaft: "Kling and Valley
View, pink apartment house"; "Christine something, Studio City, house on the corner of Hildebrand and Gage." Truth, half-truth or bullshit? At Hildebrand and Gage he got his first validation. The mailbox of the northeast corner house was tagged with the name "Christine Confrey."
That fact gave him a feeling of destiny that built up harder and harder as he drove west to Encino. When he got to Kling and Valley View and saw a faded pink apartment house on the corner, with an out-of-place Cadillac parked in front, the feeling exploded. Rice kept it at a low roar by calculating odds: five to one that the info was correct, making the heists possible. Checking the mailboxes of the six-unit building, he saw that only one single woman lived there-Sally Issler in #2. He found a door designated 2 on the ground-floor street side, with a high hedge fronting the apartment's large picture window. Rice squatted behind the hedge, waiting for the owner of the Caddy to cut the odds down to zero.
He waited an hour and a half before a door opened and two voices, one male, one female, gave him pay dirt:
"My wife gets back tomorrow. No overnighters for a while." "Matinees? You know, like the song-'Afternoon Delight'?" The man laughed. "We can hit Hot Tub Fever during your lunch hour." "Sounds good, but I read in Cosmo that those hot tub places all have herpes germs in the water."
"Don't believe everything you read. Call me at the bank?" "Yeah."
Rice heard sounds of kissing, followed by a door slamming. He counted to ten, then stood up and peered around the hedge. The Cadillac was just taking off. He ran for his car and pursued it.
It led him to a Bank of America branch on Woodman and Ventura. Rice sized up the man who got out. Tall, broad-hipped, sunken-chested. A wimp whose sex appeal was his money.
The man walked up to the front doors. Rice followed from a safe distance, passing him as he stepped inside. When the manager locked the doors behind him, Rice counted to ten, then peered through the plate-glass window and smiled.
The manager was alone inside the bank, and the surveillance cameras were fixed-focused at the floor. The tellers stations were visible from the street only if a passerby was willing to stand on his tiptoes and crane his neck. Rice watched the manager walk directly to the teller area and take a key from his pocket, then open drawers and transfer cash to his briefcase, leaving pieces of paper in the money's place-probably doctored tally slips. The odds zoomed to perfection. Rice ran to his car, then drove to a pay phone and called Louie Calderon at his message drop number.
"Speak."
"Louie, it's Duane."
"Already? Don't tell me, the car broke down and you're pissed." "Nothing like that."
"Another favor?"
"Yeah. I want three.45s and one of those dart guns. You've got darts, too?"
"Yeah. Before we go any further, I don't wanna know what you got in mind. You got that?"
"Right. Silencers?"
"I can get them, but they cut down the range to practically zilch." "They'll never be fired; it's just an extra precaution."
"Mr. Smooth. Seven bills for the whole shot. Deal?"
"Deal. One more thing. I need two men, smart, with balls, who want to make money. No niggers, no dopers, no trashy gangster types, nobody with robbery convictions."
Louie whistled, then laughed. "You want a lot, you know that? Well, today's your lucky day. I know two Chicano dudes, brothers, who're looking for work. Smart-one righteous vato, one tagalong. Pulled hundreds of burglaries, only got popped once. Righteous burglars, righteous con men. They just hung up this phone rip-off gig and they're hurtin' for cash." "You vouch for them?"
"I fenced their stuff for seven or eight years. When they got busted, they didn't snitch me off. What more you want?"
"Any strong-arm experience?"
"No, but one of them is downright mean, and I'll bet he'd dig it. Used to fight welterweight, ten, twelve years ago. All the top locals stomped on him."
"Can you set up a meet?"
"Sure. But I'm tellin' them and I'm tellin' you: I don't want to know nothin' about your plans. Comprende?"
"Comprende."
"Good. I'll call Bobby and set it up. When you meet him, tell him how you saw him knock Little Red Lopez through the ropes with a right cross.
He'll eat it up."
The phone went dead. Rice walked back to his car. When he stuck the key in the ignition, he was trembling. It felt good.
5
Even as the dream unfolded, he knew that it was just a dream, one of the stock nightmares that owned him, and if he didn't panic, it would run its course and he would wake up safe.
Sometime back in '67 or '68, when he was working Hollywood Patrol, he and his partner Flanders got an unknown trouble call directing their unit to an old house in a cul-de-sac off the Cahuenga Pass, a block of ramshackle pads rented out dirt cheap because noise from the freeway overpass made living there intolerable.
When no one answered their knocks and shouted "Police officers, open up!" he and Flanders kicked in the door, only to be driven back outside by the stench of stale cordite and decomposing flesh. While Flanders radioed for backup units, he drew his service revolver and prowled the pad, discovering the five headless bodies, brain-spattered walls, expended shotgun rounds and the note taped to the TV set: "I keep hearing these voices thru the freeway noise telling Peg and the kids about me and Billy. It's a lie, but they won't believe it was just one time when we was drunk, and that don't count. This way nobody's going to know except Billy, and he don't care."
The man who wrote the note was slumped by the TV set. He had jammed the sawed-off.10 gauge into his crotch and blown himself in two. The shotgun lay beside him in a pile of congealed viscera.
Then the dream speeded up, and he wasn't sure if it was happening or not.
Flanders came back inside and yelled, "Backup, detectives and M.E. on their way, Hoppy." He saw him reach for a cigarette to kill the awful stink, and was about to scream about gas escaping from stiffs, but knew Flanders would call it college boy bullshit. He ran toward him anyway, just as the match was struck and the little boy's stomach exploded and Flanders ran out the door with his face on fire. Then he was screaming, and ambulances were screaming, and he knew it wasn't a dream, it was the telephone.
Lloyd rolled over and reached for it, surprised to find that he had fallen asleep fully clothed. "Yes? Who is it?"
A familiar voice came on the line. "Dutch, Lloyd. You all right?"
"You woke me up."
"Sorry, kid."
"Don't be; you did me a favor."
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind. What is it, Dutch?"
When there was a long silence on the L.A. end of the line, Lloyd tensed and shook off the last remnants of sleep. He heard the bustle of Hollywood Station going on in the background, and pictured his best friend getting up the guts to tell him something very bad.
"Goddammit, Dutch, tell me!"
Dutch Peltz said, "So far it's just a rumor, but it's an informed rumor, and I credit it. That shrink you saw last month recommended you be given early retirement. You know, emotional disability incurred in the line of service, full pension, that kind of thing. I've heard that Braverton and McManus are behind it, and that if you don't accept the plan, you'll be given a trial board for dereliction of duty. Lloyd, they mean it. If the trial board finds you guilty, you'll be kicked off the Department."
A kaleidoscope of memories flashed in front of Lloyd's eyes, and for long moments he didn't know if he was back in a dream or not. "No, Dutch. They wouldn't do that to me."
"Lloyd, it's true. I've also heard that Fred Gaffaney has got a file on you. Nasty stuff, some sex shit you pulled when you worked Venice Vice."