Sunset Express

I organized the twenty statement forms by location and decided to start with those people who were closest and work outward.

I went back into the Virgin, got change from a pretty young woman with a pin through her nose, then found a pay phone on Sunset Boulevard to arrange the interviews. A homeless man with a shopping cart filled with neatly folded cardboard squares was seated beneath the phone, but he graciously moved aside when I told him I needed to make some calls. He said, 'Please feel free. It is, after all, a public instrument.' He was wearing spats.

I fed in a quarter and dialed Mr C. Bertrand Rujillio, who lived less than five minutes away. A man with a soft, raspy voice answered on the fourth ring and said, 'Who is this?'

'My name is Cole, for the law firm of Jonathan Green. I'm calling for Mr C. Bertrand Rujillio, please.'

There was a pause, and then the rasp came back. 'Do you have the money?'

'Is this Mr Rujillio?'

Another pause, softer. 'The money?'

'If you mean the reward, that won't be paid unless the information you provide leads to the arrest and conviction of Ms Martin's murderer.' Truly said that the phone bank operators had explained all this. Truly said I wouldn't have to worry about it. 'I need to take your statement, Mr Rujillio. Can we arrange that?'

The pause again, and this time the line went dead. I stared at the phone for a couple of seconds, then hung up and scratched C. Bertrand Rujillio's name off the list.

The homeless man said, 'No luck?'

I shook my head.

Of the next three calls, two reached answering machines and one went unanswered. Nobody home. I said, 'Damn.'

The homeless man said, 'Four out of four is poor luck.'

'It can't last forever.'

'Will you have many more calls?'

'A couple.'

He sighed and looked away.

Two more calls and two more answering machines and all the nearby people were done. So much for efficiency. So much for my plan of starting in close and working out. I said, 'Well, hell.'

The homeless man said, 'Tell me about it.'

I looked at him. 'I had a plan, but no one's home.'

He made a sympathetic shrug, then spread his hands. 'Flexibility, my friend. Flexibility is the key to all happiness. Remember that.'

I told him that I would and shuffled through the witness forms and decided to hell with starting close. I called Floyd M. Thomas in Chatsworth. Chatsworth was a good forty minutes away. Floyd M, Thomas answered on the third ring in a fast, nervous voice and told me that he had been expecting my call and that he would be happy to see me. I hung up. The homeless man said, 'You see? When we force events we corrupt them. Your flexibility allowed events to unfold in a way that pleases you. We know this as synchronicity.'

'You're a very wise man. Thank you.'

He spread his hands. 'To possess great wisdom obliges one to share it. Enjoy.'

I drove to Chatsworth.

Floyd Thomas lived in a studio apartment on the second floor of a ten-unit garden apartment just off Nordhoff. Scaffolding was rigged around the front and sides of the place, and Hispanic men in baggy pants were chipping away cracked stucco. Earthquake repairs. Thomas himself was a thin, hunched man in his early fifties who opened his door only wide enough to peer out at me with one eye. When he opened the door a cloud of moist heat oozed out around him like a fog. I slipped in a card. 'Elvis Cole. I called you about the Martin murder.'

He looked at the card without taking it. 'Oh, yes. Floyd Thomas saw that. Floyd Thomas saw exactly what happened.' Floyd Thomas. Don't you love it when they speak of themselves in the third person.

'That's great, Mr Thomas. I'll need to take your statement.'

He unlocked four chains and opened the door just wide enough for me to enter. If it was in the high nineties outside, Thomas's apartment must've been a hundred ten with at least three industrial-strength humidifiers pumping out jets of water vapor. Stacks of newspapers and magazines and periodicals sprouted around the room like some out-of-control toadstool jungle, and everything smelled of mildew and body odor. I said, 'Hot in here.'

'Floyd Thomas chills easily.' Sweat leaked down out of his scalp and along the contours of his face and made his thin shirt cling to his skin. Thirty seconds inside his apartment, and I was beginning to sweat, too.

'So what did you see, Mr Thomas?' I dug out the form and prepared to take notes.

He said, 'We were over the Encino Reservoir, They were in a long black convertible. A Mercury, I think.'

I looked at him without writing. 'Over the Encino Reservoir?'

He nodded. 'That's right. I saw them with a woman in their car, and I'm sure it was her. She was struggling.' His eyes shifted side to side as he spoke.

I put down the pen. 'How were you over the reservoir?'

His eyes narrowed and he looked suspicious. 'They'd taken me up in the orb to adjust the chips.'

'The orb?' I said. 'The chips?'

He pulled back his upper lips so that his gums were exposed. 'They force chips into my gums that no one can see. They won't even show up on X-rays.' He made a tiny laugh. Hee-hee. Like that.

I said, 'You believe you saw Susan Martin in a black Mercury convertible when you were up in the orb.'

He nodded again. 'There were three men in black and they had the woman. Black suits, black ties, black hats, dark glasses. She had seen the orb and the men in black had to make sure she was silenced. They work for the government, don't you know.'

'Of course.'

'When will I get the reward?'

'We'll let you know, Mr Thomas.'

I thanked Floyd Thomas for his time, then drove to a nearby 7-Eleven and made five more calls, which resulted in three more interviews. Mr Walter S. Warren of Van Nuys was a retired general contractor who was convinced that his younger brother, Phil, was behind the kidnapping. He revealed that Phil had once eaten in Teddy Martin's Santa Monica restaurant, had cracked a tooth while enjoying the steak tartare, and had promised to 'get that prick' for what had happened to his tooth. Ms Victoria Bonell, also of Van Nuys, was an extremely thin woman who shared her ranch-style home with seven pug dogs and nine million fleas. Ms Bonell described an elaborate scenario in which 'lipstick lesbians' and 'power dykes' were behind Susan Martin's murder, information she had overheard while having her hair colored at a place called Rosa's. I dutifully noted these things, then went to see Mrs Lewis P. Reese of Sherman Oaks, who offered me tea and finger cakes, and who clearly knew nothing of Teddy Martin, Susan Martin, or the kidnapping. She was elderly and lonely, and I stayed twenty minutes longer than necessary, chatting about her dead husband. The detective does his good turn.

I left Mrs Reese at twenty minutes after two, bloated on tea cakes, itching from fleas, and smelling of Floyd C. Thomas's pod-person environment. I thought that if I was going to make any more calls maybe they should be to Jonathan. Maybe I should ask him if he really wanted to spend his money having me interview these people?

I stopped at a Ralph's market, bought Tide, Downy Fabric Softener, two Long Island ducklings, enough salad ingredients for a family of nine, and was home by ten minutes after three. The airline told me that Lucy's flight was expected to arrive on time. I put the ducks into a large pot, covered them with water to thaw, and put the pot in the refrigerator. I showered, shaved, put on fresh clothes, and made a last-minute check of the house. Spotless. Pristine. Free from embarrassing dust bunnies.