The pear-shaped man was standing by the mailboxes on a little plot of grass they have there, waiting for a rat-sized dog on a silver leash. The dog was straining so hard its back was bent double. It edged sideways as it strained. Awful, the things you see in my line of work. The pear-shaped man said, “You’re not Johnny Staccato. That was an old TV series with John Cassavetes.”
“Caught me,” I said. “That’s the trouble with trying to be smart, there’s always someone smarter.” The pear-shaped man nodded and looked superior. I gave him a card. “You see Ms. Marsh around, I’d appreciate a call.”
The Mexicans in the Nova were still there, only now they were arguing. Charlie Bronson gestured angrily, then fired up their car and swung off down the street. Hot-blooded. The pear-shaped man put the card in his pants. “You aren’t the only one looking for that woman,” he said.
I looked at him. “No?”
“There was another man. I didn’t speak to him, but I saw him knocking on number 4. A big man.”
I gave him my All-Knowing Operative look. “Good-looking kid. Six-three. Sandy-haired. Could be a football player.”
He looked at the dog. “No, this man was dark. Black hair. Bigger than that.”
So much for the All-Knowing Operative. “When was this?”
“Last week. Thursday or Friday.” He belched softly, said “That’s a sweetie” to the dog, then eyed me again. “I think she had quite a few men friends.”
I nodded.
The pear-shaped man tsked at the little dog and gently jerked the leash, as if that would be coaxing. The dog looked up with sad, protruding eyes. The pear-shaped man said, “I’d feed him dog meal, but he whines so much for chicken necks. That’s all he’ll eat. He loves the skin so.”
I nodded again. “Same with people,” I said. “You never like what’s good for you.”
3
I walked back along Gorham and down to San Vicente where I phoned Ellen Lang from a Shell station, and got no answer. I took out the rolodex cards Janet Simon had given me. There were two phone numbers typed on Garrett Rice’s card, one with a Beverly Hills prefix, one from The Burbank Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank. It was almost four and traffic was starting to build, the sky already a pallid exhaust orange. Ugly. Bumper to bumper. Fifty-five delightful minutes later I was on another pay phone across from the Warner Brothers gate asking a secretary I knew for a walk-on pass. I would have phoned Garrett Rice directly; but people tend not to be in for private cops. Even when they brave the rush hour.
I jaywalked across Olive Street and gave the guard my name. He flipped through a little file where they keep the passes after the teletype prints them out and said, “Yes, sir.”
I said, “I’m going to see Garrett Rice. Can you tell me where that is?”
“What’s that name again?”
Usually, you tell these guys a name, they’re spitting out directions before you finish saying it. This guy had to look in a little book. Maybe nobody ever asked for Garrett Rice. Maybe I was the first ever and would win some kind of prize. “Here we go,” he said, and told me.
A lot of production companies share space at The Burbank Studios. Warner Brothers and Columbia are the big two. Aaron Spelling Productions rents space there. So do a couple zillion lesser companies. All tucked away in warm sand-colored buildings with red tile roofs and pseudo-adobe walls. Mature oaks fill the spaces between the buildings, making a nice shade. The quality of the space reflects your position within the industry.
Garrett Rice was beneath the water tower at the back of the lot. I missed the building twice until a cross-eyed kid on a bicycle pointed it out. It was a squat two-story brick box, six single offices on the bottom and six more on top, with a metal stair at either end. There were palm trees at either end, too, and more palms in a little plot right out front. The palms didn’t look like they were doing too well. A backhoe and a bulldozer were parked beside the building, taking up most of a tiny parking lot. This probably wasn’t where they put Paul Newman or David Lean. I looked at the names stenciled on the parking curbs. Second from the right was Garrett Rice. Room 217. The backhoe was in his spot.
I went up the stairs and found his office without having anybody point it out. The door was open. There was a little secretary’s cubicle, but no secretary. A spine-rolled copy of Black Belt magazine was on the secretary’s desk, open to an article about hand-to-hand combat in low-visibility situations. Some secretary.
Behind the secretary’s space was another door. I opened it and there was Garrett Rice. He stood behind his desk with the phone pressed to his ear, bouncing from foot to foot like he had to go to the bathroom. There was a dying plant on the desk and another on the end table by a worn green couch. There was a can of Lysol air freshener on a file cabinet. The cap was off.
When he saw me, he pressed his hip against the desk, closing a drawer that had been open. He did this in what some might call an understated fashion, then murmured into the phone and hung up.
Rice was about six-one with thin bones and the crepey skin you get from too much sun lamp. There was a mouse under his left eye and another on the left side of his forehead. He had tried to cover them with Indian earth. He had beer wings and shouldn’t have been wearing a form-fit shirt.
I handed him one of my cards. “Nice office,” I said. “I’m trying to find Morton Lang. I’m told you and he were close and that maybe you can help me out.”
He glanced at the card, then looked at me with wet, shining eyes. Nervous. “How’d you get in here?”
“My uncle owns the studio.”
“Bullshit.”
I gave him a shrug. “Mort’s been missing since Friday. He took his boy with him and didn’t leave word. His wife’s worried. Since you and he were associates, it makes sense that he might’ve said something to you.”
He licked his lips and I thought of Bambi’s mother, the way her head jerked up at the first sound of the hunters. Only she was pleasant to look at. The longer I looked at Garrett Rice, the more I wanted to cover my face with a handkerchief and fog the air with the Lysol.
He read the card again and flexed it back and forth, thinking. Then he said. “Fuckin’ asshole, Mort.”
I nodded. “That’s the one. When did you see him last?”
He glanced at the doorway behind me and spread his hands. “You shoulda called. I’m busy. I got calls.”
“Consider it a favor to the Forces of Good.”
“I got calls.”
“So make’m. I’ve got time.” I sat down on the couch between his briefcase and a large brown stain. The stain looked like Mickey Mouse run over by a Kenworth. It went well with the decor.
Garrett Rice hustled over and closed the case. Maybe he had the new Hot Property in there. Maybe Steven Spielberg had been calling him, begging to get a peek. Maybe I could sap Garrett Rice, make my getaway with the Hot Property, and sell it to George Lucas for a million bucks. I put my arm up on the back of the couch so the jacket would open and he could see the Dan Wesson. I waited.
He was breathing harder now, the way a fat man does after a flight of stairs. He looked at the door again. Maybe he was waiting for a pizza delivery. “I got calls,” he said. “I dunno where Mort is. I haven’t seen him for a week, maybe longer. What do I look like, his keeper?” He went back to his desk with the case.