17
It was getting dark when Tuuli and I got to her building from Casa de Herreras. I felt stuffed. There was a parking place made to order, and I grabbed it. Then, instead of getting out of the car, we sat for a few minutes in a weird, silent mood.
"I don't think you'd better come up tonight," she said at last.
I got out, went around and opened the off-side door for her. She looked worried. "I mean it," she said.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm not sure, but . . . Something doesn't feel right."
I reached to help her out. "I'll just walk you to your door and leave," I told her. We walked up the sidewalk between her building and the thick, eight-foot hedge bordering the property. There was night jasmine around somewhere, smelling a bit like Michigan in lilac time. Night jasmine's one of the things I like best about L.A. Tuuli's apartment was on the second floor, front corner. Like a lot of places in L.A., the stairs were outside, leading to an outside second-floor walkway. I opened the screen, intending to hold it for her while she unlocked her door.
I heard a chuff, and a bullet clunged like a hammer against an ornamental wrought-iron upright from the walkway railing to the overhang. A fragment bit my cheek. I threw Tuuli to the deck, then vaulted over the railing, hearing another chuff as I did so. The sound of a silenced pistol. I landed on the hedge, half scrambling, half falling off it onto the sidewalk. A third shot chuffed, and I heard the slug spending its energy clipping hedge stems as I ran crouching for the street and my car. I got there panting more from excitement than exertion, fumbled the key into the lock, and snatched my car gun out of the door pocket.
The shots had come from the building next door, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to go there, or back up to Tuuli's. While I crouched there trying to decide, her front window opened. "Martti!" she called softly. "Stay there! I'm all right. I'll call 911."
I didn't take her advice. Instead I went back to the stairs, and crouched listening in the cover of the hedge in case whoever it was came over. Although I was pretty sure he wouldn't. It was me he was after, and having lost his surprise, he'd taken off. Maybe to set another ambush at my place.
Things were still as midnight. We hadn't made enough noise to draw attention. I had no idea who the gunman might be. In my business you offend people who might take a notion to exercise their grudge that way. Something I'd learned the hard way. And while most of them end up domiciled with the state for extended periods, there are always some running around loose.
Two or three minutes later the police pulled up, and after I'd identified myself, we went next door together. There was a sign out front:
APTS FOR RENT
1 & 2 BEDROOMS
SEE MGR
9 AM–7 PM
We went up the stairs two at a time, and along the second-floor walkway on the side facing Tuuli's. The drapes were open wide in one apartment, the window was open, there was a hole in the screen, and it was dark inside. One of the officers went and got the manager.
All we found inside were three empty cartridge cases: .40 caliber. I was damn lucky he hadn't hit me. By that time another patrol car had arrived, this one with a senior sergeant. After talking with him, I got in my car, and the first officers followed me home. Staying close on the chance the gunman might try for me again.
My apartment's in a security building on Lanewood, with a basement garage. They waited in the patrol car while I stopped on the ramp to insert my key card. Lanewood has a row of big shaggy Mexican pines on each side of the street, and it was darker than hell, but it seemed to me someone was crouched in the tall shrubs ten feet from the ramp. While the door opened, I spoke into my shortwave mike. "Car 1094," I said, "I think our man's in the shrubs just to the left of the ramp."
Then I rolled in, got out of my car, and with pistol in one hand reopened the garage door from the inside. The officers had already moved in on the suspect. He had his hands in the air.
A little peering around with a flashlight found his gun where he'd dropped it. Then they took both of us to the Hollywood Station on Wilcox, where they questioned us. I answered everything they asked. The gunman told them only his name. Said he'd gone into the shrubbery to take a leak. They booked him for creating a public nuisance, and carrying a gun illegally. He had a record.
His name was Harley Suk O'Connell. Part Afro, part oriental—Korean, judging by his middle name. He was reputedly a freelance hit man who did occasional jobs for the black mafia. So far as I knew, I told them, I'd made no particular enemies there.
When they were done with me, I talked in the hall with the sergeant on the case. Someone must have paid O'Connell to try for me, I said. If they checked out his pad, they might find some cash in large-denomination bills. Which might have useful prints. He agreed it could be worthwhile.
Then they took me home, and I phoned Tuuli to tell her what happened. She'd been waiting for my call, and worrying because I hadn't. She told me to come over.
I was back at her place in five minutes. She'd been watching for me, and met me at the stairs, wearing her jacket. In her purse, I was willing to bet, was the little .25 caliber Lady Colt I'd given her. It's just a few blocks from her place to Laurel Canyon. Laurel Canyon Boulevard crosses the Santa Monica Mountains, a range of high, rugged hills that divides the L.A. Basin to the south from the San Fernando Valley to the north. From Laurel Canyon, narrow residential streets zigzag their way up among the slopes and draws.
I drove up one of them without either of us saying anything. Finally I parked at a place we like, in a tiny park, on a crest overlooking the basin. It's not the safest place in the world, but I had a gun under my left arm, and my car gun in the door pocket.
Since the internal combustion engine had been banished by the geogravitic power converter and the stringent air protection laws that followed, you can see forever from up there: a vast sea of city lights. To the south is a big unlighted area that I suppose is a golf course. And more miles and billions of lights farther, the hills of the Palo Verdes Peninsula, sparkling in white, red, green, and blue. Amazing that you can see individual lights so far away! And over all, scattered tall clouds side-lit by the city. It's one of the most beautiful sights in the world, another reason I love L.A.
I reached over, took Tuuli's hand, and for maybe the dozenth time asked her to marry me. She leaned against me and said she loved me, but no, she wasn't ready to commit herself. Might never be. "If I change my mind, Martti," she said in Finnish, "you'll be the first one I tell."
How could I argue with that? After a little bit I drove her home, and she invited me up.
18
The next day I slept till ten. Then I called the Hollywood Station to see what they'd learned from O'Connell's apartment. They'd found bundles of Franklins in a dresser, with prints they'd already identified as Veronica Ashley's. They planned to question her.
I asked them if they'd hold off on that for twenty-four hours. Otherwise it might queer a case I was working on. They agreed. There was no hurry. They had all they needed to put O'Connell away for a while.
Why, I wondered, would Veronica get a contract on me? I'd offended her all right, but what had I said and done that might have scared her? I called up the data on her from my files. And stared. Veronica Ashley, nee Pipolli.
Pipolli. Piper. Could be. I called the Data Center again, using the Santa Barbara County contract, and accessed Dairy Delite in Ventura. The franchise holder was Francis Gustavo Pipolli, DBA Frank Piper. His records gave his father's name, and his father's records showed his father's, and his showed a daughter, Veronica. Veronica Ashley was Piper's paternal aunt.