Kreuzer touched the woman's arm again. "At the count of three your arm will return to normal and fall pleasantly and comfortably into your lap," he said. He counted to three and the arm dropped. The crowd applauded heartily. He snapped his fingers and the woman opened her eyes. He shook hands with her. She returned to her front-row table. The applause continued as Kreuzer bowed from right to left. The curtain dropped and the show was over.
Travis Bailey found his way behind the stage into a small office. He sat down at a desk covered with wholesale liquor receipts.
Minutes later, Kreuzer plodded into the office. He locked the door. Having removed his tuxedo jacket, he hung it over a chair, then pulled off his bow tie. "What the fuck happened?" he said through gritted teeth. "I've been biting my nails for three days."
"It was an accident," Bailey said without expression. "He got in my way."
"Any feedback?"
Bailey bit his lip for a moment. "Carr was nosing around Hartmann's place but I think he was just filling in details for his reports. I'm not worried."
Emil Kreuzer pulled off his shirt and undershirt and tossed them on the floor. He got a towel out of a desk drawer and wiped his sweaty chest and arms. "You'll have to watch out for Carr. He's a snake. He'll creep up on you when you least expect it. He's mean and he won't give up. When he put me in the joint years ago I never knew what hit me. He just pulled the rug out."
"It was your idea to call him in on the stakeout," Bailey said. "I told you I wanted to do it alone."
"Calling him in was … all things considered … without question, the best thing to do," Kreuzer said, gesturing. "With the Feds involved, no one will ever question what went down. With the owner of the house being a federal witness in Tony Dio's bank scam case, the incident will wash as a contract hit that went sour. There will be a grand jury investigation and they'll subpoena Tony Dio and every other wop in the San Fernando Valley. They'll take the Fifth. The grand jury will adjourn and that's that. I'm telling you the whole thing will wash. And you'll have a plausible reason for refusing to reveal who your informant is. You're just trying to protect him from the Mafia."
"They'll still ask."
Kreuzer took off his trousers, which he arranged carefully on a hanger. He scooped the tuxedo coat off the chair and brushed it off with the back of his hand. Having hung the evening attire on a wall hook, he pulled on a pair of plaid pants. Because of his blubbery midsection, he could barely pull up the zipper.
"I'm sure you didn't call me just to Monday-morning-quarterback," Bailey said.
Kreuzer pulled on a bright orange shirt. He pointed to a small notebook on the desk. Bailey picked it up. The notations on the first page read:
Wallace
Phone: 242-9168
1402 Coventry Circle Avenue
On the next page was a rough diagram of a house with the entrances marked with Xs.
"There is a set of silver in the dining room that is worth at least ten grand," Kreuzer said. "The oriental vase in the living room looks like the real thing. I want the art hanging in the hallway. One is a Degas. Unless you have the time, forget the oils in the living room. They're more trouble than they're worth. There's got to be jewelry too. I saw alarm tape on the front window only." He pulled a comb out of his pocket and ran it straight back through his oily straight hair. He blew into the comb and put it back in his pocket. "There are no private patrol stickers on the windows."
Travis Bailey ripped the page out of the notebook. He stuffed it in his shirt pocket. "I finally got Delsey in."
"Congratulations," Kreuzer said perfunctorily. "I hope she works out. I really do."
Travis Bailey stood up to leave.
"In general, I'm very pleased with the way things are going," Kreuzer said. "There will be little obstacles from time to time, but I'm sure you agree that, overall, things are going well. I don't believe in being greedy. I really don't. There is enough sugar for everyone. I've always said that. There's more than enough sugar here in Sugarland."
"The town's been good to me," Bailey said. They exchanged smiles. Bailey opened the door, then looked both ways before he headed for his police car.
SIX
It was almost 2:00 A.M.
The wide and sterile streets of downtown Beverly Hills were all but deserted. Travis Bailey steered his police car off Rodeo Drive and onto a parking lot filled with Mercedes-Benzes, Cadillacs, expensive sports cars and a few limousines. He parked, locked the car and headed toward a two-story building adjoining the lot. He entered by a glass door. Inside a carpeted, theater-style lobby, a muscle-bound, sandy-haired young man wearing a tuxedo stood in front of a pair of ten-foot-high doors inscribed with blue velvet letters that read:
The Blue Peach
A Private Club
Standing behind ropes and stanchions on the other side of the lobby was a group of teenagers who hung out there on the nights the club was open: movie star groupies.
"Good evening, Mr. Bailey," the bouncer said. He opened the door. As Bailey entered the place, a Eurasian woman wearing satin culottes and a sable stole brushed past him on her way out. She was on the arm of a seven-foot black basketball star who, as Bailey recalled from a recent article in Variety, had just signed with Twentieth Century-Fox to do the lead in a musical based on the Watts riots. The groupies squealed as the door closed behind him.
Bailey stopped for a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. It was the regular Blue Peach scene of garishly dressed men and women lounging on sofas that, because of the ceiling lights and the effects of the dark shag carpeting, appeared as fluorescent rafts on a black sea. To the left, a long bar extended the length of the wall. Its mirrors winked reflections of colored lights. At the opposite end of the room was a dimly lit stage back-dropped with a blue velvet curtain.
Travis Bailey found his way to the end of the bar and climbed onto one of the few empty stools. The crowd was made up of men and women dressed similarly; jeans tight enough to make crotches bulge, open-collar shirts and blouses with gold chains, and boots-expensive ones made of snake or shark or lizard. The man and woman sitting next to him, with their twin blonde hairdos, could have been mistaken for sisters. They spoke to one another with great urgency and used lots of hand gestures; cocaine language.
"It was absolutely, incredibly, wonderful," the woman said in a New York accent. "I've never seen anything in my life that was so great, so… powerful, so emotional. It makes tears come to my eyes just thinking about it. I loved every minute of it. Damn, it was fantastic, terrific…"
"I just can't begin to tell you how much I agree with you," interrupted her male companion. "I completely agree with every word… I mean every single fucking word you have just said. Jesus, it was a beautiful movie…" Both of them tapped their fingers on the bar frantically.
Bobby Chagra, an athletic-looking man of Bailey's age, stood at the opposite end of the bar drying cocktail glasses. He wore a blue Hawaiian-style shirt and white form-fitting trousers that glowed in the dark. He acknowledged Bailey and headed toward him. He pinched a bar napkin and set it in front of Bailey. "What can I get you, sir?" he said as if they had never met.