L a hustle, p.6
L.A. Hustle, page 6
The conversation had somehow meandered around to smiles. What made them attractive, who had the best smiles, why we smile, why we don’t smile enough, and so forth.
“I think someone who smiles comes across as more interesting,” she concluded.
“You’re right,” I replied. “In fact, I don’t think I told you, but I tried an experiment while biking last weekend.”
“Oh? What?”
“Well, as I rode along the river, quite a few people joined me, biking, walking, running, rollerblading, and such. So I decided to smile at everyone I passed.”
“Interesting, novio. And what did you discover?”
“It seemed that about half the women I smiled at smiled back at me.”
“Because you’re so handsome!”
“Ha ha! Maybe. Anyway, some people were too focused to notice, so we can’t count them. But among the rest, almost all the children I smiled at smiled back. Only about ten percent of the men smiled back, but most gave me the curt male head nod of acknowledgment.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You know, a short, quick dip of the chin.” I demonstrated for her.
“Is that a real thing?”
“Oh, yeah! You could go anywhere in the world and guys do that to recognize each other.”
“You mean guys that know each other?”
“No, any guy can do that. It signifies a connection.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“It’s true! I could go to Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, the South Pole, anywhere. If I’m walking down the street and I make eye contact with another guy, no matter who he is, if I just make the quick head nod”—I did it again—“he will do the same.”
She thought about this and frowned. “But what does it mean?”
“It’s a universal sign of male brotherhood. It conveys the message, ‘Hey, you’re okay, I’m okay, we’re cool.’”
“Oh. I wonder what its purpose is. I mean, in an evolutionary sense.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I suppose that, back when we were uncivilized, males who encountered each other always had to worry about one or the other attacking. Maybe it evolved as a way for men to show each other that they weren’t going to have to fight.”
“Ah, but you say any guy could do it to any other guy, right? I want to see a demonstration.”
“Okay.” I looked around. Leaning out of the box, I found an easy target, a man sitting in the box ahead of us, chatting with his companion and occasionally peering around. I pointed to him and said, “Watch this.”
The next time he looked around, I stared at him. His gaze passed me before returning. I looked away briefly and then looked back. Our eyes met and I gave him the curt head nod. He returned it and continued scanning the audience in an absentminded way.
She laughed and kissed me.
“Oh, novio! You’re so cute!”
“Aw, you just caught me on a good day.”
After a few minutes of comfortable silence, she turned back to me and asked, “How’s your case going?”
I brought her up to date, including my pleasant conversation with Norman Gatz and my frightening one with Hawkface.
“Oh, novio, you’re getting into some tall seas here.”
“I think you mean deep waters.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think your client’s husband’s having an affair.”
“Oh? Why?”
“Like I said before, she would know. Women’s intuition. And the clasp you subscribed? I don’t think it was for a woman at all. Not for his wife and not for a mistress.”
“Really? Why not?”
“You said the setting cost fifteen thousand and the gem even more.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“A man doesn’t give his mistress jewels worth more than the jewels he gives his wife. And you said he didn’t give her jewels.”
“That’s what she said, yeah. But why not?”
“Culpabilitat.”
“Huh?”
She pondered for a moment, trying to recall the English word. “Culpability.”
“What?”
“No, that’s not right. Guilt! Yes, guilt.”
“Really?”
“Yes. When a man’s having an affair, he might give his mistress gifts but they never are worth more than the gifts he gives his wife. No matter how cruel and obsidian-hearted a man is, he will always feel guilty about cheating on his wife, even if it’s unconscious. In fact, usually a man gives his wife jewelry or other gifts because he has cheated on her!”
I thought about this. “You might be right.”
“Did you ever cheat on your wife?”
“Actually, no.”
“But you told me . . .”
“Yes, that’s why we divorced, but I never cheated on her.”
To her credit, Belle realized she had touched a sensitive nerve and dropped the subject. “I’m sorry, novio,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss me again.
I took a few measured breaths. “It’s okay. I’m okay. It was a long time ago.”
She smiled and leaned her head on my shoulder, massaging my neck with one hand as she slipped my program from one of the side pockets of my jacket and hid it in her purse.
I relaxed again and smiled at her. She never looked lovelier. I leaned over to tell her I loved her—which would have been a first—when the house lights dimmed and the audience murmur vanished. After the concert master took the stage to hearty applause and the orchestra tuned to her “A” note, the conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, appeared to an even more robust ovation.
He mounted the podium and held up a hand as he fished in his pockets for his baton. A nervous moment drew into a longer stretch as it became clear that the maestro couldn’t find his conducting baton. The orchestra and audience seemed to hold their collective breath as this embarrassing situation grew worse and worse.
All of a sudden, a horrifying notion seized me, too awful even to contemplate. Fearing the answer, I turned to Belle and whispered, “You didn’t?”
Confused, she whispered back, “Didn’t what?” her eyes still on the conductor.
About to ask if she had pinched Salonen’s baton, a general sigh made me look up again. He had found it on the podium. With the aplomb of the imperturbable master, he turned to the audience, smiled wryly, and flourished the baton like a saber.
A wave of polite, erudite, and above all, confident, wealth-infused laughter spread through the hall. He bowed in a self-mocking way, which elicited more genuine laughter and scattered applause. He then turned back to the orchestra, raised both hand and baton emphatically, and launched the pliant symphony into the trumpet strains of the strong asymmetrical rhythms of the opening piece, “Promenade.”
I turned to apologize to Belle for my unwarranted assumption, but clearly, she hadn’t realized what I intended to ask her. Better to just drop it.
Chapter 9
Even the lousiest of snoops makes some progress. And I had two cases to double my chances. But undeniable. No closer to Eddie Blake, Alfie Noakes—or for that matter, Lamont Sloan—than to President McKinley.
I reveled in one of those lazy afternoons where you lounge on the couch after lunch and watch the dust motes floating in the sunlight. As they rise, your spirits rise. As they fall, spiraling down to the carpet, your mood follows. Today, they mostly fell through the slanted beams filtering through the blinds. Perhaps a pun in there, something about the blinds leading the blind, but my low energy made thinking hard. A thrum of traffic passed below me, mostly muted by the double-paned glass of my windows and sliding door.
I guess I must have been a little desperate when Carmen Sloan called me a few days after my unnerving encounter with Hawkface and Deep and Sonorous.
Without even saying hello, she said simply, “I want you to give up the investigation.”
I laughed. “Kiddo, there hasn’t been any investigation. I’ve been pounding the pavement and a dozen other places for three weeks and gotten exactly nowhere.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I just . . . it’s just that it doesn’t matter anymore.”
For the second time in a week, the hair on my neck prickled. “Why not?”
“Well . . .” she paused.
I knew she could think fast so I just waited, imagining her lighting up a cigarette.
“Lamont told me what’s been going on, and I don’t need you anymore.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He . . . actually, I confronted him, and he confessed to having an affair.”
I laughed again. “You’re breaking my heart, Mrs. Sloan.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice hardened.
“I mean, I can’t imagine your husband telling you anything of the sort.”
“How dare you!” she shouted.
“I dunno, Mrs. Sloan. How dare I? You tell me.”
A moment of silence. I pictured her taking drag after drag of her cigarette and expelling the smoke. Then she said, very slowly, in a voice only slightly above zero Kelvin, “You are not to investigate this matter any farther Dr. Sharma. Please send me your expense bill.”
Doctor? How did she know? Puzzled, I tried to stall her. “Further.”
“What?”
“Further. You meant to say further and you said farther. Just a grammatical, or if you prefer, syntactical error. I thought you should know.”
“Fuck you!” she shouted and hung up.
I smiled and treated myself to a home-made ginger ale and bitters to celebrate the success of both the case and my charm. Yum. At least I got the drink right.
As I sipped my concoction, I tried to make sense of things. No way could I believe that Lamont Sloan had told her anything, confronted or not. Certainly not an affair. Carmen lying again. Nothing new there. But why fire me? Two possibilities. Either someone had told her what really was going on and she figured a private eye—even a lousy one—would find out, something she couldn’t allow. Or something or someone had frightened her. I couldn’t figure out which, so I called her back.
“Mrs. Sloan? It’s Digger Sharma. I—”
“What do you want?” she interrupted, her voice laced with anger. “Why are calling me?”
Time for the old oil. “Mrs. Sloan. Carmen . . .”
She drew a quick breath at my use of her first name.
“Carmen,” I soothed. “I know you’ve asked me to give up the case, but I’m very concerned about you. Your husband’s involved in something that, well . . . he’s up to no good.” Even though I didn’t know what.
“Something that what, Dr. Sharma?” Again, she called me doctor. Odd. I could ask her about it later.
“Please, call me Digger.”
“Okay.”
“Look, Carmen, I’m not exactly sure what’s going on, but it’s more than a simple affair. In fact, I don’t think he told you that he was cheating on you. I think he said something else.”
“What do you mean?” Fear crept into her voice, which cracked. Good.
“Well, I hate to say this without stronger evidence to back up my suspicions.”
“Just tell me straight out, Digger. I’m a big girl.”
“I think he’s involved in something illegal. And dangerous.”
She sighed. “I thought that might be it.”
“Really?” It was my turn to be surprised.
“Um . . .” she paused. Another cigarette maybe? At the rate she puffed through them, I should invest in RJ Reynolds.
“Carmen, are you in trouble?” I finally asked.
“No . . .” Her voice tapered off and the line hummed with silence. A long pause. Too long. Probably lighting another gasper. Maybe I should warn her about the dangers of smoking.
“What’s going on?” I prompted her.
“I can’t tell you. Or, I mean, I won’t tell you. It’s for your own good, Digger. Lamont’s a very powerful man. I’ve made the mistake before of trying to . . . well, you know. I’ve regretted it. I think the only reason he let me off is I’m his wife. I guess I’m lucky he didn’t divorce me.”
“You mean something like this has happened before?” This surprised me.
“Well, not exactly like this, but, yes, sort of.”
To be honest, she had the hook firmly embedded. Now I had to know the skinny. More than professional curiosity. Downright nosy voyeurism. “Carmen, look. If you are in some kind of trouble, I can help you.”
“No, I’m not in any trouble.”
“Then why tell me not to work on the case anymore?”
“Because you are in trouble.”
“Me?” The hairs on the back of my neck tingled once more.
“Yes . . .”
“How do you know?”
“Lamont found out I had hired you.”
“What?”
“Well, not you. But he found out I had hired a private investigator.”
“How do you know that?”
“He told me.”
“Oh.” Touché.
“How did he find out?”
“You know how I called the phone company to get a list of numbers he had called from his mobile phone? Well, they called him back and he got suspicious when they told him I was the one who called. Then he confronted me.”
“Oh boy,” was all I could think to say. “I’m sorry, Carmen.”
She sighed.
“Don’t be,” she replied. “But I’m truly sorry Digger, I really am. I should have been more honest with you from the beginning.”
I suppressed yet another “What?” but decided instead to keep her on topic. I took a deep breath. “What exactly did he tell you?”
“He . . . a few nights ago, when he confronted me, he said he suspected that I had hired a private dick—that’s what he called it—I mean, you.”
I smiled. “I’ve been called worse. Go on.”
“He said I’d better get rid of you, otherwise I’d be very sorry I had hired him, that is, you. He said, ‘you’ll both be sorry,’ meaning both of us.”
The line hummed again with silence. What more to say?
“So you want me to just drop it?” I asked. “Pretend we never met?”
“Yes, something like that.”
“But not exactly that.”
She didn’t answer for a few moments. Probably biting her lip. Very cute. “I . . . I can’t let you get yourself in trouble this way.”
Somewhere deep in my intuitive subconscious, I sensed threads of manipulation slowly binding me like the Lilliputians bound Gulliver. Carmen couldn’t be as noble as she sounded, stringing me along. I figured I could check this out later, so I adopted a tone of bravura. “Ha! I live for trouble! I drop ice cubes down the vest of fear.”
She laughed but then continued in an urgent but subtly false voice, “Digger, I didn’t . . . that is, you didn’t impress me at first.”
I waited.
“But you’ve impressed me quite a bit since then.”
Hmmm. Now flattery. Interesting. I wondered where she was going with it. “Thanks.”
“No, really. Lamont was not just angry. He was unsettled, rattled. It takes a lot to do that to him. You must be pretty good to have shaken him like that.”
“You just caught me during one of my rare periods of extended sobriety.”
“Always the jokes, Digger!” she laughed.
“Adds seconds to my life.”
“Well . . . so?”
“So what?”
“Will you drop it?” A tone of concern edged into her voice. For her or me I couldn’t tell.
“You really want me to?”
“Yes.” This time firmer.
I sighed. “Okay. You win. I’ll drop it. But you’ve got to promise me one thing, Carmen.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’ll call me if you get into trouble.”
“Okay, Digger. I can promise that.”
“Okay, then I’ll drop it. One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I can’t call you Carmen anymore. From now on, it’s Mrs. Sloan.”
“Okay. That makes sense.”
“You take care.”
She said thanks and hung up.
I sat there for some time, the dappled sunlight melting the ice in my drink, trying to think, my thoughts suspended like the dust motes floating lazily down in the sunlight. I couldn’t very well continue looking into Lamont Sloan’s private affairs, illicit or otherwise. It went against my professional pride to send Carmen Sloan a bill, since I hadn’t really done anything for her. However, it went against my principles to starve and not pay the rent, so I wrote up an invoice on the computer, printed it out, and sealed it in an envelope, planning to mail it later.
Too bad, Carmen, I thought. It would have been nice to see you again.
The strident ring of my mobile phone broke my reverie. A blocked number, so I answered with a clipped, professional “yeah?” half-expecting to hear Carmen’s voice again, thinking that would be nice.
A gruff voice asked, “Is this Digger Sharma?”
“That depends.”
“Depends on what?” The voice sounded surprised.
“Whether you’re someone I want to talk to.”
He laughed. “Oh, you’ll want to talk to me all right.”
“Yeah?” I tried to sound bored. “Okay, convince me.”
“I need to talk to you. In private, like.”
I thought about this for a moment. Dangerous. But my only lead in the case. I figured if it looked like I couldn’t handle it, I could always call Josh.
“Okay. Where should I meet you?” I finally asked.
“You know the piers in San Pedro?”
