When Peter broke for lunch, Teddy walked off the lot and got his car. As producer Billy Barnett, he had a parking space, but as stuntman Mark Weldon, he didn’t rate such special treatment, and never would until his name appeared above the title. That’ll be the day, he told himself.
Teddy drove downtown to the Ace Detective Agency. He parked two blocks away and walked to the address.
It was an old office building, with the accent on old. The elevator looked iffy, so Teddy took the stairs up to the third floor and looked for the Ace Detective Agency. It wasn’t hard to find. The door had a frosted glass window with ACE DETECTIVE AGENCY stenciled on it, just like in the movies.
Teddy banged on the door to no avail. He sighed, fished a couple of picks out of his pocket, and jimmied the lock. The door clicked open.
The Ace Detective Agency wasn’t as prosperous as the ones in old films, with an attractive dame manning a switchboard in the outer office. In fact, it had no outer office at all. It was a small, one-room affair, with overflowing file cabinets, a couple of folding chairs, an ancient computer, and a single metal desk.
Ace Vargas sat behind the desk, but he could be excused for not answering the door. Ace had been shot in the head.
Teddy had few options, none of them good. He could call the police and wait for them to arrive. He could call the police and get the hell out of there. Or he could get the hell out of there and not call the police.
The third option seemed best.
Teddy slipped out the office door and checked the hall. There was a surveillance camera right outside the detective agency. A wire from it ran across the ceiling to the corner, then down and into the floor. The recording equipment was in either a guard station or the basement. Teddy doubted the building had ever been well-to-do enough to merit a guard station, so he took the stairs down to the lobby, pushed through a service door, and found the cellar stairs. At the bottom of the stairs was a depressing jumble of steam pipes on which the asbestos covers were flaking off. A storeroom had a relatively new-looking padlock on it. Teddy picked the lock and pulled the string of a hanging bare bulb.
A battered old metal desk held a TV monitor, old and big and bulky with a dozen split-screen images of interior views of the building. Next to the monitor was a VCR of similar vintage, a monstrous affair with slots for twelve VHS tapes. All were recording. The VCR appeared to be set to record for six hours until it reached the end of the tape, then automatically rewind and start recording from the beginning. It was a most inefficient system. Any crime committed more than six hours ago would be gone.
If Ace had been killed within the last six hours, the killer might be on the tapes. Unfortunately, Teddy would be, too.
Teddy had no time to look. He ejected all the tapes, found an old paper bag, and threw them in.
He went out to his car and locked the tapes in the trunk, then retrieved a pair of plastic gloves, went back into the building, and searched the office. He turned it upside down to make sure Ace hadn’t kept a copy of the video. It was the type of thing a private eye of Ace’s ilk would be apt to do, but there was no sign of it.
Teddy found nothing of interest. The office files were all old, and probably left by the previous tenant. The computer had nothing as useful as a Quicken account with labeled deposits or current e-mails of any note.
Teddy figured he’d pressed his luck far enough. He wiped everything down and got out.
Teddy hopped in his car and sped to his house. He popped the trunk, grabbed the bag of tapes, went in and locked it in his floor safe.
He raced back to the car and took off. He was late. He floored it, trying to make up time.
As he approached the studio, he skidded into a turn and hurtled through the Centurion Studios gate onto the back lot.
Teddy checked his watch. Two minutes to go. He pulled into Brad’s parking space, leaped out of the car, and came strolling casually onto the set as if he’d been there all along.