I WANTED to read Chen’s reports more carefully, and opted to read them at Philippe, a cafeteria-style sandwich shop nearby in Chinatown. I could have read them under the bridge or anywhere else, but even world-class detectives get hungry. Philippe claims they invented the French dip sandwich in 1908, and maybe they did, but either way they have been serving the same killer sandwiches ever since. The double-dip turkey is my fare of choice.
I never got to the reports. I had just mounted a stool at one of the long family-style tables when Jack Eisley returned my call about Angel Tomaso. Eisley remembered me, though we had only met the one time I interviewed Tomaso at Eisley’s apartment.
He said, “I saw the thing on the news and thought, hey, that’s Angel’s dude. Talk about blast from the past. And then you call.”
Philippe was so noisy with the lunch-hour crush, I took the phone and the sandwich outside. The double-dip jus ran down my arm.
“I need to speak with him. It’s pretty important.”
“About this?”
“Yeah.”
“Angel moved back to Texas. He got really down on the whole acting thing and went back to Austin. Had to crash with his aunt. I’m, like, dude, are you sure?”
Eisley wanted to chat.
“Great. You have a number in Austin?”
“I called last night after the news, but his aunt said he came back to L.A. a few months ago. It’s the actor thing, man. If you’re an actor, you’re an actor, you know? It was only a matter of time.”
“Even better. So what’s his number here in L.A.?”
“She wouldn’t give it to me. She said she’d pass on my message, but she doesn’t give out numbers without permission. This was only last night. I’ll probably hear from him today.”
If she passed on the request.
If Angel called.
If Eisley phoned back with the number.
“Jack, have the police contacted you about Angel?”
“No, uh-uh. Why would they do that?”
“Listen, I know his aunt is supposed to give him your message, but you mind letting me have her number? I’d like to talk to her.”
Unlike Angel’s aunt, Eisley didn’t mind giving out information. I scratched out her number while turkey jus stained my pad, then drove to my office to make the call. With any luck, I would find Angel Tomaso before the end of the day and crack the case by sundown.
When I reached my building, I left my car in the parking garage and walked up the four flights to my floor.
I liked the building and my office, and had been there for many years. The office next to mine was occupied by an attractive woman who sold wholesale beauty supplies and sunned herself on the adjoining balcony. Across the hall was an insurance agent I rarely saw, though the two women who worked for him showed up every day like clockwork.
Everything about the building was normal until I reached my office and saw the doorjamb was split near the knob. Jambs do not split by themselves.
I leaned close to the door, but heard nothing.
I stepped across the hall and looked at my door from a different angle. A woman’s voice came from the insurance office, but it sounded normal. No one was screaming for help. No one was talking about the terrible noise she had heard from the private eye’s office across the hall.
I went back to my door, listened again, then pushed the door open.
Papers, files, and office supplies were scattered over the floor like trash blown by the wind. The couch was slashed along its length. My desk chair and the director’s chairs were upended, and the glass in both French doors had been kicked out, leaving jagged teeth in the frame. My computer, answering machine, and Mickey Mouse phone were part of the debris. Mickey’s left ear was broken. Everything that was on my desk the night before had been swept to the floor.
I started at the mess until I heard tocking. The Pinocchio clock was still on the wall, smiling its oblivious smile. His eyes tocked side to side, sightless, but reassuring.
“I wish you could talk.”
I went behind my desk to right my chair, but the chair was wet and smelled of urine. I left it in place. The file I had on Lionel Byrd was scattered on the floor with everything else. I gathered it together, then went down to the car for my camera and took pictures for the insurance. After the pictures, I called Lou Poitras, who told me he would send a radio car. I had to use my cell, what with Mickey being broken.
While I waited for the police, I called Joe Pike.
He said, “You think it ties in with the calls you were getting yesterday?”
“The timing’s too perfect for anything else.”
“Something with Byrd?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not sure that was the point. The file is still here, and the way it was dumped with everything else it’s likely they didn’t read it. They slashed the couch and kicked out the glass in the French doors. It looks more like vandalism. Somebody pissed on my chair.”
“Maybe they want the vandalism to cover the search.”
“Maybe. I’ll go through everything, see if anything’s missing.”
“You want me to come over?”
“There’s nothing to do. The police are on the way.”
“Maybe I should sit on your house. Make sure nobody pisses on your couch.”
“That might be a good idea.”
I called my insurance agent, then the building manager to let him know about the break-in and arrange for the doors to be fixed. We ended up shouting at each other. After the shouting, I went across the hall to ask my neighbors if they had seen or heard anything. None of them had, but everyone wanted to see the damage, so I let them. Two patrol officers arrived while they were looking, questioned me, then set about writing up the complaint. While the officers surveyed the damage, one of the women from the insurance office told us she had worked until almost eight-thirty the night before, so whoever did this had come after she had gone.
The senior officer, a sergeant-supervisor named Bristo, said, “You work late like that, ma’am, make sure you lock your door.”
She patted a little handbag.
“Don’t think I sit up here alone.”
Bristo said nothing. Everyone packs.
When the police and the women from across the hall were gone, I took a soap dispenser and paper towels from the bathroom at the end of the hall. I cleaned the urine off my chair, piled the debris on the couch so I could move without stepping on things, then went back to work. You let something like a vandalized office screw your day, pretty soon you’re calling in sick for a pimple.
Three minutes later I was speaking with Angel Tomaso’s aunt, Mrs. Candy Lopez. I explained my relationship with her nephew, and told her it was urgent I speak with him.
She said, “Give me your name and number. I will tell him you called.”
“It would be faster if I call him directly.”
“It might be faster, but I’m not going to give you his number. I don’t know you. For all I know you’re a nut.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
She said, “And please note the idiot who called last night has given my number to you without my permission, and here you are—a person completely unknown to me—invading my privacy. He gives my number to strangers, he might as well write it on a bathroom wall.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Lopez. I wouldn’t interrupt your day if it wasn’t important. Angel was a witness in a criminal investigation three years ago, and now some conflicting evidence has surfaced.”
“I understand. I will tell him all this when we speak.”
“Did you tell him that Jack Eisley called?”
“I left a message on his machine. You call him, that machine is all you get. I am sure he is busy rehearsing.”
She pronounced “rehearsing” with a snooty theatrical accent.
“So Angel is back here in Los Angeles?”
“He is. And, by the way, Angel is no longer Angel. He is now Andy.”
She pronounced Andy without a trace of her Spanish accent, as if it were the most boring name in the world.
“Excuse me?”
“Angel Tomaso was too ethnic, he says. He is now Andy Thom. As if Hollywood has been waiting for the one and only Andy Thom!”
Angel probably hadn’t gotten much artistic support back home.
I said, “Please call him right away. He’ll remember my name. Tell him I need to speak with him as soon as possible.”
“I’ll tell him you’re Steven Spielberg. You’ll hear from him more quickly that way.”
I put down the phone, thinking about Angel’s new name and the likelihood of hearing back from him in the foreseeable future. I decided it wasn’t likely.
I checked the L.A. area codes for an Andy Thom, found nothing, then called a casting agent I knew named Patricia Kyle. Pat Kyle had worked for every major studio and network in town, along with most of the commercial and video producers. She was currently successful, prosperous, and happy, which was much different from the day she hired me to help with an abusive ex-husband who thought it within his rights to shatter her windshield and terrorize her at work. I convinced him otherwise, and Pat Kyle has thought well of me ever since. If Angel Tomaso aka Andy Thom was serious about being an actor, three months was plenty of time to enroll in acting classes, pound the pavement for auditions, and send headshots to casting agents.
Pat Kyle said, “Never heard of him.”
“His real name is Angel Tomaso. Out of Austin.”
“Latin?”
“Yeah. Does it matter?”
“Only in how you search. Actors are faces and a face is what you look like. Some of the smaller agencies specialize in ethnic actors. Do you know if he’s SAG or AFTRA?”
“Don’t know.”
“Ever had a paid acting job?”
“The way his aunt was talking, I doubt it. First time he was out here didn’t work out. That’s why he went back to Austin. He’s only been back for three months.”
Pat told me she would ask around, then we hung up and I settled back in my broken office to read over Chen’s reports. I thought about the Mexican oxycodones. If Byrd was in so much pain he couldn’t walk or drive, he probably needed a steady supply. If he couldn’t walk or drive, someone might have delivered, and maybe that same someone might know how he came by the pictures. I decided to ask his neighbors.
At one-fourteen that afternoon I packed up the file on Byrd, locked the office as best I could, and went down to my car. When I pulled out of my building, a black Toyota truck with tinted glass fell in behind and followed me.