4

Three thousand dollars later, I’m out of the Lucky Palace with half my bank account and a small shred of dignity intact. My operating expenses have now dwindled to about twenty-five hundred dollars, and I dread the prospect of having to ask Frank Tallarico for more cash. It’s not in good taste, and, physically speaking, it’s not in my own self-interest.

Hagstrom eschewed the limo on his way out of the Lucky Palace, opting for a cab to take him back to the Regent Beverly Wilshire for a quick change of clothes, then another one up into the Palisades, where he disappeared behind the Tallarico gates. I’m sure Frank doesn’t need me to tail the guy when he’s in his own abode, so I figure I’ve got a short bit of time to knock off and get in a rest back at the office.

As I pull into the small underground parking lot in the Westwood office building where Vincent Rubio Investigations resides, I notice with dismay that someone has parked in my space. This despite the large sign with my photograph on it plastered to the wall, the words below reading: IF THIS IS NOT YOU, DO NOT PARK HERE. So either I’ve got a doppleganger waiting for me upstairs or I’ll be calling the towing company.

I pull into a spot on the street and trot up the stairs to my office, grumbling all the way about the little Ford crapmobile whose owner is either illiterate or rude, when I hear a familiar voice rocketing down the stairwell.

“Don’t even start. Don’t even fucking start on me. The guest spots were all taken, and you can deal with it for once and not give me a world of grief.”

Glenda Wetzel is standing at my door. Five-foot-four, foul mouth eight feet wide, smelling of carnations and old baseball gloves, this gal has saved my butt twenty times in the last few years. Five or six on the McBride investigation alone. I drop my valise and envelop her in a hug; she pulls me in tight, her strong arms catching my midsection. “Jesus, it’s good to see you,” I say.

“You getting sleep?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Why?”

“You’re dragging, that’s all. Looking about one step up from dog crap.”

I nod. “Lost a few bucks at baccarat.”

“Bacca-what?”

“Don’t ask. What the hell are you doing here?”

Glenda puts out a hand and checks my brow for a fever. Not that this would work anyway, what with her glove and my mask blocking the actual scale-to-scale contact, not to mention the fact that my relatively cold blood almost always matches itself to the ambient temperature. But this is yet another of the mammalian habits we’ve picked up for ourselves over the years; it gets so we hardly even notice it anymore.

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” she says.

Of course I forgot. “Of course I didn’t forget.”

Almost laughing now, shaking her head, surprised and yet not. “Rubio . . . you’re a friggin’ piece of work. Two months ago I said I was coming out to L.A., you said I could crash at the office, I said don’t put yourself out, you said don’t worry about it . . .”

“Right . . . right . . .” I have no clue as to what she’s talking about.

Glenda gives me a look—one of those looks. The one that’s wondering if I fucked up again. “You’re not . . . You been going to meetings, right?”

“Every few days. Almost ten months clean and sober.”

Glenda nods. It’s a fair question—this certainly seems like a blackout situation if ever there was one. But I’ve been off the herb and amnesia-free for months now. Still, if she says we had the conversation, then we had the conversation. “Come on in,” I tell her, unlocking the door and throwing it wide. “Mi casa es su casa.”

Glenda pats me on the back and strolls into my office. “Casa means house, Rubio.”

“House, office, whatever. I got a sofa, and it’s all yours.”

She’s got a few bags by her feet, and I heft them off the ground, nearly straining my back in the process. I can’t believe they allowed this much weight on the plane from New York. “Planning on bartering some of this molten metal while you’re here?”

Glenda reaches for a suitcase and helps drag it into the office foyer. “Gal’s gotta have a choice of clothes,” she says.

“How long were you planning on staying again?”

A long, slow stare, like I’m in the zoo and she’s wondering whether or not to toss me a peanut. “You really don’t remember our conversation, do you?”

I’m trying—really, I am—but nothing emerges from the muddy depths.

“They said this would happen. Post-chew blackouts, they call ’em. My brain got used to forgetting things when I was on the herb, so now that I’m clean, sometimes it picks up the slack and drops out for a few hours.” I strain to recall anything about our last conversation, over a month ago. “I remember . . . we were talking . . . you were having some money problems. It was getting pretty bad, you told me.”

Glenda shakes her head. “That’s all done now. I’m good again.”

Before I can admit to my complete lack of brain power regarding our supposed chat, the phone rings. I drop her suitcase to the floor—the resultant shock waves will probably set off seismographs up at Cal Tech—and lift the receiver.

“Vincent Rubio Investigations.”

“Come up to the house.” It’s Tallarico. Not entirely thrilled.

“Mr. Tall—Frank. I actually just left your place. Isn’t Hagstrom still—”

“I’ll expect you in a half hour.”

Before I can get in another word, he’s off the line and I’m holding a dead phone.

“Client?” Glenda asks.

“Unfortunately.” I check my watch; it’s nearing five o’clock, which means I’ll be lucky to make it out to the Palisades in less than forty minutes. “Can you wait here for me? We can head out for a quick dinner when I get back.”

Glenda shrugs and hoists one of her massive suitcases onto the black leather sofa.

“It’s gonna take me a while to get unpacked anyway,” she says. “You got a closet I can use?”

“Broom closet,” I tell her. “Kinda musty, kinda small.”

“Remember my apartment back in the Village?” She grins.

“You’ll feel right at home.”

“Douglas Triconi is the second-in-command of the Los Angeles Brontosaur contingent,” Tallarico informs me. We’re back in the solarium, sitting on those rattan chairs. I wonder if he ever leaves this place. “He used to live out in South Florida—Boca, I think—and came out west a few years back to increase the family stock. Got his claws in a lotta different pies.”

I nod. It’s all information I gleaned from some calls I placed on the way to Tallarico’s estate. It’s always easy to get the skinny on mobsters if you know folks at the local newspapers; mafia-watching is like a hobby to them. There’s probably a field guide out there somewhere.

“And he owns the Lucky Palace.”

“Technically,” Tallarico corrects me. “The family owns it, but it’s in Triconi’s name. He’s no concern of mine.”

“At least,” I say, “he hasn’t been. He and Hagstrom disappeared for a while. It was a private room. I couldn’t follow.”

Tallarico understands. “They mention business?”

“Triconi did. Said something about a ‘talent pool’—I didn’t really understand it. But it was clearly more than a social engagement.”

Frank absorbs this information, his long fingers gripping the sides of the chair. He stares up at the trees surrounding us, as if the leaves will have the answer he’s searching for. Maybe they do; he could have crib notes on those things.

“We move on,” he says finally, rubbing his palms together.

“I should follow him again?”

“You should,” says Frank. With a grunt, he pops out his human dentures, the glue sucking against the roof of his mouth as he pulls them free. His pointed Raptor teeth glint in the fading light, and his tongue licks the razor-sharp tips. “But there’s a bit of a twist.”

This is how it always starts. One little variation, a teensy bit of snow teetering on the edge of a hill, and by the time it’s all over I’m digging my way out from under an avalanche. “A twist?”

“Hagstrom’s going home.”

“To Miami?”

“Our business meeting did not go as expected.”

I don’t press for details; I don’t want to know. “So . . . you want me to tail him to the airport, make sure he gets on the plane, that sort of thing?” I’ve been run out of enough cities in my time to know the protocol.

Tallarico shakes his head. “Not quite.”

I’m afraid I can see where this is going, but I don’t want to put ideas into anyone’s head. Better to sit back and force him to come up with it on his own.

“I’ve paid you a fair amount of money to do a job,” he continues, “and I expect that job to be done.”

“As it was,” I say, “I followed him from LAX, as requested. I kept a tail on him back to the hotel, out to the casino, returning to the hotel, out to your place . . .”

Frank nods, takes my hand in his, pats the back of it, softly, slowly. Oh, this is not good at all. “And you have done a wonderful job. I couldn’t ask for more.”

“But . . . ?”

“But I’m asking for more.”

“Frank—”

“You will follow Nelly Hagstrom back to South Florida,” Tallarico tells me curtly, turning in his chair to bring the full weight of his stare upon me. I can feel it, crushing against my sternum, like the time I tried to bench press twice my weight to impress a cute little Ornithomimus I’d been intent on dating and instead ended up in the emergency room with chest pains. “You will be my eyes and ears down there, and we’ll remain in contact through my brother.”

“Wait, wait,” I say, trying to give myself a little space, some time to think. “Before, you were worried about your guys getting spotted, and you wanted to use me ’cause I’m an L.A. boy. But down in Miami . . . I don’t know the area. I don’t know the people I know here.”

“And that’s a benefit to me,” he responds. “You can go in fresh, give me your observations unclouded.”

I know, deep down, that I’m powerless to stop what’s about to happen, but it doesn’t mean I can’t put up a fight. Even a drowning man claws at the water a few times before going under for good. Three is supposedly the magic number, but I doubt I’ll get more than one shot at this.

“I’ve got a cat,” I say lamely. The tabby cat in question is really just a mongrel who begs for food near my office. Every day or so I put out a platter of tuna and milk, so the little critter’s gotten a bit attached. “Who’s going to feed him?”

Tallarico doesn’t even bother with that excuse.

“I’ve got house guests,” I try. “A friend from New York, she came down just this morning—”

“And she can join you, if she wants. You’ll stay with my brother, and I’ll even front you for expenses. Think of it as a vacation. Everyone goes to Miami eventually, yes? The fun, the surf, the parties till dawn.”

“I guess, but—”

“Vincent,” Tallarico says, “let me make this decision easy for you.”

“I wish you would.”

“Your answer is yes.”

“It is?” I ask.

“And I’ll tell you why: the number twenty, followed by three zeroes.”

The cash. His cash. His cash that became my cash that quickly became other people’s cash.

“It was a fee.”

“It was a fee to follow Nelly Hagstrom for two weeks.”

“He was supposed to be in Los Angeles,” I protest.

“And now he is not,” Tallarico says plainly. He plucks a leaf from a nearby plant and sticks it in the corner of his mouth, chewing hard, sucking the sap from the useless fiber. “Things happen. Plans change. And I would venture to say that twenty thousand dollars for one day of surveillance is an awfully high price, even for the upscale market here in the City of Angels.”

“I can pay you back.”

A bit of interest on his part. He leans in. “Today?”

“Not exactly,” I stammer. “But I’m sure we can work out a payment plan.”

This gets him going. For a moment, I think I can see the yellow in those eyes shining through the dark-brown contact lenses.

“You listen to me,” he growls, grasping the front of my shirt with one surprisingly strong hand, pulling me close, nearly ripping the fabric. “Payment plans are for banks. Do I look like a bank?”

It’s an incredibly stupid question, but this is not the time to point that out. “Of course not.”

“Which means that you have two options. Return my twenty thousand dollars, in cash, right now, or get your ass down to Miami on the next flight out.”

He leans back in the chair, suddenly calm once again. A lackey brings him a new set of flat, mammalian dentures, and he pops them into his mouth, covering up the last traces of his true reptilian nature.

“Tell me, Mr. Rubio,” he says, a single drool of saliva dripping down his lower lip, “do you have the cash?”

My lack of an answer is answer enough. Frank Tallarico smiles and offers me a final bit of advice: “Pack sunscreen.”

On the drive from the Palisades back toward Westwood, I try to rationalize the situation. Sure, I’m working for a mobster known to make little distinction between his friends and enemies when the time for killin’ comes. Sure, I’m heading into a pit of similar vipers, any of whom might off me on the slightest provocation. And, sure, there’s no telling how deep I’ll get in this thing before I’m finally cut loose to float away on my own.

But, hey, a free trip to Miami is a free trip to Miami. I feel like I’ve picked door number three and found out I won both the dream vacation and the booby prize.

I could go on the run, I guess, play it on the lam and keep an eye on my back. But Frank Tallarico doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who takes a forgive-and-forget approach when his money’s involved. And though it would be easy enough to purchase a black-market guise, have my scent glands removed, and relocate to North Dakota, I don’t relish a lifestyle of paranoia. I don’t want to be worried that the guy playing Willy Loman in a Fargo dinner-theater production of Death of a Salesman is going to jump off the stage, grab a butter knife, and make me the main attraction for the evening.

I suppose I could appeal to Tallarico’s better nature, but I think I’ve seen that side of him already. Better is a relative term.

By the time I make it back to my office in Westwood, I’ve resigned myself to my fate. Glenda is waiting inside, stretched out on the sofa, dressed in a long skirt and cotton blouse.

“You have your meeting?” she asks me.

“Uh-huh.”

“Go okay?”

“Sure.”

I move past her, toward the closet. There’s a shirt in there that I like for the hot days. It’s linen, and though I can’t feel it against my natural skin, it falls nicely over the guise. I pull off my white button-down shirt and toss it across a nearby chair, mindlessly fastening the new one across my chest, Glenda staring me down, hard.

“You doing all right?” she asks.

“I’m fine,” I tell her flatly. “Decisions had to be made. They were made.”

“Such as?”

“Such as where to go to dinner,” I say.

“And?”

I tuck my shirt into my pants, smoothing out the few wrinkles I can see as I set aside a few bowls of Whiskas for the tabby cat that lives outside. “How do you feel about something . . . tropical?”