Twelve

Flamingo Street hadn’t looked much when the sun was shining. In the rain its feathers looked positively bedraggled.

No. 75 seemed to have shrunk, as if it were pulling its shingles tighter around it to ward off the chill. It looked like nothing so much as a disgruntled garden bird waiting for the rain to stop so that it could move on to another anonymous perch.

There was no answer to Anna K. Adam’s bell. Nor was there any ‘Anna K. Adam’ business card in the slot any more. Just a fragment of scotch tape to show where it had been. I can’t say I was entirely surprised.

I then pulled the trick that has always annoyed the hell out of me when I’ve lived in buildings like this. I rang all the bells in turn. Somebody would be stupid enough to press the release buzzer. They always had in my buildings.

No buzzer buzzed but the door did suddenly open a crack. There behind the security chain was an eagle eye I recognized from our last visit.

“Oh, it’s you. Thought somebody would be round. Told you, didn’t I? Always tell a fly-by-night. Get the money first, my motto.”

“I wonder if I could see Miss Adam’s room for a moment, madam? She said she’d leave something for me.”

Quick thinking, Watson. They’ve got to get up pretty early …

The ‘Madam’ must have been what did the trick. There was a murmur about pulling the other one, then the chain clicked and the door opened. I saw that the eagle eye was one of a pair and belonged to a tiny old lady who could have been Petit’s mother. By the time we had stepped through, she was pattering back to her own room on carpet slippered feet.

“Make sure you lock up behind you and see to it that dog doesn’t do his business. I’m missing Oprah. Nuns from families with bi-sexual fathers—or something.”

Her door closed and there was a rattling of chains and bolts that would have rivaled Marley’s Ghost. Maybe Oprah’s topic for the day was security around the home.

Anna hadn’t even bothered to lock her door and we walked straight in.

Even more than last time, I had the impression of walking on to a very low budget stage set. Everything was there to create an effect. Nothing was there to be lived in.

The bed was stripped, the sheets bunched up by someone in a hurry and left on the floor. The clothes were gone from the rack and an empty Jack Daniels bottle lay in the bin among the fragments of broken glasses.

There were only two items of interest in the place.

On the bed lay a blonde wig—chignon style. I doubted the makers would take it back. After all, it was missing at least one hair. I stuffed it in my pocket. I’m a great one for souvenirs.

The other item lay in the corner of the room, where it had obviously been tossed.

It was a canvas picture frame and, when I turned it over, I saw what Holmes had described.

I could recognize Kane’s likeness but it was like seeing him through a distorting fairground mirror. The features seemed to be melting, the flesh on the face like running wax. Salvador Dali in manic depressive mood. The eyes were a fiery red , as if some demon were imprisoned and on the point of breaking free from this loathsome body to be its own even more loathsome self.

The draftsmanship was primitive but the power of the vision was frightening.

Emotion had streamed through the painter’s brush straight on to that canvas. But at least it had been in some perverted sense a creative power when the picture was painted. Now someone had turned a negative power on it, for the canvas was scored time and again with slashes and tears. He who creates can destroy. He—or she.

Apartment 13A suddenly seemed an unlucky place to be.

As we let ourselves out, I could hear Oprah addressing the daily faithful. When there was a lull in the ritual applause, I hear Old Eagle Eyes scream out—

“Right on, girl—you tell them cocksuckers!”

Whatever happened to class—for Chrissakes!

“So Anna Kane killed Mallory?”

We were driving back to my apartment. The rain was heavy now but not torrential and the windscreen wipers were working in fits and starts—mostly fits. I had to pay too much attention to my driving to look at Holmes for his reactions.

“I’m afraid that is for you to determine, Watson. In a sense Anna and Nana Kane were both involved. The conflict between them is very real …”

“But Nana has won.” I made it a statement, though it was really a question.

“Put it this way, my dear chap. I doubt that we shall see Anna Kane again, though I wouldn’t bet all my army pension on it, if I were you. And you will remember that she said something to the effect that Nicky was “the only one left”, when you mentioned Mallory. By my admittedly amateur estimation he had been dead for some twenty-four hours by the time we arrived.”

“So he was already dead when we were in Anna’s apartment?”

There was no answer but then none was necessary. Hands that serve Jack Daniels also pull triggers.

“There’s only one way to settle this once and for all, Holmes. I need to see Nana Kane face to face.”

“You also need to catch a certain Bird. Don’t lose sight of that, Watson.”

“Somehow I think the one will lead me to the other. And Nicky must have the Bird. As she said—he’s the only one left.”

That seemed to satisfy him, for he immediately changed the subject.

“Does that music machine of yours play any real music, Watson? A little lively Vivaldi would match my present mood.”

As I opened the door of the apartment, I knew right away that something was different. For one thing I didn’t remember ordering two extremely large Chinese gentlemen in Italian suits who appeared to be standing waiting for me.

You grow to expect ‘impassive’ from your average Chinese—‘imperturbable’ even. Call it racial stereotyping, if you will, but there it is. These two took it to another dimension. Their expressions—or, rather, lack of—were carved in stone and hard stone at that. I swear neither of them moved their lips but one of them must have said—

“Mr. Watson. Would you be so kind as to come with us? Our employer wishes to see you.”

With an invitation like that and two medium-sized pagodas between you and the drawer in which you keep your trusty Smith & Wesson, one is inclined to go with the flow. And after all, they had asked nicely. I indicated I would be so kind as to go with them …

Somehow they edged me to the door and through it without either of them quite touching me.

“Well, boys, this gives a whole new meaning to Chinese takeaway.”

Yes, I know I’d used the line before but they hadn’t heard it. From their lack of response, they didn’t seem to think they’d missed much.

Mike, I felt sure, would savage one or both of them but the older of the two said something to him in Chinese and—can you believe this?—he went into his sit-and-stay routine for the second time. I could only conclude that he must have been a fu dog in a previous existence.

Demonstrating a comparable degree of obedience, the stretch limo I’d seen leaving my office earlier rolled to a stop outside the house—just long enough for me to be decanted into the rear half acre and for them to vanish into the mists of the front.

In the half light—the windows were tinted, do I need to mention?—was my old pal, Kai Ling. But there was something different about him. Gone was the white jacket and black trousers and in their place a natty bit of gents’ suiting. Savile Row, at a guess. It was more than that, though. His manner was more that of a career diplomat than a cheap hoodlum who went about chopping off people’s fingers and turning them into Halloween masks. He might shave off a couple of share points in a business deal or take you to the cleaners in an LBO but that was about it. Shows how little I know.

The man was full of surprises. No sooner had I started to warm the upholstery than I found a flute of champagne in my hand. The condemned man took a hearty snootful. Why not?

“As Bette Davis so aptly put it in Old Acquaintance. Warner Brothers. Nineteen Forty-Three—‘There comes a time in every woman’s life when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.’ Cheers!” Mr. Cool.

I looked across at Holmes, who was stretching his legs out luxuriously. It was, after all, a pleasant change after the Corvette but he needn’t have made it so obvious. He nodded his approval, so I dipped the beak. First Perrier Jouet today. Gallo, eat your heart out.

“Mr. Watson, before this rather tawdry little drama plays itself out, I thought I owed you an apology for some of the grand guignol you have been exposed to through the somewhat over-enthusiastic antics of some of my younger associates. They are children, Mr. Watson, overgrown children dedicated to a cause—as, indeed, am I—but lacking the maturity to appreciate the inevitability of gradualness. I believe you have a saying in the west to the effect that everything comes to he—or is it him?—who waits.

“Well, we have waited. Indeed, we have waited. I must admit the Chinese temperament is a boon in this regard. You in the West are anxious to claim credit. Everyone must know that you were the one who did this or achieved that on your watch. We take the longer view. The matter is not personal. Only the desired end is important. That, at least, is our normal pattern but, alas, there are always exceptions and this is one. The sands in the hourglass are fast running out. The Bird’s holy millennium is almost upon us and … What is that children’s game you play? ‘Pass the parcel’. It is my destiny to be sitting there when the music stops and, therefore, it is I who am fated to take home the parcel or face the consequences of failure. The latter is not to be contemplated. So, you see, Mr. Watson …?”

He managed to shrug without spilling a drop.

I could see his point of view. I must admit I find it easy to see the point of view of anyone who plies me with vintage champagne.

“So where do I fit into your grand plan?”

“You are, shall we say—‘Piggy in the Middle’. Ah, all of this is such good practice for my colloquial English! You have been hired by the loathsome Kane to find the Bird and, although you have so far singularly failed to do so …”

That hurt.

“… you at least seem to have closed certain avenues of exploration. Also you with your pale complexion may move in circles where my colleagues and I would be, perhaps, more noticeable.

“There is one other aspect of this sorry business I should mention and on which we may well have a difference of cultural opinion. It is a tenet of our faith that the infidel must be punished. Anyone who unlawfully possesses the Bird. Over the centuries, from what we can determine, human greed has taken care of that aspect well enough.

“In this present brief episode Mr. Perlman has been taken care of, as has Mr. Mallory. Not by us, as I think you know. The contribution of my associates has been purely cosmetic. Let us attribute it to Fate. The Bird has bitten the hands that fed it, as it always will, and its ways are often devious. There have been others who have given offence and time will take care of them but there is one on whom time may not wait—and that is the person who possesses the Bird at this moment.

“Logic would seem to dictate that that person is Mr. Parmentieri. I come to you with a proposition, Mr. Watson. Help us find the Bird, be our Trojan Horse and we will double anything Mr. Kane has offered you. And after that, we shall be—what is your word?—history. What do you say?”

And then—maybe it was the champagne talking—several things came together in my head that had been bouncing around for the last couple of days. I didn’t like any part of this Bird business or the people involved in it—with the possible exception of this strange little Chinese man with his English suit, his French champagne and—I could be fairly sure—his Italian loafers. At least he believed in something. I had an uncomfortable feeling in my inside jacket pocket, where a check was burning a hole. Not because I was dying to deposit it, so that I could see black numbers for a change, but because it didn’t belong there. Period. At which point I took it out, tore it up and dropped the pieces on the carpeted floor of the limo. Get the maid to sweep up later!

To cover the psychic shock that act entailed, I helped myself to a refill of P-J. The almond eyes widened a tad, I thought.

“Mr. Chan,” I said, “you are looking at a free man. You want your Bird. Well, here’s what you do …”

For the next several minutes he listened—and so did Holmes—as the limo prowled the streets of Greater L.A.

“It’s a little devious,” I concluded. He clearly liked devious.

“So you want me to sell drugs to Mr. Parmentieri?”

“No, I want Mr. Parmentieri to think you’re going to sell him drugs. Like you, Nicky is between a rock and a hard place. His bosses expect him to deliver and they don’t much care how. They’re running a business and the drugs let Nicky make his bottom line. It’s the good all-American way. Perlman is terminally out of the picture and the connection is blown. Now, I’m betting Mr. P. hasn’t quite got round to telling the Pomona family of this unfortunate happenstance and is casting round for alternative sources of supply. He won’t feel comfortable with the Colombians. And the last thing he wants is to let old man Kane back into the game. So you, my friend, will look like the answer to a maiden’s prayer …

“Old English saying,” I added in answer to his puzzled expression. “Don’t let it bother you.”

He thought it over for a while, as we purred on in our tinted time capsule. Then he turned to me with a grin that would have sent a shiver up many a spine.

“So, Mister Plivate Eye, You wish Charlie Chan make likee Dlug Rord, yes?”

I cursed bugs and all forms of insect life.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Watson, but I couldn’t resist it. Please help me finish the champagne. A toast to our unlikely partnership. There is something highly ironic in even discussing the provision of drugs to a race of people who are steadily gorging themselves to death on a diet of fast food, empty calories and high cholesterol without the need for any further assistance. But if appearing to pander to Western decadence and self-indulgence is the best way to achieve our ends … so be it. It could even be considered to be politically correct.”

We clinked glasses.

“Now, Mr. Watson, how do you suggest we proceed?”

“Excellent, Watson. I confess I never get your limits. Here have I been thinking that you were being merely buffeted by events, when all the time you were formulating your master plan. My dear fellow, I apologize most humbly.”

I waved a modest hand. It would only have undermined that precious confidence for me to tell him that my decision had little to do with the gradual construction of an overarching concept and everything to do with a pigheaded determination not to be used as a psychological football. So now we’d tip all the chips out on the table and let them fall where they may. Frankly, I didn’t give a rat’s ass who had the Bird. A simple search for a spouse of either sex who’d gone walkabout would seem pretty attractive round about now, providing I could keep my noggin intact this time.

But Holmes now had the bit between his teeth.

“I presume, old fellow, you intend to follow the procedure I believe is commonplace in these affairs?”

Procedure. What procedure?

“Oh, yes, the usual procedure, certainly.”

“Summon all the usual suspects to a single location without giving them reason to suspect the presence of the others and inviting each of them in such a way that they find the invitation irresistible? Capital, old fellow. Capital.”

Yes, it was a good idea, wasn’t it. I could hardly believe I’d thought of it unaided. I gave Holmes a sharp glance but he didn’t quite catch my eye.

“I wonder if I might suggest one small embellishment on this occasion?”

Never let it be said that the pride of the Watsons was too proud to consider an improvement to a master plan.

“I see now the cunning of your asking your friend McNulty to hold back the news of Mallory’s death for twenty-four hours and I suggest that a news embargo will prove effective for our purposes.

“Each of the suspects should appear to be invited by the person they most want to meet and their invitations should be spread. In a well constructed play the author never brings on all his characters at once.

“Miss Grace will think her invitation comes from Mr. Parmentieri, while Kane and Miss Nana will believe they are going to meet Mallory …”

“But surely Nana …”

“I think you will find that Miss Kane is already into deep denial on that particular subject. Besides, she has her father to contend with and under those circumstances …

“Mr. Parmentieri, of course, will be allowed to believe his invitation comes from your new Chinese associate.

“As a venue, may I suggest Mallory’s beach house? He is unlikely to require it this evening and it is suitably isolated. I assume you saw the magazine article pinned to the wall of the workroom. He appears to have been very proud of it. The address, unless memory fails me, was Cormorant Cove. We do seem to be infested with birdlife, do we not?”

We were back in my apartment, the limo having dropped us off at the front door.

On the way upstairs we had had a brief exchange with Mr. Gryppe, who had clearly recovered his confidence.

“Some people are flying high, I see.” A reference to the departing limo that did, indeed, make the neighborhood look even shabbier by comparison. And maybe he was right. I don’t remember being conscious that it touched the ground.

Then, in case that had come out sounding too flattering—

“Haven’t heard a peep out of him upstairs. Suppose he’s all right.” Bang.

Not only was ‘him upstairs’ all right—Mike was still sitting and staying with a beatific expression on his face. It took me all my time to snap him out of it and he was positively grouchy until I’d found some old hamburger at the back of the Fridgidaire, which he grudgingly accepted as a quid pro quo.

I sank into my favorite chair—for once no one else was competing for it—and put my feet up with, a sigh of relief. Frankly, I was no nearer solving the case than I had been when it began but at least I’d played my highest card. Now we’d see what everyone else had in their hand.

It was in the euphoria induced by that conviction and endorsed by Monsieur Perrier (not to mention Jouet) that Holmes had made his surprising remarks.

“Ah, yes, Mallory’s beach house. A stormy night. Sea birds calling. Surf pounding. I can see it now. And then the guilty party, wracked by remorse, gives himself—or herself …” I quickly added, not wishing to appear sexist … “away,” I ended limply.

“Ah, Watson, it is good to hear that pawky sense of humor of yours at work once more. Frankly, I had wondered over the past day or two whether it had perhaps deserted you but I see not. You, of course, will have primed the psychological pump, so to speak, before any one of them sets foot in the place.

“Now then, old friend, what do you say to our composing the invitations to the party? And incidentally, since we shall need a messenger to deliver them, what harm would there be in our bringing friend Petit into our confidence? He has the added advantage of being able to afford us access to the beach house.”

“My thought, exactly, Holmes.” I crossed everything that would cross. I’m sure I would have thought of it—eventually.

I picked up the phone and called Petit.

An hour or so later the three of us were sitting—or, rather, two were sitting and one was hovering—around the card table that served as my desk.

Petit had been pleased and flattered to receive my call and glad of any excuse to leave the gloomy surroundings of Mallory’s premises, where he apparently slept on a cot in a back room.

“Everywhere I look I see that silly scarecrow face of his,” he said, his own tiny face scrunched up until it resembled nothing so much as one of the gargoyles on Notre Dame. “He was a devious old devil but he was a good friend to me and anything I can do to fix whoever killed him—well, sir, you may count on Dwight G. Grandhomme.” He gave me a look which defied me to make something of it.

“My granddaddy was from the South.”

Ah, well, that explained it.

By the time he arrived Holmes and I had composed the invitations and I confess I was pleased with them. When I say ‘Holmes and I, of course, I did the actual writing and, come to think of it, Holmes never said a word. So why did the odd word or phrase drop into my mind unbidden? A thought for another day.

By now Charlie Chan would have made one of his famous ‘teaser’ phone calls to establish contact, so Nicky Parmentieri’s note was simple …

“My Dear Mr. Parmentieri,

“May I suggest we sample one another’s merchandise forthwith, so that our new friendship may be cemented expeditiously? A mutual friend, who is out of town, has made his premises available.”

And then the address and time—11:30 p.m. It sounded a little flowery but, hey, what else would a Mafia-educated kid expect from an Oxford-educated Chinaman?

To Kane …

“The Bird sings at midnight. There is a golden secret in its song. Be there—or be square. And back to square one. Sieg heil!—Q.M.”

I was particularly pleased with the rhythm of that one. And the ending would certainly make him sit up in his wheelchair.

To Nana Kane …

“If you or your sister ever hope to spread your wings, the Bird will teach you how to fly at midnight tonight—Q.M.” To Linda Grace (I always bet a few bucks on outsiders) …

“The situation has changed and we have to make plans right now. My place is too public. Meet me at 11:45 p.m. on the button. N.” And then the details.

It was only as I had them all laid out in front of me that I realized something very strange. The handwriting was nothing like my normal scrawl. It had a pleasing calligraphic formality that was almost—Victorian.

A few minutes later Petit—I couldn’t handle Grandhomme—had scurried off on his mission and I knew with absolute certainty that nor rain nor snow would prevent the US mails from getting through. Midnight would be a witching hour, one way or another. But who would the wicked witch turn out to be?

Then, to prove that I was still on a roll, I got to my feet and addressed Holmes, who looked to be on the point of lighting his pipe and putting his feet up. Really—when I’d done all the work!

“Come, Holmes,” I cried, “the game’s afoot. We haven’t a second to lose.”

“Where to now, Watson?” And was that a gleam of amusement I detected in those deep-set gray eyes?

“To see the one character we need to complete the cast of our play. We shall pay our respects to Miss Nana Kane …

“Mike. Sit and stay!” He grumbled but obeyed. I really was on a roll.