Dead Pigeon (2 page)

The man who delivered the eulogy was obviously not a cleric. Heinie was frowning and muttering to himself as the man droned on and on about destiny and space and the Great Beyond. He was either an astronomer or a cultist or a visitor from some other planet.

I hadn’t recognized any mourners in the room; all I had seen were the back of their heads. There was a tall, thin, well-dressed man standing next to my car when we got to the parking lot. It had stopped raining. The sun was out.

“Remember me?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“I figured this had to be your car,” he said. “There aren’t that many classic 1965 Mustangs still running. I was a friend of Mike’s. My name is Joe Nolan.”

I smiled. “Now I remember. The big loser.”

He nodded. “Poker has never been my game.” He took a breath. “I was wondering—are you still a private investigator?”

“I still have my license. But that’s not why I’m here. I retired a couple of years ago.”

“In San Valdesto, right?”

“Right. What’s on your mind, Joe?”

He looked at Heinie and back at me. “It’s—kind of private.” He looked at Heinie again. “No offense intended. I know you were also a friend of Mike’s.”

“I’ll sit in the car,” Heinie said. “I don’t want any part of this.” He got in the car and slammed the door.

Nolan said, “What I have to tell you is—oh—kind of complicated. It might not be important. Are you going home tonight?”

I shook my head.

“Where are you staying?”

“At the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“I’ll phone you there tonight.”

“Do that.”

In the car, Heinie was scowling. “You know what Nolan is, don’t you?”

“Nope.”

“An effing stockbroker, the lowest form of animal life.”

Heinie has a sad financial history of investing in junk bonds. I said, “They’re not all crooks, Heinie.”

“Too many are. Let’s move. I’m hungry.”

I had lunch with him at his bar and grille: sirloin steak, French fries, and two beakers of Einlicher, courtesy of my occasionally gracious host. After an hour of yacking with the Dodger fans in attendance, I drove to the hotel.

I phoned our housekeeper, Mrs. Casey, from there. She told me Jan’s plane had taken off on time and asked if I would be home tonight.

I would be visiting friends, I lied, for a few days. Mrs. Casey does not approve of the amateur sleuthing I had returned to in my retirement. She had given up on her crusade to lure me back into “The Only True Church.” It is her devout belief that a non-Catholic Irishman is like a fish out of water.

I tried to remember back to the Saturday-night poker sessions in my former office. As I remembered them, Nolan had not been a regular. Mike had been working at E.F. Hutton then; perhaps that was where they had met.

The life of an informant is hazardous. He is both useful to and despised by the police. He is both hated and despised by the lawless. That last would be the logical choice for Mike’s killer. I doubted that even a rogue cop would use a shotgun loaded with buckshot at point-blank range.

The
Los Angeles Times
I bought at the hotel had the story on an inside page. Mike’s body had been discovered on the beach in Santa Monica, near the Venice border. Several neighbors, when questioned, had told the police they had heard the blast of the shot. But they had not gone out to investigate. At two o’clock in the morning, in that neighborhood, who could blame them?

But Mike? It was hard for me to believe he was dumb enough to meet anybody, legal or illegal, in that area at two o’clock in the morning. That was a dangerous place for an informant, which I had to assume Mike still was.

I phoned the Santa Monica Police Department and asked for Sergeant Lars Hovde. I was informed by the desk sergeant that he was not available at the moment. I gave her my name and phone number and asked that she have Lars phone me as soon as he was available.

The phone rang less than two minutes later. “Where the hell were you; in the toilet?” I asked him.

“I get a lot of nothing calls,” he explained. “I’d be on the phone all day if I answered them. What are you doing in town?”

“I came down for Mike Gregory’s funeral. You still single?”

“Temporarily. What’s on your mind?”

“I thought maybe I could buy you an expensive dinner and we could discuss the murder. Any suspects?”

“None yet. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“Okay. Buy your own dinner. Who needs you?”

“Brock!”

“You ornery bastard,” I said, and hung up.

The phone rang seconds later. He said, “Since you left this town, my jock friend, we have a new lieutenant in homicide who hates private eyes.”

“Okay. I won’t invite him to the dinner.”

“You win,” he said wearily. “Where?”

“Right here at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“I’ll be there at seven,” he said. “I get off at six.”

Good old Lars, two hundred and fifty pounds of Norwegian out of Minnesota, a welcome addition at any poker table, a man who draws to inside straights and three-card flushes. He was also a welcome addition to any police department. He knew his lacks, so relied on his instincts, the same as I did. He had served in other police departments before moving to Santa Monica. He was not an officer who got along very well with his superiors. It was a few minutes short of four o’clock when Joe Nolan phoned. He had sorted out his priorities, he said, and decided to tell me what he suspected.

“But,” he added, “I have reasons for not informing the police. It might hurt some innocent people, one of whom is one of my clients.”

“I see. Are you still with Hutton?”

“No. I opened my own office six years ago.”

I told him about my dinner date with Lars and suggested, “Why don’t you come over now. You can tell me what you suspect. And if you decide to stay for dinner we—”

“I won’t be staying for dinner,” he interrupted. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. My office isn’t far from the hotel.”

He knocked on the door fifteen minutes later, still looking doubtful.

“Should I order up a couple of drinks?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I’m in AA, like Mike was. He must have been in and out a dozen times. He was out when Hutton had to fire him, the damned fool!”

I nodded. “Booze and broads, those were Mike’s failings. I suppose there are worse.”

“I guess.” He went over to sit in a chair near the window. “That man who delivered the eulogy is a client of mine. I don’t know what his original name was. He now calls himself Turhan Bay.”

“Like the old movie actor, Turhan Bey?”

“B-a-y, not B-e-y. Maybe that’s where he got it. Anyway, he runs a cult called Inner Peace and is doing very well financially. What his congregation doesn’t know and wouldn’t tolerate, he is also sharing bed and board with a former hooker named Crystal Lane. Do you remember her?”

“Yes. She was one of Mike’s girlfriends. But she wasn’t a hooker then, so far as I know.”

He shrugged. “So far as we both know.” He took a deep breath and stared at the floor.

He looked at me. “Add it up. Maybe Mike knew earlier, or later learned about Crystal. And wouldn’t Turhan’s followers desert the flock if they learned? Wouldn’t Mike have strong grounds for a blackmail threat?”

I shook my head. “Not Mike. Never. No!”

“You didn’t know him, Brock, in the last few years. He was into drugs then—and they cost money.”

“That I didn’t know.”

“Do you see my dilemma?” he asked. “If I give this to the police, Turhan could find out and I’d lose a million-dollar account.” His smile was dim. “I may worship in the temple of Mammon, but I still like to think of myself as a responsible citizen. Whatever your current rates are, I’d be glad to pay them.”

“I no longer work for pay,” I said. “Mike was my friend.”

“Be tactful now, Brock, if you decide to investigate.”

“Of course. Tact is my middle name.”

He smiled. “What a change!”

On that cynical note, he left. An effing broker is what Heinie had called him. Nolan might be one of the better ones.

Suppositions, suppositions, facts not in evidence, as the defense attorneys love to declaim. But it was an avenue of inquiry, the bread and butter of private eyes.

I had left San Valdesto very early this morning to avoid the freeway traffic; I was bushed. It was still two hours short of dinnertime. I stretched out on the bed for a nap.

An hour later I woke up, wet with sweat. I had dreamed of my father again. He had died when I was a kid, killed by a hoodlum, a man who was out on probation for the fourth time.

I took a long warm shower and then a cool one. I dressed and read the sports and business sections of the Times. Then I went down to the lobby to wait for Lars.

He looked kind of spiffy when he showed. He was even wearing a tie, one of those William Tell bow ties that columnist George Will favors.

“You put on weight, huh?” was his opening remark.

“Almost two pounds since my playing days,” I admitted. “Anything new since last we talked?”

He shook his head. “Mike is not exactly a priority item at the Department right now.”

“And with you?”

“Let’s have a drink,” he said.

Over our drinks, he told me, “You left town before Mike went the last ugly mile. So it’s possible that you’re more sold on him than I am. You probably didn’t know that he wound up on drugs.”

“Lars, this town is loaded with highly admired and influential citizens who sniff cocaine at all their fancy parties.”

“Hell, yes! But do they also sell it?”

“I don’t know. Did Mike?”

He shrugged. “How else can a poor man support his habit if he doesn’t deal or steal?”

Facts not in evidence again. I said, “Pretend you’re not a cop. Pretend you really care about what happens to victims. Are you telling me to forget what a close friend to both of us Mike was?”

He glowered at me. “God damn you, I liked the guy! But every day we deal with drunks, child molesters, rapists, con men, murderers, burglars, and robbers. And you sit up there in San Valdesto living high off the hog on your inheritance.”

“Guilty,” I said, and smiled at him. “Another drink?”

He sighed and smiled back at me. “You bastard! I’ll have another double. I apologize for the crack about your money. If anybody deserves it, you do.”

It went better after that. We traveled down memory lane, recounting old friends and enemies—and where were they all today?

I didn’t mention what Nolan had told me. Maybe later … He promised to keep me informed on the progress (if any) on Mike’s murder investigation but repeated that it was not a high priority item to the SMPD.

Then he went home to his woman of the month and I went up to my lonely bed.

T
HERE WAS A FAINT
tinge of smog in the room when I awoke in the morning. The worst of it, according to the bedside radio, was a second-stage alert in the San Fernando Valley. Santa Monica and Venice, where I planned to prowl this morning, were relatively clear.

I had checked the phone book last night and learned that the cult called Inner Peace was in Venice. That was also where Denny’s Tavern was, a knowledgeable source of information for any chicanery that was going on in the area.

The tavern was in an old brick building of three floors, the second and third floors inhabited by Denny and his wife.

Most bars don’t open early in the morning. But Denny had another source of income, booking horse bets. He got the blue-collar trade, early-morning bettors on their way to work.

He had been a jockey at one time, but ridden too many horses that finished out of the money. The way he had figured it, there had to be a better way to make a living from the nags.

He smiled as I walked in. “Last time I saw you some guy was trying to ace you. He must have hit a rock, huh?”

That was the nickname my teammates had given me, Brock the Rock. Good beer and bad puns, that’s Denny.

I made no comment.

“Beer?” he asked. “I now serve Einlicher. On tap!”

I shook my head. “Too early. Maybe some coffee?”

“Instant?”

“Is that all you have?”

He nodded.

“Then forget it. I came to town for Mike Gregory’s funeral. Do you remember him?”

“Hell, yes. He died owing me a thirty-eight-dollar tab. I planned to go to his funeral yesterday, but my wife was ailing and I had to watch the store.”

I put two twenties on the bar. “Now he doesn’t owe you.”

He shook his head. “Forget it.”

“Denny,” I said, “you take this money or I’ll tell the law how you once threw a race at Hollywood Park.”

He smiled. “You wouldn’t and we both know it. But as long as you are now a rich man—” He picked up the twenties and handed me two singles.

“Did Mike come here often?”

“He did. He spent a lot more than the thirty-eight dollars in this place. Rich one day and poor the next, that was Mike.”

“Do you mean lately?”

“Not lately, no. Is that why you’re still in town? You playing cops and robbers again?”

“If I have to. Do you know a man named Turhan Bay?”

“The name I know, the man I don’t. A weirdo, right?”

“I guess. How about a woman named Crystal Lane?”

He shook his head.

“There is a rumor floating around that Mike might have been involved in selling drugs. Did you hear it?”

“Hell, no! Buying, maybe. But selling? Where would he get the money?”

“Denny, if he could afford to buy, he must have got the money somewhere. A lot of addicts are peddlers. They need to sell in order to support their habit.”

“Right. The way I always felt about Mike, he was his own worst enemy. But I find it hard to believe that he’d sink low enough to scout for new victims for the dealers.”

That was my gut feeling, too. But it was possible that he might have only switched long-term addicts to a new cheaper source. That could be rationalized as an act of mercy. Mike, like all losers, was prone to rationalization.

“Denny,” I said, “nobody knows this neighborhood as well as you do. You would be doing me a big favor if you would find out all you can about Turhan Bay.”