The Glitter Dome (36 page)

“Speculation,” Al Mackey said.

“I know someone else who lied, and it isn't speculation.”

“Who?”

“The old skating flash himself. Griswold Weils.”

“What did he lie about?”

“He said he was contacted by mail.”

“Yeah, a letter was sent to his guild.”

“The International Photographer's Union, Local six five nine. But it wasn't. I called them just to verify they had his address and forwarded his mail. They don't. He stopped paying dues about the time he got his first pornography bust. They show no forwarding address. He lied about how he was first contacted by Mister Gold.”

“Why would he lie about that?”

“I'm sure that's not
all
he lied about. If he'd lie about the little things …”

Al Mackey started rubbing the stubble of beard that was already starting. Hairy. A sure sign of middle age. You get hairy and ugly! “You know, Marty, Peggy said that Mister Silver might have been wearing a wig. Griswold's bald.”

“Good lad.” Martin Welborn smiled. “Now we tally debits and credits.”

“We don't have a damn thing but speculation.”

“We have lies,” Martin Welborn said. “Thank God people are such consummate liars or we'd never get things right.”

“But there's something still doesn't make a lick of sense. Why would a man like St. Claire personally contact a loser like Griswold Weils, even if he
was
up to some kind of kinky filmmaking?”

“It doesn't seem likely that he would.”

“Why would Nigel St. Claire get involved in kiddy porn?”

“It doesn't seem likely that he would.”

“What're we gonna do now?”

“Tell me, if Griswold Weils lied, and we know he did, and if he
is
Mister Silver in a wig, what would he be doing up in that house in Trousdale that night? That Just Plain Bill Bozwell couldn't do?”

“Peggy said he was making a deal.”

“Bozwell, or Lloyd to her, would make the deal. But Griswold Weils can do one thing that Bozwell and the Vietnamese friend can't do. He can operate a camera. If he was there, it was for that purpose and that purpose only.”

“Peggy Farrell didn't say she was photographed.”

“Exactly. I say she lied. And the last thing that I can't begin to handle is
why
the Vietnamese partner? What's he, a makeup artist? A porn movie stud? A gaffer or grip? A location man? A costume designer?”

“No, he's a thug,” said the Ferret, who was sitting at the next table with his bearded chin in his hands, listening to Martin Welborn theorize. “He's a thug and a hoodlum. That's all he is.”

“Okay, Marty,” Al Mackey said. “I think you're saying I won't be going to The Glitter Dome tonight. What're we gonna do?”

“Us? Nothing.” Martin Welborn smiled. “I was hoping the Ferret and Weasel might do something for us.”

“Does it have something to do with the gook?” the Ferret asked, raising up.

“It might.”

“Count us in,” he said.

They didn't have to wait more than thirty minutes after twilight until Griswold Weils skated into the parking lot. Martin Welborn and Al Mackey were inside the office of the bowling alley manager with binoculars and a radio.

“Another lie.” Martin Welborn grinned. “He said he'd never skate in that parking lot again.”

“Give him a break, Marty,” Al Mackey said. “What a temptation for a fifty-two-year-old flash. Acres of asphalt, all that.”

“Six-W-three, go!” Martin Welborn said into the hand radio unit, and Al Mackey used his binoculars to watch as the Ferret, who had exchanged his motorcycle boots for a rented pair of shoe skates with big nylon wheels and rubber stops, went pinwheeling across the parking lot. He looked none too ominous when he got on those skates and skidded and slipped and slid down that parking lot, arms windmill ing, pony tail flying, in the general direction of Griswold Weils, who was skating backwards, his radio headset drowning out all the panicky, frantic cries of the Ferret, who bounced and skidded across the asphalt.

The Ferret was athletic enough to get the hang of it after ten minutes or so, and then he was at least able to skate forward in a reasonably straight line, while the parking lot filled with after-dark jiving skaters, a cacophony of music blaring from pocket transistors. As Griswold Weils was skating backwards, eyes closed, jiving to Pink Floyd, he dreamed of Thursday night at the rink, when he'd show up in his new skating silks and knock em dead. But suddenly he was jarred so violently that his headset went sailing off his bald head and rattled across the asphalt in three pieces.

Griswold Weils went flying one way, and the other skater, a bearded longhair, went flying the other way and hit the asphalt with a splat.

“Ooooowww, my arm's broke!” the hairy skater wailed. “My fucking arm!”

A crowd of skaters gathered and two young men helped him up, and Griswold Weils, still dazed, searched for the batteries from his shattered transistor.

“He did it!” the hairy skater cried. “Not looking where he's going! My arm! It's broke!” The arm hung at an odd angle from the elbow and did look broken, but the hairy skater wouldn't remove his leather jacket for anyone to take a closer look.

“You skated into
me!
” Griswold Weils cried.

“Oooowww!” the skater moaned. “I was going frontwards. You were going backwards. It's
my
fault? Oooohhh, my arm!”

“He better get to a hospital,” somebody said.

“Who's gonna take me?” the hairy skater cried.

“Somebody oughtta call an ambulance,” someone said.

“I got a car,” the hairy skater moaned. “But I can't drive like this. Somebody has to drive me.” Then he looked at Griswold Weils. “You better drive me, Mister. I'll need your name and statement for my insurance.”

“Insurance?

“You broke my arm!” the skater moaned. “You don't wanna let me collect from the insurance company?”

And then the crowd of skaters turned on Griswold Weils. Not collect from a fucking insurance company! Insurance companies are part of Big Business! The Enemy! Boooooo! Mr. Wheels, a friend of Big Business? Boooooo!

Ten minutes later, a disgusted Griswold Weils, with his skates in the back seat of the Toyota, was driving the wounded skater in the general direction of Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital when the skater said, “Mister, will you please make a right there in that alley so I can take a leak?”

“For chrissake!” Griswold Weils whined. “I agree to drive ya to the hospital so ya don't sue me or something. I suppose with your broken arm I gotta take it out and shake it when you're through?”

“Please, Mister. If I don't take a piss I'm gonna faint!” the hairy skater groaned.

“For chrissake!” Griswold Weils whined, but he turned into an alley north of Santa Monica Boulevard and stopped.

And a moment after his passenger alighted and walked around the back of the car, the driver's door was jerked open and Griswold Weils' passenger, with
both
arms working extremely well, had his hand over Griswold Weils' mouth and a knife pressing his throat.

“Move and I'll cut you three ways: wide, deep, and forever,” he whispered, and Griswold Weils froze.

The skater said, “Turn off the ignition,” and he was obeyed instantly. Then he climbed into the back seat of the Toyota and holding the knife point at the back of Griswold Weils' neck, said, “Drive toward Griffith Park.”

“I ain't got no money,” Griswold Weils sobbed. “I swear I ain't!”

“Drive, Mr. Weils,” the hairy skater breathed, and Griswold Weils shut his mouth, started the car, and drove.

Ten minutes later they were on a dark and lonely road in the park. Griswold Weils looked around frantically. Why was there never a cop when you needed one! Then he spotted a large dark car in the distance. Maybe someone would help him if he leaped out and screamed.

They got nearer to the car and the headlights went on. The knife relaxed a bit and the skater said, “Pull over and park.”

After parking the car, Griswold Weils sat and waited and squinted into the headlights. Then the lights went out and he blinked and saw it was a Rolls-Royce.

“Get out,” the skater said, and Griswold Weils stepped tentatively from the car. “Lloyd wants to have a talk,” the skater said, and Griswold Weils peered through the night and saw that the big dark car was not a Rolls-Royce. It was a Bentley!

“I haven't told nothing!” Griswold Weils said. “What's wrong with Lloyd? I haven't told nothing!”

“Shut your mouth!” the skater whispered, getting a handful of Griswold Weils' collar and pressing the knife against his ribs.

They stopped when they were still thirty feet from the car in the darkness. Griswold Weils could see Lloyd's silhouette behind the steering wheel, the familiar cap and glasses.

Griswold Weils called out, “Lloyd! I didn't tell the cops nothing. They came, but I didn't tell them, Lloyd!”

The headlights blinked on, off, on. “That's it. He don't wanna talk to ya,” the skater said, leading Griswold Weils back to the Toyota.

“But I didn't tell the cops nothing!” Griswold Weils sobbed. He was gushing tears now. “Nothing! I swear!”

Then the passenger door of the Bentley opened and
another
leather-covered thug emerged and approached Griswold Weils as the Bentley started its engine, backed up, and drove away.

“Lloyd says to use our own judgment,” the second one said, as Griswold Weils wept and jabbered, “I didn't tell the cops nothing! Please don't kill me!”

“Who said anything about killing ya?” the first thug said.

“You're not going to kill me?”

“No.” The first thug grinned, grabbing Griswold Weils' neck. “I'm gonna hamstring ya. Only skating you'll be doing from now on will be on a little square platform on the sidewalk.”

And then, weeping brokenly, Griswold Weils was grabbed by each arm and led to the Toyota, where he was shoved into the back seat and down on the floor by the first one as the second one drove the Toyota deeper into the bowels of Griffith Park while Griswold Weils began wetting his skating pants but didn't even notice.

When it seemed they'd been driving for half an hour, but in reality had only been circling for five minutes, the one driving said, “Goddamnit, I didn't see that stop sign!”

And the thug in the back seat with his knife pressed to the nape of the neck of Griswold Weils, able to dispatch him with one slice (as Griswold Weils had seen Laurence Olivier do to Woody Strode in
Spartacus
), said, “You dumb shit! That's a cop car over there!”

Griswold Weils started hyperventilating, and spitting up the bile of sheer terror. Suddenly he heard it: a police siren!

Had he not been practically catatonic by now, even Griswold Weils would have wondered why the hell the cop was hitting his siren in a quiet and deserted park at night when there wasn't another car on the lonely road. Griswold Weils had worked on enough cop shows to know that the siren is only used when there's heavy traffic to penetrate.

“Gud-damn, Buckmore!” Gibson Hand said to the grinning street monster behind the wheel, “ain't that a little too much? The fuckin siren?”

But Buckmore Phipps said, “Gibson, this ain't police work! This is show biz!”

Meanwhile, Schultz was blasting south in the maroon Bentley, which looked black in the moonlight, heading for Beverly Hills where his partner waited at the leasing agency with a very worried agency manager who wondered if he had made a mistake by being a “good citizen” and loaning these cops a $100,000 machine.

When the street monsters approached the Toyota, one on each side, and the driver jumped out saying, “Yes, Officer, what can I do for you tonight?” and the first thug kept his knife blade against the spinal cord of Griswold Weils, who kept thinking of poor Woody Strode, he heard one of the cops cry out: “Watch out, partner!”

And then Griswold Weils felt the release of deadly pressure, and another voice cried out: “Freeze!” And as he was drifting toward unconsciousness Griswold Weils thought, they
do
say Freeze! Just like on all the shows he'd worked.

Then he felt himself being lifted bodily from the back of the Toyota and he looked into the face of a huge black cop who said, “Are you okay, sir?”

Later, Buckmore Phipps accused Gibson Hand of being the ham, because neither street monster had called anyone “sir” since they were recruits in the police academy.

Then Griswold Weils was being propped up by a huge white cop, and the huge black cop had the two thugs spreadeagled on the ground with their hands behind their ponytails, and the white cop was saying, “What happened, mister? Were they trying to kidnap ya? Was it a robbery? Did they rape ya? What?”

Griswold Weils was periously close to slipping into shock and he lost track of time as the big white cop sat in the police car and called for assistance and had a hurried conversation with his black partner. He said something about getting Griswold Weils to the detectives while the other took the thugs to jail. Griswold Weils found himself being sped to Hollywood Station by the big white cop and helped up the stairs and into the detective squadroom while still too faint to recognize the two detectives on duty there.

“Mr. Weils!” Al Mackey cried. “What are
you
doing here?”

It was nearly ten o'clock when Al Mackey sat in the detective squadroom discussing the evening's performances with the actors: Schultz and Simon, the Weasel and Ferret, and the two street monsters, who were looking at their watches and thinking about The Glitter Dome but were nonetheless savoring the success of their dramatic debuts.

“I
loved
the way the little cocksucker turned gray!” Buckmore Phipps exclaimed. “It was almost as much fun as the real thing. I think I could make it as a character actor in the movies. How much they charge you to join SAG?”