Written in Dead Wax (33 page)

I made a noise that sounded vaguely like a laugh. “It’s only the most widely advertised vinyl event of the year. So it’s very possible.”

She put her sandwich down. I was glad to see her give up on it. I’d make her a real meal when we got home. “So it was just bad luck, then,” she said, and touched my hand. “And good luck too. We did find the other one.”

I took the album out of its bag and looked at it. “This is the record that started it all,” I said.

“In more ways than one,” said Ree. “It sealed all their fates. That’s what my grandmother used to say.”

“Because of the lawsuit?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

I slid the record out of the inner sleeve and looked at the label for the composer credits. Sure enough there it was. The works of Burns Hobartt, all attributed to… Burns Hobartt. No mention of the Davenport cousins. Nasty pieces of work, Jerry had called them.

Then suddenly I remembered. I held the record up to the light and studied the vinyl. Then I got out my notebook and a pen and wrote in the letters from side one and side two. I showed it to Ree.

A shadow fell over the paper. I looked up and saw Mrs Kitchener there with the photographer in frosted denims. She said, “You wanted to know about that girl? The one who bought the record? Well, Ian here has some pictures of her.” She nudged the photographer forward. “Show them, Ian.” He kneeled beside our table and showed us the back of his camera.

There was a good-sized screen on it and the images were very sharp. “Here she is,” he said, clicking through the pictures of her. There were a lot of them. “This is the girl who bought the record.”

The red hair threw me off for a second, but there was no question.

It was Nevada.

I zipped my bag, slung it over my shoulder and turned to start for my front door. But it was as if my feet were rooted to the ground. “Have we gone over everything?” I said.

Tinkler sighed. He lifted a finger and said, “Food. Make sure I keep an eye on them when I give them food because Fanny tends to take a few bites and then take a break and wander off to smell the roses. Meanwhile, if she gets the chance, Turk will wolf down her own meal and then eat all of her sister’s too. So to stop that happening, I put Fanny’s bowl in the fridge until she comes back. Fanny, that is.”

He lifted a second finger and said, “Water. Make sure there’s always a bowl of water for Turk, but Fanny likes to drink from the tap. So if she jumps up on the sink I run the tap for a while and let her drink. Also, in the bathtub. If she jumps in the empty tub and goes scratchy-scratchy-scratch that means I run the bath tap for a minute and she drinks from that, because human beings are her slaves and vassals since she’s a cat and she’s in charge.” He frowned at me. “Have I got that right?”

“More or less,” I said. “I told you all that already?”

“Oh yes. So
bon voyage
!” He started pushing me towards the door. “Have you got your tickets and passport? Remember you have to check in an hour earlier for international flights.”

“Before I go, just a quick word about the hi-fi.”

He stopped and sighed a deep sigh. “I know how to handle a hi-fi. I’m not going to scratch your records or damage your stylus or drop an anvil on your valves. Though, come to think of it, that might be fun with the 300Bs.”

“Okay, okay. But see that you also resist the impulse to swap components around and start experimenting with my system…”

“Who, me?”

“And if you do, if you must, just make sure you don’t blow the Quads by overdriving them with a pair of Krells or something.”

“I wouldn’t do that. I understand about the Quads,” he said.

As I was on my way out the door, he added, rather alarmingly, “Anyway, haven’t they got that protection device fitted?”

Clean Head was waiting outside in her cab and she drove me to Heathrow where I met Ree in the departure lounge. “How’s old Tinkler? He all set to house-sit?”

“I briefed him in detail, and I left him some notes.”

“Saying what?”

“Saying, ‘Don’t smoke the catnip by mistake’.”

* * *

I’d suggested buying us both seats in first class but Ree wouldn’t hear of it. So I ended up sitting back in coach with her. She took the aisle seat, I had the window. I tried not to think of Nevada. I had the strange conviction that if I did, the girl sleeping beside me would know it. So I stared out at the clouds and reviewed our strategy.

At LAX we separated into our respective passport streams. I was bleary-eyed with lack of sleep and, I imagined, looking like an international terrorist. But evidently not too much, because after I’d submitted my thumbprints, fingerprints, and retina scan for scrutiny, I sped through immigration and customs and found myself outside a few minutes later, blinking in the warm exhaust fumes, in record time. Ree was at my side. We collected her car from the long-term parking.

“It’s a 1968 Plymouth Barracuda. Arguably the fastest production car ever made in America.”

“I won’t argue with you.”

“It’s got the 426 Hemi V8.”

I looked out the window at our reflection rippling by in the copper-coloured glass of a fashionable storefront as we drove past. The muscular lines of the dark grey car made it look like a powerful crouching beast. “Is it the car from
Bullitt
?”

She snorted with amusement. “That was a Mustang.”

“Just trying to take an interest,” I said.

“I guess it
does
look a little like a Mustang. But they’re completely different in the long-hood short-deck dimensions.” It was hot in the car, and smelled of leather and Ree’s perfume, and I could feel myself drifting off in the unreal sunshine.

“Am I boring you?” she said.

“There must be a diplomatic answer to that,” I said.

She laughed. “You got your hi-fi, I got my car.” Then the lights changed and we pulled away at speed.

* * *

Our first stop was at the Westfield Century City mall. We went to a tiny store tucked into a corner between a shoe boutique and a self-defence emporium full of legal weaponry, with a poster boasting
THIS WEEK
’
S SPECIAL
:
KROWD-KLEAR
6
OZ TEAR GAS GRENADES TWO FOR $20!
The only staff in our shop was a skinny teenage girl with braces on her teeth wearing a baggy black t-shirt that read
BYTE ME
. I told her we wanted to buy a bug buster and she said they had a whole range.

When I asked for the Stone Circle 10 by name, she gave me a disconcerting look of adoration.

Ree grinned at me as the girl went to the back of the store in search of stock. “You made a conquest there.” I could feel my earlobes grow hot.

The girl came back with the model I wanted. “You can just rent it, if you like,” she said.

“No, I’ll buy it.” Ree looked at me. I shrugged. “I’ll take it back to England with me. Then I can sweep my place.”

“If they’ll let you take it onto the plane.”

I paid for the bug buster, which cost about a quarter of what Mr Maori Tattoo had charged for an identical device, and we left.

We went back to Ree’s small house on Acacia Avenue in Mariposa and swept it, looking for any kind of covert transmitter. Nothing. Then we went outside and swept her car. Again, nothing.

Her next-door neighbour came over and joined us, a portly black woman in a yellow tank top and shorts. She said, “Hey, Ree. Some guy was looking for you.”

“Who was it?”

“Some white guy in a suit.”

I said, “Was he heavily built? Muscular? Like an athlete?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. He was a white guy. In a suit.”

Ree put a hand on my shoulder. “This is Chef. He’s staying with me.”

“Hey, Chef.”

“A little geek girl fell in love with him at the mall today.”

She looked at me. “Congratulations.”

* * *

Ree and I went back inside and made coffee. Her house was cool and comfortable and full of pale wood. I could hear wind chimes in the back yard. We reviewed the situation. We had swept her house, her car, and both our phones—I had a new, hopefully un-bugged one, with many no doubt wonderful functions that I didn’t know how to use yet—and come up with nothing.

“I kind of wish we had found something,” I said. I stared at the bug buster.

“Because then at least we’d know it was working.”

“Exactly.”

We got back in the car and went out for some Mexican food, which was a revelation. Then we headed on to our next destination. Air flowed through the window, whipping at my hair. I squinted into the brightness of the afternoon.
I have to get some sunglasses
, I thought.

I said, “Who is this guy again?”

“Dr Tinmouth.”

“That can’t possibly be his real name.”

But apparently it was. Jeremiah Tinmouth, professor of music, blogger, jazz historian, broadcaster and late-night DJ. “But he lost that gig a while ago,” said Ree. I suspected his outlandish name explained why he’d had less than a meteoric career in the media.

“I made an appointment to see him before I went to England. He’s got a houseful of books and tapes and DVDs. It’s like a research centre for the history of jazz.”

“Will he help us find the Hathor LPs?”

“Maybe. But what I’m really hoping is that he’ll know something about my grandmother and help us figure out what the hell this is all about. He sounded really interested when I contacted him.”

We drove past Griffith Park and along Glendale into Atwater Village. At Cerritos Park we turned off. An industrial area gave way to a shopping strip. We turned again, onto what became a leafy residential street called Princeton. Ree braked sharply.

“Oh no.”

To our right, beyond a screen of trees was the scorched shell of what had once been a small pink stucco house. It was now charred and black.

It had been burned virtually to the ground.

We parked and walked across the road. We could smell the stink of the fire as soon as we got out of the car. We stood and Ree stared at the ruin. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. She turned to a woman who was standing in the garden of the house next door, pruning a rose bush with a pair of secateurs.

“Excuse me,” said Ree. The woman looked up at us. She was wearing a straw hat and headphones. She took the headphones off. She had a pale, wary face.

“Hello.”

“When did this happen?”

“Two nights ago. It was awful.”

“Was anybody inside?”

“Yes, the doctor. It was awful.”

“Did he make it out?”

“No.” I thought she was going to tell us it was awful again, but she just shook her head. “Poor Dr Tinmouth. The fire department said we were lucky the flames didn’t jump across to our roof. I have to go inside now.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Ree looked at the burned-out house, then at me. “Well, shit,” she said.

* * *

Neither of us said anything as we drove along the freeway, coming off onto South Arroyo Boulevard. We were running parallel to another park. I hadn’t realised Los Angeles was so green.

The trees thinned out and we found ourselves on Chestnut Avenue. It was an incongruously English-sounding name. The residential area gave way to a business district. We turned onto a side street and parked beside some dusty palm trees.

We got out and I followed Ree across the road to a small square white building with a wide tarmac parking lot. I recognised the address. It was the one we’d used for all our web purchases before we left England.

We walked around the back of the building to a large open garage housed in a military-looking concrete building which might have been a small fortress. Men in blue overalls were working on vehicles. Mostly cars, but also a few motorbikes. A neon sign on the front of the fortress said
BERTO
’
S
. Ree led me inside, amid the noise and heat, saying “hi” to the guys working on the cars as we passed. A man came out of the shadows at the back of the garage.

“I thought I heard that hemi,” he said and grinned at Ree. This was an idle boast because in the garage we could hardly hear each other speak, let alone the distinctive signature of an engine across the road.

Ree introduced the man as Berto. He was so corpulent that he couldn’t fit into his blue overalls. Consequently, they were unzipped with the top half hanging, arms tied around his waist where the rolls of fabric supplemented the rolls of fat. But his bone-crushing handshake suggested that there was muscle lurking somewhere under all that adipose tissue.

He led us through a small doorway to the back of the building, where the noise thankfully diminished and it was cooler. To our right there was a short hallway with doors opening onto offices. To our left was a large storage area protected by vertical steel bars with a chunky central door. He unlocked the door, using a key hanging around his neck, and led us in. The door was very big and very sturdy and the bars looked impressively solid.

The room inside was stacked with gleaming, expensive-looking auto parts, the cost of which no doubt more than justified all the security measures.

Berto led us to an old-fashioned green strongbox at the back of the room. “You’re welcome to keep your stuff in here as long as you want,” he said. He spun the dial in cryptic patterns and opened the strongbox. Ree gave him the LPs we had collected so far and he put them inside. “Do you want to put the new one in, too?”