Write Me a Letter (Vic Daniel Series) Read online

  Luv, Sara. What a twerp. Sara was a punk poetess I helped out once in a while, God knows why, by giving her some easy chore to do and then giving her big bucks for doing it. Did I say "punk"? I should say "ex-punk." With great cunning, wisdom, and gentle handling, I'd converted her from the rags, shredded panty hose, and safety pins of punkdom, to say nothing of her Day-Glo hair, back to the trouser suits and Hush Puppies of normalcy, and do you know how she repaid me? She got herself Born Again, as did her boyfriend, and they took to showing up at my office looking like those rustics in Grant Wood's painting who are standing outside their barn waiting for rain. All right, they did tire of their antics after a couple of weeks, long after I'd tired of them, and owned up that their whole Born Again routine was done just to tease me, not that I hadn't figured that out all by myself. The atlas, of course, Sara had purloined somehow during her punk period and foisted off on me instead of getting me a real present for my birthday or Mother's Day or whenever it was, something I could really use. Wrinkle cream, maybe, or a twenty-five–dollar gift certificate for my bookie, Two-to-One Tim.

  Anyway. I returned the atlas to the shelf, put the checks in the big safe in the bathroom out back, then sat and waited. What I was waiting for was for George, for whom I'd left that phone message earlier, to call in or drop in. George, or Willing Boy, as I had so aptly named him once in a moment of total clarity, was not only willing, like Sara, to take my hard-earned lucre for performing simple tasks for me, he was also the airhead's boyfriend. And thus, of course, had been her late accomplice in the highly unamusing Born Again number. And what Willing Boy was doing, I hoped, was following Miss Ruth Braukis to wherever it was Miss Ruth Braukis was going.

  Willing Boy and I had invented our own secret code for use when I had company in the office and couldn't speak to him openly on the phone; rather, I invented it and taught it to him. For security reasons I won't reveal all the complexities of the code at this time; suffice it to say that the message I sent to him about changing it from three o'clock to an hour later can be roughly decoded to mean, "Get your skinny ass over here on that silly, noisy oriental motorcycle of yours pronto and follow the woman in the case." Which, as I just mentioned, I dearly hoped he was doing, although I hadn't spotted him outside when I escorted my client to the door, which was the other reason apart from gallantry that I'd escorted her to the door.

  I retrieved my Apple II from the safe, set her up, and switched her on. My computer has always been a she to me, why should boats have all the luck? I called her Betsy, actually, the same name Davy Crockett gave to his rifle. Were feminist groups against the practice of calling ships "she"? Probably. It is not untrue to say that Evonne and I did not always see eye to eye on the complicated subject of women's rights. I had—perhaps wisely, perhaps cravenly—some time ago adopted a simple strategy to deal with any potential fireworks: I agreed with her. I do not know why this makes her even madder.

  Betsy, that nosy know-it-all, couldn't wait to inform me of what I was already well aware of—I was broke.

  I wasn't always broke. I wasn't one of those gumshoes who made their breakfast coffee from yesterday's grounds and never could come up with the rent on time and had to drink cheap booze; I drank cheap booze because I liked it and usually made a pretty good living; all things considered, my per annum was certainly that of a carhop or a one-legged waitress, counting tips. But my good pal John D., owner of the Valley Bowl, had called me at home Sunday saying he needed some heavy bread for a couple of months and could I help. I said sure. He was due by Tuesday morning sometime to fill me in and pick up my check, which would pretty well clean me out. So I could certainly use a lucrative job or two right then and whatever else Miss Insanely Gorgeous Ruth Braukis was, she wasn't short of readies, as the Limeys put it, the traveler's checks she'd given me had hardly disturbed the wad she was carrying.

  I waited.

  I got out the typewriter and answered some mail. I could have used the computer's perfectly adequate printer, except every other time it started printing halfway down the !!#%$! page instead of at the top, and I couldn't figure out why. And I was too embarrassed to ask young Mr. Nu, who ran the TV, radio, VCR, and what-have-you emporium next door to his cousin's Vietnamese ricery, which was right next door to me, for help yet again.

  I answered a sad, xeroxed letter from an ex-cop who wanted to know if I needed any part-time assistance, which I didn't; the sad bit came at the end and said, "PS: Haven't touched a drop for two weeks!" Talk about a giveaway. Maybe my memory was going but didn't I once get the identical letter from him, some years back? Maybe it was from another ex-cop who drank—who could blame them? I answered a letter from a potential new client, a department store in one of the nearby malls, wanting to know if I offered a debt collection service and if so, could I please supply details. I wrote back saying regretfully I could not offer such a service as all my manpower was tied up at present. I'd done a spot of debt collection in my time, though, back east. I worked in tandem with Mickey, who was so tough that when we went a-calling on creditors, huge, scarred, and battered old me played the good guy, the one willing to give the poor sap a break, and him the heavy. Debt collecting can pay off as you usually get about a third of what you collect, but the work does have its perils as the kind of debts we collected on, like shylocking and gambling IOUs, being themselves illegal, had to be collected hors de law. Which, in practice, meant threatening to do serious physical damage to every bone in the creditor's body except his check-signing hand. And often, of course, it does not need underlining, doing more than threaten. I finally had enough of it one winter day and coldcocked Mickey from behind, using the same baseball bat he'd used on some poor welsher's kneecap, and then it was "Feets, do your stuff!" I was on a fast train west before he came to.

  Then I thumbed through an interesting tome my pal Benny had left behind one day, Why SOBS Succeed and Nice Guys Fail in a Small Business, paying particular attention to chapter 5: "How to Teach Legal and Financial Vultures Humility." Lotsa good ideas there. . . .

  After a while I closed up and nipped in next door but two to Mrs. Morales' Taco-Burger stand and tucked away some chewy burritos and a bowl of refried (more than once) beans and a bottle of Corona, left my customary generous tip, then went back to the office and waited some more.

  Willing Boy finally showed up about a quarter to two. He stopped just outside my plate-glass front window, swung his Yamaha up on its stand, locked it, then came in, swinging his helmet by the strap.

  "Greetings, Prof," he said with a wave of one black-gloved hand. Ever since I'd started wearing glasses a few months back, he and noodlehead had derived considerable humor by calling me Prof, as if I cared one way or the other.

  "Likewise I"m sure, Willing Boy," I said. "Take a pew." He threw his lanky, leather-clad frame down in the spare chair, grinned at me, got his foot-long plastic comb from a back pocket, and gave his gleaming blond shoulder-length locks a good workout. Willing Boy was so handsome he could have had tresses down to and including his waist and still be handsome; no wonder the twerp was so dippy about him.

  "So how's it going, Prof?" he said, tucking his cootie-catcher away again. "Haven't see you for a couple of weeks." It had actually been ten days ago when he'd spent two extremely profitable (for him) hours in my employ got up as a chaffeur, driving me around. In a fifty-dollar-per-hour rented white Daimler, too, I might just mention in passing, as my own pink-and-blue Nash Metropolitan didn't seem the appropriate wheels for the occasion, which was a get-together of me, two Italian gents, a county sheriff, and a Canadian "businessman" in a bonded warehouse down near the convention center in Long Beach.

  "Weird," I said, "is how it's going. Most bizarre. How did you get along with the little lady?"

  "What about her!" he said. "Pheew. Did you see that mouth?"

  "I was too busy looking at her lips," I said. "So where'd she go?" I would have bet my last Mexican dollar she didn't go shopping for grapes and then go to the Hollywood Kais
er.

  "Around the corner," Willing Boy said, stretching out his long legs. "She walked right past me."

  "Then what?"

  "Then she gets into a blue Ford driven by an older guy, then they talk for a bit, then they drive away."

  "I don't suppose the car had a license plate."

  He reeled the number off from memory.

  "Where did they go?"

  "Eighteen forty-three South Vermont," he said, again from memory.

  "And what is there, Willing Boy?"

  "An office duplex," he said. "The Vineyards of Bourgogne on the ground floor, something called ITC on the top. I didn't want to go in, I thought the guy driving might have made me, or maybe the little lady, she was looking back over her shoulder."

  "She shouldn't have," I said. "Willing Boy, attend. If you ever have cause to suspect someone is following you, what you don't do is look back because that tells the person who is following you that you have cause to think someone might be following you, which is not an activity innocent people indulge in."

  "Truly words of wisdom I shall ne'er forget," he said humbly.

  "What did the guy driving look like?"

  "Short," he said. "Full of energy. Looked like he could take care of himself, dunno exactly why. Chinos, white shirt, sandals. Crew-cut blond hair. Sunglasses."

  "Anything else come to mind that might be helpful?"

  Willing Boy thought it over for a moment, then said, "Nope. That's all she wrote."

  "I hope you will not refuse this token of my gratitude," I said, fishing out two twenties and a ten.

  "It would be uncouthness itself to do so," he said, folding up the bills and putting them into one of the myriad of zippered pockets in his leathers. He arose and made to leave.

  "Speaking of that's all she wrote, and I wish it was," I said, merely to be polite, "how's Sara?"

  "How would I know?" he said. "I haven't seen her since last night. She sounded OK on the phone this morning." He grinned again and departed. I watched him start up and chug off, wondering briefly what hidden qualities Miss Sara Silvetti, poetess and total nerd, could possibly have to attract a gorgeous hunk like that. Maybe he was teaching her how to spell. Maybe he was enlarging her vocabulary all the way up to two- and three-syllable words. Yeah, that was probably it, the old Pygmalion game.

  The Vineyards of Bourgogne—what the hell. I got down the atlas again. Maybe that's what Ruth Braukis was, a purveyor of overpriced French rotgut with fancy labels saying things I didn't know what they meant. I thought labels were supposed to be helpful these days and list all the poisons within and generally be of some use, it was time the Frogs woke up and started communicating in good old U.S. of A. And that stuff called French bread you get in supermarkets now? Awful.

  I located the administrative district of Bourgogne right in the middle of the map of France. I'd never heard of any of the towns in it, except maybe Limoges, which almost rang a bell. Was it beer mugs they made there, or soup tureens . . . zut, alors.

  I looked up ITC in the phone book. There were quite a few, but only one at 1843 South Vermont. Holy shit.

  Yes, holy shit, I thought. I may even have said it aloud. Give me the Vineyards of Bourgogne any time. Give me the Industrial Tools Cooperative, the International Turbine Corporation, the Instant Ticket Company, give me any of the other ITCs but don't give me the Israeli Trade Center.

  Oh, I had no doubt that down there on South Vermont the Israeli Trade Center was busily polishing a million oranges at that very minute, then squeezing them into little cardboard cans. I had no doubt their grapefruit salesmen who were out scouring the country were continually phoning in with new orders, and that teams of Sabras were busy giving thousands of avocados a final green rinse. I also had no doubt, none at all, that in a small back room protected by a heavily locked door, a group of the most respected and/or feared secret service agents on earth, members of the dreaded Israeli Mossad, were gathering to plot the downfall of one harmless, innocent, still boyish-looking in the right light—and not an eclipse, either—private investigator.

  Why oh why couldn't ITC have been the Italian Tagliatelli Connection? Give me the Mafia anytime.

  And what did Mossad want with me, anyway? What were they up to these days? They couldn't still be trying to track down guys with hankies on their heads for what they did to the Israeli athletes at Munich, that was ancient history, come on, and so was Entebbe. Of course, there were probably a few of the most ruthless, most dedicated, and most unforgiving still out there, scouring the globe for ancient Nazis. . . .

  Oh no.

  Not them.

  Say it ain't so, Ruth.

  3

  I muddled through the rest of the day somehow, and gradually my fears began to recede somewhat. Ruth Braukis mixed up with Nazis—ridiculous, almost as ridiculous as me being involved with those nightmare goose-steppers. Anyway they were all dead years ago or else hiding out in Brazil cloning new baby führers from strands of his pathetic mustache or else down in Argentina tossing the bolas and gauchoing across the pampas. Grow up, Daniel, and about time, too.

  So it was a moderately carefree and footloose PI who locked up the office, drove home, changed into suitable finery, including dress holster and .38-caliber revolver, caught the day's news on TV and then, just after seven o'clock, headed over to a certain blond-tressed secretary's apartment to pick her up for our date. Don't get me wrong, I didn't always tote the armament when I went out with gorgeous women, I could defend myself perfectly adequately with my bare hands, it was just that our date was only half a date, the other half was business.

  My friend and near neighbor, Mr. Aaron Lubinski, of Lubinski, Lubinski & Levi, family jewelers for over twenty years, had, as a partner, his cousin Nate Lubinski. The lugubrious Nathan had an equally gloomy, unlovely daughter, Rachael, whose oft-postponed marriage, it appeared, had finally taken place that afternoon, to her family's intense relief and, no doubt, hers as well. Every few months, for years now, it seemed like, I'd get a call from Aaron Lubinski to see if (a) I had a presentable suit, (b) if it was clean, and (c) could he book me to attend the wedding reception, partly as a guest and partly to keep an eye on both the family silver and the wedding presents, which, given the business he, most of his family, and many of his friends were in, would be of considerable value. As would, no doubt, the bijoux some of the guests would be wearing.

  As I recall, the nuptials were once postponed when the groom ran off to join a kibbutz in the Negev, once when he ran off to try and teach Cambodian peasants to grow potatoes instead of opium, and once when he just ran off. Anyway, it looked like Rachael had finally snagged her man, or maybe his legs just gave out. And that is why Evonne and I, attired in our wedding-reception best—Mr. Fashion Plate in a stunning ecru Indian-cotton suit with complementary accessories, her in something white, silk, and clinging—were on our way, via the San Diego freeway, to Bel Air and smoked salmon on toast instead of West Holly wood and sauce Alfredo on fettuccini at Mario's. And if I didn't look like your typical wedding-reception guest, I didn't think I looked like a typical security type either, especially with Evonne on my arm, so maybe it would all even out. It was the first time I'd ever been on any kind of a job with her along; she'd offered to help once or twice in the past but it hadn't happened, mainly because I always came up with a good enough excuse to prevent it happening. She had been in on the tag end of one escapade, though, and had seemed to enjoy herself.

  Bel Air. Lots of money in Bel Air, which is just west of Beverly Hills, which, as we know, is not without a few bucks of its own. Both the residences and the fortunes tended to be older in Bel Air, but one could find the occasional upstarts, like the Lubinskis, installed there in the green hills behind ten-foot, barbed-wire–topped walls and heavily barred front gates.

  Aaron and Nathan had adjoining properties on St. Cloud, which is off Bel Air Road. We located the right house without any trouble, as there were three uniformed valet parkers, hired by me as par
t of my chores, waiting patiently outside the front gate to take care of the overflow once the interior driveway and parking spaces in front of the house were full. On the way there I did not mention a word to Evonne about the Israeli Trade Center, agents not only licenses, but encouraged, to kill Gestapo swine, or come to think of it, Miss Ruth Braukis. Yet more proof, if indeed it be needed, that I have not as yet lost the last of my marbles, amigos.

  I pulled up outside the gate, got out, traded friendly quips with the youthful carhops, complimented them on their neat appearance, warned them severely against any teenage antics like drag racing or playing chicken with the visitors' wheels, then strolled through the now-open gate to have a word with the guard who came out of his little hut to greet me. He was an old pal of mine, an ex-cop name of Frank O'Brien who I got to know years ago upstate before I started up on my own when I was doing more or less what he was doing these days—standing around a lot keeping an eye on other people's property.

  Frank was a fit-looking, stocky man a few years older than me, dressed in his working clothes of black shoes, blue trousers, short blue jacket caught at the waist, blue cap, and holstered weapon. We shook hands; I introduced him to Evonne, and he shook hands with her too, then he raised his eyebrows at me in that man-to-man look that means "You lucky old dog, you."

  "All quiet on the western front?" I said.

  "Yep," he said.

  "Annie up at the house with the guest list?"

  "Yep," he said. Annie was his wife, a tiny powerhouse who looked, and was, just as fit as her old man. She talked about as much as him, too, which was hardly at all, except when she was squiffed.

  "OK, pal," I said, getting back in the car. "Any problems, give me a call."

  "Yep," he said. "Anythin' particular I'm lookin' for?"

  "Nope," I said. I proceeded slowly up the curving tree-lined drive, waving once in a casual fashion to a gardner who stopped work to admire my classic wheels as we passed, then I was directed by yet another valet parker toward the side of the house, where I slipped in neatly between a caterer's van and a stretch limo. The catering van's rear doors were open and two youths in T-shirts were busy unloading large, foil-covered trays and serving dishes and, I was pleased to see, cases of liquid refreshments, and then toting them down a path at the side of the house to the kitchen. The house itself was huge, sprawling, and utterly gorgeous. It was Spanish in design, with white stuccoed walls and terracotta roof tiles, also with decorative tiles outlining all the windows and doors. My friend Mr. Aaron Lubinski, looking very sharp indeed in a dark blue tux, ruffled shirt, red cummerbund, and red rose in his lapel, was standing at the front door waiting for us.