the Black Marble (1977) Read online

  "How's Vickie? Is Vickie all right?"

  "Listen to me, goddamnit, if you ever want to see your Vickie again."

  Then Madeline started to cry and Philo Skinner realized he had to alter his technique. "Damn, lady, calm down. Listen, get hold a yourself. Your hitch is okay. She's fine. Cut it out, will ya?"

  "Yes . . . I'm ... I ... yes .. . please . . . don't hurt her. Please!"

  "Hurt her! Goddamnit, lady, I'm no criminal! What the hell's wrong with you? I never hurt a dog in my life. Get hold a yourself, lady.''

  "Yes . . . I'm sorry. All right. I'll get the eighty-five hundred and then where do I take it?"

  The line was silent for a moment and Philo Skinner said: "That's eighty-five thousand, lady. Eighty-five thousand/"

  "My God!" she cried. "That's impossible. Eighty-five thousand? I don't have eighty-five thousand dollars! I wouldn't know where to begin to get eighty-five thousand dollars. Please, sir. I beg you ..."

  "You lying bitch!" Philo screamed, then he caught himself and opened the phone booth door to peek at the bartender. "You lying bitch," he whispered. "I know about you. You're rich, goddamn you. Don't gimme that shit, you want your flicking schnauzer alive."

  "Please, sir, please ..." Then Philo had to wait while she wept again. "My God, sir . . . please ... I beg you ..."

  Philo Skinner was starting to sweat in the phone booth. He lit a cigarette, still afraid to open the door. He began suffocating himself. His eyes were raw from the smoke by the time Madeline stopped crying and was able to talk.

  "Lady, I know damn well how much you're worth. I saw your goddamn house. I know you're rich. Rich! I know you can get a measly eighty-five thousand. Now if you care for this bitch a yours, you'll do exactly like I say."

  "Listen, listen to me," Madeline begged. "I'd give you anything. I swear. Anything! But you must believe me. I don't have eighty-five thousand dollars. This . . . this big house . . . there's no furniture upstairs. I keep it closed off.

  I had to refinance it last year. I live on a small trust fund. Please . . ."

  "You cunt!" Philo screamed. "You rotten filthy lying cunt! You get the money and have it by noon tomorrow. I'm going to start working on this bitch a yours at noon tomorrow. I'm going to call you at six p. M. tonight and see what progress you made. You understand? And you better have something to tell me, hear? You hear?"

  "Yes!" Madeline wailed. "Yes!"

  "And one last thing, take care a that little schnauzer bitch you have with you. Keep your handler away from her so he doesn't see she's not your Victoria. I'll give you further instructions on what to do with her when I call you tonight."

  Before Madeline could tell him the schnauzer was dead, he hung up.

  Philo Skinner was still trembling with rage and frustration when he got back to the kennel. The cunt. The rotten miserable stingy lying rich cunt. Imagine, trying to film-flam Philo Skinner like that. All these rich cunts were alike-stingy. Philo had pampered their goddamn dogs for twenty-five years and they were all alike. Spend twenty grand a year to show a single dog, and throw a Gainesburger to the dog handler. Well, this cunt wouldn't get away with that.

  Philo Skinner sat down and began rehearsing his next telephone call. Imagine that, trying to flim-flam Philo Skinner, Terrier King!

  Madeline was devastated when the terrifying extortionist hung up. It was a full hour before she could get up from the sofa where she lay, intermittently weeping and drinking.

  She didn't pour a second drink. Instead, she began thinking. She surprised herself in that she began formulating a plan. She was filled with dread and overwhelming fear and yet she began to formulate a plan to deal with this extortionist. She found some strength she didn't know she had. The money was totally out of the question. She knew from her year-end audit that her net worth was around forty thousand dollars. That included the surrender value of her insurance policy, a second-trust deed, an inflated value on what was left of the antique furniture, her car, what little equity was left in the house after refinancing, and an arbitrary value placed on the small balance of the trust fund. Until now there was the dream, the fantasy, that after Vickie won Madison Square Garden, a man would rescue her, a widower with a substantial fortune. They would meet at The Sign of The Dove restaurant . . .

  Immediate liquidation would take weeks! She would have to explain it to the extortionist when he called again. He'd have to listen to reason. Perhaps she could borrow nine thousand. Perhaps ten thousand, at the outside. There was Ariel Wentworth. Her husband was the chairman of the board of . . . which bank was it? Ariel might be able to help her get a loan. A very quick loan. Ten thousand dollars.

  The alternative was the police. She was tempted to call them. She went to the phone three times. Each time, she returned to the first plan. The loan. She started to call Ariel. No, first she had to reason with the man who had Vickie. Make him see. Surely, he would see. He wasn't a monster. He said he'd never hurt an animal in his life. She remembered him saying that. It was all she remembered, but he did say that. She drank no more that day. She sat in the living room waiting for six o'clock. Waiting for sundown. Waiting for the call.

  _ _

  The rest of the day for Natalie Zimmerman meant burglary investigation, purer and simple. Which meant public relations. An offer of sympathy to the victims who didn't really have any hope for the return of the merchandise. A few tips on how to prevent future breaking-and-entering, a crime report number for the sake of reporting the loss on a tax return or to an insurance company. Was the fingerprint man here yet? He said he didn't get any latent prints? No, they seldom leave prints, even if they don't use gloves. Sir, it's very very hard to get good lifts unless a surface is hard, smooth and clean. Yes, I know they get fingerprints in the movies from cotton handkerchiefs. Yes, I know that in the movies the detective caught a rapist by getting a fingerprint from . . . What? From a woman's tit? That's ridiculous!

  A typical day for an investigator of business burglaries. They called on six victims and got not a single lead of any kind.

  "No clues for the clues closet," Natalie Zimmerman smirked when they finished their fourth victim contact.

  "Do you want to stop for some food?" Valnikov asked.

  "I'm not hungry," she said. How could she be hungry? How could she get Captain Hooker away from Clarence Cromwell long enough to inform him about today? Valnikov was cracked. Over the edge. Just get him talking about his old homicide cases, Captain, if you don't believe me. Watch what happens to him when he starts talking about that.

  But what if he doesn't always react the way he did today? A Braille reader. Charlie Lightfoot. Sobbing as he dreamed about some goddamn rabbit. What if he could fool Hooker, whose attention span on anything outside of that goddamn boat of Cromwell's was about three minutes? What if he doesn't always go whacko when you make him remember the bad old days?

  "Valnikov?"

  "Yes?"

  "Let's just go stop somewhere, anywhere. Get a cup of coffee and a doughnut, or something."

  "How about a deli on Fairfax? I could go for a nice onion bagel," Valnikov said pleasantly. His eyes were starting to clear up, the whites no longer laced with red webbing.

  "Okay," she said, and then she said, "Valnikov, do you remember what we were talking about this morning?"

  "What's that, Natalie?" he smiled.

  She hesitated an instant, took a breath and bit the bullet:

  "We were talking about Charlie Lightfoot. About murder. Suicide. Dead bodies. Dead children. Your old job."

  Corpses. There were stacks of corpses in the morgue. Corpses all around. In the autopsy rooms. In the coolers. In the halls. Tags on toes. Bulges under the sheets.

  That ones a woman. Silicone. Look at the boobs. Like twin Everests. Ever rest, baby. What good did all that silicone do you? And that one. Under the sheet and stiff as a catfish. He's got more sticking out than we do alive, eh, Valnikov? And that one. The body's only four feet long. A boy or a girl? Is that the one ca
me through on that West L. A. crime report? You know, the little girl, her mother used to trade for dope? You know the one? The one mom used to loan to the dyke? You know the one? The one the dyke started to sleep with when she was six years old, and then mom started battering when the dyke got tired of her? The one they used to photograph being screwed by the dyke's dope customers? The one mom used to take her empty spike (No heroin today, you little bitch, it's your fault. You could have kept her happy if you wanted to.) and ram the empty spike under her toenails and through her eardrums? You know the one?

  Corpses in the morgue. A class of student nurses being taken through the morgue by an orderly who relishes their horror. Goremore is there cutting off fingers.

  A little white around the gills, aren't you, girls? If you get tired, don't lay down on those tables, girls.

  Of course he takes them right into an autopsy about to begin. One he knows about. This fellow loves his work. He loves to take student nurses on tour. Look at that one. A ragpicker the cops found after three weeks in a boxcar.

  Goremore winks. Come closer, girls. Look. He's a black man but his face is white.

  His face! His face is moving!

  No, it's not moving, girls. It's covered with a swarm of maggots. The maggots are moving, girls. He's a maggot meal ticket.

  Grab that girl! Goddamnit, Goremore, she fell on her head, you dumb shit!

  And then Goremore says, Fuck it, I ain'f no four guide any- icay, just as they jerk on the chin to see if the throat was cut, and the jaw rips loose. Half a pound of maggots sail in a heap and go plop on the tile floor. A second student nurse falls down beside the maggots. The fat and loggy maggots look at her curiously. But in their dim maggot brains they retreat and stay coiled, and writhing, and crawling on top of each other. Even maggots need maggots, after all.

  The meal ticket took with him to eternity no face whatsoever.

  And then, look out, Valnikov, here it comes! The sparkly flashes. It's the morgue, all right. There. It won't get away this time. Deja vu. There's a picture forming. He's almost got it! It's a pathologist and a . . .

  "Valnikov."

  Oh, no, it's the rabbit! He's bounding through the snow!

  "Valnikov. Valnikov!"

  "Huh?"

  "Valnikov, the stoplight went from red to green to red. Do you hear the horns?"

  "Huh?"

  Now Natalie Zimmerman was frightened. "Never mind, Valnikov. Don't tell me about Charlie Lightfoot. No murder. No dead bodies. Never mind, Valnikov, it's all right!"

  "Huh?" Valnikov pulled into the traffic, ignoring the angry motorists behind him.

  "What did you say, Natalie?"

  "I said, tell me about burglary, Valnikov," she babbled. "Tell me about burglary. I wanna learn."

  The picture was gone. Gone again. Valnikov was sweating and trembling.

  "Burglary? Yes. As you know, I haven't been working burglary too long, Natalie, I'm an old homicide detective ..."

  "No homicide, Valnikov," said Natalie Zimmerman, her eyes big behind the big glasses. "Tell me about burglary.

  What have you learned about burglary? I wanna be a good burglary investigator.,, "Oh," he said, wiping the sweat from his eyes. "Well, let's see, I've learned that a competent burglar can get through any hole or opening that's big enough for a human head. Isn't that interesting?"

  'That's very interesting. Very interesting. Let's go get that coffee and bagel, Valnikov, then we'll be just about finished for the day and we can go to the station."

  "All right," Valnikov smiled, the trembling almost stopped.

  If only she had a tape recorder. It was going to be hard to explain it to Hipless Hooker. How can you explain it unless you were there. But if he didn't understand, she'd go to the area commander. She'd go, goddamnit!

  The delicatessen was busy even at this hour. It was one of the oldest in Los Angeles.

  One employee knew Valnikov, an old counterman. He had the whiskey voice and puffy eyes of a veteran alcoholic. Takes one to know one, Natalie thought, when he and Valnikov exchanged a warm greeting.

  "Hello, Sergeant," the old man said with a wide peg- toothed grin.

  Why did all the old people respond to Valnikov? What was his age? Only forty-four? Why did old people treat him like one of their own?

  "Hi, Solly," Valnikov said, shaking hands with the counterman, who dried his wrinkled hands on his apron.

  "I ain't seen you in I don't know how long, Sergeant," said the counterman. His hair was straight and white and combed back flat. "I was awful sorry about Sergeant Lightfoot. I heard nothing until recently. I was sorry."

  "Yeah," said Valnikov. 'This is my new partner. I work Hollywood Detectives now."

  "A woman you work with?" said the counterman. "A pretty woman. You're lucky, Sergeant."

  Then a fifty-year-old busboy came out of the kitchen carrying a metal tray loaded with sandwiches. He was dark, with a flat nose, and shiny black hair, blacker than Philo Skinner's dye job. He was short and squat, with no buttocks, wide hips and skinny legs. He was from the jungles of Sinaioa near Mazatlan, and was known as Indio.

  Valnikov smiled at him and said, "Hello, Indio."

  "Sctrgento," the Indian grinned, and there it was: Tijuana bridgework. Gleaming.

  "I've been dying for an onion bagel, Solly. What would you like, Natalie?"

  "An onion bagel, please," she said.

  "Coming up, Sergeant," the old man grinned. "With cream cheese?"

  "Of course."

  "Lox or herring?"

  "Lox for me, Solly."

  "That's right. It was Sergeant Lightfoot who liked herring."

  "It was," said Valnikov.

  Then Valnikov tried to light Natalie's cigarette. "How do you like the smell of this place, Natalie?"

  "Smells fine," she said.

  "I grew up in Russian Flats," he said. "Over near Boyle Heights. We were Russians and Jews and Mexicans in those days. I knew Solly's brother, owned a beer bar on Brooklyn Avenue in the old days."

  "Is that so?" said Natalie Zimmerman.

  "Do you know why the old Russians and Jews got along so well in Boyle Heights?"

  "No."

  "Because the Russians, like my parents, remembered how it was when they were fleeing the Bolsheviks. How the Jews gave them tea and bread. Not that the Jews were czarists, but they knew that some of the Whites were going to the magical place. To America. When I was a kid in Boyle Heights the Jewish kids used to think borscht was their food. Can you imagine?"

  "Is that so," said Natalie Zimmerman, drinking her coffee and rehearsing the speech to Hipless Hooker. Look, Captain, if you won't listen to reason, there's always the area commander. I don't like to go over your head, hut . . .

  Then Solly gave Valnikov his tea. In a glass, Russian style. He remembered the old days too.

  "I sure miss Sergeant Lightfoot," Solly said. "You know my grandson? The one I was worried always getting in trouble, that one?"

  "Yes," Valnikov said.

  "Well, a grand job in a grand place, he's got. A kettle wrench, is what."

  "A kettle wrench?" said Natalie Zimmerman.

  "A kettle wrench," Solly nodded. "You know, where they punch kettles." "Oh?"

  "He's a cowboy," Valnikov explained. "Oh."

  'The kettles are on a wrench," Solly explained. "Oh."

  "He was always a better boy after you and Sergeant Lightfoot arrested him," Solly said. "Excuse me. I got to go back in the kitchen. We got one dishwasher only today."

  "Of course, Solly," Valnikov nodded.

  Then another customer at the delicatessen counter said: "My bagel isn't toasted well enough. Take it back." He said it to Indio, who understood by his tone what the man meant. The man was older than the Indian, yet he wore a rainbow T- shirt, a bush coat, and pants carefully spattered with paint. In short, he was five years out of style and thought he was groovy. 'Take this bagel back, it's not toasted well enough."

  Indio picked up the plate and st
arted for the kitchen.

  The man said to his twenty-two-year-old female companion: 'That's the trouble with these greaseballs. Let them work in delicatessens, whadda you expect?"

  Natalie heard it and ignored it. Indio didn't understand it.

  Valnikov looked perturbed. In a few minutes Indio brought back the bagel and placed it before the aging hipster.

  "It's still not toasted right," the man in the bush coat said. "What's the matter with you? You don't even speak English, do you? What are you doing working in a delicatessen anyway?"

  Valnikov put down his glass of hot tea and walked over two stools to the man in the bush coat and said, "What's wrong with that bagel? Do you have a color chip to check your bagel with?"

  The man looked up at the lumbering man with blazing watery eyes and mumbled something unintelligible to his little girlfriend, who was reading Variety and wondering how she got hooked up with this schmuck in the first place.

  When Indio sheepishly picked up the dirty dishes and walked past Valnikov, the detective reached over and took the Indian's aim. "Solly," Valnikov said to the old man who spoke all the languages of Boyle Heights: English, Yiddish, Spanish. "Tell Indio for me that when Cortez came to the New World the Aztec emperor put a golden fingerbowl in front of him and the ignorant white man drank from it. Tell him that, will you?"

  Natalie Zimmerman's mind was racing when they drove back to Hollywood Station. Captain, I have something important . . . something crucial . . . something . . . Captain, could you please excuse Sergeant Cromwell, this is private. Captain, if you don't listen to me I'm going to the area commander . . . Captain, sit down. I know you're retiring in a matter of weeks, but this is something you must deal with. Captain, Sergeant Valnikov is a raving lunatic!

  Except at that very moment, Natalie Zimmerman's plans were being frustrated by none other than Bullets Bambarella, who was doing nothing more than being himself with an irate and very famous movie star who had come to Hollywood Detectives to complain about the arrest of his seventeen-year- old nephew on a narcotics charge.

  "The kiddie cops ain't here/' Bullets Bambarella said, hardly looking up from his Playboy magazine, which he had concealed inside the Los Angeles Police Department Manual that he was allegedly studying for promotion.