the Black Marble (1977) Page 7

  "Officer?"

  "You sound like a cop."

  >

  A cop.

  "Last vice cop that tossed me in the slam looked about like you. Can t depend on cops being young and healthy-looking anymore. They dig up some ole bag a bones, give him a Lady Clairol dye job ..."

  "You miserable cunt!"

  "Get outta my place of business!"

  "Why you old pile a dog shit you got some nerve!"

  "Get outta here!" she said, "before I call a young cop with a blue suit. I ain't goin for any a your vice cop entrapment."

  Philo Skinner was outraged when he roared through the door onto Sunset Boulevard, as limp as linguini. Lady Clairol! With her lousy dye job? That old hound had a lot of room to talk!

  And it was anger now, more than fear, even more than the thrill of it, which gave him the impetus. An amateur was about to make his irrevocable first step into crime.

  _ _ _

  Millie Muldoon Gharoujian always had lunch at the Brown Derby on Friday. Just as she always had dinner Thursday at Scandia and Wednesday at La Strada. Millie Muldoon Gharoujian was a creature of habit. It made it much easier to keep her life in order because she had a third-grade education and a 90 I. Q. In her younger days she had a body and bleach job like Harlow which got her out of the uniform of a waitress and into the bed of an Armenian junk dealer who obligingly departed for the Great Scrapyard after his second heart attack, leaving Millie to marry and divorce four young studs in succession and live a hell of a sexy life high up in Trousdale Estates overlooking all the glittering lights of Baghdad. She had owned at various times, in addition to the studs, a pet ocelot, a cheetah, a boa constrictor and a baby alligator named Archie who was accidentally flushed down the toilet. She also had less exotic creatures like a Siamese cat, a standard poodle, and a miniature schnauzer bitch with terrific bloodlines who liked to amuse herself by chewing the hell out of Archie the alligator, who got sick and tired of it and went bye-bye down the john.

  The pup's name was Tutu and she later had shown well, twice winning best of breed, until her mistress got bored with dog shows because lots of the young studs around there were geldings. And because Millie got sick and tired of Tutu's handler always sniffing around like he was in heat. Millie Muldoon Gharoujian knew a fortune hunter when she saw one. Besides, the dog handler was at least fifty, about twenty years too old for her. Millie was seventy-six.

  A lackluster cop named Leonard Leggett was the instrument whereby Archie and Tutu were linked again in the Great Chain of Life. For when Archie took a powder, and found himself tumbling pell-mell in a wild surging torrent right through Millie's new plumbing-while one of the studs in the round waterbed was going through Millie's old plumbing-Archie eventually escaped with his life through a pipe vent. Then Archie began an incredible odyssey overland, living on bugs and grasshoppers and french fries which, lucky for him, lay like hordes of dead locusts on the streets of Hollywood. At last, Archie followed his instincts to the Los Angeles sewers, coming to rest in the wonderful, cool, filthy muck below the streets. There was enough tasty fare for a whole batallion of alligators: pastrami sandwiches, beef dips, the ubiquitous soggy french fries, and tons of half-eaten Big Macs and ribs from Kentucky Colonel. And there was plenty of game: rats, snakes, turtles, puppies, human fetuses, a full- term baby or two. Some of it live, most of it dead, the flotsam and jetsam of Los Angeles. People got tired of things very easily in the city and it was adios, down the sewer.

  But Archie found that peace and quiet were boring. In his dim reptile brain he perhaps remembered the bad old days when he was put upon by the schnauzer, and he became a tyrant in the sewers. He was soon five feet long, nose to tail, and still growing, rampaging around the sewers chewing the hell out of every hapless pet hamster or baby mouse that floated by on a Popsicle stick, right into the gaping maw of Archie the alligator. Then, one day, he made the mistake of chewing the hell out of the leg of Tyrone McGee, a sewer worker from Watts, who was sick and tired of being pushed around all his life and wasn't about to take any crap even from an alligator. Not in his sewer, he wasn't.

  Tyrone McGee did what he had always done when bullies picked on him. He went and got his big brother. In this case, big brother was Leonard Leggett, the lackluster cop, who reluctantly followed the bleeding sewer worker back down there in the dark and, shaking like a mouse on a popsicle stick, dispatched Archie to the Big Sewer with three volleys from his Ithaca shotgun, giving Tyrone McGee a chance to grin malevolently at the belly-up sewer monster, and say, "Catch you later, alligator.''

  That same lackluster cop would make an insignificant bureaucratic decision which would decide the very destinies of four people: Madeline Whitfield, Philo Skinner, Natalie Zimmerman and A. M. Valnikov.

  Millie's ex-dog handler, driven by anger for the massage parlor hussy, went for the Rolls-Royce three times. Each time a parking attendant came running by and Philo Skinner was forced to retreat to the safety of the street.

  So, as destiny is often decided by tiny vagaries of fortune, the dog was not stolen from the car. If she had been taken from the car, it would have been, technically speaking, a burglary from auto, and would have been handled by the auto theft detail at Hollywood Station. (Policemen, ever the civil servants, have been known to get in screaming battles over who has to work on a crime report which will entail only a phone call, and a notation which reads: "No suspects. Investigation continued.") The parking lot attendant swore to Officer Leonard Leggett that no one got within a hundred feet of that Rolls-Royce, so it was correctly deduced by the lackluster cop that the dog got out of the car on her own. It was incorrectly deduced that the dog got lost. And since lost dogs don't require a written report, Leonard Leggett was about to go lethargically on his way. Except that Millie Mul- doon Gharoujian came jiggling out of the Brown Derby with two studs young enough to be her grandsons. And with much more interest in the young studs than in the fact her schnauzer was gone, she said to Leonard Leggett, "Look, kiddo, I got more invested in that pooch than you made in the last five years. Now write me out a police report so I can get my insurance company to pay me a little dough anyway."

  So Leonard Leggett, the lackluster cop, reluctantly penciled out a quick "unknown suspects" theft report to mollify Millie, and since thefts that take place on commercial property such as restaurants are routinely given to business burglary investigators, like Valnikov and Natalie Zimmerman . . . destiny.

  The little terrior had spotted Philo Skinner on his first loping, crouching try for the Rolls-Royce. Philo was peeking up over the hood of a red Mark V when Tutu saw him. She hadn't seen her former handler in months and went wild with joy. Tutu had always loved Philo madly.

  "Tutu! Hello, Tutu!" Philo whispered, squatting on the asphalt in his sweat-stained, white leisure suit.

  Then he had to beat a skulking retreat when he saw another parking attendant coming his way.

  After a few moments Philo came slinking back, sweat sticking in his lank dyed hair, all elbows and knees and bony shoulders, crouching behind a gray Mercedes 450 SEL, dizzy in the afternoon sun.

  Then still another parking attendant with long floppy blond hair came hotfooting it across the parking lot and Philo began another gasping lope, his imitation gold medallion beating a bruise on his frail chest.

  He was determined on the third try, pouring sweat, knees aching from all the squats, eyes raw from peeking over the shiny tops of Jaguars and Cadillacs like a movie Indian. His poor ragged lungs wheezed.

  "Tutu! Come, Tutu!" he gasped. "Come to Philo!"

  The little dog was berserk now, barking, growling, crying. Leaping up and grabbing the ledge of the open car window, holding herself against the glass, head and shoulders out the window, feet kicking and scratching, only to fall back inside.

  Then Philo Skinner eyeballed another one of those tireless frigging kids slapping across the parking lot in his tennis shoes, and he was off again on his last scuttling painful retreat. He knew he was finis
hed.

  Five minutes later, Philo Skinner was sitting on the curb at Hollywood and Vine wheezing and creaking, wiping the sweat from his draining face with the sleeve of his ruined polyester jacket. He wanted to cry. He was thinking seriously about giving up this life of crime before it started, when he heard the shrill, ecstatic, beautiful bark.

  She leaped on his back, nibbling, licking, yapping with purest joy.

  "Tutu!" Philo cried.

  Philo Skinner hugged the terrier against his heaving chest, and jaded Los Angeles motorists figured it was just another kinky Hollywood freako when they saw a man sitting on the curb kissing a little dog passionately on the mouth.

  Chapter 6

  Siberia

  "Uh, would you like to drive, Natalie?" Valnikov asked when they finally got their paper work arranged and began to make their calls on burglary victims.

  "Hooker didn't even give me a chance to get my pending sex cases together," Natalie grumbled as she opened the passenger door of the stripped-down, tan Plymouth police car. "Just gave my sex cases to somebody else."

  "We once had a terrible sex case," Valnikov said, sliding in behind the steering wheel. "Spring of 1953. Near the end of the war. The Reds sent in two whores with V. D. Almost wiped out our whole company. They say there's a new strain of V. D. going around now."

  Natalie lit a cigarette and sneered at Valnikov's puny humor. But she saw nothing in those red and watery eyes. Nothing. Was he speaking without guile?

  That was the thing about Valnikov. Nothing seemed to follow. In his short time in Hollywood Detectives he hadn't made any friends at all. His old crony, Clarence Cromwell, said he was just absentminded these days. You talked to him and he answered, but you never knew what kind of an answer you'd get from the turkey. They said he was bombed, swacked, bagged. By noon? She wasn't sure if it was booze. She wasn't sure of anything about him except that he was the non-sequitur king of the whole goddamn police department.

  "How many calls do we have to make?'' Natalie groused, settling on the well-worn passenger seat of the detective car.

  "Oh, not too many," Valnikov said affably. His necktie was still askew and his cinnamon hair was fluffing up from the ridiculous combing he'd given it earlier.

  "I never thought it would come to this," she sighed, thinking about the new assignment. "Maybe we can have a big day, huh? Maybe we can recover a stolen typewriter table and return it to the owner. Business burglary. Glorified furniture movers."

  "I was a furniture mover for a year after I got out of the marines," Valnikov said pleasantly, blinking and wiping his watery eyes on the sleeve of his suitcoat. "Lot of Korean vets looking for jobs then. I was lucky to get a job on the police department. I have a brother, he couldn't find a job for eight months after World War II. He wasn't so lucky."

  Natalie decided to get the partner-to-partner biographies over with. Ought to be able to dispense with his life history with about three questions. Then she could give hers: two divorces, one daughter away at college. The police department, because it's the best-paying job she could ever have, and she likes it well enough even though the brass does its best literally and figuratively to screw the policewomen every chance they get. And so forth.

  She didn't smoke a cigarette, she sighed it. Sigh in the smoke angrily, sigh it out sadly, all the time pitying her luck. Why meP she asked her Friz.

  "I'm divorced. I hear you are too. Live alone, huh?"

  "Oh, no," he answered, driving exasperatingly slow through the noontime Hollywood traffic. "I live with Misha and Grisha."

  "Your kids?"

  "No. I don't live with my kid anymore. He lives with his mother in Chatsworth."

  "Too bad. How old?"

  "Forty-four."

  Jesus Christ! She always had to look at the rummy to see if he was putting her on. He just drove aimlessly, blinking his sad patient eyes.

  "My father used to be amazed by all the luxury in Hollywood in the old days. But it scared him because he was an immigrant."

  "Is your father still alive?" Natalie said, not really giving a shit.

  "No, my father died before my older brother was born."

  "What did you say?"

  "I said the Hollywood traffic scared him, but the Russian churches are mostly here in Hollywood."

  Jesus Christ! The guy's brain is marinated! Shriveled! Sanforized! But she couldn't smell the booze on him. It must be dope. Jesus Christ! This rummy's a doper!

  Natalie snuffed out her cigarette and tried to make it easier for him, as a test. "Valnikov, I wasn't asking how old . . . your father couldn't possibly die . . . never mind that. A moment ago I wasn't asking you how old you are. We were talking about . . . you said you live with Misha somebody ... I thought it was your kid."

  "Oh!" he smiled. "No, you asked if I live alone. I said I live with Misha and Grisha. I think that's how you got confused."

  "I got confused."

  Then he turned right on Gramercy and began humming something she didn't recognize. He drove five miles an hour. He didn't speak. He hummed in a hoarse baritone.

  "Valnikov."

  "Yes?"

  She was turned toward him now, looking and talking to him as carefully as she would to an axe murderer.

  "How old are Misha and Grisha? No, wait. Who are Misha and Grisha? These people you live with?"

  "Oh. Well, do you want me to answer the first question first?"

  'The first question. Yes, answer the first question."

  Valnikov took the longer tail on Clarence Cromwell's necktie and carefully wiped both eyes. The road was blurring.

  "Pardon me," he said when he'd finished. "Well, let s see, Grisha is eight months old. I'm sure of that because I got him when he was a little baby. I fed him with an eyedropper. He used to squeak ..."

  "Valnikov ..."

  "And Misha, I'm just not sure about. I think Misha is older because he was full grown when I got him. Well, I just wouldn't like to say for sure."

  "Valnikov," Natalie said, positive now that he was still swacked from the night before, wondering if she should make him drive right back to the station for a breathalyzer exam. They couldn't make her work with him if she could prove he was drunk on duty! "Valnikov, I was asking about . . . you said you have a son."

  "Oh, yes. His name's Nick."

  "And how old is Nick?" It was a challenge now.

  "My Nick is twenty. I never see him anymore."

  "Why?"

  "I think he doesn't like me. His mother doesn't like me."

  "Valnikov?"

  "Yes?"

  "Do Misha and Grisha like you?"

  "Of course! They like me a lot. I think Grisha likes me more. Misha only knows one word and I've tried hard to teach him lots of words. He just learned that word when I burned myself on the stove one night and I yelled 'Gavno!' That means shit. Hard as I tried to teach him other words, he goes and picks up a bad one on his own. Just like a real kid would."

  "Yeah. He talks and he's not a kid, right?"

  "Of course not," Valnikov said, looking puzzled. "He's a parakeet. Green."

  "Uh huh," said Natalie, her mind racing, wanting the day to end in a hurry so she could run to Hipless Hooker with as much of this bullshit as she could remember. He was a doper. He was loaded right now. Speed maybe. Or coke. This was perfect!

  "And Grisha is . . ."

  "Grishas beautiful." Valnikov smiled.

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," Natalie said, raising her glasses and massaging the bridge of her nose. "I mean what . . . kind . . . of . . . creature is Grisha?"

  "Oh, he's a gerbil," Valnikov said. "Didn't I say that?"

  "You didn't, Valnikov. No, no, you really didn't!" Then she said, "What's a gerbil?"

  "A little rodent, indigenous to southern Russia. I'm indigenous to northern Russia. At least my mother and father were indigenous."

  Now she was excited with what she'd deduced. He had had no partners since his assignment to Hollywood Investigative Division
. He'd been handling business burglary cases on his own, and keeping to himself. There was a damn good chance that nobody but she knew that he was a doper. Non sequitur, my ass. This dopey bastard couldn't string together one question and answer. They'd put him on the wall. Shake him down. Empty his pockets. Would they find Quaaludes? Or hash? That's it! He was fried on hash oil! He was hearing his own questions somewhere. Who knew from where?

  Siberia. The questions today were coming from a frozen wasteland. The Siberia of his mind. This was a bad day. He knew last night of course that if he drank nearly a fifth of Stolichnaya, well, he would have a hard time today linking sentences together, understanding what people said to him. People would say things and he would hear them, but on these bad days it was so very hard to put the picture in focus. There were little motes of light, the shimmering dots when a flashbulb pops. Like when they photograph a corpse. There would be a picture emerging there among the dots. He could almost get it, and if he did, well, then everything would start to make sense. But then someone would say something to him, talk to him like Natalie was talking to him now, and the shimmering sparkly picture would fade. The Great Secret would not be revealed. Not today. Stolichnaya. Too much vodka. But it was almost as bad other times too.

  She was talking to him.

  "I'm terribly sorry," Valnikov said, smiling that patient, watery-eyed, vacant smile. "What did you say?"

  She had removed her glasses. She was pretty without her glasses, he thought. She was pretty with her glasses, he thought. It might be good to have a partner again. He forgot how long it had been. He truly wasn't sure right now if it was one month or one year.

  "I asked," she said slowly, "if you were sure Misha and Grisha were boys? You refer to them in the masculine gender."

  Now that, she thought, was the toughest question she had thrown at him all morning. Let's see how he handles it.

  Valnikov's brow wrinkled, and he chewed his lip for a second and scratched the wild cinnamon hair curling over the frayed collar of a white dress shirt. His coat flapped open when he scratched his ribs. Jesus Christ! His inside coat pocket was repaired, not with thread, but with metal staples.