Blues in the Night (16 page)

Mace figured Lowell was lucky to be gone. Otherwise she'd be entertaining Tideland Security. In lieu of interrogating her, they'd probably clean her apartment, but not in a way that would leave it nice and tidy.

He got into the Camry, started it up and made a U-turn to head back to Sunset.

Passing the van, he saw that the driver had exited and was waiting for another buffed up guy who was leaving the vehicle via its back door. The last Mace saw of them in his rear-view mirror, they were strolling casually toward the entrance to the Florian.

TWENTY-SEVEN

H
onest Abe groaned when Mace's image appeared on his security camera, stopping to talk to the idiot who was setting up the tables and chairs. The idiot pointed up toward Abe's office.

Abe looked around the room, saw nothing that needed to be put away and settled back behind his desk. At the knock, he said, ‘Come on in, Mace.'

The big man entered, scanning the office. ‘Nice,' he said. ‘And it definitely smells better than your old one.'

‘Take a chair. Coffee?'

Mace accepted the chair and refused the coffee.

‘You're getting to be a regular,' Abe said. ‘I may have to put you on my speed-dial.'

‘Tell me about your pal the poet,' Mace said. ‘Jerry Monte.'

‘What do you want to know?'

‘What's he into besides poetry?'

Abe laughed. ‘Anything and anyone.'

‘A little more specific.'

Abe sighed. ‘He makes movies. He sings. He dances. All of which gives him a fortune in entertainment buckos. And he's the brains behind an electronics company that'll probably make Sony look like dog shit one of these days.'

‘What about off camera and out of the spotlight?' Mace asked. ‘Perv? Goofy religion? Drugs?'

‘I gather he covers the waterfront when it comes to sex. Religion, not so much.'

‘Drugs?'

‘This is Hollywood, Mace. You musta heard the joke. “I don't like cocaine. I just like the smell.” Jerry doesn't overdo, but he's an excellent host. By that I mean he and some other heavy-hitters own a drug store.'

‘Honeymoon Drugs?' Mace asked.

Abe nodded before remembering that Mace previously had asked him about the Honeymoon. In connection with what . . . ?
Aw, shit. Angela Lowell.

‘I hear Monte throws parties at his place in Cabrillo Canyon,' Mace said.

‘He's a party animal, for sure.'

‘Got one tonight?'

‘The usual. Hot cooze and cold vodka.'

‘Where in Cabrillo Canyon, exactly?' Mace asked.

Abe wondered if he should bullshit or play it straight. The scowl on Mace's face made up his mind for him. He mentioned an address on Cabrillo Canyon Road.

‘Can you get me an invitation to the party?'

Abe shook his big head, his features showing sincere regret. ‘We're friends, Mace. And we go back a ways. But, frankly, you're a little . . . unpredictable? I can't afford to have Jerry pissed at me because somebody I recommended started slugging his party guests. Or him.'

‘I've mellowed, Abe.'

‘So you won't manhandle anyone. You'll just piss in the punchbowl. You're gonna have to find another way in.'

‘You're more afraid of Monte than you are of me?' Mace said. ‘Good to know.'

Abe felt a chill, but he said, ‘I respect you more. But he's got money in this place.'

Mace smiled. A rare thing. ‘You're OK, Abe. Thanks for the address. I'll work something out.'

He stood and lost the smile. ‘But if I hear that you tipped Monte to be watching out for me, it'll be the end of our beautiful relationship.'

Abe followed Mace's departure on his security monitor. It wasn't until the big man had cleared the front door that he remembered to exhale. He reached out a hand to the phone, then thought better of it.
Let Jerry fucking Monte handle his own problems.

TWENTY-EIGHT

M
ace had driven just a few blocks west on Sunset when he spotted a black Bentley sedan several cars back that seemed to be pacing him. He speeded up and so did the Bentley. He slowed and the Bentley fell back, too.

He continued along Sunset until Charing Cross Road where he took a sharp left. Then a right on Hilgard, which he followed to Westholme where he drove on to the UCLA campus. Not for the first time, he wondered what the designer of the campus had been smoking when he laid out the streets. He took rights and lefts as if he had some destination in mind. Eventually he had to stop a jogger to find out how to get to Sunset. Then another student.

Rejoining Sunset Boulevard at Westwood Plaza, he checked his rear-view mirror and saw that the Bentley was no longer following. Of course, the tail could have been passed to any of the other vehicles lined up behind him.

There were only two cars trailing him when he turned right off Sunset on to Cabrillo Canyon Road. According to the address Abe had provided, Jerry Monte's party central was way the hell up Cabrillo. A tenth of a mile before he got there, Mace took a road to the left that doglegged up the canyon.

His Camry was the only car on that narrow road.

He kept driving until he arrived at a lip that provided a nice view of the lower Canyon. He parked the Camry as close to the protected side of the road as he could. There was barely enough space for another car to pass, but he didn't think that would be a problem unless a driver came barreling up or down and was surprised. The odds of that were slim. People using that road had to be careful drivers or they wouldn't still be alive.

He opened the trunk, unzipped his bag and pulled out a pair of binoculars. He took them to the edge of the road and scanned the area below. Some of the homes beneath the steep cliff were big enough to pass as principalities, but there was no problem spotting Jerry Monte's. It wasn't just because his estate was at least three times the size of his neighbors'. His face was on a large flag that snapped in the breeze beside a huge man-made lagoon, complete with waterfall. It fed several other smaller faux ponds and pools. All that in a city whose mortal inhabitants often suffered the depravations of drought conditions.

The estate's main building was huge, a sandstone, three-story, castle-like affair. It was separated from the Canyon Road by a high stone wall bordering a bright green rolling lawn that could have served as an eighteen-hole golf course. A metal gate – presumably operated from the house – allowed approved vehicles entry to a wide flagstone driveway that traveled the hundred or so yards to the main building. There was a second gate and drive, further up Cabrillo Canyon Road at the far edge of the property. For the help to use, probably.

A matching flagstone walkway surrounded the house and branched off through a series of landscaped, verdant terraces, past fountains, redwood decks and a cabana, near the fake lagoon, from which two naked young women emerged, towels wrapped around their hair, drinks in their hands.

They were both Hollywood pretty, Mace thought, as he focused the binoculars. Very comfortable in their surgically enhanced and bikini-waxed skin. They blissfully strolled along the brick road, much to the amusement of workers who were putting together a white tent that was large enough for a two-if not three-ring circus just below the mini castle.

The naked ladies entered the castle and the workmen went back to their tenting.

Mace turned his magnified attention on the rest of the property, including a double tennis court beyond the lagoon area where two mullet-haired guys in muscle shirts and baggy shorts listlessly whacked a ball back and forth.

Past the courts was a garage large enough to handle at least six vehicles, above which was what appeared to be living quarters for a chauffeur. It would have been too much to ask for the chauffeur to be the black man known as Sweets. More likely, it was the blond shirtless guy in jodhpurs and boots, for Christ's sake, posing in front of the garage as he hosed off an electric-blue Rolls.

Next in line for a washing was a yellow Mustang convertible.

Mace lowered the binoculars.

He'd seen enough to convince him that Jerry Monte's party would be worth crashing, if only to become reacquainted with Angela Lowell. He was convinced she was the key to getting Paulie out of the soup. But he was self-aware enough to realize there may have been another reason he wanted to see her again.

He was turning to walk back to the Camry when the sound of a car horn echoed upward. A white panel truck had braked near Monte's servants' gate. Mildly curious, he picked up the truck with his binoculars just as the gate swung inward in response to the horn. The vehicle entered the property and headed directly to the garage area.

There was a drawing of a mortar and pestle on the door below the name ‘Honeymoon Drugs'. It braked behind the Mustang. A tanned surfer boy who may still have been in his late teens, with sun- or chemical-bleached, near-white hair, hopped out of the truck. He was wearing khaki shorts, flip-flops and a pale green T-shirt with the mortar and pestle logo on its front. Mace thought he may have seen the boy during his brief visit to the drug store.

The chauffeur said something that sounded like, ‘Hi, sweetheart,' and the surfer boy shot him the finger. Then he opened the truck's rear door, reached in and withdrew what appeared to be a heavy two-suiter. He struggled it to the rear door of the castle where he placed it on the bricks.

He pressed a door button and Mace could hear the resulting gong.

The rear door was opened by a big black guy who'd been with Monte at Abe's coffeehouse. He took the suitcase from the surfer boy and carried it back into the house.

The surfer boy remained at the door until the black guy returned and tossed the suitcase to him. It floated like a feather.

The surfer boy, whistling now, got back into the white panel truck and left the way he'd come.

The good stuff had arrived. The party was on.

TWENTY-NINE

P
aulie lived off Mulholland Drive in a treeless and consequently sun-baked, ranch-style house with pale, adobe plaster walls and a dark shake roof. There was a narrow lawn, freshly mowed but with yellow patches, in front of the house and a garden colored by white and pink hydrangeas. But for the most part that portion of the property was taken up by a vehicle gate and concrete slabs on which Paulie parked his Mercedes sedan and a Range Rover which, judging by a thick coating of dust, had fallen victim to the escalation in the price of gas.

Inside, the place reminded Mace of a bachelor pad, circa 1980. Or maybe earlier. Dark hardwood floor, heavy beamed ceiling. Casual, leather furniture. He had to smother a laugh when Paulie proudly showed him the living room with its giant Hi-Def, microthin TV screen and a goddamned bearskin rug in front of a massive fireplace.

Sliding glass doors led to what looked like a junior-size version of the lagoon at Jerry Monte's. Mace wondered if they had come from the same pool company and, it being the movie capitol, if its designer had taken his cues from the old Tarzan flicks. This one included a fake-rock grotto and a black sand bottom that served, Paulie claimed, as an organic filter.

But with all those wonderful things, including a big, round bed in the master suite and a Wi-Fi set-up that allowed him to access the Internet from anywhere on the property, what really sold Paulie on the place was, ‘It's just a block away from where Nicholson lives. And Brando used to live.'

‘It kinda reminds me of our digs at Manhattan Beach,' Mace said.

Paulie's face reddened. He was about to protest when he realized Mace was goofing. ‘Yeah,' he said, ‘except the ceiling doesn't leak, the toilets work and we don't have hot and cold runnin' hookers living next door. But, you know, those weren't bad times.'

‘If you don't mind having to bathe in the ocean in March,' Mace said.

‘C'mon, you son of a bitch. We had a blast.'

Mace didn't disagree.

It had been nearly twenty years ago. They'd met a couple of years before that in Italy, where he'd been sent by the Army; a new Warrant Officer assigned to Second Lieutenant Lacotta in the Quartermaster Corps. By then, Paulie had an arrangement going with the local representative of Mafia boss ‘Toto' Riina. It consisted of a simple transfer of Army supplies – cigarettes and whiskey in the main – for cash.

At first, Paulie had been suspicious of the big, too-intelligent non-com. But those suspicions dissolved one drunken night when the normally taciturn Warrant Officer Mason had explained how his temper had gotten him tossed out of Louisiana State University in his sophomore year when he'd nearly killed a frat boy who had allegedly raped a young Baton Rouge girl of his acquaintance.

She later admitted that the sex had been consensual, but by then Mace's formal education had been cut short. He'd escaped arrest only because the battered boy's father, a state senator, had preferred to avoid the publicity of a trial.

Mace's father, however, was not as willing to forgive and forget. He gave his son two options. He would arrange for young David to go to work with a cousin who trapped muskrat and nutria in the bayou, a hard, heading-nowhere job that paid just enough to live on. Or he could serve a stint in the Army, learn a little about life and then go back to college and make something of himself.

‘Your dad sounds like he's got his head on straight,' Lieutenant Lacotta had told him. ‘He saw you were a green kid who got fucked up trying to be a hero. He figured the Army would smarten you up. So are you ready for a life lesson that'll put some coin in your khakis?'

He and Paulie amassed a comfortable amount over the next few years providing goods for the local black market. They were conservative, limiting their theft to products and quantities that were neither essential nor easily missed. They would have re-upped had Rome not dispatched seven thousand troops into Sicily to bust up the Mafia. Then the Carabinieri collared Riina, after nearly three decades of ignoring his fugitive status. Reform was definitely in the Italian air.