Eats to Die For! (2 page)

I decided not to go to the one having its grand opening down the street, the one Louie Sandoval was helping to promote, but my usual one, where the clerks knew me by sight. I drove past the new restaurant, however, and saw the happy ingredients, including Louie, playing broadly to the crowd of passers-by. They all appeared to be having a good time, at least as good as one can have out in public dressed like a strip of bacon or a slice of cheese.

I thought about rolling down the window, tooting the horn and waving to Louie, but then thought better of it. That's how accidents happened, men taking their eyes off the road momentarily to acknowledge beautiful women dressed like produce.

This is L.A.; there is probably even a statistic for it.

Traffic on Ventura was no heavier than usual, but it seemed as though the city had retimed the stoplights so that once your immediate light was green, the next one was red, and vice versa, making progress all but impossible. It took twenty-five minutes to travel from Sherman Oaks to Studio City, and not for the first time I wondered if maybe I should move either my office or my apartment to be closer to the other one.

I was actually starting to salivate as I pulled into the parking lot of my usual Burger Heaven.

Did I always
? I suddenly wondered. Or had Louie planted her suspicions in my brain to the point that I was reacting to them?

Once inside I got in the line, which was quite long, even though it was a little past traditional lunchtime, and when I got to Amber, the young blonde clerk who usually takes my order, I got a special wink.

“Well, hi there, Mr. Beauchamp,” she said. “You're early today. The usual?”

“You know, Amber, I'm feeling adventurous today, so I think I'll try…um…oh, heck. Yeah, the usual.”

It wasn't that I
wasn't
adventurous, it's just that I knew exactly what I would be getting in the Twin Halo combo and didn't want to risk having something I might not like as much.

Amber gave me a look that perhaps wasn't intended to communicate that I was a pathetic, pattie-whipped dork, but a little of that came across. Someday I'd march right in her and order a Twin Halo with bacon, and then I'd show her!

But not today.

Burger Heaven prides itself on the speed of its service, and watching the workers behind the counter move, I'm always reminded of a silent comedy projected at the wrong speed, which makes everyone move abnormally fast. These folks really double-timed it to get the food to you as quickly as possible, and while I was always happy to be a customer, I was glad I didn't have to work here.

Your clients wish you did, though
, Robert Mitchum said in my head, but I didn't care, because my combo tray was just about to be slid over the counter.

The feel of the hot hamburger through the paper wrap is part of the Burger Heaven experience, and I always take an extra second to hold it before tearing into it. The french fries here are always hot as well, unlike some other chains where they're allowed to become a little clammy. One of BH's carefully guarded trade secrets is how they keep the fries so hot without dumping them under a heat lamp.

I had just popped the last bite of my burger into my mouth when I remembered that the reason I had come here was to try and leave with a chunk of uneaten hamburger. Dang. I could always order another, but I wasn't hungry enough for another. Well, I guess it means I'll just have to come back again sometime. Now that I have a little cash in the bank, from my last case, I might find myself eating out more often.

Carole Lombard commented on that one, but I won't repeat it.

On the way out I was, as I always am, treated to a friendly “Have a Heavenly day” by the smiling security guard at the door. For all her dimples, legs and journalistic zeal, Louie Sandoval must be misguided; no place this friendly and cheerful could be engaged in shady activity.

Given that this particular Burger Heaven was within a few blocks of my apartment, it would have made sense for me to simply go on home, but I had left the lights on in my office, and it was only the middle of the afternoon anyway.

Even though I no longer had to worry about the DWP turning my lights off for me (at least for the next three or four months) there was no sense being wasteful, even if gas was perilously close to three bucks a gallon again, and the drive back to Sherman Oaks would probably drink up a half-dollar, minimum.

Three dollars…a GALLON
? the voice of Jack Benny cried inside my head.
My CAR didn't cost that much
!

Yeah, well, times change, Jack.

When I drove back past the ingredient parade in front of the newly-opened Burger Heaven, I noticed that Louie was no longer there. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Even tomatoes have to squeeze out a little juice now and then.

I was sure after I'd closed up shop and was headed back home I would see her again, on the sidewalk gleefully shilling in customers alongside someone who had played Hamlet at their college to rave reviews, but was now searching for his motivation as a sesame seed bun.

Outside of my office building was a For Lease sign, which I knew to be relating to the double-suite space on the first floor that had once housed a porn movie operation, but was now sitting empty. Upon entering my very-well-lit office, the first thing I did, as always, was to check the answering machine on my desk to see if there was a blue flashing light indicating that a call had come in.

There wasn't, so I sat down and powered up my laptop, then went onto the Webfilms site to see if there were any new movies to download, or, more accurately, whether there were any old movies that were newly being offered for download.

People sometimes ask me how I can be such a fanatic over Golden Age Hollywood when at my age I should really be a fanatic of video games or role-playing endeavors. The truth is my father is to blame, though I hardly consider it blame. He is not simply a film buff but a genuine authority who has written scads of articles in magazines, mostly the ones catering to the hard-core movie freak. He is also a lawyer, but unlike my uneasy years at the bar, he is successful at it.

More importantly to me, he never told me that my preference for watching old movies over throwing around a baseball was not normal. I had to find that out on my own, in school. As a result, while Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds are just names I've heard somewhere, Cuddles Sakall and Mischa Auer are old friends.

I was only a few minutes into a post-war gangbuster epic titled
The Street with No Name
, which featured a personal endorsement from J. Edgar Hoover himself, when my stomach became very unhappy. It wasn't the Twin Halo, which was lying easy with the tide; it was the sudden realization that something was wrong.

It was the phone machine.

Even though the blue call-indicator was not flashing, there was a digital “1” on the screen indicating that I had an old message. Except I shouldn't have an old message because earlier today I had cleared two overnight messages, which were nothing but misdirected fax tones. There were no old calls remaining, I was sure of that. Since no calls had come in while I'd been here in the office, there was only one other possibility: someone had phoned while I was out at the Burger Heaven. But were that the case, the blue light would be flashing.

That left only one possibility: somebody had called and left a message, and someone else had listened to it while I wasn't here, relegating it to “old message” status.

Which meant somebody had broken into my office while I was gone.

Had it been the landlord? I couldn't imagine why, since I'd actually paid my rent three months in advance last week. Even if he had come in, I doubt he would have listened in on my phone messages.

Then I noticed the picture on the wall.

It was a painting of a moody, rainy street scene that I'd picked up at a thrift shop. An appraiser would probably judge it the fine art equivalent of an Ed Wood, Jr. movie, but I liked it. Staring at it, I could imagine myself in a trench coat and fedora, cigarette in hand, walking down that wet street.

You don't smoke, kid
, Bogie reminded me,
you're allergic
.

Details.

But something was wrong with the picture, and it took another couple seconds before I figured it out. Up until now that picture had been hanging at a slight angle. It was one of those things that I had intended to fix for a long time but never did, meaning I had not only become used to its tilt, I appreciated it for aesthetic purposes, like a “dutch” camera angle in a film.

But now the painting was perfectly straight. As I approached the picture, I tried to figure out why somebody would mess with it in the first place. Did they think I had a safe hidden behind it, like in the movies?

Taking the picture frame with both hands, I turned it back to its usual angle and heard a scratching sound, like something was abrading the wall. Lifting the frame off its hook, I turned it over and saw a tiny black box affixed to the backing. While I'm certainly no expert on high-tech spy gear, I can recognize a bug when I see one.

So while I was out enjoying a hamburger, someone had entered my office, listened to a phone message, and planted a bug. I'm sure if I looked around more I would find even more evidence of their presence. But what were they looking for?

And who were “they” in the first place?

Amateurs, obviously
, said New Jersey-flavored voice that I recognized it immediately as belonging to Sheldon Leonard.

All right, Sheldon, I'll bite: why amateurs?

It came to me a second later, prompting Sheldon and I to answer in unison:
Because a pro would have noticed the picture was askew and re-hung it that way.
Actually, Sheldon had said
dat way
, but I knew what we meant.

I peeled the device off of the backing, where it had been attached with a strip of medical adhesive tape, and fumbled with it until the back popped off. Inside was a SIM card like the one my cell phone used, so I presumed that removing it would deactivate the bug.

I knew I should call the police and report this, but there was one problem: I had no actual verifiable proof that someone had broken in. Sure, I was holding a bug, but I'm a private investigator, so it would be perfectly logical for me to have such equipment lying around. It would only be my word that I'd discovered it, having been planted by someone else.

And as for the phone message clue, it was my word against my phone's, and given my past experience with the police, they would be more likely to believe my phone.

Speaking of my phone, I realized I had not yet listened to the message. While I doubted it would reveal a voice saying something like, “Oh, hi, I broke into your office earlier and planted a listening device, and now my keys are missing, so could you look around for them and call me back?” it might reveal something.

Stepping to my desk I jabbed the playback and was told the call came in at 2:47 p.m., which was maybe ten minutes after I'd left.

David, it's J.D.,
a familiar voice said from the box.
You are out ridding the streets of miscreants, I imagine, or else looking through the sale DVD bin at Best Buy. In any event, when you return, call me. Cheers.

While “J.D.” sounded like an old time Hollywood studio executive, it was short for Jack Daniels—yes, that's his real name—a friend of mine who was a mystery writer. He wrote under a pseudonym, one you would immediately recognize if you've browsed through an airport newsstand in recent years, but off the page he was always Jack, or else “J.D.”

A Brit by birth, Jack lived in Santa Monica, Raymond Chandler's “Bay City” and currently home to a large English émigré population, and he called every so often to grill me about investigative procedure for one of his stories. I in turn called upon him during my last case and asked him to use his writers' imagination on an overabundance of facts, leads and clues that I could not conform into one solitary picture.

So it was his turn.

I dialed his number back and when he answered, said: “Jack, it's Dave Beauchamp.”

“David, m'lad!”

He sounded soberish, so I went on. “Are you in need of someone to help you spend all that cash you're making again?”

“Oh, yes, right!” he laughed. “These days most publishers think an advance check is a chess move. No, I called with a question. You have a second?”

I knew this was going to take longer than a second, but said yes anyway.

“You have a mobile phone, right?” Jack asked.

“A cell phone? Sure. I don't know anyone who doesn't.”

“Right, so here's my problem. I need to get Tory into a situation where he's abducted and he has to stay locked up for a big chunk of the book.”

Tory Poacher
was Jack's series character.

“But these days, like you say, everybody has a mobile. Anyone who's trapped somewhere can simply call for help, or text for help, or go online and Facebook for help. So I have to get the phone away from him.”

“Well, have whoever's abducting him take the phone away.”

“Cliché, my boy. In the old days, the bad guys always took the detective's gun. These days they take the phone. I'm looking for something different.”

“How about he drops it somewhere and can't reach it?”

“How many movies have you seen where the good guy loses his gun during a chase, while the bad guy retains his? All you're doing is substituting a phone.”

“Hmmm. Well, then, there's no service available where he's being held. That's endemic to a phone.”

“Yeah, but the bad guys are there too, and they have to call people, so there has to be service.”

“I never realized what a difficult job you have, Jack,” I said.

“I'll tell you David, the ubiquity of mobile phones is the worst thing that's ever happened to the plotting of a mystery. Even if you can figure out how to get rid of the damn things, it has to be for a logical reason or else you get a thousand-word two-star Amazon review explaining how a real person in the real world would have gotten around that problem. I think that's why so many TV crime shows these days are done with period settings.”