L.A. Success (6 page)

“You can call me Mr. Stevens. I have to keep my real name hidden.”

Oh yeah, it was him. He didn't even go very far to think of a fake name.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Well...I want you to follow Gertie Elliot and tell me who she is with. I have to know. Just spend as much time as you can following her. Sit outside her house all night if you have to.”

“Where does she live?”

“Uh...I shouldn't have to tell you that. You
are
a good investigator, aren't you?”

“Of course. No information needed. And where can I find you when I have what you need?” I asked.

“You can never come to me. I'll come to you. Just wait for me. I don't even want you to know my real name in case you get discovered. I'm a happily married man and I don't need my wife knowing that I'm stalking my lover.”

“Okay. I'll do it.”

“Good. Get started immediately. I'll be out of town for about a week. I'll get in touch with you when I get back.”

“Um...this is not going to be free,” I said, feeling bold with the booze running through me.

“When you give me the information, I'll give you double your usual fee,” he said and left.

I had no idea what my usual fee was. I'd have to ask Dennis somehow. Anyway, I was happy because double is always a good word. But I still had some questions. At least I thought I had some questions. I seemed to have forgotten what they were, so I decided to have another beer while trying to remember them.

When I passed by my dad on the way to the fridge, I saw that he had started his first chocolate sculpture. He was using knives and forks from the kitchen to do it.

“What are you sculpting?” I asked. He pointed to the courtyard.

“Talking people.”

“Good idea.”

I grabbed a beer and watched him go at it for a while. It was going to take him forever. He was working on a TV tray. He had one chunk of chocolate for me and another for Spieldburt. He had other little chunks spread around for plants or something. An hour went by before he had shapes that looked like humans. I could recognize mine because it was a lot fatter than the other one. He had to stick the tray back in the fridge every now and then to make sure the chocolate wouldn't melt.

Then the important question came back to me. Why did Spieldburt's lover have the same name as the characters in E.T.? Maybe he had named the characters after her. That was weird, especially if he was trying to keep her hidden. It didn't seem too smart to me.

I was going to have to find out more about all this, but I couldn't do it immediately because I wasn't going to be able to drive until I had sobered up.

I did a couple of searches on the internet to get some more information, but “Spieldburt” came up with nothing, and “Gertie Elliot” always led back to an actress who liked to flash people on talk shows. This might not be as easy as I'd thought.

15

The next morning I put on some more of Dennis' clothes, took the dog and jumped into the Mercedes. I stopped by the perfume store on the Promenade and picked up a gift box, and then I drove out to Helen's sister's place. It was a nice neighborhood, not too far from the Griffith Observatory. I knocked on the door, and after a while Helen opened it. She didn't look as clean as I remembered.

“Hi,” I said. I knew I couldn't try to win her back immediately—she'd be prepared for that.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking at me strangely. I could see she was confused by Ballsack.

“This is my friend's dog. I'm looking after him for a while. Hey, I dropped by to give you this.” I held out the box I'd bought from the perfume store. She refused to take it.

“Presents won't change anything,” she said. I knew she would say that, and she was right. But that's not why I had bought it. I was just using it as a pretext to drop by.

“This isn't really a present. I bought it for you when we were still together, with your money. I was going to give it to you for Christmas. You may as well have it since you paid for it.”

She hesitated for a minute and then took the package. I didn't want to stay around and push my luck, so I started to back away.

“It was good to see you. I gotta go walk this guy. Call me anytime,” I said, trying to look calm.

“Thanks,” she said and shut the door.

I got into the car. I could see her watching me from the window as I drove away. She must have been wondering why I had a sweet Mercedes now.

16

I picked up tacos and headed over to Dennis' place. My dad was playing chess again, although I knew he had been sculpting also because there were little chocolate shavings all over the coffee table. I wiped those up and we ate lunch.

My dad was doing better, so I decided to ask him to walk the poodle—not because the poodle needed walking, but because I thought it would do him some good to get out and stretch his legs a little.

I went upstairs and opened Dennis' investigator closet. I took out the boxes and started looking through them. He had all sorts of cool stuff. In one box he had a bunch of different sized binoculars and spotting scopes. In another box he had a microphone that looked like it had a little satellite dish behind it. I turned it on and plugged some earphones into it and then aimed it out the window. There was a woman pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. She was talking on the phone, so I pointed the microphone at her. The sound exploded in my ears and made me half deaf, so I turned the volume down.

“...so I told him that if he wanted to change places with me, he'd see how 'easy' it was to stay home all day,” she said. She waited for the other person to finish talking and then continued. “Oh no, you think I was serious? I'm a baby machine now. No way am I going back to cutting hair.” She stopped pushing, walked around to the front of the stroller and started to bend over. I rushed over to the box and picked up the spotting scope, as any good man would have done. I took off the lens protectors and aimed it in her direction. I tried to focus the thing, but it wasn't easy. After a minute or two, a clear image of the eye of a lawn flamingo came into view. I lowered the scope and looked out the window, but she was gone.

I decided to practice using all the equipment so that I wouldn't have any difficulty using it on Gertie Elliot once I found her. I got pretty good with the spotting scope, but for anything that wasn't really far away, it wasn't the right choice. Then I took out the binoculars and started scanning the neighborhood. After a while I saw my dad coming down the street. I followed him around as he and the big poodle went from yard to yard. Two houses down, Ballsack pulled my dad over to a real-estate sign and started sniffing away. Then he cocked his leg up and peed all over the agent's picture.

And then I couldn't believe my eyes. I took out the spotting scope and zoomed in on the picture of the real-estate agent. She looked to be around sixty years old. Her red hair was all done up in curls that made her look like she was from the 50's. She had the fakest smile you can imagine, and since I was zoomed in tight on it, I could see that she had yellowish teeth and upper-lip hair that got darker as it moved out to the corners of her mouth. It was one of those poses where the photographer tells you to turn away from the camera with your body, but to look directly at the lens. But the part that was the most interesting to me was written to the left of the picture. I moved my scope slowly from left to right over the words “Gertie Elliot: I just do one thing. And I do it right.” Spieldburt’s lover was a real-estate agent. I’d probably walked by that sign several times without even realizing it. Following this old broad around was going to be easy. If I ever lost her, all I'd have to do is call the number on one of her signs and schedule a house showing. I could even go to some open houses all disguised up.

I went downstairs and rifled through the kitchen drawers for a telephone book. I got her office address from the real-estate section and decided that the first thing I'd do was grab some binoculars, go to her office and sit around waiting for her. Then I could tail her and find out where she lived.

My dad walked in with the dog, and I told him I was going out for a while. I had no idea when I'd be back, so I told him if I didn't make it back in time for dinner, I'd have a pizza delivered.

17

I jumped in the Charger and started driving over to Gertie's office in Culver City. I was excited because this was going to be my first big stakeout. I imagined a street filled with big trees that I'd park under. I'd be hidden by the shade and glued to my binoculars. People would drive by me, and I'd duck down quick to avoid detection. I'd go over the facts of the case again and again and make notes about everything, and then when I finally caught a glimpse of her, I'd roll into action, following her back to her place.

The address said Gertie Elliot's office was on Overland Avenue. I thought I was in the wrong place at first because when I got there, I found myself in a strip mall. The only trees around were palm trees, and there weren't very many of them, so I just parked outside the Starbucks nearby. That didn't seem too detective-like to me, but there was no shade, so what could I do?

I got out of the car and looked around a bit. On the other side of Overland and a couple of blocks to the south was the entrance to Sony Studios. That made sense. Maybe this Gertie met all sorts of movie types, since she did real estate right next to where they worked. Her office was a few businesses up, sandwiched between a cell-phone place and a fitness club. Otherwise, there was a mattress store and a pharmacy, and behind the strip mall there was a huge electronics store and some fast food joints. I went into the pharmacy, bought some paper and a pen, got back in the car and drew a quick map of everything so I'd be able to show Spieldburt exactly where I put in my hours.

I'd just about finished my map when I saw a meter maid cruising through the parking lot. I hadn't seen any parking meters here, so I wasn't worried, but the chick actually stopped at my car. She tapped on my window.

“Yeah? What is it?” I asked.

“Sir, you're parked in a Berdly Fitness spot. Are you a Berdly customer?”

“No, I am not a 'Berdly customer',” I said, trying to imitate her official tone.

“Well, you're going to have to move your car.”

“What if I don't want to?”

“Sir, we tow a lot of cars every month. Your car looks really nice, and I'd hate to see it scratched up by the tow company. They tend to be fairly jealous, so when they see a nice car like this, they aren't very careful.”

I couldn't believe it. I wasn't being very nice to this lady, and she was being nice to me because I had a nice car and nice clothes. If I'd have been in my piece-of-junk car wearing my flip-flops and stained shorts, she probably wouldn't even have given me the warning. This was crazy.

“Thanks for letting me know. Sorry I was being rude—I really need some caffeine. Where can I park?”

“Anywhere you don't see a Berdly stop sign painted on the ground. Most of these are 15-minute spots, but over by the electronics store there's unlimited parking.”

“Thanks,” I said. I started the car up and drove over there. It was all wrong. I couldn't see anything anymore. I grabbed my pen and paper, put the binoculars in my jacket pocket, and walked back over to the strip-mall parking lot.

The first thing I did was pass quickly by Gertie Elliot's door. I didn't even look in. That way if she saw me, she'd think I was just some dude going somewhere in a hurry. That was pretty sneaky, I thought. Then I went by a second time and pretended I was having a conversation on my shit phone, all the while taking pictures through the windows of her office. Then I had to find a place to look at the photos. I couldn't just stand in the parking lot and do that because there was a security guy walking around, and every time he saw some punk in a hooded sweatshirt, he was on top of them telling them not to touch any cars. If I stood around long enough, he'd probably come harass me, too. So I went over to the Starbucks, because if there's one thing I'd learned, it's that nobody ever suspects you of anything as long as you're drinking coffee. I went inside and waited in line.

“Hey, you got anything that someone who normally doesn't come here would like?” I asked the teenager behind the counter.

“Do you mean do we have anything that people who don't
like
coming here would like? Because if they liked coming here, they'd definitely like
something
, but if they don't like coming here, it's because they don't like anything here,” he said. “And how could we give someone who doesn't like coming here anything other than something he doesn't like?”

This guy was trying to confuse me with some sort of logic. I didn't have time for this crap.

“Here's what I mean smart guy. Can you imagine Magnum P.I. coming in here and ordering something?”

“Yes, I can. We've got lots of customers who wear Hawaiian shirts and drive Ferraris. We get people from Sony Studios in here every day, so I've pretty much seen it all.”

“Well, imagine what you would give those guys, and give me one of them. Make it really big.”

He went back and fooled around with some gadgets. I thought he was screwing around back there, but it turns out everything he was doing was for my coffee. He came back with a big cup and handed it to me.

“Caramel Macchiato,” he said.

I paid the kid and went outside. I sat down at one of the tables that had a sun umbrella and made sure I could see the door to Gertie's office. This location seemed a little less cool than waiting in a dark street in the Charger, but that's life I guess.

For a while I just let the coffee sit there on the table. I'd never actually taken a sip of coffee from this place before. Whenever I'd bought a cup of it in the past, I'd just waited for it to get cold and thrown it away. I had never thought of myself as a coffee guy, and since I had only needed it to blend in occasionally, there had never been a reason to actually taste it. But now there I was with no booze around, so I took the cup and gave it a try. Almost immediately, my heart rate increased. I had the impression that my metabolism was speeding up, that I was digesting faster, that if I wanted to, I could actually run for almost a minute. The warmth that was normally just in my hand now spread out all over my body. It was like someone had invented an anti-booze. I was thinking that now I'd be able to get really wasted and then switch gears whenever I wanted. I took some bigger swigs and almost burned my mouth, but I didn't care because I was feeling ready for anything.