Bad Samaritan (18 page)

“This is our first trip anywhere together,” he said. “We’re kind of square. Do you live in Los Angeles?”

“No. I moved up to San Valdesto this spring.”

“It’s a pretty town,” he said, “but too quiet, like Mill Valley.”

I laughed. “Quiet and Square—those are dirty words, aren’t they?”

He said nothing. Dianne said, “Don wants to be an actor. It’s hard to be that in Mill Valley.”

“It’s hard to be that anywhere, “I said, “if you want to be paid for it. You folks hungry? It’s almost lunchtime, and there’s a great rib place on the other side of Ventura. Do you like barbecued ribs?”

“We haven’t had breakfast yet,” Don said. “Is this place expensive?”

“Not when I’m picking up the tab. You will be my guests.”

We rode for about five minutes in silence. Then Don said, “Brock Callahan …? Weren’t you a football player? Aren’t you in the Hall of Fame at Canton?”

“My name is, and my jersey. I’m right here, riding along old Highway 101 with a couple of runaway kids.”

“We left a note,” Don said. “My dad hated you.”

“He must be a 49er fan.”

“Is he ever! Are you a coach now?”

“No. I’m a retired private investigator. I’m going to Los Angeles on an errand for a friend of mine. She wants me to talk her daughter into coming home.”

A silence, and then Dianne said, “Your friend wouldn’t be my mother, would she?”

“Not unless your mother is a waitress in San Valdesto.”

She said, “Sorry. That was dumb of me. Does this girl want to be an actress?”

“I doubt it. She left home two years ago, when she was fifteen. Her last job was at a massage parlor in San Valdesto. Maybe she thought she could earn more working that Sunset Boulevard trade.”

“And her mother wants
her
back?”

“Mothers are strange people,” I said. “I’ve worked for a few of them when I was active. Let’s talk about something else.”

We didn’t talk about anything all the way to Ronny’s Rib Rendezvous. They were thinking and I was hoping. I was mostly hoping that they were thinking.

At Ronny’s the waiter said, “Cocktail first, sir?”

“A double bourbon on the rocks,” I said. “How about you two?”

Don looked at Dianne and both of them looked doubtfully at me. “Beer?” Don asked.

“Do you have your ID cards with you?” the waiter asked.

They stared at the tabletop.

I said, “Change my order to one double bourbon and two beers. Einlicher, if you serve it.”

“Sir—”

“I am not only extremely muscular,” I told him, “I am also a very impatient and thirsty man. We will order our lunch after I get my drinks.”

The waiter went away, and Don smiled. Dianne said, “Mucho macho, just like your father, Don.”

“Dad’s not in the Hall of Fame,” he said.

“Neither is Einstein,” I said. “Have you had much experience as an actor?”

“In high school. We graduated in June.”

“There must be a lot of little theater groups in an area like Mill Valley.”

“I don’t know. I suppose. Yes, there are.”

“I read in the
Los Angeles Times
last week that only two percent of the members of the Screen Actors’ Guild were currently working, and they’re pros.”

He smiled. “Yes, father.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’s none of my damned business. But I remember some of the girls I finally found for their parents. Two of them were in the morgue.”

The waiter brought our drinks and we all ordered ribs. “And three more beers,” I added.

“Yes, sir,” he said, and went quietly away.

“One girl I found had to be identified by her dental work,” I went on. “Even in that dry desert air, she was so badly decomposed that—”

“Please!” Dianne said. “Enough! We get your point.”

We ate in silence, we drank our beer. We climbed into the car again and went back to the freeway. Silence. Past Oxnard, starting the big climb at Camarillo Springs.

Up, up, up. … Past the crawling trucks, the tiny-engine foreign cars, groaning in third gear, the campers, the trailers.

At the crest, the San Fernando Valley was spread out below us. An ugly yellow blanket was blotting out the sun.

“My God, what’s that?” Dianne asked. “There must be a fire somewhere!”

“That,” I told her, “is Los Angeles smog. Welcome to the home of the stars.”

“Don,” she said. “Oh, Don—”

“So we’ll find a job and get enough to get home on,” he said. “We’re down to nine dollars, Dianne.”

At the bus station in the San Fernando Valley, I bought them two tickets for San Francisco, and gave Don a double sawbuck. “Take a cab from San Francisco,” I said. “Go home in style.”

“If you’ll give me your address,” he said, “I’ll—”

“Forget it. Go home and learn your trade, whatever that is. You sounded like an engineer to me.”

“I’m a pretty good mechanic,” he said. “I’ve rebuilt a couple of old Jags, and sold them.”

“Could I kiss you?” Dianne asked.

“If you don’t think it would excite you too much.”

She kissed me, he shook my hand, and then they had to hurry for the bus, already loading.

I stood there. People sat on the benches and read, or ate their lunches out of paper bags. Some bought tickets, some boarded buses, some got off. Not one of them had the grace to walk up and pin a Good Samaritan medal on me.

V
INCENT BATTAGLIA WAS MARY
Serano’s oldest brother, a man of about sixty. He was short and stocky, as were his wife and two sons. Their daughter, Mary, was neither short nor stocky. Vincent had married late; the kids were still living at home.

In descending order, by ages, they were: Vincent Junior, 17, Mary, 16, and Tony, 15. Vincent hadn’t wasted any time, once he deserted his bachelorhood.

They lived in a three-bedroom, bath-and-a-half, cream-colored stucco house on National Boulevard, near the Santa Monica Airport.

I met Mrs. Battaglia first. She answered the door to my ring. “Mr. Callahan!” she said. “When Mary told me yesterday that you were coming here, I thought my husband would have a heart attack. You’re staying for dinner, of course?”

“If you insist. Mary told you yesterday?”

She nodded.

“But I didn’t even tell her I was coming here until about four hours ago.”

“She said you would come. She said she knew you would.”

“She must have the gift of prophecy.”

Mrs. Battaglia played it straight. “She has. Her mother told me she was born with the veil. Come in.”

Here, as in the one-room home of Jesus Gonzales, there was a crucifix on the living-room wall. The furniture was dark, upholstered in brown mohair. Lace doilies protected the areas most likely to soil. The few pictures were religious scenes, including the Last Supper. I felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me; I had grown up in this kind of house in Long Beach.

“I have coffee on,” she said. “But maybe you’d rather have something cold?”

“Coffee will be fine,” I said.

She brought a five-by-seven portrait of Patty with my coffee. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

She had Mary’s big eyes and olive skin and shining black hair. “She certainly is,” I said. “What did she tell you when she was here?”

“Nothing much. But she told my daughter she was going to be in a movie, starting this week. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me more about it.”

I could guess why. I asked, “Does your daughter know the name of the firm making the movie?”

“I don’t think so. My oldest boy, Vince, probably does. He was teasing Patty about it.”

“Do you know where Patty is staying?”

She shook her head. “Today’s kids—”

I sipped my coffee.

“Patty used to come here for a couple of weeks every summer. What a sweet girl she was! But after she turned fifteen—” Her face hardened. “Of course, with that father of hers—”

“Mary has sent him packing,” I said. “Didn’t you know that?”

“No. When did it happen?”

“It must have happened since she talked with you yesterday. She told me this morning. If Patty gets in touch with you again, be sure to tell her that.”

“That could make a difference,” she said. “Nobody in the family could ever understand what she saw in that man.”

Mary came home first, acknowledged the introduction politely and went to her room.

The boys came together, were just as polite and went out in back to throw basketballs into the hoop over the garage door.

The master of the house gave me more attention. He stood in the middle of the living room, his hands on his hips, and stared at me, a real ham. “I never thought I would live to see this day,” he said. “You honor this house, sir.”

That was his opening. For the next hour and a half he talked and I listened. He must have seen every Rams home game since the club moved to California. I had the feeling that he remembered every play of every game.

Dinner was all high-caloric Italian food: canneloni, cacciatore, even macaroni in the minestrone soup. Young Mary was the only person at the table who ate sparingly.

When we had finished, I said to Vince Junior, “Could I talk with you alone for a few minutes?”

His face was guarded. He looked at his father.

“Do it,” his father said.

We went to the room he shared with Tony. I asked, “What’s the name of that movie company Patty is going to work for?”

“Why should I tell you? So you can drag her back to that house? Patty is a friend of mine.”

“If you’re really a friend of hers, you’ll tell me. Your aunt dumped that slob she married. She sent him to Phoenix, to go into business with his brother. If he ever comes back to San Valdesto, her cousins will cut him up for dog food.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“That’s God’s honest truth, Vince. Your aunt is retiring and she wants to travel and she wants Patty to go with her.”

He remained stubbornly silent.

“If Patty doesn’t want to go home,” I said, “I won’t crowd her. I promise you that. Don’t you realize where she’s heading, man?”

He stared at me for a few more seconds before he said, “Adult Art Cinema. They’ve got an office in Hollywood, I guess, but they make their pictures out in some house near Malibu.”

“You thought that was something to tease Patty about?”

“I was trying to shame her in front of the folks. When we were alone, I tried to talk her out of it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And trust me,” I added.

“I have to, now,” he said.

His father wanted me to spend the night there, but I explained that I had people to see. I promised them I would tell Mary to phone them if my mission was successful.

Back in the car, I headed for Heinie’s. I missed that bum—and besides, he was a porno movie fan.

There were five men at the bar, four of them horseplayers going over their handicap sheets together.

“The Rock!” he said. “What you doing in town?”

“Looking up old friends. As a connoisseur of dirty pictures, have you ever heard of a firm called Adult Art Cinema?”

“Yuck!” he said. “Who wants to look at freaks? All their pictures are loaded with those Muscle Beach weirdos. I go to look at women. You ain’t signing up with
them
, are you?”

“Heinie!”

“Sorry. I forgot you don’t need that kind of money now. Einlicher?”

“Please. You mean there are no women in their pictures?”

“Young girls, mostly. Just kids. They get ʼem cheap, I suppose. And the things those kids go through with those muscle-bound nitwits—my stomach isn’t
that
strong, buddy.”

Later, from the same wall phone I had used to inform Jan of my inheritance, I called our house. No answer.

I phoned the Lunds’ house. Jan was there. “What happened?” she asked.

“It was an emergency—kind of.”

“Chief Harris phoned you and Lieutenant Vogel phoned twice.”

“Call Vogel at home,” I told her. “Tell him I’m down here trying to find Patty Serano for her mother. And for us. Why were he and the chief looking for me?”

“I couldn’t understand it. Something about Otis Locum being out of the hospital. Is that why you wanted me to stay here?”

“That was the main reason.”

“And who is Patty Serano?”

“She is the daughter of a woman who could be helpful to us in our investigation.”

“Where are you now?”

“In a restaurant. I’ll be at the Shamrock West in half an hour, if they have a room for me. If they haven’t, I’ll phone you back.”

They had a room, and I had a good night’s sleep; I had tried to find Adult Art Cinema in the phone book before I went to bed. There was no listing. They could be too new to be listed or too cheap to install a phone. More likely, they had a private number.

In the morning, I called one of my Hollywood haunts, Mimi’s Grotto. It was run by a great lady who specialized in bad food and good banter. Mimi answered the phone.

“I said, “This is Brock. Has Amos come in for breakfast yet?”

“Not yet. Where have
you
been lately, you bum?”

“I’m retired. I’m only in town for the day—I hope. Do you have Amos’s phone number?”

“I’m one of the few who have.” She gave it to me.

Amos had an unlisted number and specialized in selling unlisted numbers, plus a variety of other services.

I told him what I wanted.

“Adult Art Cinema?” he said. “I can get it for you. It will cost you a tenner.”

“Okay. I’ll mail you a check. Or I could leave your money here at the desk?”

“The desk? Where? At the Mission? I’ve had your rubber checks before, Brock.”

“You cheap fink,” I said. “Okay. Come to the hotel and I’ll buy you breakfast and give you the ten. I’ll probably need you for more work today.”

“What hotel?”

“The Shamrock, room 138. Hurry! I’m getting hungry.”

Unlisted numbers was only one of Amos Gilchrist’s services. Angles was another. He was a slick and innovative man. He had learned early in his career that the police took a more kindly view of his profession if he cheated crooks instead of marks.

The crooks didn’t, of course. Which meant that he was also a brave man.

He was there before I had finished shaving. He looked around my Shamrock suite and said, “You must be on a big one, if the sucker’s paying for this.”