Nighttown Read online

  My new acquaintance barely came up to my shoulder and probably weighed less than eighty-five pounds. She was shrouded from head to toe in flowing black robes topped off with a niqab, the black headdress with eye slits favored by some Muslim women, a disguise no cop dares to question these days. Just visible at one corner of the eye slit was a long straight tress of silver hair that confirmed my guess about who she was, although I hadn’t let on. Female burglars are relatively unusual, and female burglars with prematurely white hair are rarely seen even at burglar conventions, which are, as you might imagine, held infrequently. Lumia White Antelope was a one-time protégé of my mentor, Herbie Mott, although her name then had been Luz Ginzberg. Sometime after I knew her, she’d gone to the desert and dropped psilocybin with a Polish post-hippie who told potential squeezes he was Native American. In the blaze of a chemically enhanced sun she’d had what Herbie had described as “an epiphany. Or something.” I hadn’t thought about her in years, although at one point I had thought of her practically all the time.

  She’d patted me down so thoroughly I wasn’t sure I’d tell Ronnie about it.

  I wrenched myself back into the present. “Ballpark figure,” I said. “Just in the neighborhood. How much did they offer?”

  “Way too much,” she said. “It almost stopped me from taking the job.”

  “Me, too.”

  “But not quite,” she said.

  Since I wasn’t going to explain my need for the money, I said, with the sincerity of someone totally baffled by a disguise, “It’s not fair that I can’t see your face.”

  “What’s not fair,” she said, “is that I have to look at yours. Wow,” she said, sitting back and fanning her face with the gun, “I made a joke and I didn’t hiccup.”

  “If it was too much money, why did you take it?”

  She fiddled with the gun some more, and I got ready to duck under the table. “Do you read economics?” she asked.

  “Not if there’s anything else on hand.”

  “If you did, you’d know that price has nothing to do with intrinsic value. Back in the 1970s an economist named Fred Hirsch invented the term positional good to describe something that’s valuable only because other people want it. You know, like the way the rope line outside a nightclub and a couple of bodybuilders saying no makes stupid people think whoever’s playing inside must be good, even though they’d probably run for their lives if the same band was playing for free in their grocery store.”

  “I was thinking something like that a little while ago. About books.”

  “So it sort of reassured me. I mean, the idea that the doll isn’t worth anything even close to—to what they offered me. Not worth enough to kill for. But at the same time it kind of put me on the thorns of a dilemma.”

  I said, “Horns.”

  She shook her head. “Horns? What kind of sense does that make? Dilemmas are thorny.”

  “The early Greek word dilemma means ‘double proposition.’ In other words, an either-or choice is necessary. Animals with sharp horns have two of them, at least ever since the last unicorn took the long hike.”

  “Okay, okay. I’d write it all down but I’d have to put down the gun.”

  “So what are the horns, if we can get specific for a minute?”

  “Well, which is more dangerous, having something that’s worth so much that everybody wants it, or having something that might not be worth much at all and only a few people want but they want it really, really bad, and they’re the kind of people who hire burglars?”

  I said, “That qualifies as a dilemma. Are you looking for an answer?”

  “No. Anyway, I think I’ve eliminated one of those groups. I think it’s worth a lot. I wasn’t sure I was going to show you this, but you cured my hiccups.”

  I said, “The doll has been cut open.”

  “How did—oh, that’s right. I remem—I mean, someone said—that you were pretty smart. Take a look, under the back of the cloak.”

  I picked up the doll, which was heavier than I’d expected, and ran my fingers over the smooth, cold face. The whole thing was so over-finished, so precious, so finicky, it was impossible to imagine its being given to a little girl to play with.

  Apparently reading my mind, she said, “I don’t think it was really a toy. I think it was an aspirational role model. Middle-class family, brainwashing their eight-year-old, This is who you can be if you marry up. Makes me—hic—really pissed off. I hiccup when I get mad, too.”

  “This is still economics?”

  “Well, left-wing economics. Have a look at it while I breathe.”

  I turned it over and lifted the cloak, which was heavily beaded. The fabric was beginning to split and fall away from the beads, and beneath it was a polished, flesh-colored composition material that I knew was a blend of very fine sawdust, water, and glue that had been mixed, molded, dyed, sanded, and lacquered. A slit had been cut in a straight line that would have run from one shoulder blade to the other if the doll had a skeleton. The two diagonals cut below created a triangle that could be pried out. I worked it free and saw that a little wadded linen or muslin stuffing, old enough to be brittle, had been tamped down to make room for something rectangular and sharp-cornered, maybe two-thirds the size of a box of playing cards, but not as thick. It would have to have been slipped in vertically and eased out the same way. A snug fit. I said, “And you found it empty.”

  “As you said yourself, if I hadn’t, why would I have waited around for you?”

  “Why did you? You obviously knew I didn’t have it. I came in after you did.”

  “I was going to force you to tell me who sent you. The person who hired me is not going to be happy about this, and I thought some information about the competition might make the encounter a little less unpleasant.”

  I said, “Are you worried about that?”

  “The person? No.” She looked at the table top for a moment. “I’ve got a winning personality,” she said. “I do, don’t I?”

  “Absolutely. Okay, here’s what I know about the one who hired me, but it’s not going to help. It was a woman, Anglo, probably early forties, and kind of heavyset. Real cold eyes, not very tall. Nothing remarkable about her voice.”

  She said, “Well, I suppose that eliminates a few people, but I was hired by a go-between.”

  “Who?”

  “Skip it. Hey, was tonight when you were supposed to come?”

  “Last night. If it can be avoided, I make it a point not to show up on any night when someone knows I’m supposed to be doing something illegal. You?”

  “Yeah.” she said. “Tonight. They’re going to be waiting to pick me up. Two of them, I think. What they’re not going to be is happy.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Don’t know. The people who hired me, I guess.”

  “When are they supposed to—”

  “Any old time now. In fact, you’ve held me up. So to speak. So there’s nothing more you can tell me? As like a consolation prize for them?”

  “No. I mean, she had three kids with her, but she’d rented them.”

  “Right.”

  “No, really. They were actors.”

  “Okay,” she said. She got up, almost no taller than she’d been when she was sitting, and took the doll. The gun dangled from her free hand. “I don’t think there’s any chance that they’re going to come in here,” she said, “but there’s a good space just under the steps down into the basement. You can get in there and even if they shine a light all over the place they won’t see you.”

  I said, “That’s really nice of you. Do you actually think—”

  “No, no, no,” she said. Then she shook her head for emphasis. “No. Worst comes to worst, I’ll just give them their money back.” She hiccupped. “Some of their money, anyway.”

  “You could give
me your gun, and I could cover—”

  “It’s not mine,” she said. “I borrowed it. I think I should—”

  “No problem. Well, I could watch through the hedge or something.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. She looked down at her hands, the gun in one and the doll in the other. “Although you might get the front door for me.”

  “Sure,” I said. I got up.

  “You know who I am, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I said, feeling apologetic. “The hair.”

  “Well, Junior,” she said, “it was nice to see you again.” She turned away, hesitated, and turned to face me again. “Would you let me phone you once in a while?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’d be great to hear from you.”

  She put her stuff on the table, pulled out some kind of Android phone and entered the number I recited.

  When she’d thumbed it in, she looked up at me and said, “We can catch up or something. Maybe just talk about nothing. I don’t have a lot of friends now.” And she picked up the doll and the gun. I followed her to the door and opened it for her. Then I sprinted into the living room, peeled away a corner of thick brown paper, and put my eye to the window.

  Seen through the old glass, she rippled like a mermaid as she walked to the gate. Tucking the doll under one arm, she used the free hand to open the gate and step through it. The gate swung shut. I couldn’t hear it latch behind her.

  But I did hear a car door close. Through the little spaces in the hedge I saw headlights come on. And then I heard a remote little pop that, I was dead certain, was a gun being fired inside a closed automobile. By the time I got out to the sidewalk, the car—something wide and white—was making a leisurely right turn onto Pico Boulevard.

  7

  Itsy Winkle

  I just kept kicking the front door, yelling, and jamming my thumb against the bell. It was after 2 a.m. and I was making a lot of noise for a sedate, upper-middle-money neighborhood full of TV series supporting actors, second-tier studio executives, and record producers who hadn’t had a hit since Big Hair, but that was the point. Stinky had a couple million bucks’ worth of reasons not to want any of his neighbors to get alarmed and call the cops. At any given time the house had three or four rooms full of extremely expensive objects from all over the world, improbably jumbled together as though Sotheby’s had held a garage sale.

  “Minute, minute,” someone said from the other side of the door. It was the kind of voice the South Wind might have, long on breath, somewhat moist, and well above body temperature. It belonged to the latest in Stinky’s infinite conga line of Filipino folk dancers, lured from their touring troupes to overstay their visas and serve as his houseboy. This one, an almost unreasonably slender wisp of good cheer, seemed to be named Crisanto, which, he’d informed me, means “golden flower.” Crisanto’s two most recent predecessors—there was a lot of turnover—had been named Jejomar and Ting Ting, both of whom, like Crisanto, came from impoverished small towns where English was, at best, a third language. Jejomar, regrettably, was no longer among the mobile, but I was friends with Ting Ting, who now lived in improbable bliss with a short-tempered hit woman, a hippie throwback who hadn’t signed on to the peace and love part of the lifestyle. Her parents, bless them, had named her Eaglet.

  I was thinking I might have a use for Eaglet when the door opened.

  “It’s you,” Crisanto said with apparent delight. He put three straight fingers to his mouth, the picture of a man who has forgotten something unpleasant, and his eyes crinkled in infinite regret. “Mr. Stinky will be so sad he miss you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He is—” Crisanto put his hands palm to palm as though in prayer, brought them up to one cheek, closed his eyes, and rocked slightly. “Him sleep,” he said, opening his eyes.

  “Well, get him up. And excuse me,” I said, brushing past him, “I don’t mean to be rude but I’m going to have to be.” He took up so little of the doorway I could get by without even side-stepping. “I’ll be in the living room.”

  “Mr. Stinky will not be happy,” he said, following me. He was plucking at my shirt as though that would bring me to a screeching halt.

  “Tell him I’m going to wait for exactly two minutes, and after that I’ll break something valuable every thirty seconds. And I’ll start with the best stuff.” I headed down the hallway, not looking at the excellent seventeenth-century silverpoint portrait of a young woman, a work I had coveted for years, and made a left into the enormous and compulsively redecorated living room. The huge picture window in one wall looked down at the lights of the San Fernando Valley, burning extravagantly away in defiance of the energy crisis even at this hour. I’d always figured that view added about $350,000 to whatever Stinky paid for the place.

  “Mister Junior.” I turned to see Crisanto standing in the doorway, being visibly, almost tidally, tugged toward Stinky and his primary responsibility, but stranded here by manners. “You wan’ a Coc’Cola?”

  Looking at him, seeing the grace he maintained in what had to be a difficult life, I felt a little of my fury ease off. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll wait four minutes. And no thanks, no Coke.”

  I used the time to survey the latest treasures, including a fine nineteenth-century spinning wheel, which looked fragile enough to qualify as the first thing to put my foot through. I’d have to walk a line with the destruction, though; I’d known Stinky—probably the San Fernando Valley’s best high-end fence—long enough to respect the blinding speed and total commitment with which he could turn from harmless, finely tuned aesthete, the kind of man who can draw a delicate butterfly’s wing from memory, into a homicidal maniac.

  I’d been here only a few days ago to pick up my $2,500, but there were already some new acquisitions. I knew where the best small objects would be, and was staring at the exquisite eighteenth-century French cylinder desk, like a roll-top but with a single thin, curved piece of wood where the roll-top’s slats would be, when I heard Stinky grumbling to Crisanto about making some tea. I stepped away from the desk and closer to the spinning wheel than he would want me to be.

  “You’re not going to need the tea,” I said as he came in, wearing a long Victorian nightshirt big enough that four Ebenezer Scrooges could wear it while stealing a car, with yardage left over. I’d never awakened him before, so I was surprised by the man-bun on top of his head. It was exactly as flattering as all the ones you’ve seen, and it was hard to imagine him doing it in a mirror without averting his eyes.

  I said, “I need one thing from you, and then I’m gone.”

  “It’s chamomile tea,” Stinky said icily. “It’s for me. It’s for going back to sleep.”

  “One thing, two words,” I said. “The name of the person who called you.”

  He crossed his arms. “Not on your life.”

  “It’s not my life I’m talking about.”

  Stinky’s eyebrows went up, one a little higher than the other, something I was pretty sure he practiced. “Is that a threat?”

  “Well, of course, it is, you dope. And it’s not limited to your copious body, either. For example.” I kicked the delicate wooden spokes of the spinning wheel hard enough to send splinters flying in all directions. Crisanto appeared behind Stinky, eyes wide. He had a teacup dangling from one finger.

  “That. Will. Cost. You.” Stinky’s face had gone Arctic white. He didn’t care about people but he was crazy about things. “And so will anything else you destroy. Good night.” He turned his back with a dramatic whirl and came face to face with Crisanto. They stepped to Stinky’s right once and then to his left, trying to get past each other, and while they were dancing I went to the cylinder desk and opened it hard enough to bang the curved piece of wood home.

  “Wonder what’s in here,” I said.

  Stinky grabbed the teacup, turned, and heaved it at me. He had a terribl
e arm. It missed me by five or six feet and pretty much disintegrated against the wall.

  I said, “Must have been pretty thin. Limoges?”

  “Get away from that desk.” He was quivering. “If you’re not out of here in sixty seconds I’ll shoot you.”

  “I’m fucking terrified,” I said. “Do you know Lumia White Antelope?”

  “Mediocre,” he said. He drew several deep breaths. “Even for a woman.”

  “My guess right now is that she’s dead, and that she’s doing it as well as any man could, and I need the name of the person who called you.”

  “I can’t go all Sarah Bernhardt tragic on you,” Stinky said. “I didn’t know her well enough, and what I did know didn’t inspire confidence.”

  “Stinky,” I said, “I will attack you physically.”

  “Can’t do it.” He uncrossed his arms and then crossed them again, a nice, defensive tell.

  “Okay, then, what’s your favorite thing in this room?”

  “Why didn’t you call me today?” he demanded. “You were supposed to have gone last—”

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said. “I went tonight instead.”

  He held up a hand, palm facing me, international sign language for stop. “And you’re telling me that—that girl was . . . was there?” He looked like someone who’d glanced into a mirror and seen someone else’s reflection.

  “Yes.”

  Stinky said, “Where’s that tea?”

  “I am making,” Crisanto said. Over Stinky’s shoulder he gave me a beatific smile that said, See? Everything is fine. He disappeared into the kitchen.

  Stinky blotted his upper lip with his index finger, brought down the corners of his mouth and pushed his lower lip out, making what I think of as Mussolini mouth. His eyes were all over the room, as though he were counting to make sure I hadn’t pocketed anything. It was unusual to see him lose his composure to such an extent, so I just relaxed and enjoyed it.