“That’s Moe. Here’s the address of his electronics shop.” He handed Dain the memo slip with a wink. They stood. “How’s my boyfriend? Shenzie the wonder cat?”
“Don’t ask. You might get stuck with him again for a few days if this Farnsworth thing pans out. The neighbor lady in Mill Valley who usually takes him is out of town...”
Solomon gave his deep chuckle. “Anytime for the Shenzie cat.” They shook hands, Dain started for the door. Randy spoke to his back. “How about some handball?”
Dain turned and looked at him. Suddenly grinned.
“How about tomorrow? I’ll whup your ass.”
“That’s my man,” said Randy happily. “The hopeless romantic to the bitter end.”
13
Arched across the front window of the narrow storefront in Clement Street was MOE’S ELECTRONICS PLUS. Under this in smaller letters was, TVs — VCRs — Recorders — Radios, and under that in even smaller letters, repair & service. Dain pushed open the door, jangling a small brass bell fixed to a spring inside the top of the door. There was a wooden counter with an old-fashioned cash register, behind that a doorway to the work area covered with a heavy brown curtain.
The curtain was shoved aside by a big easygoing man running to fat. He had a cute little mouth and hair in his ears and ex-cop written all over him. He moved with a slight limp.
“Hello, Moe,” said Dain.
Wexler studied him for a moment, then smiled genially.
“Eddie Dain,” he said. “You’re looking fit. Randy Solomon called, said you might be around, or I’d of thought somebody was sending an ex-49er tackle around to bust my other leg.”
“How’s the first one?”
“Still busted.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry about your wife and kid.”
Dain was silent. Wexler raised a hinged flap of countertop and went to the door to twist the bolt lock at the same time that he jerked down over the doorpane a small brown roller shade that had OUT TO COFFEE — BACK IN 15 on it. Dain had begun counting out $100 bills on the counter like dealing a hand of poker.
“One bug on the private phone of Robert Farnsworth at Farnsworth, Fechheimer and Farnsworth. They’re a brokerage house on Pine across from the Pacific Coast Stock Exch—”
“You sure your call won’t come through the switchboard?”
“My man is dumb, but not that dumb.”
Moe nodded. “They got a service door on Leidesdorff Alley with a lock on it you could open with garlic breath.”
“You ex-cops,” marveled Dain. He counted out another sheaf of bills. “The second bug is at Farnsworth’s apartment. He’s got a three-month lease in that tall white stucco place on Montclair Terrace where Francisco—”
“Yeah. Gotcha.”
“Apartment three-C. We’re looking for a call from a James Zimmer or anybody who could be Zimmer. I figure a week tops.”
Moe shuffled the bills together like a hand of cards.
“I can use an infinity mike at the brokerage house, can go back in for it afterwards. At the apartment I might have to go into the walls, that’d mean I’d have to leave the equipment.”
Dain gestured at the third fan of bills he had laid on the counter. “If you can salvage the equipment, consider the extra five bills a bonus.”
“A week gonna be enough?”
“If we’ve got no action in seven days, I’ll have to rethink my premise.”
Moe started to pocket the folded bills, then hesitated.
“Randy says you’re working for Teddy Maxton on this one.”
“Randy’s got a big mouth,” said Dain coldly.
“We went through the academy together, what can I say?”
“What the fuck is it with Teddy Maxton and the SFPD? Mention his name and you all piss your pants in unison. Maxton’s in Chicago, for Chrissake.”
“He’s got a long arm.”
“That bother you, Moe?”
“It rains, my leg hurts, that bothers me. I can’t get it up for the wife, that bothers me. Maxton don’t bother me.”
“Then why are we talking about him?”
Moe leaned forward slightly across the counter to look closer at Dain, as if confirming some rumor he’d heard.
“Watch your butt with this guy, Dain. He’s one tricky son of a bitch.”
Dain smiled for the first time since his wife and child had come up in the conversation.
“So am I, Moe. So am I.”
Maxton got out of the elevator on the P-1 level under his office building and crossed the concrete to the Mercedes parked in his slot. It was another scorching Chicago summer afternoon, but Maxton, moving between his air-conditioned office and his air-conditioned home in his air-conditioned car, only felt the heat by his backyard pool, where he expected it.
He pushed the remote that unlocked the doors of the Mercedes, started to get in, checked the movement. Dain was sitting in the rider’s side. Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, K-64, was sweet as honey off the car’s CD player.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
Instead of answering, Dain said, “We’re going out to O’Hare, I want to show you something.”
“That’ll take hours this time of day, and I’ve got two tickets to the Cubs game.”
Dain said nothing. Maxton got in, grumbling, began fighting the rush-hour traffic out Wacker to the big convoluted freeway exchange that would put him on the John Kennedy north to O’Hare. Cars were stacked bumper-to-bumper, horns blared, exhausts fumed, light glared into drivers’ eyes off polished chrome. The air conditioner whooshed softly under the Mozart.
“Zimmer and a peroxide blonde were booked on a flight leaving for Rio four hours after the bonds were taken,” said Dain in a conversational voice.
This jerked Maxton’s head around. “They left the country? How the fuck’re you going to—”
“Remember last New Year’s Eve office party? When you hired some exotic dancers to put on a show for the employees?”
“Of course. We’d had a good year, financially.”
“Zimmer met her there.”
“Who, goddam you?”
“The woman who planned this whole thing. You had a little something going with her yourself at the time, I hear.”
Maxton said icily, “You hear wrong.”
“She wasn’t always a peroxide blonde. Think about it.”
Dain slid down in the seat and shut his eyes. He didn’t open them until the roar of a landing jetliner’s engines penetrated even the Mercedes’s vaunted sound-exclusion paneling, then he sat up suddenly.
“Get in the right lane, to long-term parking.”
Maxton swung the wheel over, stopped at the striped arm, got his ticket from the machine, drove through. His voice was tentative, almost shocked. “You’re saying it was... Vangie?”
“Evangeline Broussard,” Dain nodded. “She planned the steal, she was waiting for Zimmer in an alley around the corner from the bank. Go down this row.”
Maxton obediently drove down the long row of dusty cars.
“I don’t get it, Dain. Why would Vangie—”
“You wanted her to fuck one of your business associates in the back room during the Christmas party, for Chris-sake.”
His bewilderment didn’t lessen. “Yeah? So?”
“She thought she loved you, Maxton,” Dain said in an almost defeated voice. “She thought you loved her.”
“Loved her? She’s a fucking hootch dancer, for Chris-sake!”
“Stop here.”
Dain walked over to Vangie’s red Porsche; from the dust on it, and the dried rain-streaks on the windshield, it obviously had not been moved in many days. Maxton followed, still not knowing what they were doing there. On the far side of the Porsche, Dain leaned his elbows on the dusty top. Maxton faced him across the grimy red roof.