“The best in the public defender’s office.”
“No.” Dave rose, flapped into the trench coat. “Not good enough. Medallion will foot the bill. I’ll send Abe Greenglass. Tomorrow morning.”
“Jesus.” Barker blinked. “Remind me never to cross you.”
Dave grinned, worked the coat’s wet leather buttons, quit grinning. “I’m sorry about Robinson’s brother. If I’d just been a little quicker—”
“It was natural causes,” Barker said. “Don’t blame yourself. Can’t even blame Dieterle—or Wilbur White.”
“The bar owner? You mean he was there?”
“Slocum checked him out. He had the letters.”
“Yup.” Dave fastened the coat belt. “Twenty minutes late to work. White, sweaty, shaking. It figures. Hell, he even talked about apoplexy, how the reverend hated him for perverting his brother.”
“The man had horrible blood pressure,” Barker said. “We talked to his doctor. He’d warned him. The least excitement and”—Barker snapped his fingers—“cerebral hemorrhage. Told him to retire. Robinson refused. They needed him—the people at that run-down church.”
“It figures,” Dave said. “He didn’t make it easy, but he was the only one in this mess I could like. A little.”
“Not Bambi O’Mara?” Barker went and snagged a topcoat from a rack. “She looked great in those magazine spreads.” He took Dave’s arm, steered him between gray-green desks toward a gray-green door. “I want to hear all about her. I’ll buy you a drink.”
But the phone rang and called him back. And Dave walked alone out of the beautiful, bright glass building into the rain that looked as if it would never stop falling.
THE KERMAN KILL
BY WILLIAM CAMPBELL GAULT
Pacific Palisades
(Originally published in 1987)
Pierre?” my Uncle Vartan asked. “Why Pierre? You were Pistol Pete Apoyan when you fought.”
Sixteen amateur fights I’d had and won them all. Two professional fights I’d had and painfully decided it would not be my trade. I had followed that career with three years as an employee of the Arden Guard and Investigative Service in Santa Monica before deciding to branch out on my own.
We were in my uncle’s rug store in Beverly Hills, a small store and not in the highest rent district, but a fine store. No machine-made imitation Orientals for him, and absolutely no carpeting.
“You didn’t change your name,” I pointed out.
“Why would I?” he asked. “It is an honorable name and suited to my trade.”
“And Pierre is not an honorable name?”
He sighed. “Please do not misunderstand me. I adore your mother. But Pierre is a name for hairdressers and perfume manufacturers and those pirate merchants on Rodeo Drive. Don’t your friends call you Pete?”
“My odar friends,” I admitted. “Odar” means (roughly) non-Armenian. My mother is French, my father Armenian.
“Think!” he said. “Sam Spade. Mike Hammer. But Pierre?”
“Hercule Poirot,” I said.
“What does that mean? Who is this Hercule Poirot? A friend?” He was frowning.
It was my turn to sigh. I said nothing. My Uncle Vartan is a stubborn man. He had four nephews, but I was his favorite. He had never married. He had come to this country as an infant with my father and their older brother. My father had sired one son and one daughter, my Uncle Sarkis three sons.
“You’re so stubborn!” Uncle Vartan said.
The pot had just described the kettle. I shrugged.
He took a deep breath. “I suppose I am, too.”
I nodded.
“Whatever,” he said, “the decision is yours, no matter what name you decide to use.”
The decision would be mine but the suggestion had been his. Tough private eye stories, fine rugs, and any attractive woman under sixty were what he cherished. His store had originally been a two-story duplex with a separate door and stairway to the second floor. That, he had suggested, would be a lucrative location for my office when I left Arden.
His reasoning was sound enough. He got the carriage trade; why wouldn’t I? And he would finance the remodeling.
Why was I so stubborn?
“Don’t sulk,” he said.
“It’s because of my mother,” I explained. “She didn’t like it when I was called Pistol Pete.”
His smile was sad. “I know. But wouldn’t Pistol Pierre have sounded worse?” He shook his head. “Lucky Pierre, always in the middle. I talked with the contractor last night. The remodeling should be finished by next Tuesday.”
The second floor was large enough to include living quarters for me. Tonight I would tell my two roomies in our Pacific Palisades apartment that I would be deserting them at the end of the month. I drove out to Westwood, where my mother and sister had a French pastry shop.
My sister, Adele, was behind the counter. My mother was in the back, smoking a cigarette. She is a chain smoker, my mother, the only nicotine addict in the family. She is a slim, trim, and testy forty-seven-year-old tiger.
“Well—?” she asked.
“We won,” I told her. “It will be the Pierre Apoyan Investigative Service.”
“You won,” she corrected me. “You and Vartan. It wasn’t my idea.”
“Are there any croissants left?” I asked.
“On the shelf next to the oven.” She shook her head. “That horny old bastard! All the nice women I found for him—”
“Who needs a cow when milk is cheap?” I asked.
“Don’t be vulgar,” she said. “And if you do, get some new jokes.”
I buttered two croissants, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down across from her. I said, “The rumor I heard years ago is that Vartan came on to you before you met Dad.”
“The rumor is true,” she admitted. “But if I wanted to marry an adulterer I would have stayed in France.”
“And then you never would have met Dad. You did okay, Ma.”
“I sure as hell did. He’s all man.”
The thought came to me that if he were all man, the macho type, my first name would not be Pierre. I didn’t voice the thought; I preferred to drink my coffee, not wear it.
She said, “I suppose that you’ll be carrying a gun again in this new profession you and Vartan dreamed up?”
“Ma, at Arden I carried a gun only when I worked guard duty. I never carried one when I did investigative work. This will not be guard duty.”
She put out her cigarette and stood up. “That’s something, I suppose. You’re coming for dinner on Sunday, of course?”
“Of course,” I said.
She went out to take over the counter. Adele came in to have a cup of coffee. She was born eight years after I was; she is twenty and romantically inclined. She has our mother’s slim, dark beauty and our father’s love of the theater. She was currently sharing quarters with an aspiring actor. My father was a still cameraman at Elysian Films.
“Mom looks angry,” she said. “What did you two argue about this time?”
“My new office. Uncle Vartan is going to back me.”
She shook her head. “What a waste! With your looks you’d be a cinch in films.”
“Even prettier than your Ronnie?”
“Call it a tie,” she said. “You don’t like him, do you?”
Her Ronnie was an aspiring actor who called himself Ronnie Egan. His real name was Salvatore Martino. I shrugged.
“He’s got another commercial coming up next week. And his agent thinks he might be able to work me into it.”