“Where are we going?” I asked, trying to sound calm. I wasn’t calm. I was scared. Very scared. Nobody answered.
He got onto Washington. Longingly, I watched the tall, lighted office buildings of Marina del Rey passing outside the window. I thought about the couples and swinging singles out there in their favorite watering holes, drinking and dancing and performing their birdlike courtship rituals, trying to get the magic going for a night. They weren’t exactly my kind of joints, but I wasn’t so narrow-minded that I wasn’t willing to bend a rule for an evening. “You guys want to pick up some chicks? I know a great place right over here—”
The gun barrel tried to find the seat behind my back and I sucked in some air and shut up. We got onto Lincoln and crossed Ballona Creek and the buildings were gone as we headed into the barren brown hills. The driver turned off onto a dirt road and we churned up dust for a short distance until he pulled up and stopped in front of a fence at the edge of the runway of a private industrial airport. They opened the doors and got out; the driver had a gun now too, a .38. “Out,” the sagging-faced man said.
There were no stars, just a limitless blackness. The red lights bordering the runway blinked in sequence, away from us, beckoning planes from the dark and lonely sky.
“Okay,” Saggy Face asked. “Who are you working for?”
“Truth, justice, and the American way,” I said, I don’t know why.
Nose Job stepped in fast and brought a hook from somewhere south of Tierra del Fuego that sent me to my knees, gasping for air like a sick guppy. He bent down and grabbed me under the arms, hoisted me up easily and leaned me against the car. Saggy Face leaned close, his breath hot and moist in my face. He was chewing a mint; I guess there’s always something to be thankful for, if you just look for it.
He jammed his gun in my crotch. That didn’t feel too good, either, but I couldn’t work up enough breath to tell him. “Now listen, shit-for-brains,” he said, “we can dance all night if you want, but we’ve all got better things to do, including you, I imagine. Now, I’m gonna ask you one more time: Who are you working for?”
I had to admit, he was a hell of a debater. “John Anixter,” I gasped, barely.
He nodded and smiled and stepped back. He nodded at Nose Job, who put away his gun and grabbed my wrist before I had a chance to resist. He yanked my hand out and held it on the hood of my car while Saggy Face brought the barrel of the .45 down on it. I screamed as the pain shot halfway up my arm to my elbow, then I slid down the side of the car.
All I could do was cradle the hand and rock back and forth in the dirt as Saggy Face hovered over me and said: “The nuns used to do that to me in school when I did something I shouldn’ta. You been doing something you shouldn’ta, Asch. You been sticking your nose in other people’s private business. I think we both know who I mean. Now if you keep it up, we’re gonna have to come back and visit, and if we do, it ain’t gonna be a slap on the wrist, it’s gonna be traction-time. You get where I’m coming from?”
I might have said yes, I’m not sure. My hand felt as if it were full of broken glass.
“We’ll leave your car back at your apartment,” he said, and they got into the car and drove away, leaving me there.
I watched my taillights recede down the road and stood up. A cold, damp fog had begun to roll in from the ocean, chilling the sweat on my face and making me shiver. Maybe it would numb my swelling hand. I took a deep breath and started off. It was going to be a long, cold walk home, but I didn’t mind. I kind of enjoyed being by myself.
I woke up groggy from the pain pills the E.R. doctor had given me. I also had a headache, which got worse when I reached up and smacked myself with the cast I’d forgotten about that was holding my two broken metacarpals in place. I swore and rubbed my head with my good hand, then got up and made coffee. I made extra noise doing that, thinking about how I owed those guys and how I would more than likely never get the chance to repay them.
After three cups, I’d cleared enough cobwebs to call Al. He had Phalen’s arrest report. I thought about telling him about my dance partners last night, but rejected the idea. He would have just wanted me to waste a lot of time looking at mug shots, and I wasn’t in the mood. It wouldn’t have done any good, anyway. Even if I could have identified them, they would have had six witnesses who had been playing poker with them last night, my car was outside where they had thoughtfully dropped it, and there was no way to prove that my hand had not been stepped on when I’d bent down to pick up a quarter from the sidewalk. My blood pressure went up ten points when I thought about it, but I kept my mouth shut and took down what Al gave me.
Phalen had been arrested after the fire department had found evidence of arson in the grease fire that completely destroyed his Encino restaurant, Arnie’s Greenhouse. Traces of accelerants, possibly gasoline, had been found in the kitchen area where the fire had started, but Phalen claimed that those were possibly cleaning solvents which had been kept in a closet there. The case was weak, but it had been filed, anyway.
I thanked Al and called a friend of mine at Hooper Holms. The Hooper Holms Casualty Index in Morristown, New Jersey, contains the names of more than six million individuals and lists their insurance histories. The purpose is to spot insurance fraud. They had Phalen’s name. Before moving to California, Phalen had owned two buildings in Baltimore that had mysteriously gone up in flames. No legal charges had ever been brought against him in those cases and the insurance claims had been paid.
Arnie the Torch. With three fires to his credit in the past ten years, one more business going up in smoke would certainly bring him more heat than just the combustible kind. Maybe he figured it was time to humanize him claim base.
I called Anixter and gave him a report. When I told him about my welcome home committee, he sounded shocked. “My God. Are you all right?”
“A broken hand. They were just administering an object lesson. They let me know that next time, the damage would be more extensive.”
“You think they were working for this Phalen character?”
“Yeah, I think. And now he knows I’m working for you, not his wife.”
“Have you told the police?”
“It wouldn’t do any good—”
“But if he and Rhonda have been carrying on an affair all this time, and he’s the kind of man you say he is, they could have plotted Chip’s death from the beginning. He could have targeted Chip as a mark and sent her after him.”
That thought had crossed my mind. Phalen certainly had the connections and the experience, and his mind seemed to run in those directions. “It’s possible,” I said, more to keep him from running off on that track than anything. “Did Chip own his own scuba gear, Mr. Anixter?”
“Huh? Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“I should be. I paid enough for it. Why?”
I bypassed the question. “I’d like to put a twenty-four hour surveillance on both the woman and Phalen, Mr. Anixter, but that would run into some money—”
“I told you I don’t care what it costs,” he snapped.
My kind of client. I told him I’d keep in touch, then called Transcontinental Life. The agent handling the Anixter claim was named Manning and I repeated what I’d learned to him, then asked if he could send an investigator over to Rhonda Anixter’s apartment and on some pretext ask to see Chip’s diving gear. When he asked what I was looking for, I told him I basically wanted an inventory of what was there. He said it should be no problem, and promised to get right on it.
I called some people I knew and arranged for round-the-clock surveillance on both Rhonda and Phalen, warning them to be careful, then called the phone company. I told the service rep that my name was Chip Anixter and that I’d just gotten my phone bill and noticed I’d been billed for a call to Fort Lauderdale I’d never made. I gave her Rhonda’s number and she came back on the line and said she could find no record of any such call billed to that number. Indignantly, I asked what calls had been made in the past month that she did have a record for, and she read off a list. I took them down and hung up.