He nodded once, pleased. “Good.”
I sat and watched while he finished signing his name to the check. He tore it out and pushed it toward me, tucking the checkbook into the inner pocket of his suit coat. “My address and telephone number are on that in case you need to get in touch.”
I pulled a standard contract form out of my desk drawer and took a few minutes to fill it in. I got his signature and then I made a note of Tony Gahan’s last known address, a house in Colgate, the township just north of Santa Teresa. I was already feeling some low-level dread, wishing I hadn’t agreed to do anything. Still, I’d committed myself, the contract was signed, and I figured I’d make the best of it. How much trouble could it be, thought I.
He stood up and I did too, moving with him as he walked toward the door. With both of us on our feet, I could see how much taller he was than I … maybe six-four to my five-foot-six. He paused with his hand on the knob, gazing down at me with the same remote stare.
“One other thing you might need to know about Tony Gahan,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“He’s fifteen years old.”
I stood there and watched Alvin Limardo move off down the hall. I should have called him back, folks. I should have known right then that it wasn’t going to turn out well. Instead I closed the office door and returned to my desk. On impulse, I opened the French doors and went out on the balcony. I scanned the street below, but there was no sign of him. I shook my head, dissatisfied.
I locked the cashier’s check in my file cabinet. When the bank opened on Monday, I’d put it in my safe deposit box until I located Tony Gahan and then turn it over to him. Fifteen?
At noon, I closed up the office and went down the back stairs to the parking lot, where I retrieved my VW, a decaying sedan with more rust than paint. This is not the sort of vehicle you’d choose for a car chase, but then most of what a P.I. does for a living isn’t that exciting anyway. I’m sometimes reduced to serving process papers, which gets hairy now and then, but much of the time I do preemployment background checks, skip-tracing, or case-and-trial preparation for a couple of attorneys here in town. My office is provided by California Fidelity Insurance, a former employer of mine. The company headquarters is right next door and I still do sporadic investigations for them in exchange for a modest two rooms (one inner, one outer) with a separate entrance and a balcony overlooking State Street.
I went by the post office and dropped the mail in the box and then I stopped by the bank and deposited Alvin Limardo’s four hundred dollars in my checking account.
Four business days later, on a Thursday, I got a letter from the bank, informing me that the check had bounced. According to their records, Alvin Limardo had closed out his account. In proof of this, I was presented with the check itself stamped across the face with the sort of officious looking purple ink that makes it clear the bank is displeased.
So was I.
My account had been debited the four hundred dollars and I was charged an additional three bucks, apparently to remind me, in the future, not to deal with deadbeats. I picked up the phone and called Alvin Limardo’s number in Los Angeles. A disconnect. I’d been canny enough to ignore the search for Tony Gahan until the check cleared, so it wasn’t as if I’d done any work to date. But how was I going to get the check replaced? And what was I going to do with the twenty-five grand in the meantime? By then, the cashier’s check was tucked away in my safe deposit box, but it was useless to me and I didn’t want to proceed with delivery until I knew I’d be paid. In theory, I could have dropped Alvin Limardo a note, but it might have come bouncing back at me with all the jauntiness of his rubber check, and then where would I be? Crap. I was going to have to drive down to L.A. One thing I’ve learned about collections-the faster you move, the better your chances are.
I looked up his street address in my Thomas Guide to Los Angeles Streets. Even on the map, it didn’t look like a nice neighborhood. I checked my watch. It was then 10:15. It was going to take me ninety minutes to reach L.A., probably another hour to locate Limardo, chew him out, get the check replaced, and grab a bite of lunch. Then I’d have to drive ninety minutes back, which would put me in the office again at 3:30 or 4:00. Well, that wasn’t too bad. It was tedious, but necessary, so I decided I might as well quit bellyaching and get on with it.
By 10:30, I’d gassed up my car and I was on the road.
Chapter 2
I left the Ventura Freeway at Sherman Oaks, taking the San Diego Freeway south as far as Venice Boulevard. I exited, turning right at the bottom of the off-ramp. According to my calculations, the address I wanted was somewhere close. I doubled back toward Sawtelle, the street that hugs the freeway on a parallel route.
Once I saw the building, I realized that I’d spotted the rear of it from the freeway as I passed. It was painted the color of Pepto-Bismol and sported a sagging banner of Day-Glo orange that said NOW RENTING. The building was separated from the roadway by a concrete rain wash and protected from speeding vehicles by a ten-foot cinderblock wall sprayed with messages for passing motorists. Spiky weeds had sprung up along the base of the wall and trash had accumulated like hanging ornaments in the few hearty bushes that managed to survive the gas fumes. I had noted the building because it seemed so typical of L.A.: bald, cheaply constructed, badly defaced. There was something meanspirited about its backside, and the entrance turned out to be worse.
The street was largely made up of California “bungalows,” small two-bedroom houses of wood and stucco with ragged yards and no trees. Most of them had been painted in pastel hues, odd shades of turquoise and mauve, suggestive of discount paints that hadn’t quite covered the color underneath. I found a parking space across the street and locked my car, then crossed to the apartment complex.
The building was beginning to disintegrate. The stucco looked mealy and dry, the aluminum window frames pitted and buckling. The wrought-iron gate near the front had been pulled straight out of the supporting wall, leaving holes large enough to stick a fist into. Two apartments at street level were boarded up. The management had thoughtfully provided a number of garbage bins near the stairs, without (apparently) paying for adequate trash removal services. A big yellow dog was scratching through this pile of refuse with enthusiasm, though all he seemed to net for his efforts was a quarter moon of pizza. He trotted off, the rim of crust clenched in his jaws like a bone.
I moved into the shelter of the stairs. Most of the mailboxes had been ripped out and mail was scattered in the foyer like so much trash. According to the address on the face of the check, Limardo lived in apartment 26, which I surmised was somewhere above. There were apparently forty units, only a few marked with the occupants’ names. That seemed curious to me. In Santa Teresa, the post office won’t even deliver junk mail unless a box is provided, clearly marked, and in good repair. I pictured the postman, emptying out his mail pouch like a wastepaper basket, escaping on foot then before the inhabitants of the building swarmed over him like bugs.
The apartments were arranged in tiers around a courtyard “garden” of loose gravel, pink paving stones, and nut grass. I picked my way up the cracked concrete steps.
At the second-floor landing, a black man was seated in a rickety metal folding chair, whittling with a knife on a bar of Ivory soap. There was a magazine open on his lap to catch the shavings. He was heavyset and shapeless, maybe fifty years old, his short-cropped frizzy hair showing gray around his ears. His eyes were a muddy brown, the lid of one pulled askew by a vibrant track of stitches that cut down along his cheek.
He took me in at a glance, turning his attention then to the sculpture taking form in his hands. “You must be looking for Alvin Limardo,” he said.
“That’s right,” I said, startled. “How’d you guess?”
He flashed a smile at me, showing perfect teeth, as snowy as the soap he carved. He tilted his face up at me, the injured eye creating the illusion of a wink. “Baby, you ain’t live here. I know ever’body live here. And from the look on your face, you ain’t thinkin’ to rent. If you knew where you were going, you’d be headed straight there. Instead, you be lookin’ all around like somethin’ might jump out on you, including me,” he said and then paused to survey me. “I’d say you do social work, parole, something like that. Maybe welfare.”