Violent Ward

‘You must be the poet who writes for the fortune cookies,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘Just tickets.’

‘For the police charity concert?’ I said. ‘Who are you having this year—’

‘Yah, Miss Demeanor Washington and Felonious Monk,’ he interrupted me. ‘That’s getting to be a tired old joke, Mr Murphy.’

I knew he was just trying to make me feel bad about having him go inside first. But what is a cop paid to do anyway? Don’t get me wrong; I like cops but not at the fold of a tough day, right? And not when they are doing a Lennie Bernstein with their nightstick.

‘Just you living in the house, Mr Murphy?’

‘You got it.’

‘Big place for just one person.’

‘No, it’s just the right size. Listen, wise guy, I’ve put this mansion on the market four times in a row with three different real estate dummies in different-colored blazers. Three times it went into escrow, and three times the deal fell apart. What else would you like to know?’

‘Nothing,’ said the cop. ‘You explicated it just fine.’ I followed him outside. Explicated: what kind of a word is that?

We were standing out front smelling the orange trees, and I was remembering that if I roust these guys too much they might Breathalyze me, so I was taken suddenly good-natured: smiling and saying good night and thank you, and without any kind of warning there comes a noise and a scuffle as some dumb jerk of a burglar jumps out of my best bougainvillea and runs down the side alley.

It was damned dark. The plump cop didn’t hesitate for a second. He was off after him and moving with amazing speed for his age and weight and leg length. I couldn’t see a thing in the darkness but I followed on as best I could, clearly hearing the clattering sounds of their feet and then the loud and fierce creak of my back fence as first the perpetrator and then the cop vaulted over it into my neighbor’s yard. Behind me, I heard the scratchy sounds of voices on the police radio: the second cop was calling for backup. Then he changed his mind and said they were okay. What did he know? He was in the car with the heater on.

The fugitive was scrambling across the backyards to the street on the other side of the block. I knew the scam. Some other perp would be arriving there in a car to pick him up. The newspapers kept saying it had become a popular modus operandi for these suburban break-in artists. The papers said the cops should be countering it with random patrols and better intelligence work. Those newspaper guys know everything, right? Sometimes I wonder why these guys and gals writing in the newspaper don’t take over the whole world and make it faultless like them.

Bam! Now I heard the noise of someone blundering into my neighbor’s elaborate barbecue setup. Crash, crunch, and clatter; there go the grills and irons, the gas bottle thumps to the ground, and finally the tin trays are making a noise like a collapsing xylophone.

‘Owwwww … errrrrr!’

I stood there hoping it marked the perpetrator’s downfall, but the cry had the tenor trill of the plump cop. ‘Watch out!’ I shouted as loud as I could shout, but I was too late. Even before I reached the fence there was an almighty splash and another cry of anguish with a lot of shouting and gurgling.

The other cop, the young thin one, came rushing over to me with his gun drawn. He looked at the fence. ‘What happened?’

‘Sounds like your partner went into my neighbor’s pool.’

‘Holy cow,’ he said quietly and glared at me. ‘You son of a bitch, you let him do that?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ I said. ‘It’s a pool, not a booby trap. We didn’t dig it out in secret and cover it with leaves and twigs.’

‘Are you all right, Steve?’ he called into the darkness. I could hear his partner wading through the water.

There was the sound of a man climbing onto dry land. ‘The bastard got away.’ The half-drowned voice was low and breathless as he came back along the alley and opened my neighbor’s side gate. Shoes slapped water; he was wringing it from his shirt. More water flooded off him as he squeezed his pants and continued cursing. He came very close to me, as if he was going to get violent: he smelled strongly of the pool chemicals that cut the algae back.

‘You’d better come in and dry off,’ I said. My neighbor was nowhere to be seen and all his lights were out. Professor Klopstock certainly knew when to make himself scarce.

‘Why don’t you drop dead?’ he replied. You’d think they would have been mad at my neighbor, but the wet one was acting like I’d switched off the pool lights and lured him on.

‘We’ll get back to the precinct house,’ the dry one said. ‘We’re off duty in thirty minutes.’

‘Suit yourself,’ I said. Now that we were standing in the dim antiprowler light from my porch, I saw how wet he was. Up to his waist he was soaked, but his shoulders were only partly wet. He must have gone in at the shallow end, where all the toys and the inflated yellow alligator are floating, and recovered his balance before going under.

‘I should book you, smart-ass,’ said the wet one.

Book me? ‘What for?’

‘Disorderly conduct,’ he said.

‘Next time you take a midnight dip,’ I said, ‘don’t count on me for the kiss of life.’

‘And next time you get burglarized, drop a dime to your interior decorator,’ he said. I guess he was mad that I’d told him not to chip my paintwork.

They both got into the black-and-white, with the wet one moving carefully, and drove away. Once they’d sailed off into the night I went inside, poured myself a drink, sank down on the sofa, and kicked off my shoes. With a picture window in this town, who needs television? I looked around me; I should make more serious efforts to sell the house. Maybe if we swung a new office from Petrovitch I could rent a small service apartment somewhere nearby. If I could find a place real close, I could leave my car parked at the office. Why hadn’t I sold years ago? I knew the answer. This is the house where I’d been happy. Betty had brought Danny back here from the hospital, and everything in the house reminded me of those days. Under the dining room table were two cardboard boxes containing ornaments and chinaware. When Betty first left me I decided to move out right away and started packing up the breakable stuff. But it was a dispiriting task and I soon gave up. Now the half-filled boxes were just collecting dust under a dining table I never used. I had to do something about my life; it was a mess.

What a tacky day I’d had. And then, just to make it complete, the phone gets up on its hind legs and warbles at me. ‘Is that you, Mickey?’ said a voice I recognized.

‘No, it’s his valet. I’ll put you through to the solarium.’

‘This is Goldie,’ he said. ‘Goldie Arnez.’

‘Yeah, I knew which one it was,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got a confusingly large number of acquaintances named Goldie.’

‘You slipped away without my seeing you go.’

‘Did I? I do that sometimes, when the hands are creeping toward the witching hour and I’ve swallowed too many of those sharp little sticks they spear the cocktail wieners on.’

‘Mr Petrovitch wants to talk with you.’

‘Put him on.’

A polite little chuckle. ‘Tomorrow. Nine A.M. sharp. At Camarillo airport. Bring all the papers concerning Vic Crichton’s deal with the British lord. The British companies and all.’

‘Camarillo?’

‘It’s a short drive down the freeway, Mickey. And at that time of day you should have the westbound side all to yourself.’

‘I would have thought a rich guy like that would have a hangar in John Wayne or Santa Monica, some place with a fancy restaurant.’

‘I got news for you. Rich guys like that have a chef right on the plane, cooking them all the fancy food they can eat.’

‘In the main building? Where will I find him?’

‘There’s no main building. You’ll spot his limo: white with tinted glass. Just make sure you bring the papers, like I said.’

‘I’m not sure I can do that. Those papers concern a client. There is a matter of confidentiality involved.’

‘Just bring the files.’

‘Like I’m telling you, Goldie. This is a matter of confidentiality, client-attorney confidentiality.’