Violent Ward

‘Better if you don’t drive,’ I advised him. At least he didn’t call it Tinseltown, the way some of them did.

‘Dot will drive,’ said Vic. ‘She’s wonderful in the driving seat, aren’t you, Dotty? Unless we can find a motel, that is.’ He slapped her rear gently, and she bared her teeth in an angry smile. He finished his champagne. ‘I think I need another drink, a real drink this time.’

‘You’ve had enough, Vic. We’ve got to go,’ she said.

She took him by the arm, and he allowed himself to be guided away. ‘When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. Right, Mickey, my old lovely?’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘See you around, Victor. ’Bye, Dot.’ He turned and, with one hand on her buttocks, shepherded her toward the bar. I wondered if he knew that Petrovitch had put a partner into my law business. If not, this didn’t seem to be the right time to discuss it. Victor waved a splay-fingered hand in the air. He didn’t look back. He seemed to know I’d be watching him go and calculating how much I was going to lose in fees next year. Oh, well, I hate crooks. I should never have become a lawyer.

The reception line was still going, but people were no longer coming through the door. This was a celebration for employees and associates, and these guests didn’t come late to a Petrovitch bash if they knew what was good for them. I decided to get a closer look at Peter the Great, whom someone seemed so keen to murder, and inched my way across the room to where the bright lights and TV cameras had been arranged just in case Petrovitch deigned to step over and tell the hushed American public the secret of making untold millions of dollars while still looking young and beautiful enough to run for President. He was dressed in a dark blue silk tuxedo with a frilly blue shirt, floppy bow tie, and patent shoes with gold buckles. He had a loose gold bracelet and lots of gold rings and a thin gold watch on a thin gold bracelet: more jewelry than his wife, in fact. He was tall and well-built and didn’t look as if he’d need the help of Goldie or any of his muscle men to look after himself. His face was bronzed and clear, almost like the skin of a young woman, and his eyes were blue and active, moving as if he was expecting physical attack. Maybe Goldie had told him about the bomb in the phone.

As I got near the people thronging around him, the thin elderly man at his side said, ‘And this is Mr Murphy of the law partnership downtown.’

‘Mickey!’ said Petrovitch. ‘It’s a long time.’ He extended his hand and gave me a firm pumping shake while grabbing my elbow in his other hand. It was another of those Hollywood handshakes, and with it he gave me a Hollywood smile and that very very sincere Hollywood stare too. I wonder if he did it the same way in New York. ‘How are tricks, buddy?’

‘What a memory you’ve got,’ I said.

‘You fighting the taxi driver, to make him take me to the hotel? How could I forget?’ Another big smile. ‘You drank me under the table. It doesn’t happen often.’ The thin elderly sidekick smiled too, both men operated by the same machinery.

‘Just hold it like that!’ It was a photographer crouching down low to sight up one of those shots that make tycoons look statuesque.

‘It’s okay,’ Petrovitch told me, indicating the photographer. ‘He’s one of our people.’ With that comforting reassurance, he grabbed my hand again and held it still so it didn’t blur, while turning his head away from me to give the camera a big smile. A flash captured this contrived moment for history.

‘Murphy,’ I heard the elderly man tell the photographer. ‘Mickey: business associate and old Marine Corps friend.’ The photographer wrote it down.

The thin elderly man smiled, and a gentle pressure upon the small of my back propelled me out of the shot as another business associate and old friend of Mr Petrovitch was given the handshake and smile treatment.

With the benediction still ringing in my ears, I shuffled off through the crush. I saw Goldie standing guard just a few paces away. He met my eyes and grinned. That guy really earned his salary, judging by the matter-of-fact way he defused bombs. Wondering how often such things happened to them, I went to the bar and got another whisky. ‘Old Marine Corps friend.’ What was that guy talking about? I looked around. This wasn’t really a party, it was a press call with drinks and music. Petrovitch had the clean-cut film-star image and the rags-to-riches story that America loves. Tonight he was showing once again that he knew exactly how to turn a few thousand dollars’ worth of tax-deductible entertaining into a message to his stockholders that sent his prices soaring when the rest of the market was struggling to keep afloat.

‘Did you get your press kit?’ A pretty girl in a striped leotard tried to hand me a bulky packet while her companion offered me a pink-colored flute of champagne.

I declined both. ‘I’m drinking,’ I said, holding my whisky aloft.

‘Everyone has to have champagne,’ said the girl, pushing the glass into my free hand. ‘It’s to toast Mr Petrovitch’s health and prosperity.’

‘Oh, in that case …’ I said. I took it, held it up, and poured it into a pot where miniature palms were growing.

The girls gulped, smiled, and moved on. Dealing with folks who don’t want to drink to the health and prosperity of Mr Petrovitch had not been part of the training schedule.

‘I saw you do that, Mickey.’

I looked up; it was Ingrid Petrovitch, née Ibsen, standing on the rostrum behind me. She looked ravishingly beautiful, just the way she’d been in my fevered high school dreams. She gave me a jokey scowl and waved a finger, the way she’d done back in those long-ago days when I’d pulled up at night in my father’s car and suggested we climb into the back seat.

‘Hello, Ingrid,’ I said. It sounded dumb and I felt stupid, the way some people do feel when confronted by someone they love too much. I’d always been a klutz like that when I was with her: I never did figure out why.

‘Hello, Mickey,’ she said, very softly. ‘It’s lovely to think that some things never change.’ She turned away and kept moving to where a line had formed to get a smile from her husband.

‘Ingrid …’

She stopped. ‘Yes, Mickey?’

‘It’s good to see you again.’

She smiled sweetly and moved on. I guess she was telling me I’d had my chance with her and blew it. And that was long ago. It was nice of her not to say it.

3

I drove back from the Petrovitch bash with a lot of worries on my mind. The Ventura Freeway, U.S. 101, runs west to Woodland Hills but it doesn’t run far enough or fast enough, because when you get there you might as well never have left the city.

When we first went to live in Woodland Hills it was a village. Betty loved it. It was country-style living, she said, a great place to bring up children. A village, did I say? Now it’s got all your user-unfriendly banks, plastic fast food, international high-rise hotels with atriums and shopping malls with floors made from Italian marble, indoor palm trees, and fountains with colored lights, not to mention vagrants sleeping out-doors in cardboard boxes.

They say this is a early-go-to-bed town, so who are all these guys doing the Freeway 101 assignment in the small hours? Newly waxed Porsches, dented Mazdas, Chevy pickups, stretch Caddies with dark glass and TV antennas – who are these guys? Tell me. That journey home took me the best part of an hour, crawling along in a pox of red lights. I tuned in to the news on the car radio. It was a litany of violence: a decomposing corpse found in a closet in Newport Beach, a liquor store stickup in Koreatown, a drive-by killing in Ramparts, and if that wasn’t enough you could join the crowds in Westwood flocking to see a movie about a cannibalistic serial killer. That’s show business?

As I got near my house I saw blue-colored flashes illuminating the trees. Uh-huh? There were two black-and-whites parked on my frontage. One of them still had the beacon revolving and its doors open.

I drove up and parked on my ramp. As I stopped and lowered the window, a young nervous cop came at me out of the darkness waving a handgun. ‘Are you the resident here?’ He was a thin kid – straight out of the Police Academy, unless I’m very much mistaken – growing a straggly mustache to make himself look old enough to buy a beer without flashing ID.

‘You got it, kid. You want to point that thing away from me?’

‘Mr Murphy?’ He looked up as the second car started up and pulled away.

‘That’s right.’ As I said it, another cop arrived panting from somewhere behind my house. He was a plump old fellow with his pistol in his hand. He was oriental-looking. You don’t get many oriental cops, do you? Hispanics, yes; black guys, even; but how many Asian cops do you see?

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. I went to the door and got out my keys.

‘There was a prowler,’ said the plump one. ‘A neighbor called it in. Saw someone in your yard. Do you want to go inside and see if he got entry?’

‘Confucius say, Cop with gun go first,’ I told him.

Before anyone could go anywhere there was the sound of a nearby door catch, and the prowler light illuminated the doorstep of my next-door neighbor, Henry Klopstock. He’d come out to watch. He was some kind of English teacher at UCLA. His wife liked to call him Professor Klopstock. ‘Is everything okay, Mr Murphy?’ He was leaning across the orange trees, the flashing lights illuminating his lined face and five-o’clock shadow and his slicked-down hair. When my son was dating the Klopstock daughter he was all smiles and Hello, Mickey. Then they split up – you know the way kids are – and suddenly he’s giving me the ‘Mr Murphy’ syntax.

‘Sure it is. Didn’t you hear the sirens? I always have a police escort now I’m running for mayor.’

‘Okay, okay. Sorry I asked,’ he said. I saw him exchange rolling eye glances with the Asian cop. So why ask dumb questions, right?

I went up the path and unlocked my front door and waited while the fat one stepped past me into the entry. Rex, my terrier, suddenly awoke and came scampering from the kitchen to growl at both of us.

‘It’s me, Rex,’ I said.

Rex crouched very low, crawled around, and watched resentfully. The cop looked at me, looked at Rex, and then stepped over him to jab the kitchen door with his nightstick. It moved just a little, but his second jab made the door open all the way. ‘Mind my paintwork, buddy,’ I said. ‘Try a little tenderness, like the song says.’

There was no one there, just the little safety lights that switch on automatically when it gets dark. He went from room to room, all through the house. I followed him. It wasn’t really a search and he didn’t do it like in the movies; he wasn’t agile enough. He knew there was no one there, and he was determined to make me feel bad about making him do it. He just plodded around, puffing, sighing, and tapping the furniture with his baton. He wound up inspecting the stuff I’ve got decorating all the walls. Broadway posters and signed eight-by-ten glossies of the stars. My dad left me his collection, and I added to it. It goes back to Show Boat. Forgive me, Dad; it goes back to Rose Marie. It’s the greatest. My dad got signed photos of everyone from Cole Porter to Ethel Merman.

The cop inspected these pictures and posters without enthusiasm. ‘Seems like your intruder didn’t get in.’ He said it like he was consoling me.

‘Is that your professional opinion?’ I said.

Having studied the titles of my books, the level of my whisky, the corn flakes supply, and the big colored photo of Danny that’s on the breakfast counter, he turned to me, gave a grin, and hitched both thumbs into his gun belt. ‘That’s right. You can rest your head on your pillow tonight and enjoy untroubled sleep.’