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  He unfolded a manila envelope and passed me a mimeographed sheet. It was an ugly flyer with portraits of Lenin, Mao and Senator Hawthorne across the top and a larger photograph of Howard Eppis in the middle. I read the copy:

  Brothers and Sisters—Join me in supporting Senator Miles Hawthorne in his quest for the Presidency. I have talked personally with Senator Hawthorne and am convinced he is a great revolutionary. He will do for Amerika what Mao and Lenin have done for China and Russia. Vote for Hawthorne! Stuff the ballot boxes for him if you can!!!

  Howard Eppis’ signature was on the bottom above the logo of the Free Amerika Party (FAP). On the opposite side of the page was a photograph of Eppis and Hawthorne shaking hands at some political rally.

  “Toilet paper, isn’t it?” Sebastian watched my reaction as I held onto the edges of the flyer.

  “How many did they send out?”

  “A few hundred so far. You can keep this one, if you want.”

  “What do you want me to do with it?”

  “Find out where it came from.”

  I didn’t say anything. The county coordinator tugged at his cuffs to make sure his shirt was straight. I could hear Lila Shea’s voice out in the corridor, then the ringing of a telephone. Sebastian leaned in toward me again and gripped on the back of my chair. “I can’t understand what Eppis expects to gain by this, or even if he’s acting on his own. But whoever’s behind it, we’ve got to stop him and fast.”

  “Do you have any ideas?” I asked.

  Sebastian’s answer was interrupted by a knock on the door. “May I come in?” It was Sugars. I couldn’t tell how long he had been standing there. The young wizard entered and took a seat to my right, extracting a panatella from his shirt pocket, one of those eighty-five-cent Jamaican jobs with dark wrappers. “Are you going to help us?” he asked me.

  “I don’t know. Normally I find the Democratic Party about as attractive as a den of vipers. Old guard and reformers.” I watched them. Sugars lit his cigar waiting for me to continue. “But in this case I kind of owe it to a friend of mine in your campaign. I might be persuaded to try it for a few days.” Sugars smiled, although neither he nor Sebastian appeared to know who my friend was. “But I do this for a living, of course. I’m not a volunteer for Hawthorne.”

  Abruptly the smiles faded. The two men exchanged a look.

  “I thought they called you the People’s Detective,” said Sugars, not without some sarcasm.

  “The papers say you guys have a million four in campaign contributions. You’re not going to tell me that all came from welfare families.”

  “Look,” said Sebastian, pointing at me with the coffee stirrer. “Our budget’s a lot tighter than you think. . . .”

  “I come cheap, Sebastian. Three hundred a week plus expenses. Compare that with what you pay your high-priced media men and razzle-dazzle pollsters.”

  Sugars didn’t flinch.

  Sebastian turned to him and the whiz kid got up and walked over to a computer against the side wall. He punched a couple of buttons and a series of cards started pouring into the slots like the questions on a television quiz show. I wondered if it was rigged. Sugars took the top card and handed it to the county coordinator.

  “All right,” he said. “But it goes no farther than this room. If anybody asks, you’re a dietary consultant.”

  Sebastian unlocked the top right drawer of the desk and counted out three hundred dollars and then another two hundred for expenses. In twenties. I took the money and stuffed it in the breast pocket of my work shirt.

  “So I find Eppis and make him stop the smear.”

  They both nodded. I stood to leave.

  “What’s the last address you have on him?”

  “23 Columbia Drive,” said Sebastian. “In Venice. But you needn’t bother. It’s boarded up tight.”

  Lila was waiting outside in her Volkswagen. On the way back we didn’t talk about what went on at the headquarters. She didn’t ask me about it and I wasn’t sure what she knew. We talked about old times, the friends we’d had and what happened since. Lila was silent about herself. A few words about graduate work in creative writing at San Francisco State and something about going to Europe to find herself, but then nothing. A large gap of nearly half a decade—as if she dissolved in some Parisian cafe then reemerged years later as a campaign worker for Senator Hawthorne. The lapse seemed peculiar to me at the time, but I didn’t press her. I assumed she would fill me in at some later date.

  We drove up Alvarado and into the Echo Park Hills. Lila’s fingers brushed the inside of my leg as she shifted up and down. I watched her, making no attempt to move away. But when she pulled up at my house, she leaned over and opened the door.

  “A private dick,” she said. “I never would have guessed.”

  “Neither would I.”

  3

  THE NEXT MORNING I got up with a sharp headache. I didn’t think I was going to like this case. Sebastian wasn’t so bad. And it was good to see Lila again. But Sugars reminded me of one of those adolescent old men I used to know at law school before I quit, the kind that paraded in three-piece suits discussing torts. Every argument had two sides. Pretending to be fair and pragmatic, they debated everything to death so they would never have to be responsible for a decision. In twenty years they’d be just like my New York relatives, riding through Harlem in their late-model Lincoln limousines with the windows rolled up for the air-conditioning and the radio tuned to WBAI.

  Besides, I didn’t have any particular bone to pick with Howard Eppis. He was only a second-rate radical, doing his bit. If he wanted to spoil Hawthorne’s chances, that was his privilege.

  I rolled over and reached for the hash pipe on the headboard. Maybe a few good hits would clear my temples. But the last of the hash had turned to ashes. I got up and looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and my hair was getting pretty stringy. I was in bad need of a shampoo. I bent down and threw some water on my face. Then I went over to the stove and started to make some instant coffee. I wondered if the Buick was going to make it up the hill this morning.

  Thirty minutes later I was wending my way through the back streets of Venice past those faded Victorian mansions which were once the elegant beach homes of the rich, looking for 23 Columbia Drive. I found it at the end of a cul-de-sac, a peculiar old duck complete with a widow’s walk and a pair of wooden lions guarding the front door. It was boarded up all right, with grass high enough to thresh and dandelions crawling through the door jams. A dusty For Sale sign from Pacific Properties, Marina del Rey, stood by the driveway. The front door was locked, but around the side I found a crack in one of the window shutters and looked in. The place was a morgue. Soot covered everything and the bathtub was coated with grime. The ceiling was stained an ugly mildew brown, and the cobwebs between the light fixtures were thick enough to swing on. If anybody had been living here in the last year, he was probably in a hospital by now sweating out some rare tropical disease. I backed away from the window and looked down the other side. Someone was watching me from the neighboring house through the slits of a Venetian blind.

  I returned to my car and drove off, heading toward the ocean. The decaying monuments of another age soon disappeared, giving way to the pre-fab mausoleums of our own—low-slung motel structures with names like Neptune’s Kingdom and Tahitian Singles Village West. The Marina itself was set up like a second-rate Disneyland. Pacific Properties stood behind a macramé fishnet between Sid’s Surf-o-rama and the Mermaid’s Booknook. A plastic parrot over the door croaked, “Ahoy, shipmates! Beach house or permanent home. . . . Buy Pacific!”

  I entered and was greeted by a handsome, greying man in yachting attire who bounded out of a deck chair in the front.

  “Good morning. My name is Charlie Flint. May I help you?”

  “Yes. I was interested in purchasing real estate in the Venice area.”

  “And what is your name, sir?”

  “Moses Wine.”


  Flint paused to write my name on a yellow legal pad, then turned up toward me again with the sincere smile of a mortician.

  “Well, Mose, you stopped at the right place. Were you thinking beach house, investment property or permanent home?”

  “I was thinking permanent home.”

  “Very good. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the relaxed beach lifestyle. What kind of house were you thinking, Mose, and what kind of figures . . . if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “About four bedrooms at twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “Twenty-five thousand.”

  Flint’s smile faded into a pout and then to a kind of awkward smirk. He walked around the side of his desk to a cork bulletin board and skimmed down the list of properties which were arranged by size and location. From behind I could see he was wearing a pair of those Swedish clogs and a rope belt tied in a cinch, pirate style.

  “I’m sorry, Mose, but I don’t think we have anything in your category at this time. You know it’s very difficult to find anything under fifty thousand within a half-mile of the Marina. . . .Will keep an eye out for you though.” He turned and extended a limp hand. “Glad you stopped at Pacific.”

  “Sure you don’t have anything, Mr. Flint?”

  “I just said . . . ”

  “What about the place on 23 Columbia Drive?”

  For a moment the realtor hesitated, then his hand went to his forehead as if trying to recall the address. “23 Columbia Drive, let me check our files.” He unlocked his bottom drawer and made a show of looking through a cardfile in a metal container, pulling out another card with a photograph and reading from it. From where I was standing, the house didn’t look anything like the one on Columbia Drive. “Sorry again, Mose. The owner will only accept an offer over fifty-six thousand dollars. Now if we’re talking those kinds of figures . . . ”

  “Fifty-six thousand? For that dump?”

  “Well. . . .”

  “It would take ten grand to fix the plumbing alone.”

  “We must respect our client’s wishes, Mose.”

  “Who owns the place?”

  Flint looked down at the card again, shaking his head and making a supercilious clucking noise.

  “What can I say, Mose? Our client has requested that he remain anonymous.”

  “Let me see that!”

  I reached forward and yanked the card out of his hand. Flint lunged at me, but I stepped away from him to the other side of the desk.

  “Give that back, Mr. Wine!”

  I looked at the card. It contained the specifications for an expensive beach front property at the tip of the Marina, a Spanish villa selling for $119,000.

  “All right, Flint, what’s the deal?”

  “What deal?”

  “How come you’re not telling me who owns that property?”

  “It’s just as I said. Our client prefers to remain anonymous. You were getting edgy so I thought the simplest way would. . . .” He was becoming conciliatory again. “Look, Mose, I don’t see why you care so much about that house. It’s not even a good buy at twenty-five thousand. I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy.”

  “Come off it, Flint. All I have to do is take the street address to the city engineer’s office for a legal description of the property and then go down to Title Insurance for the name of the owner.”

  “I wouldn’t waste your time, Mr. Wine. It’s registered under an alias. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some important calls to make.”

  He walked off to one of the desks in the rear and sat down, dialing a number rapidly while keeping his eyes glued on me. I couldn’t figure out why they left a For Sale sign on the property unless there was some real intention of selling it. Possibly it was an oversight. Or possibly it was a way to find out who was snooping around the premises. I tried to listen to what Flint said, but he was speaking very softly. He had curled his fingers over his mouth so his lips couldn’t be read. I started out. A mother and daughter entered the agency as I reached the door. Flint gave them the peace sign.

  On my way to the car, I stopped at the Mermaid’s Booknook and bought a copy of Rip It Off. An impressive stack was piled up beside the checkout counter next to a poster of Eppis’ grinning Harpo Marx face. With all those royalties, his publishers must have had some way of getting ahold of him—if they would tell me. I tossed the book into the back seat of the car and drove off. Pulling onto Lincoln Boulevard, I turned on the radio. I heard chimes and a cutesy little theme song played on the ocarina. It was one of those luncheon talk shows filled with mindless chatter against a background of tinkling glasses. The host had a voice like salt-water taffy on a desert rock.

  “Hello, again, friends. We’ve a surprise for you this afternoon, our town’s most famous political couple. Is it true you two powerbroking Wilsons are working full time behind the scenes on the Dillworthy campaign?”

  “Yes, it is, Bill. Arthur Dillworthy’s our man.”

  “What stratagems are you planning to bolster your candidate and derail Senator Hawthorne in his quest for the nomination?”

  “I don’t think that’s a problem, Bill. Arthur Dillworthy’s record speaks for itself. And I can promise you, one week before the date of the primary the people of this state will know where Miles Hawthorne stands too. They’ll see he’s too far out of the mainstream of American life.”

  I turned to a Spanish language station.

  In my rearview mirror I could see two large men in pastel banlon shirts seated in the front of a green Chevelle with an out-of-state license. One of them held what looked like a miniature camera in his right hand and appeared to be photographing my car. Trying to get a better look, I slowed down at the entrance to a shopping mall to let them come up alongside, but they turned off into the parking lot and vanished at the other end behind a bank.

  Farther along Lincoln, I stopped at a local bar to make a quick call to the Scotsford Press, Eppis’ publishers. A group of Chicano businessmen were seated at a corner table drinking Tecate from the can. I walked around them to the phone which was attached to the wall beside the jukebox. As I dialed, a Mexican woman wearing a dress like Lila Shea’s sat down at the table nearest me. She had one of those exquisite Indian faces like the peasant women in Orozco murals, but made up with a misty-green mascara around the eyes. I was staring at her feeling a little weakkneed when I connected with the Scotsford receptionist in New York.

  “273-4907.”

  “I’d like to speak with Howard Eppis’ editor.”

  “One mo-ment.”

  The Chicana ordered vermouth and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke in a steady stream toward me. She wore the sharp, flowery perfume that Latin women seem to prefer and a gold pendant in the shape of an Aztec god around her neck.

  “Lucy Garber’s office.”

  “I’d like to speak with Lucy Garber. This is Moses Wine calling.”

  “Does Ms. Garber know you?”

  “No, I . . . ”

  “Ms. Garber is very busy.”

  “I’m a private detective. I’d like to speak with her about one of her authors.”

  “We have a policy not to discuss our authors, sir.”

  “You’d better make an exception.”

  “I see. . . . One second.”

  The secretary put the telephone on hold. The Chicana stood up and walked in my direction. I could hear the nylon rubbing between her legs. She smiled at me, leaning up against the jukebox. I reached over and handed her a dime for the machine. She dropped the coin in the slot and pushed two buttons. A jazz samba by João Gilberto. She started swaying to the music.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Alora,” she said.

  I was about to say something else when I was interrupted by a voice on the line.

  “Lucy Garber speaking. Who’s calling?”

  “Hello, Ms. Garber. My name is Moses Wine.”

  “You’re a private detective, Mr. Wine?”

  “Yes,
I’m working for a client who must get in contact with one of your authors . . . Howard Eppis.”

  “I don’t disclose information about my authors.”

  “I know, but this is very important to my client, Ms. Garber. It could be life or death.”

  “Who is your client, Mr. Wine?”

  I watched Alora sway back and forth to the samba. Her hips moved in an undulating motion. The inside of her thighs was the color of café au lait on a summer morning. Her dress wasn’t like Lila Shea’s. It was much tighter and shorter.

  “Mr. Wine? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “I need to know who your client is before I can say anything.”

  “Look, Ms. Garber, I can assure you all we want is an address . . . some way of locating him.”

  The record ended and Alora smiled at me again. I smiled back.

  “Just some way of locating him, Ms. Garber. This may sound crazy, but the political future of our country could be in the balance.”

  It sounded crazy to me. Alora finished extinguishing her cigarette in an ashtray on top of the jukebox. “Another drink?” I asked, but she shook her head. Then she waved goodbye to me with the tips of her fingers, turned and walked away, heading around the corner into the front room. Too bad.

  “If that’s what you want, Mr. Wine, you’ve called the wrong place.”

  “You send him royalty checks, don’t you? He must be making a million.”

  “Not quite that much, Mr. Wine. Now if you’ll . . . ”

  “All right, Ms. Garber, I’m working for the Hawthorne campaign.”

  A moment’s silence. “Senator Miles Hawthorne?”

  “Correct.”

  “I see.” She sounded impressed.

  “Where can I find Howard Eppis?”