“I understand,” he says. The mention of police has darkened his mood. He checks his wristwatch and makes a slight grimace, like he just remembered an appointment he has with a federal prosecutor. He walks me to the door. He reminds me of what he said the other day at Canter’s. That he’d promised to call the cops if it wasn’t resolved. “But now Markowitz and Kaplan are back, right? So we’re getting somewhere. And they can play without her for now. They’re pros.”
“I’m sure they can,” I say.
His arm moves tentatively to my shoulder. He leaves it there for a few seconds. It’s a tiny gesture, so tiny and harmless it almost didn’t happen, except it did. I’m not offended, but it does make me wonder. Maybe he’s thinking I’m as overwhelmed as he is inside, or maybe everything is naturally personal in his world, or maybe he’s one of those touchy-feely Hollywood guys who’s been around so long he doesn’t know any other way to express himself.
“I just want her to be safe,” he mumbles. “That’s the long and short of it, Parisman. Really, that’s my only interest. You want to call the cops, you go ahead.”
I don’t tell him about my conversations with Lieutenant Malloy. I tell him I’ll keep on it and get back to him as soon as I learn anything else. I settle into my car and turn the key. And I’m halfway down the cobblestone driveway when I realize that I completely forgot to ask whether or not he mailed my check.
By the time I get down from Laurel Canyon, my stomach is telling me I’m hungry. I stop at an organic cafeteria on Sunset near Cahuenga. It’s right across the street from the mom-andpop bank I used to go to before they got big and forgot who their customers were. The cafeteria has a line out the door, but it moves quickly. It’s full of twentysomethings lost in their cell phones, which doesn’t surprise me since that’s what most of LA looks like. Everyone is friendly, or distracted, or both at once somehow. I check out the handwritten overhead food menu. I’ve been here before. It’s a place where they specialize in hummus and couscous and tahini and fresh-squeezed lime drinks infused with ginger and a few other mysterious ingredients. I play it safe with the hummus platter, a small Greek salad, and a large iced tea. This is how I’m trying to eat these days, or rather this is how Dr. Flynn would like me to eat. He’s also told me a dozen times that he’d prefer it if I chose some safer line of work, too, but that’s not going to happen.
I eat half the salad and about a third of the hummus platter before I lose interest altogether. Then I call Lieutenant Malloy. He seems in a better frame of mind. Maybe he’s had lunch. Yeah, maybe that’s it.
“You can forget about two of the missing musicians, Bill. I’ll bet that’s a load off your head.”
“Which two?”
“The drummer and the fiddle player. They both turned up for rehearsal. The drummer claims he was locked up in San Diego but my client thinks it was Tijuana.”
“Locked up where? For what?”
“Locked up? Where—I don’t know, probably a county facility. For what? Try drunk and disorderly. David Markowitz.”
“That should be easy to track down,” he says. “And the fiddle player? What jail was he in?”
“Went to Brooklyn for his mom’s funeral, apparently. But forget about him. The problem—and it’s a real one—is Risa Barsky, the singer. I went through her apartment.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says. “Somebody trashed it. You told me already.”
“Sorry, I’m an old man, an alte katchke. I repeat things. You will, too, someday.”
He ignores my little jab. “And still no sign of her, huh?” he asks. “Nothing?”
“Well, not nothing. Looks like she came back after it happened, grabbed a few schmattes, and left. The neighbor saw her come back last night for five minutes to collect a few more things, but she didn’t stick around the second time, either. What do you think?”
Malloy doesn’t speak for a while. “I think you should call the Van Nuys Police, let them handle it. Not my bailiwick, is it?”
“No, it’s not. But that’s not what I mean, Bill.”
He clears his throat. “No, of course not. You want me to tell you what I think, which you’re hoping comports with what you think. Okay, so here’s our working hypothesis: Risa What’s-her-name is a beautiful, talented singer. Everything would be coming up roses for her except for one little detail. She has terrible taste in men. She is drawn—kind of like the proverbial moth to the flame, if you get my drift. She may not even be aware of it, but she finds strong, jealous, even violent men, irresistible. And if you ask me, she just found one.”
“All that came to you just because someone broke into her apartment and trashed it? That’s impressive, Lieutenant. You deserve a raise.”
“I’m just giving you the obvious scenario, Amos. What any rookie cop from Van Nuys would come up with. No more, no less.”
“Does that mean you don’t think that’s what’s happening?”
“It could be. Whoever got in had a key. He—and I’m fairly sure it was a he—didn’t have to climb a ladder or jimmy open a door, so she knew him well enough to let him have a key. To me, that says, boyfriend or father or brother. Someone close. And unless her father or her brother have mental health issues, well, I would toss them out of the mix.”
“I don’t know, Bill. You’re right, it comports with my thinking, but now that I hear it coming out of your mouth, well, it’s just another theory.”
“Right. And you never want to get too comfortable with your own ideas,” he says, “even if they make perfect sense. Criminology 101.”
He tells me again that he’ll look into the true whereabouts of Markowitz and Kaplan to see if their stories are on the up-and-up. I ask him if he could also run a check on Pincus Bleistiff as well. “I’d like to know who I’m dealing with,” I tell him. “Just as a precaution.”
“He’s like you, right—a member of the tribe? And you don’t trust him?”
“Sure, sure, I trust him. I even like him. He’s funny. But he still hasn’t paid me what he owes me.”
Chapter 5
THE NEXT AFTERNOON a woman named Cynthia from Malloy’s office calls. Well, actually, she doesn’t say she’s from Malloy’s office. I don’t recognize the phone number, so she could be calling from Mars. All she says is that she has some information that a Mr. William Malloy asked her to pass along. He also asked that I please be very discreet with what she’s about to tell me. Hey, discretion is my middle name, I say. That’s swell, she answers. That was a joke, I say. Ha, ha, she goes. Though she doesn’t come right out and declare it, there’s something in her voice and manner that shouts Texas at me. Or maybe it’s just that she seems way too chirpy and polite for the job she’s in, and I wonder how many months she’ll last in a severely buttoned-down labyrinth like the LAPD. They pull in all kinds of people to work there, I suppose, and if they pass the lie detector test and all the other psychological hoops they put them through, hell, what can you do? But even so, Cynthia is an odd bird.
David P. Markowitz, she says, was incarcerated in a cell in Tijuana over the weekend and charged with public intoxication. This is nothing to be concerned about, however. The good news, she tells me, is that he has paid his debt to society, and according to the Mexican authorities has now been released on his own recognizance. She also thinks