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  Contents

  PART ONE

  A Gift

  Chapter 1: Justice in the Morning

  Chapter 2: Kneepads

  Chapter 3: Motivation

  Chapter 4: Little Melvin Prevails

  Chapter 5: The Horizontal Mambo

  Chapter 6: The Golden Gun

  Chapter 7: Devi

  Chapter 8: King Sunny, Considered

  Chapter 9: A Call in the Night

  PART TWO

  A Crime

  Chapter 10: An Evening at the El Royale

  Chapter 11: A Very Dead Dog

  Chapter 12: Exposure and Intensity

  Chapter 13: Bad Law

  Chapter 14: With a Pan

  Chapter 15: Ficus in Focus

  Chapter 16: What Pussy Said

  Chapter 17: Monopsony

  Chapter 18: Redolent of Nature

  Chapter 19: Nine Ball

  Chapter 20: The Sins of Howard Hogue

  Chapter 21: Yawning of the Pit

  Chapter 22: A Million Dollars

  Chapter 23: Mr. Hogue Will See You Now

  Chapter 24: A Regiment of Dummies

  Chapter 25: Wells-Fargo

  Chapter 26: Dick Rings the Coincidence Bell

  Chapter 27: Impound Blues

  Chapter 28: Rhonda Redux

  Chapter 29: Meet Me in St. Louis

  Chapter 30: A Call from On High

  Chapter 31: Acquisition Error

  Chapter 32: Angles and Angels

  Chapter 33: Himmler Calls

  Chapter 34: For the Benefit of Smokin’ Jack

  Chapter 35: A Rare Honor

  Chapter 36: Partners

  Chapter 37: Dead Certain

  Chapter 38: Davis Algren

  Chapter 39: Burying the Hatchet

  Chapter 40: Angel’s Gate

  Chapter 41: Sullivan’s Troubles

  Chapter 42: Plop Factor

  Chapter 43: Rhonda, Sylvette

  Chapter 44: Hearsay

  Chapter 45: The Pappam and the Cluddum

  Chapter 46: Viking Smoked Salt

  PART THREE

  A Sentence

  Chapter 47: In Memory of Betty Ann Fowler

  Chapter 48: A Package for America’s Favorite Granddad

  Chapter 49: Juan Valdez

  Chapter 50: Last Supper, Interrupted

  Chapter 51: Ion Winds at the Edge of Time

  Chapter 52: An Olfactory Event

  Chapter 53: Lesbians and Communists

  Chapter 54: Brown-Skinned Woman

  Chapter 55: Impervious

  Chapter 56: The Presence of God

  Chapter 57: All the Way to the Bing

  Chapter 58: Negative Buoyancy

  Chapter 59: Glastonbury

  Chapter 60: Where You Draw the Line

  Chapter 61: Prick Cop

  Chapter 62: Melvin Points a Gun

  Chapter 63: The Purview of His Expertise

  Chapter 64: Fifty Pieces of Silver

  Chapter 65: Magic Jack

  Chapter 66: All in the Wind

  Chapter 67: A Damn Shame

  Chapter 68: Last Man Standing

  Chapter 69: Palmettos in a 7-D

  Chapter 70: If the House Came Down

  Chapter 71: Two Hispanics

  Chapter 72: Copycat

  Chapter 73: Dinner with Georgette

  Chapter 74: Whirlwind

  Chapter 75: To Confess and Repent

  Chapter 76: Hope

  Chapter 77: Ellen Arden

  Epilogues

  Epilogue One

  Epilogue Two

  A Letter

  Acknowledgments

  “If There Is No God”

  About P. G. Sturges

  To Alison Paige Ferguson, my darling girl

  &

  All of my little people, some of whom are not so little:

  Mac, Kelly, Taka, Thomas, Sam, Kian, and Daisy Faye

  A Note from the Author

  It is not the author’s intention to amend, emend, reduce, ameliorate, or redress any wrongs, misfortunes, tragedies, or perditious conditions known to exist in this world or the next. You will depart the premises no wiser than you arrived. However, it is hoped you will be entertained in the meantime.

  p.g.sturges

  PART ONE

  A Gift

  ONE

  Justice in the Morning

  Nevil Jonson had been giving Jack Hathaway the long, cold screw but I would put an end to it. Daydreaming in my cumulus-ride 1969 Cadillac Coupe de Ville convertible, headed west on Wilshire Boulevard, a section called the Miracle Mile, A. W. Ross’s gift to the world of urban planning, only when I passed the La Brea Tar Pits did I realize I’d gone too far.

  I reversed course, passed the tar pits again. A million fossils had been extracted from the site, but only one human being. Before stoplights, plumbing, algebra, electricity, and lotto tickets, a young woman had met her demise hereabouts, blunt force trauma to the head.

  A body then was as inconvenient as a body today. She had been tossed into the tar pits where her murderer watched until she sank. Nine thousand years later a team of Hancock Park amateur paleontologists had recovered her. Piece by piece.

  It set me thinking. Somewhere back there must have been a man like me. A man the grieving family came to, looking for answers about their disappeared kinswoman. What had he told them? Tales of jealous gods? Tales of saber-tooth tigers?

  Perhaps, back then, as now, justice did not absolutely require a body. Maybe common sense, circumstantial evidence, would have sufficed. My predecessor would have studied her friends, her family, her lovers. Because, mostly, only those who loved were capable of hate. Then he would draw a conclusion. And then—then, who knows? She might have been inconvenient.

  I wondered what they called that man. They call me the Shortcut Man.

  • • •

  I found my destination, the old Desmond’s building. I parked on Dunsmuir, walked up to the once-grand stretch of boulevard.

  The building directory was aged, too, the white plastic letters crooked. Nevil Jonson, Esq. was on the fourth floor. Suite 404.

  Jonson practiced a narrow subspecialty at the periphery of the profession. The DA called it UPL—the unauthorized practice of law.

  A blatant violation of a client’s trust, most frequently by keeping his money and doing nothing, the usual result was a pablum letter from the State Bar. If the guy did it fifty times he might be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and fined a thousand bucks.

  Sometimes, rarely, the lawyer was actually disbarred and ordered to cease practice. In fact, Nevil Jonson had been so ordered. Of course, a practiced bureaucrat, Jonson ignored the order. He then managed to ensnare one Jack Hathaway as a client; that’s where I came in.

  The elevator grumbled to a stop. I exited into a lobby serving four offices and a restroom. Jonson’s office was off to my right. I opened the door and stepped inside.

  Suite 404 smelled like a case of diminishing returns, musty, dusty, humid. Out-of-date moderne furniture sagged brownly around the waiting area. A fluorescent overhead flickered intermittently.

  “How can I help you?” inquired a woman behind a glass partition. A small vase held plastic flowers.

  “I’m Dick Henry.” I demonstrated my Mr. Affable smile. “Here to see Mr. Jonson.”

  Linda Hart looked up at the man in front of her. He wasn’t among th
e usual run of customer. He didn’t look worried, rabid, or defeated. Maybe he was another alkie running on a fresh tank of early-morning resolve.

  It had taken Linda just a few weeks to realize her boss was a cheat, a thief, and a tartuffle. A man who did nothing for his clients but accept their retainers. Not that the look of the office wouldn’t warn a prudent customer. She always took her paycheck directly to the bank. “Is Mr. Jonson expecting you?”

  “You told me he would be. Yesterday.”

  “Have a seat, Mr.—uh . . .”

  “Henry.”

  “Mr. Henry.”

  The magazines on the table were as stale as the air. I thumbed through a few, learned about cold fusion, pagers, and quadraphonic sound. At least they had come to exist. I still relied on the promise of flying automobiles.

  “Mr. Jonson will see you now.”

  I followed the woman down a short hall, lined with cardboard boxes, to the door at the end.

  Jonson’s private office had long, narrow windows affording little light. Buildings along the Miracle Mile had actually been designed to be seen through a windshield at thirty-five miles per hour. Not lived in and looked out of.

  A tall, bony man with a rubicund complexion rose from a disorderly desk. Thin hair, enhanced to a shade of wiry Gouda, fluffed for volume, shaded his scalp. A red tie was the final touch. Matching his face. He approached me solemnly, hand extended. He had perfected a grave, funereal tone. “I’m Nevil Jonson.”

  We shook hands. “Dick Henry.”

  He gestured me into a seat. “Coffee?”

  As a rule, office coffee will be no better than the lobby magazines.

  “No, thanks.” I looked around. Nine or ten certificates hung from the walls. There was one sign of life. A vigorous ficus tree rose gracefully from a big, bright, Chinese-yellow ceramic pot three feet high, three feet in diameter.

  Jonson took a sharpened pencil from a jar and a fresh legal pad from a credenza behind him. “How may I be of service, Mr. Henry?”

  “I’m here for a little advice.”

  Jonson smiled in neutral. “You’re prepared to pay for a little advice?”

  “Of course.”

  “Please continue,” said Jonson, pencil point to tongue.

  “I have a friend who spent a good deal of money on a certain matter. Now, months and months have gone by, eleven months, and my friend can’t get any work done, and the man he hired to do it can’t seem to be reached.”

  Jonson nodded, made bullet points. “A compliance issue. Perhaps fraud. What’s the sum involved?”

  “Thirty-three hundred dollars.”

  Jack Hathaway, my old friend at World Book & News, the newsstand, had fallen in love with a Filipina bar girl. All that stood in the way was another bar girl he had married fifty years ago near an air force base in Manila. He had no paper from the event, just an indelible memory of an incredible act she had performed on their wedding night. A feat, even.

  “I just want to set things right,” Jack had explained, raising his shoulders sheepishly.

  What was wrong with bigamy? In this case.

  “I want to die a proper married man,” said Jack.

  In other words he wanted to go down screwed.

  “Thirty-three hundred dollars.” Jonson did some more scribbling on the legal pad. “Which means we’re still in small claims territory.”

  “It’s a lot to him.”

  Jonson smiled with his teeth. “Now, look. There’s no reason to be embarrassed. But I have to know what’s what. To help in this matter. Is this friend you’re talking about you?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Jonson set pad and pencil aside. “Then I’m a little perplexed. There’re going to be fees, here. I don’t work for nothing. I’m going to need to know who’s who and who’s going to pay. Who is this friend you’re talking about?”

  “His name is Jack Hathaway.”

  Jonson’s eyes narrowed for a second.

  “By the way, Mr. Jonson, where’s your restroom?”

  “Out by the elevators,” said Jonson. He was suspicious. “Who’s Jack Hathaway?”

  “Jack Hathaway is your client.” I rose from my chair. “This is a ficus, right?”

  Jonson was on his feet, suspicious. “Yes, it is a ficus. What are you trying to pull?”

  Pull was, indeed, the word. With a zzzip I emancipated the Love Captain, directed its attention to the dry leaves in the yellow pot.

  Jonson’s eyes saucered in horror.

  I pointed a finger from my free hand at him before he got any bright ideas. “Don’t make me piss on your loafers, Nevil, because I’d be happy to.” His thin-soled, tasseled lawyer-shoes wouldn’t handle it all that well. They weren’t built for complications.

  “You owe Mr. Hathaway thirty-three hundred dollars. You’ve had his money for eleven months. Including my fee, the total comes to four thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. Which keeps us, as luck will have it, in small claims territory.”

  Jonson finally found his voice. “G-get the f-fuck out of my office. I don’t respond to blackmail.”

  I finished off, shook, reeled in, zzziped.

  Jonson pointed at the yellow ficus pot. “You’re going to pay for that. I’m calling the police.”

  “Call anybody you want, Nevil. What I’m talking about is your specialty, UPL. The unauthorized practice of law? You’re lucky I don’t represent all the people you’ve been screwing. Though I do have your client list.” No, I didn’t.

  I walked up to him, nose to nose. “I’m only interested in Mr. Hathaway. He wants his money back and I want my fee.”

  I saw his degree on the wall. “That your degree?”

  He looked at it, perhaps recalling earlier hopes and jubilations.

  “Have your secretary write the check I asked for, Mr. Jonson. Right now. And don’t make me come back. Or I’ll wipe my ass with your certificate.”

  See how my business works? My efficient arbor service made my final ultimatum a credible threat.

  Three minutes later, check in hand, I rolled up La Brea, Chase Bank up ahead on my left. I passed the La Brea Bakery, loving the smell of freshly baked bread.

  In my opinion, the baking of bread was the line of demarcation between civilized and uncivilized man. Homo bakens. Before I died, I promised myself, I would learn to bake bread. Sourdough.

  I took a deep breath. Even more satisfying than the smell of fresh bread—was the smell of justice in the morning.

  TWO

  Kneepads

  If there were a worse dancer in the universe than Amberlyn d’Solay, Mark Markham of the Mark Markham School of Dance had never seen her. She was the size of a linebacker but moved like a lineman.

  Everything in proportion, but huge. Dancers’ breasts were supposed to be suggestions of femininity, not impediments to motion. Counter-weights to that ass. An ass only a breeder could love.

  But the money tendered on her behalf was real and the bottom line was all that counted in the end.

  Peter was late but entered now with the promised sandwiches from Greenblatt’s. His face was smooth and unlined. Peter would break his heart one day. Just as he himself had broken Lawrence’s. Just as Lawrence, in his day, had broken a string of older men’s hearts. That was the price one paid for a short lease in heaven in this corner of the universe. Soon he would see young men and they would look right past him. And he would have to smile.

  Peter kissed him on the cheek, Mark closed his mind, lived in the moment.

  Peter turned to the flock of females practicing their entrechats. “Good God, that cow is back.”

  “Amberlyn d’Solay.”

  Amberlyn galumphed her way across the studio, giant arms high in the air. She could probably lift a Subaru and throw it across the room.

  Peter smirked. “What do you think her real name is?”

  Mark shook his head. “Colonel Sanders, I don’t know. I have three of them.”

  “Three?”
/>
  “A new one last week. Same exact body type. All blondes. All on scholarship.”

  “Who pays?”

  Markham had wondered that himself. Devi Stanton was the girl who visited, wrote the checks, but she was obviously someone’s employee. Never once inquired about progress. Progress. Not with that trio of elsies.

  Well, speak of the devil. Mark waved at the girl walking in, glanced at Peter. “That’s who pays.”

  Devi was a pretty girl, late twenties. Black hair, hazel eyes, one arm fully sleeved in vibrant Asian tattoos. Cresting waves and dragons.

  “Hi, Mark,” she said. She pulled out a checkbook, tore out a completed check, handed it to Markham. “For Amberlyn, Stacy, and Michelle.”

  Markham looked at it, the figure was correct. A hundred per session, three sessions per week, three cows. Nine hundred dollars.

  Peter stepped forward, extended a hand to the tattooed woman. “I’m Peter.”

  “Devi.”

  They shook. Devi sized him up. A beautiful boy who knew he was beautiful.

  “You pay for Amberlyn,” said Peter.

  “I do. Why?” Devi wondered where he was going with this. Kid looked like a smartass.

  “That’s was what I was going to ask you.”

  Amberlyn pirouetted, miscalculated, fell with a thud. Rattled the windows. Markham moved in her direction but Amberlyn waved him off. Devi restrained a smile, turned back to Peter.

  “Amberlyn is being specially groomed.”

  “Groomed?” inquired Smartass.

  Amberlyn got to her feet.

  “Yeah, groomed,” said Devi. “What of it?”

  Peter grinned at Mark, then back at Debbie or whatever her name was. “Why don’t you just cut to the chase and buy her some kneepads?”

  Markham watched Devi, who had not been humorized. He kept a straight face, glared at Peter, shocked, shocked.

  Devi glared at Markham. “Hey, Mark, your boyfriend is an asshole.”

  She turned on her heel. Out she went.

  Markham turned to Peter. “What the fuck?”

  But Peter was laughing, bent at that supple waist, holding his sides.

  “I’m serious,” said Markham. “Don’t fuck up my good thing, bitch.” But he couldn’t be mad at Peter. He loved him too much. And then they both were laughing.