“Me and Betty go back. Hell, she used to babysit Anita and her sister. I told her what you and Anita had done around King’s visit to town in ’63,” Nielson admitted. “Bragging on my child and her old man.” She shook her head. “You would think I should know better.”

  “It was that and you knowing the lay of the land,” Nielson added. “I’m sorry I wasted your time.”

  “I haven’t said no.” Since the time Dorothy Nielson referred to, Ingram hadn’t had that kind of engagement to command his attention. Putting the pieces together, that was the thing. Process serving involved a degree of tracking but the results were usually finding someone who was trying to avoid getting their car repossessed or being taken to court over back child support. This had the potential to be different, the outcome could matter.

  Nielson put a hand on his arm. “Don’t do this for me, Harry. Anita would kill me if anything happened to you. Not to mention, I’ve grown fond of you.”

  He put his on hers. “My reasons are more mercenary.”

  “I’m not looking to bring trouble to your doorstep,” Payton said.

  “As long as you’re up front with me, we’re solid.”

  They talked more and continued eating. Payton provided a home phone number for Chet Horne and gave him the address and phone for Tolbert’s home too. She didn’t have a home phone number for the bookkeeper, Arlene Domergue, but she knew she lived in the beach area of Venice.

  “Yeah?” Ingram had said at that information. Venice was sometimes affectionately referred to as the “Slum by the Sea,” with its dilapidated housing, surfers and what had been beatnik coffee houses turned hippie hangouts. Ingram’d once served papers on a muscle-bound individual who worked out in Muscle Beach in Venice. The individual’s girlfriend, also a weight-lifter, hit hard too.

  His fee plus expenses were also agreed upon, including a check—a $500 advance. He hadn’t made that much in the three weeks prior. Ingram walked with the women to their cars. Down the street at the Towers, the crowd had dispersed and workers were dismantling the stage. The police had departed as well, though a trio of Guardsmen remained. They seemed to have no particular orders. One of them stood outside the main entrance to the Towers, which was closed, and two others walked back and forth along the residential street, rifles slung over their shoulders.

  The three stopped next to Payton’s aqua-blue Thunder-bird convertible. “I should tell you, Mose has a gun and carried it with him from time to time, particularly if he found himself transporting a lot of cash for the shop.”

  “Is that missing too, the gun?”

  “I don’t know, and according to Chet, Mose hadn’t had to take money anywhere for a few weeks. Just figured you should know.”

  “Chet and Mose good buddies?” he asked.

  “Sure, they pal around. You think Chet knows what happened?”

  “I’m going to see what I can find out.” He considered if Tolbert were up to his wild ways again, what would that mean for him?

  They shook hands again and he and Nielson watched her drive away.

  “Betty is a rarity,” Nielson said when she finished waving at her departing friend. “She’s a native Angeleno. Her grandfather and his brother made their money in California’s first oil boom back in horse and buggy days. By all accounts they were greedy, rapacious sonsabitches with her granddad winding up bankrupting his own brother.”

  “Damn.”

  “Mind you, this was a few years after the brother that would be bankrupted had shot the other brother in the butt after he’d kicked his dog.”

  “I’ll just say it again, damn.” Ingram reflected on the information Betty shared. “You know anything about this Rickler?”

  “No. That surprised me too.”

  “She called him Gavin. Sounds like they’re chummy.”

  “I’ll ask around. Quiet like.”

  They got to Dorothy’s car, which was parked a few blocks from the Towers. As he’d left his vehicle at Eternal Sands, she’d offered to give him a ride instead of him having to take a bus. He gladly accepted. As Nielson piloted, she continued her narrative. “At some point Betty’s father inherited the business, then sold it off to Pinnacle Oil for cash and stock. It’s the stock that allows her to do what she does.”

  “You saying she’s a dilettante and a Red? Ain’t that a contradiction?”

  “There’s degrees of class traitors, Harry,” she joked. “Betty doesn’t mind certain trappings what with her split-level in Tujunga Canyon. But she don’t let it go to her head. She’s definitely one of those who understands money is a means of exchange. She put up the bail several times when the hammer came down on us in the ’50s. Mose was sometimes her courier.”

  “She could be quite used to certain trappings these days, Dorothy.”

  Nielson regarded him.

  “Why do you think she wants Mose found? Just being a good friend, or worried about her investment?”

  Nielson said, “Honestly, Harry, I’m not sure. Could be she’s more worried about this Rickler than she lets on. To your point, she could be wondering about getting muscled out of her percentage if Mose isn’t around.”

  Now he kept quiet.

  Ingram stared out the window at destroyed businesses and those left intact. “The hammer hasn’t exactly let up.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Betty and I agree that there was probably at least one paid informant if not more at the memorial today. A police agent or two as well.” She made a face as if tasting something bitter. “I’m worried about our young people, Harry. The history of times like this, the authorities can’t let the hoi polloi get too rambunctious. Knowing Parker as I do, he’ll send in their infiltrators to cause disruption and disunity. The FBI too.”

  This was not a new observation from his girlfriend’s mother. She’d lived through those times when comrades turned on one another for real and imagined reasons. The results weren’t simply hurt feelings. People had lost their jobs, their families, and in some cases gone to prison due to the poisoned fallout from the red crackdown, as she’d called it. There was a toughness in Dorothy that Ingram had recognized in Anita Claire, who was like those career soldiers he’d encountered on occasion in the Army. They didn’t growl or sit at the end of the bar telling whoever was in earshot yet again about how gloriously they killed and in what magnificent battle. To them there was a distant kind of hardness borne of seeing too many casualties on both sides of the line. Not a war of bombs and machine guns, but a psychological assault inciting paranoia and fear. This too wrecked body and mind.

  They arrived at his parked car. Nielson put hers in neutral and engaged the parking brake, letting the engine idle. Ingram’s car was a late model Falcon Squire station wagon with the fake “woodie-style” trim on its flanks and rear drop gate. Having plenty of room in the cargo area of this car, he’d reconfigured his mobile dark room which once occupied the trunk area of his departed Plymouth Belvedere. The car had been intentionally torched when he was looking into the death of his Army buddy Ben Kinslow two years ago. The new setup included black curtains on rods installed over the two rear-side windows and the center back one.

  “Thanks for the ride, Dorothy.” He damn sure wasn’t going to call her “Dot.”

  “Of course. I’ll have you two over for dinner soon. Oh, and good luck on the Louis Lomax show. Anita told me you’d been invited to appear.”

  “Thanks.” He leaned over and gave her a smack on the cheek and, as he slid back toward the passenger door, noticed something peeking out from underneath the bench seat. It was a torn paper currency strap like what banks used to band together specific amounts of money. He picked it up and held it toward her. “Been counting your stacks at the Savings and Loan?”

  She stared at the strap. Smiling, she said, “Had to take out a little for an emergency.” She took it and crumpled the paper up in her fist and put it in her purse. “Bye, Harry,” she said, putting the car back in gear and waving at him as she drove off. He returned the wave.

  He stood there for a few moments after lowering his hand. The denomination and amount in the strap was handwritten on the paper as was customary. Two thousand dollars in hundreds. Heck of an emergency, he reflected as he got in his car.

  He keyed the ignition and drove off as well, heading for Tolbert’s house in View Park. He didn’t expect to discover a clue checking out a missing guy’s pad from the outside. But as his girlfriend had told him, nothing wrong with a little reconnoitering.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Weren’t you at the memorial?” Ingram asked.

  Chet Horne was a stocky, solid-looking individual. He’d come up front when Ingram arrived and they’d introduced themselves one to another. This area of Restoration Building Supply was occupied by three chairs, a small table with several issues of Popular Mechanics and Sports Illustrated on it, and a wilting potted rubber fig in the corner. It was the following day. Ingram had made this appointment yesterday after returning from checking out Tolbert’s house.

  “That’s right. I saw you there taking your pictures, too,” Chet said. “But Miss Betty says she’s asked you to see about what happened to Mose. That is if something did happen to him.”

  “I’m gonna see what I can do.”

  Horne was in his early forties with close cropped hair with some gray in it, weightlifter’s arms and a pleasant face like that of a county clergyman. “Jack of all trades, huh?”

  “Looks like,” Ingram amicably agreed.

  “Well, come on back,” he said. “Thanks, Hillary,” he said to a white woman standing nearby.

  “Sure, Chet.”

  The woman in jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots had greeted Ingram when he first came in. She’d made it clear that she was not the receptionist but one of the order pullers.

  He followed Horne through a metal door past stacks of lumber organized by size—two-by-fours, four-by-fours and so on. They side-stepped a forklift backing up with a load of planks.

  “Coffee?” Horne asked over his shoulder.

  “Sure. Can never have enough.”

  Horne stopped at a rickety wooden table with a two burner electric hot plate and a carafe of coffee on it. He poured measures of coffee into two ceramic mugs. He handed one to Ingram and pointed to the sugar and Coffee Mate.

  “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  Horne gestured with his coffee cup. “We can talk over there.”

  Horne opened an unmarked green door and entered the compact wood-paneled room. The plaster had been patched and sanded smooth in several spots awaiting a new coat of paint for the entire surface. Ingram followed, stirring in a spoonful of the coffee creamer while he sat. The sounds of the workers going about their business filtered through the walls. A mini fridge hummed in the corner. On top of that was a toaster oven. A clipboard with bills of lading hung on the wall next to a pin-up type calendar. This display for August depicted a bikini-clad blonde caressing a giant floating spark plug as if the object was the love of her life. The second hand on the clock on the wall audibly ticked off the time as it rotated the dial. There was a phone on a corner of the desk, and an aqua blue Admiral clock radio rested on a rickety narrow stand. The time on the radio was five minutes different from that of the wall clock.

  “Let me ask, ’cause I was out that day taking shots, but I think I saw you and Mose driving around in one of the company trucks the afternoon he was last seen.” Ingram wasn’t trying to trap him in a lie but was curious as to his answer. He’d figured to be straightforward with him.

  “Yeah,” Horne said. “We were taking people home or elsewhere, figuring the Restoration name had goodwill.”

  “Y’all stayed open?”

  “Big order to fill and we’re far enough north, but naturally we guessed wrong and once we knew the riots were spreading, we decided to get folks to safety.”

  “Look man, you think Mose ran off with a flashy chick he met in a bar?”

  “Can’t say Mose was that kind of dude,” Chet Horne said. “He likes the ladies like we all do—but lose his mind over some young thing who flashed him some thigh, hardly.” He hunched a shoulder. “Leastways I ain’t seen no filly prancing around about, and me and him shared a beer now and then. Hell, right in here for that matter.” He wagged a finger. “Pretty sure he would have made mention.”

  “Right,” Ingram said. He had his notepad open and circled where he’d printed “girlfriend” and finished his notation with a question mark bifurcating the circle. “And no one you recall coming around asking about money he owed or something like that? Like this guy Rickler?”

  Horne shook his head. “Don’t know no Rickler. And let me tell you not a nickel gets spent around here that Miss Arlene don’t know what it’s for and when it’s gonna get allocated, dig?”

  Ingram wondered if Horne was lying about Rickler but nodded in understanding. “By the way, where’s her office?” There was only the one desk in here. There was no safe, but Ingram assumed there was one elsewhere in the building, given Tolbert occasionally took amounts of cash to the bank.

  Horne hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “She has her own office out back near the loading dock.” He smiled, revealing a silver front tooth. “Even got a couple of neighborhood strays that like to hang around ’cause she feeds ’em.”

  “I heard about her cat fancy.”

  “Guess that’s one way of putting it,” he agreed. Horne paused, folding his arms, his mood shifting. “You think somebody did Mose harm? That what Miss Betty say?”

  “Like I said, she’s worried, him up and vanishing like he did.”

  Horne paused. Ingram took this to mean the other man was weighing holding back or not.

  “Sure, I see that,” he finally said. Then his mood seemed to lighten as he clapped his hands together and rubbed them, rising from his seat. “Look, I better get back to it. I was told by Miss Arlene it was okay for you to look through his papers and whatnot, help yourself.”

  Ingram stood too. “For the time being, are you the one who has to take money to the bank if it’s necessary?”

  “Hasn’t come up yet, but yeah, I guess I would be. And brother, you can believe I’ll keep a rod on me. Parker’s goddamn police or not. I ain’t about to get knocked upside my big head.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Horne added, “Miss Arlene already looked through Mose’s desk but didn’t find nothin’, just so you know. But I guess you’ll be talking to her too?”

  “I will. Thanks for your time, Chet.”

  “Hope you can find out what happened and he’s okay.” He took hold of the clipboard on the wall.

  “Me too.” They shook hands and the manager left.

  Alone in the room, Ingram approached the desk, extending his hand. He stopped, his hand motionless, the only sound that of the clock marking time. He momentarily felt unmoored. Here he was playing at detective, realizing to be effective he was going to have to intrude deeper into Mose Tolbert’s life. He’d plunged in because he estimated Payton’s money would buy him freedom to work on not just an article about Faraday Zinum but maybe a book, one with his photos and reflections on Black life before and after the fires.

  This gig was different than looking for a deadbeat dad or a hit and run driver who dented a fender to serve them court papers. He usually had a last known address, the license plate number of their car, and a list of known associates and the like to go on. In that respect he had similar information for Tolbert. Yet once he’d served the papers on someone, he was done. How matters turned out for them dealing with the legal system, maybe going to jail or prison, he didn’t know and if he was being honest, didn’t care. Sure, sometimes a square head would cuss him out or come at him with a tire iron. But he’d handled those situations accordingly, bruises and all. It was all part of the job.

  This though might turn out to be more like when he jumped in to unravel the death of his friend Ben Kinslow. What he saw and learned from his questioning might mean nothing at first but could be useful to know as he dug deeper. And like with his buddy, would there be roughnecks coming at him? Would he be ready for that? Too if he found Tolbert, he wouldn’t just be cashing Betty Payton’s check and moving on. She was friends with his damn near mother-in-law and the love of his life. For whatever reason Moses Tolbert went missing, he and the others, people he cared about, would have to live with the consequences.

  Ingram got unstuck and went to work. Taking possession of the situation he was in, rather than standing at the desk and looking through the papers and items as if wishing to not impose, he sat behind the desk—defying Tolbert to burst in and catch him. The drawers of the desk were unlocked. Ingram wondered if they had been left that way by Tolbert. Or had that been done by Miss Arlene, as Horne called her? She probably had keys to the whole place. Did Horne?

  In the middle drawer were handwritten notes about orders to be filled and scraps of paper with a name and phone number on it. That was expected. There were also some paper coasters with beer brands on them and several books of matches bearing Restoration’s name. In the other drawers were letter-sized envelopes, onionskin and carbon paper for the typewriter, “Paid” and “Overdue” rubber stamps, mailing stamps, index cards with names of specific kinds of lumber and on and on. In the left bottom drawer was a can of gun oil wrapped in a soft cloth and a few loose .45 bullets.

  As Payton had told him, the missing man had a gun though it was reportedly absent from his abandoned vehicle. Could be Tolbert had the gun with him. It could also be the gun was at his house. Ingram wondered if he would have to break into the man’s home to get some answers. He also came across a worn deck of cards. Did he and Horne while away the time some nights playing Blackjack as they sipped on libations stronger than beer? Looking through the paperwork on the desk was also a bust insofar as a clue to where Tolbert had skirted off to, willingly or otherwise.

  Ingram got up from behind the desk, stretched and drained his now tepid coffee and left the office. He walked across the shop floor, keeping out of the way of another forklift as an employee drove by with a load. He and the operator nodded at each other as he rolled past. The building was located less than fifty yards to the north of the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks which paralleled this part of Slauson Avenue between Olive and Broadway. The entrance to the Harbor Freeway, the 110, was accessible on the north side of Slauson at Flower. A few miles west, the tracks curved to the south. A narrow dirt track that served as an access road lay between the gravel lining the railroad tracks and Restoration. The loading dock was on the west side of the building.