When he left, he said, “Why don’t you drive out to that address in Malibu and check out the roads? We may have to leave in a hurry.”

  A drive along the ocean wouldn’t be a bad way to kill the afternoon. I took his advice. When I came out onto the Coast Road, the ocean breeze was cool, the smog at a minimum.

  Past the Palisades, past Topanga, enjoying the air. Gehringer Road led off the highway to the right, a few hundred feet short of where the road to the Colony led off to the left. It was a steep, winding and narrow road.

  The mailbox at the address Holly had given us was on the road. The name on the box was Ducasse, and the paint was faded. Ducasse couldn’t have come out here a month ago from Newark; even the California sun couldn’t bleach the letters that fast.

  His house was high above the road, his entire acreage bordered with a chain-link fence that looked new to me. The double gate was locked. We could leave in a hurry—if we had a helicopter.

  Driving down again, I wondered if my old friend Marvin Burns still worked at the Malibu Sheriff’s Station.

  He did. He was knee-deep in paperwork, as usual. I don’t believe Deputy Marvin Burns had ever used his revolver, except on the target range.

  “I thought you had moved to San Valdesto,” he said. “Somebody told me that.”

  “I did move. I’m only in town for the day. I thought I’d drop in and buy you a beer.”

  He studied me. “And what do you think a beer will buy you?”

  “How about two beers?”

  “Aagh!” he said. “You …! Okay, I guess I can knock off for half an hour.”

  At the Tender Tavern (owned by Terence Tender), Marv said, “I understand a couple of the big boys have moved to your little sanctuary to retire. Dons, weren’t they?”

  “I guess. Harris is still in charge, though, I’m sure.”

  “He’s a lot of cop,” Marv said. “Ornery old bastard, isn’t he?”

  I nodded. I asked, “What do you know about a man named Michael Ducasse?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing much. He’s obviously rich and I hear he’s weird. Why?”

  “Do you mean sexually weird?”

  “Why do you want to know? You mean because he rents out his house to those porno movie creeps?”

  “You know that, and nothing’s being done about it?”

  “Cut it out, Callahan! We go to court and their shyster proves their films have redeeming social value. Which means we have wasted some more of the taxpayers’ money.”

  “How long has Ducasse lived in that house?”

  “As long as I’ve been out here. At least twelve years. Why?”

  “He is the president of Adult Art Cinema. And the word I get is that his associates moved out here only a month ago from Newark.”

  “Why the hell should you care? I thought you were retired.”

  “I’m still a citizen.”

  “Oh, Jesus! I’ll have another beer.”

  After tender Terence Tender brought it and went away, I said, “They have just signed a seventeen-year-old girl to a contract without her parents’ consent. Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Probably. But that would make it a civil case, not criminal. Sue him, if you’re an interested party.”

  “I take it you’re not an interested party.”

  “Not me. I’m just a crooked cop, drinking while on duty. If you think I’m cynical, I am. The world’s gone crazy in the last couple of years.”

  When I left him at the station, he said, “Thanks for that Newark tip. Maybe they have records. Ducasse hasn’t.”

  I was back at the hotel at four o’clock, and spent an hour in the pool. A little after five, Amos phoned. “Are we eating there?”

  “Unless you want to put me on your tab at Mimi’s?”

  “Be nice! That heap of yours hasn’t a very big rear seat, has it?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll take my car,” he said. “There’s a possibility Holly checked our credentials after we left him and found out you were a private eye. So I hired a couple of guys for backup.”

  “Are they going to eat here, too?”

  “Neither one owns a tie. They’ll meet us there at eight-thirty.” He paused. “Outside.”

  OUTSIDE WAS THE PROPER place for them. They both would have marred the elegant decor of the Shamrock lobby. They were high and wide and ugly, with matching cauliflower ears, scar tissue above the eyes and flattened noses. They both wore sweat-stained T-shirts and faded jeans.

  One was black and one white; Amos was an Equal Opportunity Employer. The white one was named Joe, the black one Jack. That, Amos informed me, was all I needed to know.

  We climbed into his highly polished twelve-year-old Cadillac and purred off toward Malibu.

  I told him what Marv Burns had told me about Ducasse.

  Amos had more: “The story I got, he has a yen for twelve-year-old girls. The Newark boys need the free rent. So they give him the title of president, find him a few twelve-year-old girls, and they’re in business.”

  It was getting dark now; headlights came at us in a constant stream along the Coast Road. I said, “I’ve got to talk with Patty alone some way. I have to tell her her father’s no longer in the house.”

  “We’ll think of something,” he said. “Maybe we won’t have to. I talked with a couple of case-hardened hookers today who walked out on them. Those muscle freaks dream up some sick stuff.”

  We climbed the winding road. The gate was open. There was an old station wagon parked in front of the big house and a black Continental with New Jersey license plates.

  Amos told Jack and Joe, “Stay out of sight. If we need you, I’ll signal.”

  “How?” Jack asked.

  “I’ll think of a way. Just be ready.” We walked to the front door and Amos rang the bell.

  Barry Holly opened the door. “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  I hope so, I thought.

  “Come in,” he said.

  The living room led off to the right from the small entrance foyer. We would be in the front part of the house, a comforting thought. There were two men waiting for us in the living room.

  One of them had his back to us. He was staring out a front window. The other sat in an enormous, black satin upholstered armchair. He got up as we entered.

  The man at the window turned toward him. “That’s some view you’ve got, Michael.”

  He was a big man, with one of those blue black beards no razor can ever cut close enough to hide.

  Michael Ducasse was shorter, thinner, darker and less frightening. He could have been a hairdresser. “Thank you, Al.” He turned to us. “Welcome to my home,” he said. “You can call me Mike. This is my friend, Albert Spicuzzi.”

  We shook hands all around.

  “Call me Al,” Spicuzzi said.

  “My friends call me Lanny,” I told him.

  “Okay, Lanny,” Spicuzzi said. “So let’s sit and let’s talk.”

  Amos sat on a hassock near a front window. I sat on a couch next to Holly, Ducasse sank back again into the satin chair. Big Al didn’t follow his own suggestion; he stood next to Ducasse’s chair.

  He said, “Barry tells me you’d like to back a picture with Patty Serano starring in it.”

  “Well, not back it completely,” I said. “I’m sure you can’t make a picture for fifty or sixty thousand dollars.”

  “We can try,” Al said. “Patty a friend of yours?”

  I shook my head. “I only met her once. It was in a massage parlor in San Valdesto. She probably doesn’t even remember me.”

  “You met her once? You mean you didn’t go back?”

  “I went back last week. But she wasn’t there.”

  “And you followed her down here?”

  “Not really. I was in town on business and I looked up her Aunt Rose, and. …” I shrugged.

  He studied me. I felt like a bug on a pin. He looked at Holly. “Is Patty still here?”

  Holly nodded. “But they’re shooting. We could wait.”

  Al shook his head. “Get her.”

  Holly got up and went through the foyer toward the back of the house. In a few minutes we could hear them coming our way. Not their footsteps; what we heard was a girl’s complaining voice.

  Holly was holding Patty’s elbow when they came into the living room. She was wearing a terry-cloth robe, and probably nothing else.

  She ignored all of us but Ducasse. “Mr. Ducasse,” she said angrily, “I want out!”

  He smiled at her. “You’d prefer to go back to jail? We bailed you out of there, Patty, and we can send you back.”

  “All right, then, get me a new male lead. Somebody human. That filthy Angelo is right out of sick ville. I won’t work with him!”

  “Who’s Angelo?” Spicuzzi asked.

  “Angelo Arrapopulus,” Holly said. “Remember him, the wrestler? He used to be pretty big out here.”

  “Never heard of him,” Spicuzzi said. “Get him.”

  I looked at Amos, and Amos looked nervously at me. We both knew Angelo Arrapopulus and he had reason to remember me. I had worked for his wife. I had obtained ample grounds for her divorce from Angelo, enough to get her about seventy percent of his assets at the time.

  “Do we need him?” I asked. “I’m sure we can find somebody else Patty would be happier working with.”

  “We need him now,” Al said. “I want to get this fuss straightened out right now.”

  Amos’s eyes had left mine and were scanning the room. He might have been looking for a convenient exit. He could have been looking for a weapon. Knowing Amos, I had to guess it was an exit. He is a brave man in some ways, but he loathes physical violence.

  Holly didn’t have to go and get Angelo; he was now standing in the doorway from the foyer, also wearing a robe. He glared at Ducasse. “Are we working with virgins?” he asked. And then he saw me. “What is he doing here?”

  “Mr. Callahan,” Holly informed, “is a potential investor in our company. He’s from San Valdesto.”

  “Like hell,” Angelo said. “He’s a lousy peeper from L.A. He’s the bastard that got the goods on me for my ex. Brock Callahan? You guys don’t remember him?”

  Amos and I were suddenly the center of attention. Al looked between us, back and forth. Then, “You two can leave quietly now or leave on stretchers later. You decide.”

  “And I’m going with them,” Patty said.

  “The hell you are,” Al said.

  “The hell she isn’t,” I said, and stood up.

  “I’ll get Franky,” Angelo said. “We’ll take care of this jerk for you, Mr. Ducasse.”

  That was when Amos found what he had been looking for. It wasn’t an exit or a weapon. It was a signal. He picked up a heavy marble lamp from a nearby end table and threw it through the front window.

  22

  GLASS FELL QUIETLY ON the soft carpeting and tinkled off the end table. Big Al came for me. Amos would have been a softer match, but Amos was no longer in sight.

  “Franky!” Angelo shouted, and came over to help Al.

  Two against one. … They were muckers, like Otis. What has happened to American tradition? I would have gone up clean against Al, man to man. John Wayne was dead; somebody had to carry on the tradition.

  The lamp I hit Al with was smaller than the one Amos had thrown through the window, but it was cut glass and it cut up his forehead pretty good. The blood running down over his eyes could have been the reason his looping overhand right missed me by a foot.

  I put my own right into his nose to hamper his breathing, as Angelo circled to get a side shot at me.

  Together, they could have taken me—maybe. But from the doorway Jack called, “Hey, Angelo, baby! This way. You’re mine, Angie!”

  He came in, as Angelo moved toward him. Another hulk, probably Franky, came running into the foyer—and into Joe.

  The grapple and groan boys against club fighters? Forget it. This wasn’t Friday night at the Olympic on Channel Five. This was the real world.

  Al had no partner now. It was man to man and I honored the tradition. I didn’t try to disfigure him, only to make sure he would spend the rest of his life in pain. As I have mentioned before, I like kids.

  Joe and Jack hadn’t been active in the ring for some time, they were overdoing it a little. There was no reason for them to stand there and kick unconscious men.

  I pulled them away, and asked, “Where’s Amos?”

  “In the car with the girl,” Jack said. “Let’s get out of here before the fuzz come.”

  Holly and Ducasse were not in sight. Like Amos, they probably were not physical. Or maybe they were calling the police, though I doubted it.

  Amos had the engine running. Patty was in the seat beside him. I slid in next to her, as Jack and Joe climbed into the backseat.

  “Move it, gutless,” I said.

  He swung the big car in an arc and headed down the driveway. “Gutless? What the hell you talking about?”

  “I missed you during the action.”

  “You dumb mick! Somebody had to get Patty’s clothes for her, didn’t he? You want to take the girl home naked?”

  “I’m not going home,” Patty said. “That is the last place I’m going.”

  “The decision is yours,” I said. “But would you talk with me about it before you decide?”

  “Talk won’t change my mind.”

  We were about three blocks from the house when we heard the sound of a siren below, and saw the flashing red light as it came around a curve.

  “Stay well over to the right,” I told Amos. “This is a narrow road.”

  “The law,” he informed me, “reads that all drivers are required to stop. What kind of driver do you think I am?”

  He pulled over onto the grass in a flat area and turned off the car lights, as the county black and white came around the turn below us.

  When it went past us, he turned on the lights and started down again. “I can’t believe those creeps would call the law.

  “It was probably neighbors. But they might have. The sheriff’s department knows what’s going on there, and they haven’t busted them. That makes them legitimate.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” Patty said. “I know enough about them to keep them from starting anything. There are two twelve-year-old girls up there right now.”

  “Did they let you play with their dolls?” Amos asked.

  “Shut up!” she said.

  From the back, Jack said, “I’m glad I got my licks in on Angelo. My wife thinks he was the prettiest thing on the tube since Gorgeous George. Them wrestlers are sure sickening, aren’t they?”

  “Grotesque,” Patty said.

  There was no more dialogue all the way to the hotel. There, in the parking garage, I gave Amos his five hundred and Jack and Joe the fifty each he had promised them.

  They left, and I asked Patty, “Are you hungry? Would you like to go someplace and eat—and talk?”

  She said, “I haven’t eaten since two o’clock. I know a great place for burgers and shakes right near here. But talking isn’t going to change anything.”

  At Arnold’s she sipped her shake and munched her hamburger. I sipped my large Coke.

  “Your mother wants to travel,” I said. “She’s retiring. She’ll take you anyplace in the world you want to go.”

  “With him? No, thanks!”

  “By him, do you mean your father?”

  “He’s not my father. I never told mom I knew that, but I do.”

  “Who told you?”

  “He did. Mom was three months pregnant when he married her. He told me he married her as a favor, to give me a name.”

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “Three years ago, when I was fourteen.” She looked down at the table and up again at me. “The first time he took a pass at me.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Wouldn’t you? Would you like to think your own father. …” She shivered and sniffed.

  “He is now in Phoenix,” I said. “He is in business with his brother down there. If he comes back to San Valdesto, your mother’s cousins will give him reason to regret it.”

  She stared at me. “Is that the truth?”

  “I swear to God it’s the truth. And I’ll promise you something else. If he comes back to town and your mother’s cousins are busy, you call on me and I will personally castrate him.”

  She giggled. “You wouldn’t do that!”

  “Probably not. Are you ready to go home?”

  “I’m ready,” she said. “Wait until I finish my burger. I’ll take the milk shake along to drink on the road.”

  A few miles short of Oxnard, I said, “Lenny Tishkin’s back in town.”

  “Who cares? That’s over!”

  “He was asking for you at the Arden Massage Parlor.”

  “Oh, God! Does my mother know I worked there?”

  “Not through me. I doubt if she knows it.”

  “That’s where I would have wound up, if I’d stuck with Lenny.”

  “Instead,” I said, “you wound up as an internationally famous star with the Adult Art Cinema studios.”

  “Shut up!”

  I shut up.

  This side of Ventura, she said, “I’m sorry. After all you went through to get me out of there, and the expense it will be to my mother—”

  I said, “Don’t you worry about Mary Serano. She’s loaded. She’s ready for Europe, first class all the way.”

  It was after midnight when we pulled up in front of her house, but there was a light showing through the living-room window.

  From behind the locked front door, Mary asked, “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, mom,” Patty answered. “Me and Mr. Callahan.”

  Hugs and tears, while I stood there. Then Mary broke free to say, “Come in. You can come in for a few minutes, can’t you?”

  “I’d better get home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “And you send me a bill,” she said. “Never mind what you said. You send me a bill! You understand that?”

  “I understand that. Sleep tight, both of you.”

  I had turned off onto Main Street, heading for the highway intersection, when the police cruiser pulled up behind me, its red light flashing. I stopped and took out my driver’s license.