LITMIR.BIZ

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he still there?” said Ty. Hallinan nodded. “He won’t leave until he gets what he’s come for.”

      Red handed Storch an envelope that he shoved inside his jacket.

      “He’s coming over,” said Hallinan, butting out his cigarette. “I’ll handle it.”

      “How’s it hangin’?” said Storch. He had a bulldog face with a serious under bite.

      ”I’m busy, Storch. What do you want?”

      “Don’t tell me this ‘thing’ is your informant.”

      “Get lost.”

      “I’m just making conversation.”

      “Okay, let’s converse about the envelope inside your jacket. You hitting Red up for your third wife’s alimony payments?”

      Hallinan and Dooley had history that went back to St. Francis Academy. After graduation Dooley followed his old man into the bar business, and Hallinan followed his onto The Force.

      “You’re an asshole, you know that, Hallinan?” He thumped the back of Ty’s chair with his knee and straight-armed out the door.

      “He’ll be waiting for me in the parking lot,” said Ty. “There’s shit about this guy you couldn’t even guess.”

      “You mean he’s not the violent moron I think he is?” That got a shaky smile. “Come on, I’ll follow you out.”

      Storch’s Studebaker was gone when they walked through the pink and purple neon to the lot. Ty got into her car and he tailed her to the hotel. Storch was sitting in his car up the block. When Hallinan headed in his direction he took off.

      Hallinan’s new Buick hummed west on the boulevard, neon reflections rippling over the chrome. He pulled to the curb in front of the Pantages, and limped across the sidewalk, his bum knee a souvenir from a Jap grenade on the island of Luzon. The poster in the display case read:

      WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS

      A Foolish Girl…A Dangerous Boy…A Fatal Moment.

      He bought a ticket and went inside. Half an hour into the movie his box of popcorn tumbled to the floor. The man behind him kicked the back of his seat and told him to stop snoring.

      Hallinan parked at the curb in front of his house on Sandalwood Street at two A.M. It was a quiet, older neighborhood where roots of mature trees capsized the sidewalks and no one locked their cars. His house was a brown-shingled two-story with a clothesline, orange tree, and garden plot out back, and a soon-to-be-banned incinerator beside a one-car garage with alley access.

      When he stepped onto the front porch the silence made him pause. His Chihuahua, Beelzebub (‘Beezer’ for short), should have been squealing and dancing, his nose pressed to the windowpane. He went inside and snapped on the light. The only sound was the hum of the fridge and a clank from the basement furnace. Where the hell was Beezer?

      He went into the back yard. No dog. In the den he found his bottom desk drawer pried open, a screwdriver on the desktop. His framed commendation for bravery was on the floor, the glass broken, a lady’s shoe print on the face of the document.

      Dorothy!

      CHAPTER FOUR

      THE NIGHT HAS EYES

      In 212 of the upscale Castleton Apartments, Amanda Chase stepped from her bubble bath. She was young and petite with intelligent blue-green eyes and a secret she was saving for Gavin at tonight’s New Year’s Eve party. After six years of marriage she was two months pregnant with their first child.

      She ran her fingers over the new party dress that lay across the bedspread and smiled at her good fortune. She enjoyed a happy marriage to a husband whose star was rising in architectural circles. They’d put a down payment on an old Spanish house in Topanga Canyon, and were three weeks from signing the closing papers.

      After a sprinkling of talcum powder, a touch of makeup, and a whisper of perfume, she slipped into lacy white underthings and shimmery silk stockings. She stood in front of the dressing table mirror, swept her golden-brown hair into a rhinestone clip, then sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on strappy, high-heeled shoes. She glanced at her watch. Gavin should be here by now.

      Dack Traynor stood in the windy darkness outside Amanda’s bedroom window, his camera aimed through a crack in the curtains. He wanted to run his hands over every inch of her silky skin, to pull her beneath him on the cool satin bedspread with nothing between them but the slippery sizzle of sex. He smiled. Oh yes, he was a bad, bad boy.

      Gavin had once caught him peeping and gone into a testosterone-fueled rage that scared the bejesus out of him. Even a bloodless, stuffed shirt like Gavin could get pretty riled when it came to his beautiful, young wife.

      Dacks’s obsession started in high school when he poked a peephole between the boy’s and girl’s bathrooms. Ever since, the fear of getting caught in the act took his level of excitement to a fever pitch.

      Amanda looked in the mirror and tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear, then touched the back of her neck as if a spider had crawled across her skin. She walked to the window.

      Dack stepped away from the glass, pressing his back against the building so he couldn’t be seen. Amanda separated the curtains, allowing a golden slice of light to cut across the second-story walkway. He held his breath until the curtain dropped, then made a dash for 214. By the time Amanda opened the front door he was safely inside.

      Dack liked to get his sex on the run, a lusty midnight tumble with a pickup from a bar along the boulevard, a post-coital cigarette, then back home before his wife got too suspicious or the chick started in with her litany of relationship problems.

      Dack’s wife Gail looked up from her book. She had sharp eyes and a razor-cut bob like the wealthy women who came to her teller window at the bank.

      “What are you doing with the camera?”

      “I didn’t want to leave it in the car overnight. Wanna go to The Carnival Room?” he said, setting the camera on top of the bookcase.

      “With all the drunks on the road? Are you crazy?”

      Just what he wanted to hear.

      Dack lit a cigarette. Standing there in his button-fly jeans, a dark curl falling over his forehead, Gail recalled getting drunk and stupid on her seventeenth birthday and ending up with Dack in a roadside motel. He still exuded the same sensory cocktail of smoke, sweat, and overactive hormones, except they were in their thirties now. She’d grown up and he was still a loose cannon.

      “Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.

      ”You better not be up to your old tricks, Dack. One more misstep and you’re on your own.”

      “I’m going out,” he said. “The quiet around here is deafening.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      HOUSE IN THE HILLS

      Dr. Nathan Adler, Plastic Surgeon to the Stars, was celebrating his fiftieth birthday. His wife Helen was combining his celebration with their annual New Year’s Eve party. A man of pedestrian looks and extraordinary skill, he was the closest thing his illustrious clientele had to the Fountain of Youth.

      Tonight, lights and laughter poured from the party onto the balconies of the last house at the summit of Fairbanks Drive in the Hollywood Hills. The pink Mediterranean was stacked like children’s blocks above the three-car garage at street level. The wrought iron gate opened onto stairs leading up to the front door.

      The Hollywood sign was visible across a sweep of canyon slightly above and to the left of the address, and the wild expanse of Griffith Park abutted the property behind and to the east. On this last night of the year the house looked like a festive wedding cake ablaze with light.

      The celebration was a catered affair with plenty of food. Hors d’oeuvres and champagne circulated on silver platters.

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