LITMIR.BIZ

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spoke about his mother in a real detached way, Pete. I don’t know. Maybe it was because she died so long ago.”

      “Or maybe he was real pissed off at her for setting the house on fire,” Decker suggested.

      “Yeah,” Hollander nodded. “I didn’t detect much love lost.”

      “What about Pode’s limited partnership movies?” Decker wanted to know.

      “Pode and this partner of his,” Hollander began. “What the hell was his name?”

      “Cameron Smithson.”

      “That’s the one,” Hollander said. “They invested in low-budget flicks. Grade B horror movies and teenage jiggle films. I asked if it was possible to see them. I wanted to make sure they were what he said they were.”

      “That was smart.”

      “He showed me the videos—as much as I wanted to see. And what I saw wasn’t porno: just a lot of healthy-looking babes showing off their boobs and buns. Standard R fare. Pode also let me look at the books. Some of those turkeys even netted him some pocket money.”

      “Numbers can be fudged.”

      “Yeah, no doubt the sleaze has at least four sets of books: one for his accountant, one for the backers, one for the IRS, and one for himself.”

      Hollander scratched his nose again.

      “I can’t put my finger on why I hated him so much. Yeah, he talked down to me, but I was feeding into his image of me as the dumb cop. He wasn’t an ornery bastard. He was cooperative, polite. He seemed so … so goddamn oily. Even his looks—Pode’s a good-looking guy if you like the male model type. I could see him getting laid by a lot of Marina airheads. But to me, the guy sizes up as a grease ball.”

      “Did he have the kind of good looks that could sway an impressionable young girl?”

      “Definitely.”

      He went over the play in his mind. Act One: Lindsey meets Chris, who introduces her to fellow photographer Cecil Pode. Act Two: Cecil sees Lindsey as much more than a would-be model for Playboy. Act Three: Cecil introduces her to his son, Dustin. Act Four: Dustin seduces her and convinces her to star in his skin flicks. Act Five: Lindsey dies, maybe because she didn’t like what she was doing and Dustin had a low tolerance for recalcitrant actresses; maybe because she starred in a snuff; maybe because she was in the wrong fire at the wrong time—like Dustin’s mother.

      A whole lot of maybes.

      Why would she bother to make arrangements to meet Chris at the Galleria if she was going to run away with Dustin? Did Lindsey ask Cecil to get Chris out of the way so she could run away with Dustin and throw suspicion on Chris? Poor Chris. Decker could still feel the boy in his arms, cradling him like a baby as he sobbed. And what gasping sobs—like a dying man fighting for air.

      He needed the Podes. Cecil was gone. Dustin was all he had.

      15

      Discretion was the word of the hour. Hollander’s interview with Dustin Pode had been a double-edged sword. Decker hoped it would smoke out Dustin and make him do something foolish, but he also knew that it had heightened Pode’s awareness of cops. The tail would have to be close to invisible.

      He debated over which car to use. Although it had a police radio, the unmarked was a terrible vehicle for a tail, a giveaway to anyone perceptive about cop cars. His personal vehicles were a red ’69 Porsche 911, which he’d rebuilt, and a Jeep. Neither blended inconspicuously in street traffic. Finally, he settled on Rina’s ’77 bronze Volvo station wagon and gave her the Plymouth. He carried his beeper and had asked Marge to buzz him if anything important came up. He hoped all his bases were covered.

      So far, the only place Pode had gone to was work. Decker parked a couple of stalls down from the broker’s white Mercedes 450 SL on level C of the underground garage. The place was dank, the air loaded with exhaust fumes, and he felt a headache coming on. He sat in his car for an hour, then, wanting to stretch his legs, climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. The hallways were empty and soundless except for an occasional inner door closing or a ding from the elevator bell. He leaned against the wall and waited. Another hour passed. At 11:15, Dustin finally came out of his office. From a corner, Decker had a good chance to memorize his face as he waited for the elevator.

      Mike was right. The younger Pode was a good-looking man. Five eleven, one seventy or eighty, and well built. An iron pumper, his chest swelled under his shirt, big shoulders. Coiffed dark hair with a full mustache. A deep sunlamp tan. His face was lean with a sloped nose and deep-set dark eyes under dark brows.

      Tall, dark, and handsome with little resemblance to his father. As soon as Dustin stepped inside the elevator, Decker rushed down the stairwell to his car. He pulled out of the space a couple of seconds after the Mercedes.

      Pode’s destination was Beverly Hills—lunch at La Ragazzina Boutique, a one-room Italian restaurant jammed with a mixture of businessmen, entertainment hangerson, and women shoppers with acute ennuitis just dying for a little attention. It was a good place in which to observe Pode because everyone was either self-absorbed or wanted to be noticed. Decker found a spot at the end of the tiny bar and ordered a club soda.

      Pode sat in a dark-red booth in the corner opposite the bar. Five minutes later Cameron Smithson joined him with two other suits. The four of them talked animatedly for a while, until Cameron pulled out a briefcase. Within moments, the table was covered with papers.

      Decker glanced at his watch. Half a day shot. Maybe Morrison was right. This was a waste of manpower. He got up and found a pay phone occupied by a lady with the hands of a fifty-year-old but the face of a woman twenty years younger. Good lift. Her hair was as orange as his, but her color came from a bottle. Rechecking his watch, he grew impatient with the woman’s blabbering and glanced over to Pode’s table.

      The pile of papers had grown.

      Finally, she hung up. Turning around, the woman smiled at him and reached for his hair. Instinctively, he backed away.

      She let out a chuckle.

      “It’s natural, isn’t it?”

      “Yes.”

      “Lucky boy.” She turned around and caught the headwaiter’s eye.

      “Tony!” she purred huskily, spreading out her arms widely and embracing the tuxedoed Hispanic.

      The hug didn’t help her get a table any faster. Smiling all the way, ole Tony led her to the bar.

      Decker dialed the station and Marge told him there had been no new developments—the warrants hadn’t been approved yet, the X rays from Oregon hadn’t arrived. She had decided to put the case in abeyance for the moment and work on another that had just come over the line.

      Swell!

      Yesterday, the case had been hot, but now a definite chill was settling in. Goddam it, Lindsey deserved more.

      An hour later Pode left the restaurant. Decker followed him to the Rox-San building, five blocks from where he’d eaten. More waiting. He pulled out his lunch—a chunk of kosher salami with crackers and nothing to drink. He’d made his own brown bag today. The garlic lingered on his breath and he became irritable.

      If nothing came of this, he’d have to go back to Hollywood, and a return to scuzzville didn’t thrill him. Lately the crap was beginning to get to him. The dichotomy—one minute he was a spiritual being, praying, seeking a higher order in his life; the next, knee deep in scum and shit. He was living in two worlds, not sure which part of his life was real and which was an undercover assignment.

      Pode left an hour later and returned to Executive First. He was there for another twenty minutes, then came out with a gym bag. Decker followed him to the Sports Connection.

      More cooling of the heels outside the health club.

      At

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