Page 113 of Hanging and Burning

Olo showed me the information that she’d photographed and downloaded.

It was clear to us that Paulie was using information he gathered to blackmail some and sell to others. One business file told us that Kenneth Rouche was involved with Star Shield, but he also worked for Malto, who had provided Paulie with his startup money and so was the true owner of the agency.

“Any of this help?” Olo asked me after a few hours of going through the business and monkey-business files.

“Quite a bit, I think.”

“How?”

“We know that Paulie, Malto—aka Melton Lamming—and Mr. Rouche are tied together, that they answer to each other. If we play it right, we could get them all tangled up and then their fall is a foregone conclusion.”

“You know what Melquarth would say we should do,” said Olo.

“I do. But, you know, I’d like to keep the blood off my hands.”

26.

OLO SAID THAT she’d like to stick around until my bloodless coup could be realized. I accepted the offer but told her to go to ground somewhere until I really needed help.

Down the street from the transient office there was a used-car rental lot. I was in need of a car that did not announce me to potential predators. I settled on a 2015 Saab 9-3 that had been painted an unflattering dull brown. There were some slippage problems with the transmission, but that was an acceptable trade-off, considering that it was unlikely that anyone would suspect the driver of or feel threatened by the presence of such a weak example of an automobile.

One salient piece of information I got from the stolen files was that Paulie Jr. lived up in the Trousdale Estates in the Santa Monica Mountains. That was my next stop.

The opulent manor house was up on a hill, protected by huge stone walls and probably guarded by advanced electronics and undereducated thugs.

Across the street from Junior’s castle was a paved path of some sort. It snaked up the side of a hill and disappeared among the trees and bushes. It might have been a private road or even a driveway. That didn’t matter to me. I drove my boxy brown car thirty feet up the lane and then backed into a space between trees and overdense shrubbery until my car was well hidden. Then I took a modified cell phone and hung it from a tree across the street from Paulie’s driveway.

All I had to do then was sit in my car and watch the screen that connected my phone and the electric eye.

There I waited.

The romance of being a PI usually falls apart for most people when they realize how much time is spent sitting and waiting, watching and seeing little, pissing into milk bottles and eating processed foods that were, in turn, eroding you from the inside out. But I was never bothered by the empty moments of my profession. I had learned that no matter how long you stared at a blank wall, there was something left to learn, either in the environment or in yourself.

The mass of shrubbery across the road from my hiding place contained all kinds of life. Mostly insects and birds, but there was also errant fauna. Dogs, squirrels, and one time even a coyote came loping down the middle of the mostly empty road. The feral canine stopped to stare at my camera. It felt as if she was looking directly at me. She held that gaze for nearly a minute and then turned away—ultimately unimpressed.

After the coyote I decided to call Leaf. Halfway through the first ring, the call was cut off and a system-generated text message appeared: Busy now. Call later.

Before I could consider a response the phone rang.

“Hello.”

“What you doin’, Joe?” Arman Babylon asked, his voice sounding clearer than when we first met.

“Sittin’ in a park,” I replied.

“What about Junior?”

“Him and that guy Rouche came to my hotel.”

“Why?”

“Because I put an agent into Star Shield to spy on him.”

“Your man get caught?”

“Let’s just say that Junior found out.”

The gate to Paulie’s driveway slid open and a Rolls-Royce coated with glittering metallic gold paint emerged. It turned left, allowing me to see, quite clearly, that Paulie was the driver.