BECAUSE THE NIGHT

367

Lloyd let his mental wheels spin. “Captain, have you thrown the name Thomas Goff at that D.M.V. operator who called in about Christie?”

“Yes. I talked to her myself. She said that Goff was not the name she dug up for Christie. I also gave her the license number and a description of Goff’s vehicle. Negative on that too. What do you—”

Lloyd hushed the captain with a hand on his shoulder. “Has Douglas seen the mug shots of Goff?”

“No.”

“Then get me a copy of them now, and run me a complete all-police computer check on this name—Richard Brian Oldfield, white male, about thirty. Four-one-oh-nine Windemere, Hollywood. White Mercedes, FHMthree-six-three. He’s clean on wants and warrants, but I need all the details I can get.”

Gaffaney nodded, then said, “What are you fishing for?”

“I’ll tell you after I’ve spoken to Douglas. Will you get me those mug shots now?”

The captain walked into his office, flushing from his neck all the way up to his crew cut. Returning to Lloyd and handing him the mug-shot strip, he hissed, “Don’t make Douglas any promises of leniency.”

Lloyd gave his superior officer a guileless smile. “No, sir.” When Gaffaney walked back to his office, he entered the cubicle and flipped off the loudspeaker. “Let’s make a deal,” he said to Hubert Douglas, placing the pint of Jack Daniel’s on the table between them. “Tell me what I want to know, and you walk. Fuck me around, and I hotfoot it up to Narco Division and glom a pound of reefer to add to the bag the I.A.D. bulls took off you, making it a felony possession bust. What’ll it be?”

Douglas grabbed the bottle and downed half of it in one gulp. “Do I look stupid, Hopkins?”

“No, you look intelligent and handsome and full of savoir faire. Let’s accomplish this with a minimum of bullshit and jive. The I.A.D. bulls think that you have some guilty knowledge regarding the classified files at Junior Miss. Let’s take it from there.”

Douglas coughed and breathed bourbon in Lloyd’s face. “But what if that there guilty knowledge involves coppin’ to some illegal shit I pulled?”

“You still walk.”

“No shit, Dick Tracy?”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’. Talk, Hubert.”

Douglas knocked back a drink and wiped his lips. “ ’Bout three weeks ago 368

L.A. NOIR

I was drinkin’ in a juke joint down the street from Junior Miss. This paddy dude starts a conversation with me, asks me if I like workin’ security at Junior Miss, what my duties was, how tight I was in with the security boss, that kind of rebop. He buys me drinks up the ying-yang, gets me righteously lubed, then splits. I ain’t no dummy, I knows this dude and I ain’t seen the last of each other.”

Douglas paused and grabbed the bottle. Lloyd snatched it out of his hand before he could bring it to his lips. Placing the mug-shot strip on the table, he said, “Is this the man?”

Douglas stared at the photos and grinned from ear to ear. “Righteous. That’s the dude. What kind of shit did he pull?”

“Never mind. Finish your story.”

Casting sad eyes at the pint, Douglas said, “I was right. The dude shows up the very next day, and offers to get me coked. We toot some righteous pharmaceutical blow in the john, then he starts talkin’ about this righteous smart fuckin’ buddy of his, how the guy was fuckin’ obsessed with fuckin’

data, you know, obsessed with knowin’ the fuckin’ skinny on other people’s lives. You dig?”

“I dig,” Lloyd said. “Did he tell you the man’s name? Did he describe him?

Did he say that the man was his half-brother?”

Douglas shook his head. “The fucker didn’t even tell me his own fuckin’

name, let alone the name of his fuckin’ buddy. But dig, that day he makes his pitch: one K and two grams of pharmacy blow for Xerox copies of all the classified files. I tell him it’s gonna take time, I gotta make them copies a couple at a time, on the sly. So I does it, without Murray or anyone else at Junior Miss knowin’ about it. The dude calls me at the bar to set the tr—”

Lloyd interrupted: “Did he give you an address or a phone number where he could be reached?”

“Fuck, no! He kept callin’ himself a ‘justified paranoid’ and said that he covered his tracks when he took a fuckin’ piss, just to stay in fuckin’ practice. He wouldn’t even call me at my fuckin’ crib; it had to be the fuckin’

bar. Anyways, we sets up the trade-off, last week sometime, Tuesday or Wednesday night, and man, it was righteously fuckin’ strange. Kick loose with that jug, will you, homeboy? I’m thirsty.”

Lloyd slid the bottle across the table. “Tell me about the trade-off. Take it slow and be very specific.”

Douglas guzzled half of the remaining whiskey. “Righteous. Anyway, I been observin’ the dude, and to my mind he seems like he ain’t wound to-