CHAPTER 26

 

.26.

The drive to Ron Montano’s office took us through the heart of a city that felt like it was vibrating with a fever it couldn’t name. We found the address in a nondescript building on South Spring Street – the “Wall Street of the West.” It was the kind of place where the air tasted of exhaust and desperate ambition, filled with men in grey suits who all looked like they were running out of time.

Montano’s office was on the fourth floor, tucked between a bail bondsman and a shorthand school. The frosted glass door just said Montano & Associates, but the “associates” seemed to be a collection of overflowing ashtrays and a secretary who looked like she’d been carved out of a very tired piece of oak.

“He’s out,” she said, not looking up from her Underwood typewriter. The keys clacked with a rhythmic, aggressive pace. “Glendale. Won’t be back until the shadows are long.”

Jimmy didn’t flinch. He just leaned over her desk and wrote a few words on a scrap of paper. “Tell him Jimmy Karlsen called. Tell him I’m at Stella Maris. He knows the way.”

The secretary took the paper with a two-fingered grip, her eyes flicking to Jimmy’s suit. She knew the name. Everyone in this city knew the name, but in 1929, a name was just something you put on a check before the bank closed. “I’ll give him the word,” she muttered.

***

The one-hour trip back to Malibu was a masterclass in the scarcity of conversation.

Jimmy hit the gas the moment we cleared the city limits, pushing the Auburn 8-90 toward eighty. The wind was a roar that should have made conversation impossible, but the silence sitting between us was heavier. Jimmy stared at the ribbon of the Roosevelt Highway, his eyes shielded by the dark lenses, his hands fused to the wheel.

I sat back and watched the landscape shift. The grand, desperate sprawl of Los Angeles gave way to the brown, scrubby hills and finally, the blue-grey expanse of the Pacific. To my left, the ocean was a flat, shimmering plate; to my right, the Santa Monica Mountains stood like silent witnesses to our retreat.

I thought about the drivers in the parking lot, the “missing” trucks, and the man whose face Jimmy couldn’t quite place. I thought about Daisy Poulsen standing alone in the lobby, looking like a Simonetta Vespucci in a world of industrial ovens.

Mostly, I thought about Montano. Jimmy had called his “shadow” home. He was inviting the man who had been spying on us in Hawaii into the sanctuary of Stella Maris.

Jimmy didn’t say a word until the tires crunched onto the gravel of the Malibu Inn driveway. He killed the engine.

“You think I’m making a mistake,” he said, still staring through the windshield.

“I think you’re inviting the fox into the hen house,” I replied, my voice raspy from the salt air. “But then again, the fox is the only one who knows where the wolf hides his kills.”

Jimmy finally turned to me, and for a second, the sunglasses didn’t hide the hollowed-out look in his eyes. “I don’t need a friend right now, Ray. I need a witness. And Montano…” He shook his head. “Montano has seen pretty much every rot in this place. Now, can we have some lunch?”

I nodded. Jimmy restarted the car and eased it toward the inn’s entrance.