Grist 01 - The Four Last Things by Timothy Hallinan Read Free Book Online

I said. “Simeon. What’s yellow journalism paying these days?”
    “Green,” he said. “How much of it do you need?”
    “It runs into seven figures. As in a license plate. Have the cops run a make yet on the car in that motel murder last night?”
    “Motel murder where?”
    “Jesus, Pat, how many were there?”
    “Three.”
    I wondered whether Norman Bates was in town. “This was on Sunset, in Hollywood.”
    “Jane Doe,” he said.
    I digested that.
    “White woman,” Pat said. “Early thirties, right?”
    “No identification?” I said.
    “Clean as a whistle. Just like it said in the paper.” He paused for a second. “Do you know anything I don’t know?”
    “I probably know lots of things you don’t know.”
    “Anyway,” he said, “what makes you think there was a car involved?”
    “It was a motel. Motels take license numbers. Checks bounce but license plates don’t.”
    “This one did,” he said. “As you’d know if you read the Times or anything more current than Homer. The car was stolen.”
    “From whom?” I said.
    “Why?” he said.
    “I’m a concerned citizen. You know how concerned I am. Remember how concerned I was when you bought your term paper from that Iranian?”
    “There was nothing wrong with that paper,” he said defensively. It was an old argument.
    “No. It would have been perfect if it hadn’t implicated Allah as the deity responsible for the deus ex machina in the last act of an Elizabethan play. That’s one of the things I know that you don’t know, that Elizabethans didn’t know Allah from Colonel Sanders.”
    “You didn’t flunk me,” he said.
    “No, I didn’t. So who was the car stolen from?”
    There was a pause. “I don’t know. I should, but I don’t.”
    “If you find out, call me, okay?”
    “Tell me why.”
    “Tell me about that term paper.”
    “Oh, shit. I’ll call you. But when there’s something we can print, you tell me first, right?”
    “Make a deal?”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Here’s another license plate. Check it for me and I promise that I’ll call you first if there’s ever anything.”
    “Cross your heart and swear to God?”
    “Come on, Pat. You know I can’t do two things at the same time.” I gave him the license number of Sally Oldfield’s chubby girlfriend.
    “I’m going to have to talk to the cops, you know.”
    “Tell them it has to do with the Girl Scout Cookie scam.”
    “The what scam?”
    “Read the Herald Examiner ,” I said. I hung up.
    An hour later Harker still hadn’t called, although Mrs. Yount had. Twice. I’d let her talk to the answering machine while I did two hundred sit-ups as part of the installment plan on a flat stomach I was purchasing with sweat and boredom, and I’d fed a little lettuce to my one surviving parakeet, Gretel. Someone had twisted Hansel’s head off by way of saying hello a few months earlier. That time I’d been lucky; Hansel was the only one I’d cared about who’d been killed.
    Thirty minutes and half a new pot of coffee after that, my patience had given out. This time Harker’s secretary told me that he was in a meeting and couldn’t be disturbed.
    “I’m very disturbed,” I said. “Tell him it’s Simeon Grist and tell him that I’m calling the cops if he doesn’t talk to me.”
    “Geez, the cops?” she said. “Will he know what it’s about?”
    “Tell him Sally Oldfield.”
    “He knows Miss Oldfield. What about her?”
    “You have a lovely voice,” I said. “Will you put me on hold and give him the message?”
    “Gee, thanks, I mean, I don’t know. He’s like a grizzly bear when he gets interrupted.”
    “Interrupt him. Tell him I’m going to the cops if he won’t talk to me.”
    “Jeez,” she said again. “Hang on a minute.”
    I held on. One of Monument Records’ nominal stars crooned something about love on the run. It sounded uncomfortable.
    “He got all grizzly,” she said. “But he held up twelve fingers, I mean first