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They caught a cab in two minutes, and it carried them to Sunset Boulevard. Then they walked for quite a while. The sun went down; the lights came on over the city. Sunset Boulevard began to fill up with cars bumper to bumper. The sidewalks were begi
They stopped and asked some of the aimlessly wandering youths about lodging. A young fellow with shoulder-length hair and a thick 1890 moustache and sideburns, but dressed in expensive looking clothes, gave them some sound information. He wanted to talk some more and even invited them to have di
Kickaha said to him, "We'll see you around," and they left. A half hour later, they were inside their room in a motel on a side street. The room was not plush, but it was more than adequate for Kickaha, who had spent most of the last twenty-four years in primitive conditions. It was not as quiet as he wished, since a party was going on in the next room. A radio or record player was blasting out one of the more screechy examples of Rock, many feet stomped, and many voices shrieked.
While Anana took a shower, he studied the contents of the wallets he'd taken from the two men. Frederic James Mazarin and Jeffrey Velazquez Ramos, according to their drivers' licenses, lived on Wilshire Boulevard. His map showed him that the address was close to the termination of Wilshire downtown. He suspected that the two lived in a hotel. Mazarin was forty-eight and Ramos was forty-six. The rest of the contents of the wallets were credit cards (almost unknown in 1946, if he remembered correctly), a few pictures of the two with women, a photo of a woman who might have been Ramos' mother, money (three hundred and twenty dollars), and a slip of paper in Mazarin's wallet with ten initials in one column and telephone numbers in others.
Kickaha went into the bathroom and opened the shower door. He told Anana that he was going across the street to the public telephone booth.
"Why don't you use the telephone here?"
"It goes through the motel switchboard," he said. "I just don't want to take any chances of being traced or tapped."
He walked several blocks to a drug store where he got change. He stood for a moment, considering using the drug store phones and then decided to go back to the booth near the motel. That way, he could watch the motel front while making his calls.
He stopped for a moment by the paperback rack. It had been so long since he'd read a book. Well, he had read the Tishquetmoac books, but they didn't publish anything but science and history and theology. The people of the tier called Atlantis had published fiction, but he had spent very little time among them, although he had pla
He looked over the selection, aware that he shouldn't be taking the time to do so, and finally picked three. One was a Tom Wolfe book (but not the Thomas Wolfe he had known), which looked as if it would give him information about the Zeitgeist of modern times. One was a factual book by Asimov (who was, it seemed, the same man as the science-fiction writer he remembered), and a book on the black revolution. He went to the magazine counter and purchased Look, Life, The Saturday Review, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles magazine, and a number of science-fiction magazines.
With his books, magazines, and an evening Times, he walked back to the telephone booth. He called Anana first to make sure that she was all right. Then he took pencil and paper and dialed each of the numbers on the slip of paper he had found in Mazarin's wallet.
Three of them were women who disclaimed any knowledge of Mazarin. Three of the numbers did not reply. Kickaha marked these for later calls. One might have been a bookie joint, judging from the talking in the background. The man who answered was as noncommittal as the women. The eighth call got a bartender. Kickaha said he was looking for Mazarin.
The bartender said, "Ain't you heard, friend? Mazarin was killed today!"
"Somebody killed him?" Kickaha said, as if he were shocked. "Who done it?"
"Nobody knows. The guy was riding with Fred and some of the boys, and all of a sudden the guy pulls Charley's gun out of his pocket, shoots Fred in the chest with it, and takes off, but only after he knocks out Charley, Ramos, and Ziggy."
"Yeah?" Kickaha said. "Them guys was pros, too. They must've got careless or something. Say, ain't that go
"You kiddin', friend? Nothin' makes Cambring jump up and down. Look, I gotta go, a customer. Drop around, buy me a drink, I'll fill you in on the gory details."
Kickaha wrote the name Cambring down and then looked through the phone book. There was no Cambring in the Los Angeles directory or any of the surrounding cities.
The ninth phone number was that of a Culver City garage. The man who answered said he'd never heard of Mazarin. Kickaha doubted that that was true, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The last number was opposite the letters R.C. Kickaha hoped that these stood for R. Cambring. But the woman who answered was Roma Chalmers. She was as guarded as the others in her replies to his questions.
He called Anana again to make doubly sure that she was all right. Then he returned to the room, where he ordered a meal from the Chicken Delight. He ate everything in the box, but the food had that taste of something disagreeable and of something missing. Anana also ate all of hers but complained.
"Tomorrow's Saturday," he said. "If we haven't found any promising leads, we'll go out and get some clothes."
He took a shower and got dried just before a bottle of Wild Turkey and six bottles of Tuborg were delivered. Anana tried both and settled for the Danish beer. Kickaha sipped a little of the bourbon and made a wry face. The liquor store owner had said that the bourbon was the best in the world. It had been too long since he had tasted whiskey; he would have to learn to like it all over again. If he had time, that is, which he doubted. He decided to drink a bottle or two of the Tuborg, which he found tasty, probably because beer-making was well known on and he had not gotten out of the habit of drinking it.
He sat in a chair and sipped while he slowly read out loud in English from the newspaper to Anana. Primarily, he was looking for any news about Wolff, Jadawin, or the Beller. He sat up straight when he came across an item about Lucifer's Louts. These had been discovered, half-naked, beaten up, and burned, on the road out of Lake Arrowhead. The story they gave police was that a rival gang had jumped them.
A page later, he found a story about the crash of a helicopter near Lake Arrowhead. The helicopter, out of the Santa Monica airport, was owned by a Mister Cambring, who had once been put on trial, but not convicted, for bribery of city officials in co
The news story did not give Cambring's address. Kickaha called the office of Top Hat Enterprises, which Cambring owned. The phone rang for a long time, and he finally gave up. He then called the Los Angeles Times and, after a series of transfers from one person and department to another, some of them involving waits of three or four minutes, he got his information. Mr. Roy Arndell Cambring lived on Rimpau Boulevard. A check of the city map showed that the house was several blocks north of Wilshire.