Body Copy - Michael Craven [51]
B O D Y C O P Y
men, to Tremaine’s astonishment, were actually wearing designer sweat suits. Not Spinelli, though, not the Shark.
The Shark wore a suit. Wonder if it’s a shark-skin suit? The Shark in a shark-skin suit. Tremaine stayed in his car for an hour and a half, until Spinelli and the two men returned to the building.
Tremaine drove home.
The next day, at five till one, Tremaine pulled the Cutlass into the exact same spot it had been in the day before, right in front of the L.A. Stone offices.
At one, Spinelli and the same two men exited the building. Tremaine watched them and said aloud, “Good. The Shark is like me. Likes to have lunch at the same time every day.”
Tremaine drove home.
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C H A P T E R 2 3
Tremaine knocked on Marvin Kearns’s door. This time, he was home, Tremaine could hear him in there. Marvin opened the trailer door and Tremaine said, “I need a favor.”
“Enter, Mr. Tremaine,” Marvin said.
Tremaine entered Marvin’s trailer and, as always, mar-veled at the walls festooned with Bruce Lee posters.
“Have a seat, my friend,” Marvin said. Tremaine did.
“Let me say in advance that it will be my pleasure to assist the great Donald Tremaine in whatever endeavor you request that I indulge in. Ever since you pulled me out of the ocean that day, my death imminent, MY DEATH
IMMINENT, I have felt like I owed you one. It will be my pleasure to return the gesture.”
B O D Y C O P Y
Tremaine had taken Marvin surfing one winter day when the waves were big and the ocean was a little angry.
Marvin, a decent surfer, had been pulled over the falls and was really struggling. Leash: snapped. Board: nowhere in sight. Tremaine grabbed him, pulled a cramp out of his calf, and swam him to safety. Marvin constantly told Tremaine he owed him one. Things Marvin enjoyed, like taking care of Lyle, didn’t count. Marvin wanted to really return the gesture. Tremaine didn’t feel like Marvin owed him anything. But even if he had, he wouldn’t need to use that favor now, because this was about a case, and he knew Marvin would want to help. This request was pretty big, though—
so, Tremaine figured, two birds with one stone.
Tremaine said, “This is actually about a case, Marvin.”
“Superior,” he said.
“You’ve often offered to help me.”
“I have.”
“But this is a big favor, so this takes care of the one you owe me, too.”
“I’m listening.”
“You’re an actor, right?”
“I am.”
“I want to hire you to do a gig, an acting gig.”
“Done.”
The next day, Tremaine told Marvin he was going to pick him up around noon for his acting gig. Marvin didn’t know who he was going to perform for, didn’t ask. But Tremaine told him anyway, a man by the name of Tyler Wilkes and a man by the name of Paul Spinelli.
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Michael Craven
Tremaine had things to do before picking up Marvin.
He wanted to talk to Wendy Leahy again. So he grabbed the L.A. Times, got in the Cutlass, and drove down to L.A.
Shape, and parked outside the building. It was only 8:45, he was going to wait until nine to go in.
During about two of the fifteen minutes he spent waiting—he didn’t have his stopwatch for an exact time—he did the Jumble. klabn to blank, cheen to hence, biveal to viable, and hupsty to typhus, then finally, aneevlyh to heavenly. Camping under the stars can be this: heavenly.
During the other thirteen minutes, he thought about what he was going to say to Wendy Leahy. About how he had come to the conclusion that he needed to talk to her again.
During his time as a private investigator, Tremaine had discovered something that he believed to be true. This was: Sometimes your subconscious makes decisions for you.
Sometimes, when you’re thinking about something really hard, your subconscious begins to take the information that you’ve compiled and make conclusions on its own. It begins to connect A to B, and B to C, and C to D, then D back to A, and so on and so forth. Then it deposits the information it has collected into your conscious mind. It gives you a little