I parked down the street and walked back along the alley behind the building. There were steel bars over the ground-floor windows and a metal fire escape with the first set of steps retracted. Around front, I walked in the entrance and looked at the directory in the unattended lobby. The offices of Hildebrand & Hildebrand took up the entire third floor. Apparently the nepotistic bastard had taken his son into business with him.

Access to the third floor was by a tiny four-person elevator and a set of service stairs. The building’s front and back doors were both alarmed. The lawyer’s office door would be, too. It would be tricky ghosting through multiple alarm systems without disturbing the doughnut eaters but we could probably do it. Jail time for breaking and entering an unoccupied building is much less than for armed robbery, and in a burglary you don’t have to worry about hero complexes and heart patients.

Back in the alley, I took another look at the fire escape. If we pulled the retracted steps down, it would get us to the third floor. From there, we could climb onto the roof, using the short steel ladder that was bolted to the wall to give maintenance workers access to the top of the building.

I liked it. Going through the roof, we would avoid the alarm systems. There might be a vent opening large enough to squeeze through once the cover was pried off. If not, I could use a cordless reciprocating saw to enlarge a smaller opening.

Buildings like this one weren’t constructed with security in mind. The roof was nothing but tar and plywood atop two-by-eight or two-by-ten joists with lath and plaster underneath. The saw would be noisy for twenty or thirty seconds, but it was a commercial district. There wouldn’t be anybody around at 2 a.m. We could find a place to watch from, wait till the cops did their midnight drive-by, then drop down into the lawyer’s office with a pack of safecracking tools.

If the safe stymied us, we could put on masks and jump the lawyer when he showed up the next morning. Heroically self-sacrificing attorneys are as rare as virgins in Vegas, and I didn’t think it would take too many light taps on the forehead with a pry bar to convince Hildebrand, junior or senior, to cough up the combination. Once we had the diamonds, we could tie up the lawyer, his security guard, and any of the office staff who came in early, then take the elevator down to the lobby. If we brought our tools into the building in a couple of sturdy shoulder bags, we could carry them out the front door without attracting attention. All we needed was a place to park the car that wasn’t too far away and wouldn’t attract the attention of the police.

Well-dressed pedestrians passed in both directions on the sidewalk in front of the building. The boulevard was busy with cabs, passenger cars, and local delivery trucks. Looking up and down the street, I saw a Norm’s one block west of the lawyer’s building. Norm’s restaurants, scattered across Los Angeles and Orange County, are all-night eateries that bustle until two or three o’clock in the morning. It was a gift.

I walked down to the diner-style eatery, got the morning paper from a machine, and went inside and sat down at a booth by the front window. Looking through the plate glass, I had a clear view of the lawyer’s Eisenhower-era office building. When the uniformed waitress slouched over, I ordered a western omelet with rye toast and hash browns, feeling cozy and in control.

There was an article in the paper about the fire on Pacific Avenue that we had seen on Saturday night. Three structures had been badly damaged and would have to be demolished. The fire chief was quoted as saying that the buildings had been unoccupied and dilapidated and that tearing them down would help clear the way for new development. The cause of the fire was unknown-to the authorities, at least.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

I took Santa Monica west to Ocean Boulevard and turned south, driving along the edge of Palisades Park above the Pacific. The choppy blue water was frosted with whitecaps, the blustery beach deserted. Turning left at Westminster, away from the water, I made my way to Mr. Parker’s lot.

When I walked through the front door of the flophouse a few minutes later, Budge and Candyman were standing by the kitchen door with worried expressions, talking to a Asian man with a clipboard who glanced over at me as I came in.

“What’s all that mean?” Candyman said with a touch of belligerence.

“All these violations have to be corrected or the house will be condemned,” the man said patiently. He wore thick glasses with heavy black frames. His blue suit looked like it had come off the rack at Sears.

“How long we got to fix ‘em?” Budge asked in a frightened voice.

“Fourteen days.”

“Fourteen days!” Candyman said. “How we s’posed to fix all that in just two weeks?”

“It will be very difficult,” the city inspector said.

“What’s going on?” I said. All three of them looked over at me.

“They’re gonna condemn the house, Rob,” Budge wailed.

“Are you a resident here?” the inspector asked me.

“I live upstairs.”

He nodded. “Acting on a tip from a concerned citizen, I inspected the premises with these gentlemen’s permission and found numerous serious violations of the housing code, starting with the plumbing and electrical systems and including the structural integrity of the building. There’s also a serious health hazard from rodent infestation. If the violations aren’t corrected within fourteen days, the city will move to condemn the property.”

“Who was the concerned citizen?” I said.

“I don’t know, sir, and even if I did know, I couldn’t tell you.”

“This have anything to do with the resort Councilman Discenza is building up the beach?” I asked.

The man’s intelligent face seemed to close up and contract. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “I’m just doing my job.”

“Where we s’posed to go if you condemn the joint?” Candyman asked angrily. “There ain’t no place else ‘round here we can afford to live.”

“I hear you, man,” the inspector said. “I hope you don’t lose your home. But there is nothing I can do about it, one way or the other.”

He tore a pink sheet off the form on his clipboard and held it out to the two stooges. They looked at it like it was radioactive.

“You best give that to Miz Sharpnick,” Candyman said. “She the owner.”

“She’ll get a copy, too,” the inspector said. “This copy is for the tenants.”

Candyman and Budge kept their hands at their sides, as if they could hold the reality of impending homelessness at bay by refusing the form.

The inspector raised his eyebrows at me and I walked over and took the sheet. It was crammed with check-marked boxes and scrawled comments. By the looks of it, the house would have to be rebuilt from the foundation up and then have a new foundation put under it in order to fix all the violations.

I walked out onto the front porch with him.

“Would a thousand dollars do anything to bring us up to code?” I asked, showing him one of the packets of hundreds I got from Fahim.

He looked at the money like a dry alcoholic at a glass of Chivas Regal, rubbing the polyester lapel of his suit with the hand that wasn’t holding the clipboard. But then he shook his head.

“It wouldn’t do any good, man. They are waiting for this report at city hall. If I said the place was up to code, they would just send somebody else out here to write it up. And this is one time they would be right. They’ve taken some houses north of here that really weren’t in bad condition, but this place isn’t fit for human habitation-no offense to you.”

“None taken,” I said. “The place is a dump. What do they want the property for? I thought the resort ended a few blocks north of here.”