Swimming to Catalina

a mineral water. The place was already full, and he spotted a number of familiar faces from films and television, then he saw Rick Grant coming toward him. The cop was grayer and heavier but otherwise much the same as Stone remembered.
    “How are you, Stone?” Grant said, extending a hand.
    “Not bad, Rick; you?”
    “Getting by.”
    “You’re at headquarters now?”
    “Yeah, I’ve got soft duty as a deputy to the chief of detectives.”
    “Administrative stuff?”
    “More like consulting on various cases. Right now I’m writing a long report on the state of organized crime in L.A., that being my old specialty.”

    “That’s very interesting,” Stone said. “Why don’t we order?”
    They chatted amiably while their food was served.
    “What was that about moonlighting?” Grant finally asked.
    “I need some local knowledge and, maybe, influence on something I’m working on. I’m sorry you’re not available.”
    “I didn’t say that; I said that the department frowns on it. It didn’t seem like a good idea to talk about it on the phone. What’s involved?”
    “Five hundred a day; I’m not sure for how long, but it’s cash, and I’m not going to issue a 1099 to the IRS at the end of the year.”
    “That’s nice, but I meant, what is it, exactly, you need?”
    “Advice; intelligence; absolute discretion; maybe an occasional flash of the badge.”
    “Tell me about the problem.”
    “A friend of mine has disappeared; her husband called me a few days ago and asked me to come out here and find her.”
    “Domestic thing?”
    “I thought so at first; I don’t now.”
    “What changed your mind?”
    “As soon as I got here everybody, and I meaneverybody, the husband knows went to a great deal of trouble to distract me from the problem. Then the husband told me he had heard from his wife, that she was fine, and I was hustled out of town.”
    “But you’re still here.”
    “I didn’t like being hustled. Also, I had two phone messages from the lady, and my hotel’s caller ID made them from a restaurant called Grimaldi’s.”

    Grant’s eyebrows shot up. “I know that place, or used to.”
    “I thought you might.” Stone told Grant about his visit to the restaurant and finding the matchbook in the storeroom.
    “Sounds like the lady’s leaving a trail of crumbs.”
    “It does, doesn’t it? I can’t go any farther with this without telling you who these people are, so I need to know if you’re in.”
    “Tell me who they are, and I’ll tell you if I’m in.”
    “The husband is Vance Calder.”
    Grant put down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “Holy shit,” he said.
    “That about sums it up. His wife and I used to be…close, in New York. She went off to do a magazine piece on Calder and ended up marrying him.”
    “So why didn’t Calder call us?”
    “He’s terrified of the publicity, especially the tabloids. I think he’s led pretty much of a charmed existence with the press, and he doesn’t want that to change.”
    “But it’s hiswife. ”
    “Yeah.”
    Grant shook his head. “I haven’t had all that much contact with the showbiz community,” he said, “but these people never cease to amaze me. They think they’re operating on a nearby planet of their own, where they call all the shots and nobody else matters.”
    “From what I’ve heard, that’s how it was in the twenties and thirties, when the studios were big.”
    “I guess so, and maybe it’s still like that a little, but it rubs me the wrong way.”
    “I can understand that, but it’s not my purpose here to drag these people and their friends down to earth; Ijust want to find the lady and talk to her.”
    “Talk to her? Not reunite her with her husband?”
    Stone shrugged. “If absolutely necessary.”
    “You still want her?”
    Stone looked at his plate. This was the question he had been avoiding asking himself. “I want to know ifshe still wantsme, after…all that’s happened.”
    “But you don’tknow what’s happened.”
    “That’s right, and I want to find out.”
    “Well, on the face of it—I mean if Calder walked into the cop shop and I caught it—I’d read it as a purely domestic matter.”
    “It may be, but I doubt it.”
    “You could be right; it’s the Grimaldi’s connection that intrigues me. I doubt if that joint is even in the phone book; it’s not the sort of place a movie star’s wife would wander into.”
    “That’s how it struck me; it looked like half