“I hope you’re right,” Stone said.
Chapter 11
On the West Coast, as Dino left Elaine’s, Allan Peebles arrived at his Beverly Hills home after a long editorial board meeting at the “newspaper” he edited, The American Infiltrator. His editorial board consisted of a dozen writers and editors who had failed at real newspapers and magazines and had ended up, as Peebles had, at the last stop for a journalist, a seamy tabloid. They were consoled by the fact that they were considerably better paid than their counterparts at real newspapers.
Peebles was an androgynous Scot who had fled his native Glasgow, pursued by rumors about his sexual orientation, for London, where he had acquired an English accent, an English wife, and, apparently while holding his nose, two English daughters. When the marriage failed, his father-in-law, who owned a London tabloid, had sent him to America to found a similar organ there, on the condition that he not return to England until his daughters were of age.
To his father-in-law’s surprise, Peebles had succeeded in putting together a highly profitable, if highly disreputable, publication, which specialized in exposing those parts of the lifestyles of the rich and famous that they had hoped would remain secret. Peebles did this with some glee, while, in the permissive atmosphere of La-La Land, indulging his own rather specialized appetites. Tonight, Peebles was hungry for pizza.
Upon entering his empty house, he shucked off his jacket, picked up a phone, and pressed an unlabeled speed-dial button.
“Jiffy Pizza,” a whiskied female voice said.
“It’s number two zero two; how are you, sweets?”
“Fine, baby; what’s your pleasure tonight?”
“I’m in the mood for the special.”
“’Round-the-world?”
“You bet.”
“With sausage?”
“L
ots of sausage.”
“That’s going to run you twenty,” she said. Twenty meant two hundred.
“And cheap at the price, I’m sure it will be.”
“Half an hour, sweets. Your order is in the oven.”
“The sooner the better. Bye.” He hung up and walked into the kitchen. Opening the freezer door, he extracted a bottle of lemon vodka and poured himself a double. He always had to be a little drunk for pizza.
Three miles away, Sheila consulted her book and dialed a number.
“Hey, talk to me,” a husky male voice said.
“It’s the pizzeria,” Sheila said. “I’ve got an order for a ’round-the-world, with lots of sausage; I thought of you.”
“Of course you did, baby.”
“You available immediately?”
“How much?”
“Ten; you won’t be there long, believe me.”
“I can do it.”
She gave him the address. “Oh, and pick up a pizza on the way; we want this to look good, don’t we?”
“Sure we do.”
“And be sure to get paid before he starts eating.”