by Jack Bunker
A thin, balding man in jeans and a polo shirt takes her gently by the arm and leads her away. Lynch appears relieved. He puts his arm around Sophia, pulling her to him protectively, reeling her in.
Sophia stares at the coffin with a look on her face that Lana wore on her Heart Like a Whiffleball album. I’ll never forget that album because it had “Go Down Hard,” my favorite song. Billy played a mean slide solo on that song.
I glance over at Mepum or Mopam, who’s now staring at me. For some reason, he makes me feel guilty for standing next to Gloria, like I’ve been caught out of school.
Billy clears his throat to speak. He’s wearing a nicely tailored black suit, navy silk T-shirt, and black cowboy boots. His ponytail is braided and bound by the same cock ring he wore the first time we met. He looks out at the small group with the whites of his gray eyes even redder than usual.
“She was my baby girl. My sweet baby girl, Jesus rest her soul. I remember the day she was borned. They had to drag her out of Lana, both of ’em kicking and screaming, but Ginger never did seem to find her no peace on this earth. Maybe now, she’ll find it in the good Lord’s garden. I’ll always love you, Pumpkin. May Sweet Jesus Baby God, our merciful Lord and shepherd, have mercy on your ever-lovin’ sweet baby girl soul. Amen.”
He bows his head, and tears rain dark spots on his shirt. Sophia pulls away from Karl and embraces her father. Billy clutches her tightly. “You’re alls I got left, angel girl.”
Sophia stands on tiptoe to softly kiss his cheek, and I’m embarrassed by the thought that I wish I were feeling those lips. Then Billy raises his mournful eyes. From the depths of his pain, the living legend reveals himself to be all too human.
TWENTY-ONE
After the funeral yesterday, at the condolence gathering, I asked Sophia if she’d be willing to talk to me sometime about her mother. She said she had to go to Little Tokyo today and could meet up with me afterward. I suggested Qat Haus, and she said, “You mean Little Pedro’s?” I like a girl with a sense of history.
Little Pedro’s was reputedly the oldest bar in LA. Its proximity to the old Parker Center made it a perfect cop stop. Around the time of the Rampart scandal, LAPD morale took a dive, and so did business at Little Pedro’s. A few years later it closed. Then it became the brothel-themed Bordello. Then One-Eyed Gypsy. And now, Qat Haus. The décor is still nineteenth-century whorehouse from the Bordello days, over-the-top in a lighthearted crimson-crushed-velvet-and-gilded-wood sort of way. Though it’s trendier than most LAPD hangs, the chick bartenders pour heavy, charge light, and wear burlesque chic so the bar’s packed with off-duty cops.
I walk in and spot Sophia in a booth in back, sipping something pink and paper umbrellaed. Could be a Singapore sling. I slide in.
“Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”
“I just got here.” She’s got her hair pulled back tight in a ponytail and wears red lipstick and a tight yellow blouse. Very easy on the eyes.
Aside from the bar, the place is mostly empty. Too early for anyone but an elderly man with a young woman who’s either his granddaughter or a hooker. They’re deep into an order of fish and chips and a couple draft beers with lime. I scan the bar and see Dumphy slumped over a shot glass, trying to get his lips on it without wetting his W. C. Fields nose. Gloria sits a few stools away, staring at Sophia like a falcon sighting its prey. There’s a guy talking at her a mile a minute, but she’s not paying any attention. He’s a SWAT guy whose name I can never remember, but he lives nearby and got mugged by a junkie on his way home from happy hour one night. He’ll never live it down.
Gloria locks eyes with me. Brrrrr. I smile a greeting across the room, but she doesn’t even try to fake a civil response. She turns her back to me. What the hell is that all about?
Mindy, a barmaid who once house-sat for me when I was on a story in New Orleans, stops by. “Drink?” She’s about thirty and must have that many studs in her face. I wonder how she gets through airport security.
“I’ll have a Bombay rocks.” Gin is the only civilized spirit to drink before five o’clock. I turn to Sophia. “You like calamari?”
“Sure.”
I nod at Mindy who makes a mental note of the order and walks off. She never writes it down, and she never gets it wrong. Good house sitter, too.
“So what do you want from me?” Sophia asks.
If I tell her the truth I’ll probably get slapped, so I open my notebook. “Why don’t we start with your parents’ divorce.”
“They were fighting a lot.”
“What about?” I need to pee, but I don’t want to interrupt her train of thought before she even gets started.
“Me and my sister, mostly. Poppy had a unique approach to parenting that Mama didn’t much like.”
“What did he do?”
“He could be pretty cruel. Not that he spanked us or anything; he’d never do that. But he was a big fan of humiliation. That was his absolute favorite tool. He had this Ampex reel-to-reel recorder that used to belong to Les Paul, and one day he set it up to bug the phone when some guy was offering to take Ginger to the junior prom if she’d blow him under the bleachers. She bargained him down to a hand job, but that wasn’t good enough for Poppy. He just had to teach her a lesson. So he played that damn tape at the dinner table. And to make matters worse, Grampa Nate was there, loving every second like it was some kind of soft-core sitcom instead of my sister’s guts being ripped open. Mama went completely psycho, screaming at him, throwing plates, and finally smashing the recorder with a chair. I couldn’t believe it. Poppy worshiped that Les Paul Ampex. Sometimes I thought he loved it even more than he loved us. And then she told him to pack his shit and get the hell out.”
“How did he take it?” My bladder is getting insistent.
“He told her when she was through fucking Vern Senzimmer she could go fuck herself, if you’ll excuse my French. They were both doing a lot of drugs at the time, drinking a lot, as if they needed artificial means to be crazy. And Ginger and I weren’t exactly helpful. We both got Mama’s drama queen gene. Between the four of us there was not a lot of sanity in residence.”
My bladder’s making it impossible to concentrate. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for a minute.” I head off to the men’s room.
Two minutes later I’m leaving the stall and almost trip on my shoelace. I put my foot on the sink to tie my shoe and hear the door close behind me. I look in the mirror and see Gloria locking the deadbolt. Her skin looks almost green, but I can’t tell if it’s the CFL lighting or the fact that she’s already pickled.
“Hey, shailor.” Drunk as a Russian poet. Whatever fragrance she’s wearing clashes with the saccharine urinal-cake smell that infuses the air.
“Ladies’ room is down the hall, Gloria.”
“But you’re not.” She twists me around, jamming my back against the wall-mounted air dryer, mashing her body against mine.
“This isn’t the time or the place.”
She kisses me hard. Despite my discomfort, the risk of being caught excites me. She reaches down and feels my ambivalence through my pants.
“I guess your brain hasn’t notified your dick,” she says, “but that’s not why I’m here.” She gives my balls a sharp squeeze. I stifle a shout. She looks at me hard. All of a sudden she seems almost sober.
“Curb your dick, Nob. You don’t want to get a hard-on for your little girlfriend out there. There’s questions.”
She heads out.
“What questions?”
She snaps the bolt and swings open the door to find Dumphy reaching for the handle. Dumphy doesn’t seem too surprised to find Gloria in the men’s room. On the other hand, surprise requires a certain degree of consciousness, and Dumphy doesn’t appear to have much more than Gloria at the moment.
“What questions, Gloria?”
Dumphy salutes her and hits his forehead a little harder than planned.
She gives him the finger and marshals her balance to walk
out.
“Wuz her problem?” slurs Dumphy. “I’m just tryin’ to kiss ass.”
“Maybe she doesn’t like ass-kissers.”
“You think she got those ’tenant bars without Frenchin’ a shitload of starfish?”
I’m still wondering about Gloria’s comment as I slide back into the booth. Sophia ordered another round while I was gone, and it’s already on the table.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she says.
“The men’s room was a little crowded.” I take a healthy slug of gin to clear my head. “Tell me about Ginger.”
“Is that how you treat all your dates? Make them talk about their little sisters?”
I knew it was a mistake to pee. You give an interviewee time to think, and the blood rushes to their brain, leaving cold feet.
“This isn’t a date. It’s an interview.”
“You always drink when you interview people?”
“Depends on whether I think it’ll help.”
“So I’m the kind of girl you need to ply with alcohol?” She looks into her drink with a sly smile and swirls it with her little umbrella.
“You were drinking when I walked in. I just went with the program.”
She laughs and lifts her glass to toast. We clink, and I get back to work.
“Do you think Ginger inherited enough money to live on?”
“It’s enough for me, and we split it fifty-fifty.”
“You don’t work?”
“I’m an artist.” In other words, no.
“I earn a living making hand-carved marionettes.” This woman is full of surprises. “But I do it because I enjoy it. Mama’s estate was wiped out by the time I gained control, but her publishing rights earn a reasonable living. And on top of that, Ginger didn’t have to pay rent or mortgage.”
I ponder why Ginger was slutting it up on the Web if she didn’t have to work. Was that her art form?
The calamari arrives. Sophia eyes them but isn’t ready to make her move. I pick up a set of legs that looks like a deep-fried exotic flower and pop it in my mouth. The oil’s so hot it burns my tongue. I grab my drink and take a swig, but I know I’m going to feel it for days.
Over her shoulder I see Gloria at the bar. She’s got her back to me, but I feel like she’s watching me anyway, as if her eyes have swiveled around to stare through the back of her head. She’s making it hard to concentrate on Sophia.
“Why do you think your sister did the Internet thing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she just did it for kicks. Or maybe she had a boyfriend who worked there, and she did it for him. In high school she was a big prick teaser, if you know what I mean, always flirting to work the boys.”
She takes the wedge of pineapple from the edge of her sling and puts it between her lips to suck the juice out. I have to look away.
“So tell me. Are you one of those writers who’s driven by a passion to write?” she asks and laughs. A little too hard. I make a mental note to try to move her onto coffee but leave her question hanging.
“At the moment I’m driven by a passion to save my house from my ex.”
“Ouch! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
I wave it off. No problem.
“Are you a good writer?” she asks then immediately backpedals. “I guess that’s a silly question, asking a writer a subjective thing like that about his own work.”
“I subscribe to the first law of writing: you’re only good if it pays off your debts. At the moment, my writing is so-so.”
She laughs again.
I think about how I’ve not only come to bottom-feed for the likes of Globe or the Enquirer but how I’ve come to be glad for the gigs. It’s not much of a living, but I don’t live much. Since Holly left I haven’t seen much point in going out in the world to enjoy life. Especially when I can be staring at a blank screen, alone in a lonely room, losing myself in some grisly homicide.
“Do you like freelance writing?” asks Sophia. “Or do you just do it because you can?”
I shrug. “The freelance market’s shrinking faster than typewriter sales, but if the right story comes along, it can be a stepping-stone into books. Maybe movies.”
“A story like my mother’s?”
I give a “maybe” shrug and pop a calamari ring into my mouth. The squid’s juicy and not too hot anymore.
“Everybody’s got a theory about who killed her,” she says. “What’s yours?”
“I don’t know yet. How about you?”
“I think my sister did it.”
I choke on my squid.
TWENTY-TWO
As usual, I feel self-conscious walking into Robbery Homicide, like a guy coming home to his wife reeking of booze and cheap perfume. It’s not like anyone but Dumphy knows why I quit the department, but the fact that I did earned me a gold star on a lot of shit lists.
It’s late afternoon, and about a dozen detectives are packed into the bullpen, talking on the phone, interviewing wits, doing paperwork. Dumphy sits at his desk, or rather, near his desk. His sheer bulk prevents him from sitting too close.
An Asian whore sits across from him sporting a streaked-platinum shag, six-inch transparent heels, smeared crimson lip gloss, mascara streaks down her cheeks, Kleenex-stuffed nostrils, and two reddened black eyes that her heavy-handed eye makeup doesn’t come close to hiding. Her gold sequined blouse is held up securely by the hydraulic pressure of her implants even with both shoulder straps torn.
Dumphy looks up when I step into the squad room. In a silent exchange of pleasantries, he raises his middle finger and I return the greeting. The least I can do. I give what I hope is a reassuring smile to the Asian vic before stepping into Gloria’s converted-maintenance-closet of an office.
“Afternoon, Lieutenant.”
She looks up from the file she’s reading. “I saw you ogling that hooker in the bullpen.”
“I wasn’t ogling.”
“It must have been the leash attached to her chest that was dragging you around by the eyeballs,” she says. “What is it with you guys? From the second you’re weaned, you’re on this quest to get back on the nipple.”
“And you earned your doctorate in psychology where?”
“In a thousand bars in a hundred towns.” She leans back and forms an A-frame with her hands, thoughtfully tapping her fingertips to her lips. “Is there a point to this visit? Or can I get back to work?”
“What was that little hissy fit you threw at Qat Haus yesterday? You jealous?”
“Since when are you so sensitive?”
“Since you almost rendered me sterile.”
She smiles. “Maybe I was a little tipsy. I was just trying to make a point.”
For her, this is a magnanimous apology, so I let it suffice.
“Well, you failed. What are these ‘questions’ about Sophia?”
She closes the file to give me her full attention. Talking about feelings makes her nervous. Talking about murder doesn’t.
“This is not for publication until I say so.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s take a drive.”
A half hour later, we pull into the parking lot of the California Forensic Science Institute. The state-of-the-art crime lab and teaching facility was designed to optimize the benefits of collaboration between the LAPD, the County Sheriff, and the Cal State LA School of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics, ending years of rivalry and miscommunications.
Gloria badges us in, and we navigate up the stairs and down the mazelike hallways. We pass a shower in the corridor that has no drain. It’s in case you spill toxins, acids, or biological contaminants on yourself. They want you to be able to shower it off, but they don’t want it going down any drains. Better to clean it off the floor than let it out into the world. I question the wisdom of this every time I walk by. Would have made more sense to me for them to drain it into a sealed tank. Then you wouldn’t have toxins washing down the corridor and under doors. Go figure.
We reach one of the labs where she arranged to meet Edsel Martinez, a forensic chemist who was Edith Martinez until his trip to Sweden three years ago. He wears a white lab coat embroidered not just with his name but with the logo of the Edsel automobile. He’s looking through a huge binocular microscope when we arrive, even though whatever he’s looking at is displayed on a hi-def flat-screen right next to him. I have no idea what the object is, maybe some sort of blood cell, but the razor-sharp image is spectacular.
“Edsel, you remember Nob Brown?”
“Sure. Looking good, Nob. Even without hair gel.” Edsel likes me because I’ve quoted him in a number of stories, but I’ve never mentioned his gender change, whereas most other journalists manage to work it into their lead paragraph.
Edsel hands Gloria a stapled document.
“Initial labs from the autopsy,” he says, beaming with the anticipation of a father watching his child open an extravagant birthday gift.
As Gloria reads, I notice a dartboard with a well-punctured photo attached to it.
“Who’s the dart catcher?” I ask.
“Werner Heisenberg,” says Edsel.
“Why him?”
“He invented the ‘uncertainty principle.’” Edsel pulls a dart from his pencil drawer and throws it into Heisenberg’s left nostril. “I hate uncertainty.”
“Heisenberg didn’t create uncertainty, he revealed it,” I say. “He’s like the guy who found the perp while everyone else was chasing the red herring. He opened people’s eyes.”
“Facts are the enemy of jokes.”
Gloria looks up from the labs. “How much was in her blood?”
“Enough to knock down a camel,” says Edsel.
“How much what?” I ask.
“Elavil,” says Gloria.
“We have no way of knowing the brand,” corrects Edsel. “We just know it’s a TCA, a tricyclic antidepressant.”
“She must have taken it for insurance,” I say, “just in case the gas didn’t work.”