Hardboiled Crime Four-Pack

by Jack Bunker

  “So I’ve read. It’s so sad about Ginger.”

  The scent of some sweet flower floats by on a wisp of sea breeze. Gardenia? I seem to recall the same smell floating from a scorpion bowl of rum punch I once shared with Gloria at a Chinese restaurant. This was early in our friendship, before my marriage to Holly, when we were trying on a romantic relationship. It never did fit right. We tried a number of alterations but they just drove us apart. It wasn’t until we gave up that our relationship really clicked.

  “I sent a condolence note to the house,” Senzimmer says, “but I didn’t know if Billy was still there.”

  “He is.”

  “He got it, then. That’s good. I feel bad about what I did to him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I slept with his wife.”

  “From what I understand, you weren’t the first, and he didn’t care.”

  “She slept around, sure. We all did. But with me and Lana it was different. We had something going. It wasn’t just recreational sex; it was a thing, you know? Something that might have had a future. It was okay with Billy if Lana had a zipless fuck, but having a regular lover was different. Like cheating. I really have to reconnect with him, make amends.”

  Admission and apology. Two steps down, ten to go. Not to criticize AA. Senzimmer is clearly in a better place now than he was when he was in Sticky White or when he went upstate. But I tend to mistrust dogma, no matter how positive it may be. Especially when there’s a Higher Power invoked.

  “Were you still seeing her when she was killed?”

  “We broke up a couple months before. I think Billy gave her an ultimatum.”

  “According to the tabloids, she dumped Billy for you.”

  He smirks. “I don’t mean to burst your bubble, Nob, but in the tabloids, truth is just a four-letter word.”

  “I see your point,” I concede, though it’s something of a sore one. I take pride in the veracity of my reporting when I write for the ’bloids. But I’ve been screwed by so-called editors more times than I’d care to count and, of course, it’s my byline that takes the licking.

  “What was she like?” I ask.

  “She’d swing with the wind. Be one person one minute, another the next.”

  “Mood swings?”

  “Not like that. Like she couldn’t decide who she wanted to be, so she tried out different personalities.” He frowns as if unhappy with his own description. “She used to dress up like old movie stars, you know. Used to make me do it, too. We’d play roles.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’d dress up like Myrna Loy in the Thin Man movies and dress me up, too. We’d be Nick and Nora Charles. Or we’d put on golf outfits like Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in Pat and Mike. We’d party a little then have sex, all in character.”

  I’m having a hard time seeing Lana Strain role-playing classic movie stars. It is so far removed from my own Lana fantasies.

  “I never saw Lana as the classic movie type,” I say.

  “She was a total freak for the Golden Age. Just look at her girls. Both named for Academy Award winners.”

  Boom-Boom Laphroig had told me about the names, but I hadn’t put it together as an obsession. I flash on the crime-scene photo.

  “Did she ever wear a black dotted swiss halter dress?”

  “She loved that dress,” he says. “Marilyn Monroe was supposed to wear it in Some Like It Hot, but it never made the cut. Lana picked it up at some charity auction. She’d wear it with these red stiletto heels and those old nylons with the sexy seams up the back? Then she’d put on this big blond wig.”

  I flash on the crime-scene photo and remember the blurry thing on her vanity that looked vaguely like a human head. A wig stand.

  “She’d make me wear a tweed double-breasted suit, and I’d be Joe DiMaggio. Or I’d put on a tux and be JFK. She’d whip us up some martinis and cocktail wieners, and we’d have a little party. Then she’d sing me “Happy Birthday” and start a slow peel of that dress…man, could she sizzle.”

  I rarely envy other men, but I’m doing it right now.

  “Was this role-playing thing something she did with everyone?”

  “I don’t think so.” He looks pensive. “We’d been together a couple weeks before she suggested it to me. Most of the guys she had were one-night stands. Wham, bam, thank you, Sam. If he was good, she might keep him around a few days, but that was it.”

  “So if she was dressed up the night she was killed, you think she was expecting a lover she knew pretty well?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “And when you’d do this role-playing, would she already be dressed when you got there? Or would the two of you get dressed together?”

  “Oh, she’d be dressed and ready to play. It was like everything she did—the music, the drinking, the drugs, the sex—there was nothing halfway about it. I’m sure she spent hours on that makeup.”

  I try to remember her makeup from the crime-scene photo, but very little of her face was visible through her hair. I make a note to recheck the photo and the autopsy report.

  “Ever see her wearing a gold half-heart necklace with a jagged edge?”

  His brows indicate a positive hit. “Never saw it on Lana, but her father had one like that.”

  “Nathaniel Strain?”

  “Yeah. He showed it to me once at some weird art opening on La Cienega, some friend of the family. It was really bizarre. The artist did this kind of surrealist stuff with taxidermy. A sheep with a pig’s head, a snake with eight dachshund legs, you know.”

  Actually, I don’t. But I nod anyway. I’m struggling with the notion of Strain wearing one of these pendants like some smitten twelve-year-old.

  “There was this one piece,” he continues, “had a pelican in flight with its beak impaling the heart of a bull. Nathaniel dug out his broken-heart pendant and made some lame joke about it.”

  “He was wearing it?”

  “It was on his keychain.”

  I remember the gnat of a clue that I just couldn’t snatch that day in Strain’s office. It was right in front of me in the photo of the young Nathaniel Strain showing more pride in his vintage MG than in his granddaughters. He was holding his keychain aloft, and I’ll bet my left ear that that pendant was on it.

  Lana had one. Ginger had one. And now Strain has one. Three pendants, two murders. Is there a connection? If these pendants have any meaning, Strain is the only one left to ask. But the last time we spoke, he threw me out of his office. If I want another shot at him, I’ll have to beg his forgiveness. That has all the appeal of a French kiss from a camel.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The next day I meet Sophia for lunch at Sri Siam in Van Nuys. When it opened twenty-five years ago, it was only the second Thai restaurant in the Valley. It’s tucked into a cheap minimall on Vanowen and the atmosphere, to be kind, is basic. But the food sings.

  “Your friend Lieutenant Lopes doesn’t like me very much, does she?” Sophia asks.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “The way she acted when she questioned me.”

  “It’s tough to tell with Gloria. She’s known for picking some pretty unusual ways to show her feelings. Makes her hard to read sometimes.”

  “It’s easy to see she likes you.” She twists her chopstick wrapper into a paper stick. I always wonder why Thai restaurants give you chopsticks. In Thailand they eat with a fork and a soup spoon.

  “We go back a long way.”

  “I think she might be in love with you.”

  I choke on my own saliva. “Love is a complicated thing for Gloria. She doesn’t believe in monogamy, but she has a hard time dealing with the outcome of that. She’s got a boyfriend, by the way. And he’s not me.”

  “What makes him a boyfriend if they’re not monogamous?”

  “He’s monogamous. It’s just that she’s not.”

  “And he’s okay with that?”

  “He kno
ws about it.”

  “What about you?” She glances up at me. I notice a little freckle in one of her eyes.

  “I’m okay with it.”

  “I meant, is love a complicated thing for you, too?”

  I don’t know where she’s going with this, and that makes me nervous. She’s diving into some untested waters.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  The air is suddenly flush with exotic scents, and I turn to see our kai jiew pork omelet arrive.

  “Did you know Vern Senzimmer?” I ask.

  “I knew the name from that night my mother kicked Poppy out, but I never met him.”

  “I met him yesterday. He told me your grandfather has one of those gold pendants like your mother had.”

  Instead of replying, she takes a bite of omelet.

  “So did your sister,” I add softly.

  She freezes, hands hovering over her plate. Something crosses her face that looks like griefhen she turns to stare out the window.

  “Did Karl know about your grandfather? About the pendants?”

  I presume Strain gave a half-heart pendant to each of his victims as an initiation into his secret club, a reminder of her vow of silence, a symbol of their grim bond.

  I also presume he didn’t pass up any opportunities.

  “Your grandfather gave one to you, too, didn’t he?”

  Sophia’s chopsticks start to tremble. She puts them down on her plate. I take her reaction as an affirmation. She looks me in the eye and transmits her pain like a broadcast. I long to say something analgesic, but only platitudes come to mind. The noise of the restaurant recedes into the background as we retreat together to a private emotional space carved out by her tacit revelation.

  An irritating sound shatters the moment. Sophia erupts in a flurry of motion, rummaging in her purse for her ringing cell phone. I’m annoyed that she’s taking this call, as if she’s depriving me of some sacred experience. She says hello then listens. Stunned, she drops the phone back in her purse.

  Her face is a blank, but tears start to brim, causing the afternoon sunlight to flare off her cheeks. “They found drugs in the coffee he gave me.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Sophia comes back from the restroom looking like a different person. Her eyes are still red, but her nerves are settled, her tears are stanched, and her face is no longer streaked with mascara. I’ve ordered her a Thai iced coffee that now sits at her place beside her half-finished Singha. She sits down and eyes them for a moment, trying to decide whether to spike her mood up or down.

  “You okay?”

  She nods and reaches for the beer.

  “Do you want me to call Gloria?”

  “No police. Not yet. It could have been some sort of accident.”

  “Sophia, it was no accident. He did the same thing to Ginger.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe somebody’s trying to frame him.”

  She clings to denial like a drowning woman to a sinking raft.

  “Somebody who had access to your morning coffee?”

  This penetrates like mercury poisoning. She hangs her head.

  “I guess I need a place to stay.” She considers her options. “Maybe I could stay with you for a few days?”

  A small inappropriate thrill shivers my timbers. “Me?”

  “If it’s okay.”

  “I’ve got plenty of room, but don’t you want to stay with someone who’s, you know, maybe a closer friend?”

  “To be honest? I don’t know if I can face any of my friends right now. They’ll all be thinking ‘I told you so,’ but they’ll be too sensitive to come out and say it. I really don’t want to deal with that kind of two-faced shit. At least with you, there’s no bullshit.”

  “What about your dad?”

  She gives me a look that requires no words to express how absurd that would be.

  I give her a sheepish smile. “You’re welcome to stay. Mi casa es su casa.” At least until Holly takes it away.

  Freshly showered and still buttoning my shirt, I rush downstairs to answer the bell. Sophia had swung by her place to throw a few things in an overnight bag, so I expect that she’s at the door, but I eyeball the peephole just to be sure. She’s waiting, chewing on her ponytail. She hears me twist the deadbolt and drops her hair as I open the door. She gives her head a twist to pull her ponytail off her shoulder and it disappears behind her back.

  “Iced coffee?”

  “Sounds good.”

  I take her bag and put it at the foot of the stairs then lead her into the kitchen and get the coffee out of the fridge.

  “What did you tell Karl?” I ask.

  “I told him Poppy was having a lot of trouble dealing with Ginger’s death, and I was going to move in with him until he could get it under control.”

  We go into the living room and settle in on the couch.

  “What if Karl calls your dad’s house?”

  “He and Poppy don’t get along. If Karl wants to talk, he’ll call my cell.”

  She stares out the window at the view. Her green-gold eyes are reddened by tears, reflecting a hailstorm of emotions. For some reason an image comes to mind when Lolita lets Humbert Humbert licks an annoying speck of dust off her eyeball. I imagine the briny taste of Sophia’s tears.

  She’s sitting close enough for me to smell the apricot shampoo in her hair. I imagine her in the shower, working the lather, water streaming a sheen down her body. I want to kiss her. What the fuck is wrong with me?

  I try to think about baseball, but it won’t take my mind off her lips. She parts them just a bit, her eyes searching mine, and it occurs to me that she’s thinking the same misguided thing. Her desire couldn’t be clearer if she had “Kiss me” scrawled on her forehead.

  “I’ll make up the bed in the guest room,” I say and get my ass off the couch before my dick leads me astray. Shame isn’t as good as a cold shower, but it works better than baseball.

  FORTY-NINE

  That night I get home from a grueling three thousand meters in the Van Nuys pool to find Melody and Gloria sitting on my moonlit deck, drinking my beer, probably disparaging my reputation.

  Runt comes running, and I brace myself to knee him in the chest before he can thump mine. After a couple attempts, he gives up, and I give him a hearty but civilized ear ruffling. He finally gets over his need to greet and goes back to sit by Gloria, eyes peeled for dropping food.

  I open the fridge and find some duck mole empanadas left over from an experiment I tried last week. Worked out pretty well. I stick them in the oven, pour myself a glass of five-dollar Malbec, and join the odd couple outside.

  “Where’s Sophia?” I ask.

  “She’s taking a nap,” says Melody.

  Gloria raises her glass in a mock toast. “You go out with the chick on one date, and she’s already living in. Pretty swift work, Studly.”

  “I never go on dates. I can’t write them off.” I sip my Malbec.

  “I stand corrected,” she says. “You’re living together after only one tax dodge. She planning to file charges against her boyfriend anytime soon? Maybe get a restraining order?”

  “I don’t know. We only talked for a few minutes before she went off to nap.”

  “Depression sleep,” says Melody. “That’s what happens when your therapist tries to kill you.”

  “He hasn’t been her therapist in years,” says Gloria.

  “Good point,” I say. “He raped her when he was her therapist then dumped her as a patient and tried to cover his tracks by trapping her in a relationship then waited until she was in love with him before trying to kill her. Much less traumatic that way.”

  “Exactly,” she says, skirting my sarcasm. Gloria wipes her brow with the back of her hand to squeegee off a sweat slick. It’s been dark for an hour, but it’s still in the high eighties. At least she’s dressed for the weather in her canary tank top and old denim cutoffs. Melody’s wearing four or five layers of clingy bodywear in black
s, whites, and grays, all variations on the basic leotard with names like jazz suit or body hose. One of them is long-sleeved, another long-legged; between them all she looks like she’s wearing a thin patchwork wetsuit. My body temperature spikes just looking at her. She’s not even breaking a sweat.

  We look out over the Valley floor to see millions of shimmering lights throwing off every color from ROY to BIV, as my high school physics teacher used to say. The brilliance of the light pollutes the darkness of the sky, causing visibility problems for local astronomers, but tonight the stars shine brightly.

  Runt suddenly perks up. There’s something on the hill below the house. Maybe a raccoon or a coyote. I pray it’s not a skunk. Runt sits stock-still, ears erect, brow furrowed. One hundred percent concentration.

  Gloria shifts her attention from Runt back to me. “So let me guess. You think he put downers in her coffee, just like he did Ginger. Because he was trying to kill her, just like he did Ginger. Am I right?” asks Gloria in her trap-setting voice.

  “Why not?”

  “The guy’s a grade-A sphincter, that’s for sure. But the asshole’s got brains. I have a hard time seeing him try to reenact the exact same murder with a second victim when he knows we already suspect him of the first.”

  “On the other hand,” I say, “if he’s already a suspect, she’s a huge threat if she can incriminate him. And if she dies, he’s going to be a suspect no matter how he kills her, so he might as well use a method he’s comfortable with.”

  We hear a rustling sound in the bushes, and Runt jumps to his feet with a little growl. The humans all fall silent, straining to hear it again. The hill is pitch black so we can’t see what’s out there. I consider getting a flashlight from the kitchen, but it’s too much trouble. Runt trots over to the railing and peers down. After a few moments of silence, the rest of us go back to our conversation while Runt stands guard, hackles raised. He doesn’t bark, but he goes in and out of a growl so soft that it seems more to bolster his self-confidence than to scare off an intruder.