“Yes sir.”
Floyd looked at me. “See, Dickie, I’m famous. Nobody’s even heard of you, or El Puso.” Then he nudged Gilbert’s shoulder. “Get up, Gilbert, we’re going to go have a nice little chat about who’s paying for the bed and breakfast.”
Gilbert and I stood at the same time and paused there, sizing one another up. Gilbert probably wondering could he take this guy in the suit. I pictured myself dropping him with an elbow across the bridge of his nose, previously broken, no doubt, by the shape of it. No sense in playing games, rolling around in a suit, is the way I looked at it. Floyd would be thinking mano a mano. Being the pugilist, he would no doubt enjoy making sport of it. I’d just as soon get it done and over with. Either way, we both would have a plan to take him out, if need be; there was no doubt about that.
Floyd nudged Gilbert and said, “Walk, asshole.”
Walking to the room, Gilbert looked at me on his left flank and asked, “Did he say, ‘El Paso?’”
I shook my head. “El Puso.”
“I ain’t never heard of El Puso, I don’t think. I got family in El Paso.”
Floyd said, “It’s more of a state of mind, Gilbert, like reverse osmosis.”
“Oh.”
We were now at the door to Room 114, all of us stopped, Gilbert in the middle, a look of confusion on his face. Maybe it was fear. Floyd continuing to mess with his head, telling him anything but the truth until he answered some questions.
Gilbert looked from the guy in shades to the one with the hat as he searched his pocket for the keycard. Finally, and maybe only to break the silence, but more likely because Gilbert was now very concerned about his future, he said, “You guys are feds, right?”
“We’re actually commissioned officers of the East Westchester Northstars of the Southern Division. It’s a secret cavalry unit, though we’ve lost all of our horses, the Indians damn near wiping us out back in the day. Me and Dickie here jumped a train from Tucson.”
As Gilbert stood listening, frowning a bit, perhaps from confusion, Floyd took the keycard from his hand. He keyed the door open, a red light giving way to a flashing green one.
Floyd stepped inside, saying, “But I really am a captain.”
I stepped in behind Gilbert, letting the door fall closed on its own.
“Where’s your girlfriend?” Floyd asked as he pulled a chair from the round table near the window and nodded for Gilbert to sit down.
Gilbert stepped over and lowered himself into it, slowly, watching us carefully. “What girlfriend?”
Floyd slipped out of his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Standing in front of Gilbert but talking to me, he said, “See what I mean about this guy? What girlfriend?”
I stepped back and bolted the door for effect.
“You’re not here alone, Gilbert,” Floyd said. “Do you think we’re stupid?”
Floyd pulled out the chair next to Gilbert and squatted down, placing himself on the edge but still on his toes, easy to come to life. The two of them on this side of the table, their knees nearly touching, Gilbert leaning back and Floyd leaning into him again. Gilbert glanced back and forth from the cop in his face to the cop by the door, a look of fear now clearly present.
I began looking around, making myself at home.
“I asked you a question, Gilbert,” Floyd said, “and I get the feeling I’m being ignored. If there’s one thing I hate, Gilbert, it’s being ignored.”
“Sir?”
“Do you think we’re stupid?”
Gilbert said, “No sir, I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Then?”
He said, “Sir,” and held it there, as he watched me going through the drawers, the closet, the suitcase . . .
“Don’t you guys need a warrant or something?” he asked, cautiously, the question directed toward me.
“Tell him, Floyd, about the Public Information Act of 1943.”
“1986 for Christ’s sake, Dickie. What he’s saying, Gilbert,” Floyd said, “is we don’t need a warrant or anything else. You may be needing a lawyer when this is all over though, or maybe a doctor, depending on your level of cooperation.”
“I want to cooperate, sir.”
“Good. Your girlfriend?”
Gilbert’s eyes shifted away as he answered, “Her name is Maria. I don’t know her last name. She was here a couple days, then she left. It was her paid for the room, I don’t even know how.”
Floyd slapped Gilbert across the side of his head and crawled into his lap, his hand cocked for another. Gilbert sank into the chair shielding his head with two hands, a rosary tattooed on the back of one.
“Try again, Gilbert!”
“Okay, okay . . .”
Floyd backed off but not too much, and Gilbert slowly lowered his hands, his bulging eyes now fixed on Floyd. I stood to the side, casually lifting women’s clothing from a suitcase, displaying the items as conversation pieces.
“Well?” Floyd said.
“Some girl I know in California.”
“Go on.”
“We just came out here for a visit, you know, a vacation.”
Floyd drove a knee into Gilbert’s rib cage and clamped his hand around his neck. He leaned into him again, Floyd’s face now red with anger. It seemed a good time to intervene, before it was too late.
“We know you’re not here on vacation, Gilbert,” I said, sliding into the third chair.
Floyd released his grasp and sat back a little.
“Let me talk to him a minute, partner,” I said. “Maybe he and I can get along better. What do you think, Gilbert, you wanna get along?”
“Yeah, sure, I don’t want no problem.” He watched as Floyd sat back in his chair now, but not too much.
“Listen, Gilbert,” I said, “you may be in some trouble here, the business you guys are in, but I’ll let you in on a secret. We’re homicide cops from L.A. We don’t care about anything other than a couple murders we’re looking at. Not the dope, nothing else.”
“Murders?”
“Yeah, some friends of yours. What do you want to tell me about that?”
“Nah, man, I didn’t have nothing to do with no murders.”
“Gilbert, I’d like to believe you, but you’ve not been real truthful so far. How about let’s talk about the players, for starters, see how truthful you’re going to be. First, we’ve got Gilbert,” I said, touching the tip of my left pinky with my right index finger, “and Gilbert doesn’t want to take a fall all by himself. Then we have this girl, what was her name?”
Gilbert sighed and looked down. Then he raised his eyes and said, “Donna.”
I continued as if the name hadn’t fazed me. “Okay, Donna . . . who else?”
“I don’t know the ones out here, the two guys we met for the stuff. That’s all Donna’s deal. Just me and her came out though. Man, I’m not even really into the dope thing, just more helping her out, you know, kind of just hanging with her and shit while she’s making some green. She’s not really even my girlfriend, just more like a piece of ass sometimes.”
Floyd still appeared wound tight, waiting for a reason to pounce.
“Where’s the stuff you picked up?”
“That’s the thing, we got ripped off. Donna went back, see if she could put together another plan. Told me hang out, be cool. That worked for me,” he said, now grinning, showing his crooked teeth, yellow with brown stains. “It’s cool here.”
“How much did you guys get ripped for?”
“Twenty K.”
“Damn,” I said, studying him for a minute. “Where’d she come up with that kind of money?”
He looked away, ready to lie. The look, I’d seen it a thousand times. Floyd too, and he moved in ready for it, pushing his sleeves up a little, ready to respond. We were getting close now with this guy; we weren’t about to let him off the ropes.
I said, “The truth, Gilbert.”
“She’ll kill me, she ever finds out I said this.
”
Floyd inched closer. “We might kill you, if you don’t.”
He paused, dropped his head in his hand, looking between his bony knees.
“Gilbert?”
“Yeah?”
I said in a low tone, “I’d like to leave here, get out of your life for a while. You want me to leave, take this asshole with me, or do you want me to leave him here, let the two of you get better acquainted, maybe see who’s tougher?”
He glanced at Floyd but returned his gaze to the ground.
“Where’s Donna get twenty K?”
“Started out,” he said, “she had a couple whores pimped out, plus had ‘em running some dope. Then she started doing some weird shit.”
“Go on,” I said, seeing we’d hit pay dirt but keeping it low, playing it cool.
“I don’t know a lot, but there were some pictures, a few clients she tried to scam for money.”
“Extortion,” I said.
Gilbert nodded. “Something like that.”
Floyd said, “Who’s these whores you’re talking about, Gilbert?”
“Couple drag queens,” Gilbert said. “She’s got ‘em put up in their own place, down in the ghetto, somewhere on the boulevard—”
“Long Beach?”
“Yeah, at a motel. But they’re cool with that, like it’s good enough for them. Then she’s got this hookup with some kinky place in Hollywood, gets some clients looking for that type of thing and sends her queens out for business. Big dollar business, like executives, lawyers, shit like that.”
“How’s she send them?”
“Hires a driver.”
“You?”
“And others. Anyone looks tough enough to scare these guys, keep ‘em from hurting the girls . . . guys, whatever.”
The hotel’s automatic doors slid open, and Floyd and I walked through them, passing a pair of businessmen with attaches and overnight bags. They nodded as if we were in the same club, medical supplies or maybe vacuum cleaner salesmen, four white guys wearing suits in Texas. They had no idea we were packing heat, that we’d roughed up a gangster in Room 114, or that we were thinking only of Susie, ligature marks crisscrossing her delicate neck, a man-made woman now lying still on a metal slab in Los Angeles. The two businessmen wouldn’t know any of this, nor that we could never share a drink with them; our worlds were just too far apart.
18
ARRANGING AN EARLY flight became my problem, Floyd saying if he didn’t get a run in this week he’d surely blimp up like a whale, all the great Texas food we had eaten: filet mignon and huge potatoes last night, shrimp cocktail appetizers and then cheesecake for dessert; Texas-styled breakfast skillets with sides of biscuits and gravy this morning, cheeseburgers and fries at Hooters for lunch. Texas-sized portions, yessir, and we did not weaken. Man, this traveling was going to kill us, he had said. Of course, he didn’t mention the dozen or more beers, wine with dinner, those two gin and tonics in the lounge . . .
I sat at the edge of a floral-patterned bedspread doodling on hotel stationary as Carmen from Delta checked afternoon flights. There was room on the 3:52 departure out of Dallas-Fort Worth, nonstop into Los Angeles International, she said. I glanced at the clock displaying 2:18 and told her we’d take it, thinking, we’re going to have to haul ass. Also wondering just how long my partner would be gone working on his cardio and suntan, thinking it might be a little tight unless he returned soon.
I packed my bag, throwing everything together with little concern for organization, periodically glancing out the window hoping to see my partner jogging back toward the hotel. No sign of Floyd, and the clock seemed to move quickly now. At 2:55 p.m. I shrugged into my suit jacket, stuffed Floyd’s gun, badge, cell phone, shaving kit, and dirty clothes into the outside pocket of his garment bag, zipped it closed, and slung it over my shoulder. I glanced outside again but finding Floyd at times could be like spotting Big Foot, and I didn’t see either of them. I flipped my gray felt onto my head, grabbed my garment bag, and squeezed through the door into the hallway.
When I stepped into the elevator, I dropped Floyd’s bag to the floor, cursing its weight. I pictured the hotel laundry bag inside, no doubt filled with hotel shampoos, conditioners, soaps, packages of coffee . . . Floyd telling the maid we needed extra everything as he had walked a perimeter around her cart: Yeah, sure, a few extra pens too, maybe some tissues . . . What else do you have? Floyd smiling and thanking her in Spanish.
When I finished my business at the checkout counter, I turned to catch Floyd pacing in front of the hotel, his hands on his hips and his head tilted back, searching for air. People passing by seemed to notice the man in black nylon shorts and white running shoes with no socks, his t-shirt wadded in his hand. His bare chest and shoulders were wet with perspiration, glistening in the sunshine.
I trudged through the automatic doors, catching Floyd’s attention just as he bent at the waist to stretch it out.
“Good timing, asshole.”
Floyd looked up and instantly frowned. “The hell you doing?”
“We’re checked out, got a plane to catch.”
“Dude, I need a shower, change of clothes.”
“Don’t know what to tell you about the shower; you can change in the car.”
“You’re kidding, right?” he said, now following me to the rental, maybe a little pissed.
I dropped the two garment bags next to the trunk. “We’ve got forty-five minutes to catch the next flight, which is the only flight until seven-something. Better grab what you need, you can purty up on the way to the airport.”
“You’re an asshole,” Floyd said, wiping sweat from his face, his chest, his underarms and then draping the sweaty t-shirt around his neck.
“You said get us on the next flight, that’s what I did. The goal, you may recall, is to get back and find Donna before she disappears or does something really stupid.”
“You’re killing me.” He picked up his bag and laid it across the hood. “You want me to put on a suit in a Taurus while sweating my ass off and listening to you bitch about Texas drivers and traffic and the sun and whatever else, all the way to the airport?”
“Like it’ll be the first time you dressed or undressed in a rental car.”
“You ever wonder why you don’t have any friends?” he asked.
I dropped my bag into the trunk, left the lid open, and walked to the driver’s door.
“Hurry up,” I said, as I slid in behind the wheel, “if you’re riding with me.”
I called the office just before the announcement to turn off all portable electronic devices. When Lieutenant Jordan answered, I went straight to the point, asking if he had anything new to report as to the whereabouts of Elmer Fudd. No, he said, without elaboration. Then he asked how it went in Texas. It was a long story, I told him, but the bottom line is we have not found James Scott, Donna Edwards is a dirty little lying bitch, and my partner is still an idiot. Then I asked, “Any questions?”
Jordan chuckled and said, “Well, you and that partner of yours will be first up in the rotation for murders come Monday morning; better get some rest.”
After pushing end, I turned off the power and slid the cell phone into my inside jacket pocket to the side of a ballpoint pen and mechanical pencil.
“Well?” Floyd asked.
“Lieutenant has us first up Monday.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It’s what he said. And as far as your buddy, Fudd, they’ve got nothing.”
Floyd stared out the window. “I’m not so convinced Elmer and James Scott are two different people.”
“Thinking she steered us off the path?”
“It crossed my mind,” Floyd said, and then turned to face me. “What do you think? And how the hell are we first up again, all the shit we’ve got going on?”
“I was thinking the same thing as far as Donna,” I said. “Makes you wonder, Gilbert having his credit cards. We should have had him busted, called th
e Rangers. And the reason we’re always first up is because you piss off the lieutenant. He hates us.”
“Nah, he loves us, Dickie. Always playing his big hitters is what I think. Anyway, Donna’s too important to put on ice right now. First up or not, we have to get at her.”
I pulled my hat off, set it on my lap and leaned my head back, waiting for takeoff. “Why would she want us thinking Elmer Fudd isn’t James Scott, if he is? She looked at the picture and said, no way, that’s not our boy. You think maybe she’s keeping us distracted while they do their thing? Running around the country making dope deals, using Scott’s credit cards?”
“What about the story of his wife? Remember,” Floyd said, “nice little lady always speaks to her, says hi.”
“We better look into it, see if there even is a Mrs. Fudd.”
“Neighborly type, always waves to the dope dealer across the street,” Floyd said.
I looked past him now, stealing a view through his window as we taxied to the runway, planes coming in and taking off in the distance. I couldn’t help but think of the last time we left Texas, only to turn around and come in for an emergency landing. The runway lined by fluorescent green fire trucks, ambulances, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport police, and a couple trucks loaded with foam, all awaiting our unexpected arrival, none of them praying the way we were with our birds-eye view of the action below.
It had been one of those trips from hell, the kind not easily forgotten. I figured Floyd was thinking about it too, feeling a little apprehensive like myself maybe.
“I always miss this place, every time we leave.”
“Yeah?”
Floyd chuckled. “Except the times we come right back.”
“Right.”
We both sat back and snugged our belts as the jet engines wound to a powerful roar. I started thinking of the case, most likely to get my mind off the flight, or more likely the prior departure from Texas.
“No wonder that asshole hates his neighbors,” I said.
“Who?”
“Your buddy, Elmer. I’m starting to see his reason for hating Donna Edwards and her asshole friends.”
Hard-Boiled- Box Set Page 17