by Ace Atkins
“She told me she loved me,” Collinson said. “I’m doing what is best for Gabby. And that’s all you need to know.”
Before I could answer, the connection clicked off. It was nearly three in the morning, and dark behind Gabby’s apartment. In the slanting artificial light, I could just make out the six-foot concrete block fence she’d hopped. I’d made a mistake, a long time ago, with another client in L.A. I had a sickening feeling we were headed to a similar spot. I recalled a time of a lot of wind and rain.
Such a long time ago.
51
Imet Sixkill at Eric Collinson’s apartment atop a tall hill in Silver Lake.
We knocked several times. We both broke and entered. Collinson wasn’t there.
“This woman is confusing,” Z said. “Why Collinson and not Haldorn?”
“She needed his help,” I said. “She wanted someone who’d do what she said and ask few questions.”
“And Haldorn is hiding because of the Armenians,” he said. “Who want to seize his parts.”
“Samuelson says Sarkisov has a bounty on one specific part.”
“I’d leave the country.”
“I think that’s the plan.”
Z shrugged as we walked back to his car, parked on the slope of the hill, the nose of the Mustang edging upward. It was pitch black except for the odd streetlight. The air had grown warmer, palm trees dancing at the edge of the road. The winds scattered the black hair across his face, a strong gust nearly slamming the door from his hands. “Santa Ana winds,” he said. “In August, they blow so hard and hot, they make people crazy.”
“Out here,” I said, “how can you tell?”
“Even crazier than normal,” he said. “Back in the day, the Spaniards would forgive those who’d committed crimes during the winds.”
As Z opened the driver’s door, his cell phone rang. He spoke for a few quick seconds and pocketed the phone.
“Jem Yoon,” I said.
He nodded. “Says her guy got a ping on Collinson’s phone. Close to LAX. Somewhere on Manchester. She says her guy is usually accurate within a block or two. Remember what Collinson was driving?”
“BMW M240i in alpine white.”
“You’re good,” Sixkill said.
“Some might say the best.”
“Some might,” Sixkill said. “With a new guy closing in second.”
“Pride went before,” I said. “Ambition follows him.”
Z got in behind the wheel and I climbed into the passenger seat. We didn’t talk as he hit the interstate at speeds only possible before dawn. In Boston, we called interstates by number, here it seemed all big roads have the in front of them. It wouldn’t do to hop on 110, we had to hop on the 110 on over to the 405. Didn’t call them routes here, either. Only seemed to have routes back home. I liked routes. Gave a road character.
“Did you tell Samuelson about Collinson?” Sixkill said.
“Nope.”
“Figure we can reason with him better.”
“You and I might offer more expediency.”
Z found the rough slice along Airlines that Jem Yoon had pinpointed. We drove slow, searching for Collinson’s alpine white car. We passed several gas stations, long-term parking lots, McDonald’s, El Pollo Loco. The road was lined with telephone poles, wires dancing in the high wind. All-night convenience stores brightly lit and lonely. The winds blew so hard, they buffeted the Mustang.
We traveled up and down Airlines four times without spotting a thing. Z called Jem Yoon to check again. Her people had narrowed the search to the western edge of Airlines, beyond the road and into a construction site, blocked off with concrete barriers. Small construction trailers had been set up with what looked like a parking deck taking shape beyond the cleared land. Z dodged in and out of the barrier maze, headlights shining far into the distance onto a bright white BMW parked at a haphazard angle by a battered CAT earth compactor.
Z hit the high beams and we both got out at the same time.
The driver’s door to the BMW was open and the interior light glowed. The motor was still running, giving a soft, even hum in the buffeting winds. Trash bags and paper coffee cups skittered past the reach of the headlights. I could taste the sand and the grit swirling about us.
We walked toward the car together, silent and slow. A huge plane passed close overhead, drowning out everything, red lights blinking on its wings.
I took a deep breath and pushed the door open wider.
Inside, Eric Collinson lay slumped over the center console, his face down in the plush leather seat. There was a lot of blood across the dash and down onto the floorboards. His cell phone lay on the floor, display lit showing five of my missed calls.
Another plane, this time smaller and more quiet, flew overhead. There was silence and then the winds blew even stronger, pushing at the dirt and the grit, twisting the cleared land into a brown swirl.
“What did I say about the winds?” Z said.
In the headlights, I could make out several different footprints in the soft, powdery dirt. They were grouped in tight patterns, seeming to walk in spirals before moving in a straight line toward a halting tire print that then veered out back toward the road.
“Isn’t tracking a job for an Indian?” Z said.
“I didn’t want to go for the stereotype.”
“A blind man could feel his way through that scuffle,” he said. “Looks like a big truck or SUV.”
“Sarkisov.”
“Why would he kill Collinson?”
“He must’ve gotten in the way,” I said. “I think Eric was taking Gabby to Haldorn. Sarkisov found them all.”
“Stupid.”
“Love is blind,” I said.
Z looked back at the BMW, the sloping figure of Collinson over the console. “Damn sure is.”
52
At nearly four a.m., we wound our way up into the leafy green hills of Bel-Air and into the open wrought-iron gates of Victor del Rio’s mansion.
Chollo stood at the top of the drive as we entered and walked us through the house and into a study. The room was dark and wood-paneled, with plenty of leather-bound volumes that interior decorators collect but their clients seldom read. Del Rio was seated in a big brown leather chair, half lit by a spindly brass lamp. He had on a white terry-cloth robe and blue silk slippers.
Del Rio didn’t seem happy to see us. Chollo took a seat beside a giant marble desk. Bobby Horse came in after us, closing the sliding doors of the study.
“Your girl and Haldorn were going to fly out to Mexico,” he said. “But they were followed.”
“Did you hear anything about a young man named Collinson?”
“No,” he said. “Why?”
“They killed him.”
“Would he be the kind to put up a fight?” he said. “For the woman?”
“Probably.”
Del Rio shook his head. He rubbed his tired eyes and stood up, pacing before the big desk. Chollo didn’t move at all, his eyes lingering on far wall, hands loose and relaxed by his sides. At one point, he seemed to stifle a yawn.
“I think he was taking Gabby to Haldorn,” I said. “One of them was followed.”
Del Rio continued to pace. He walked over to the desk and reached for a thick crystal glass full of a brown liquid. He took a sip, set the glass back on the leather blotter, and wiped his salt-and-pepper mustache.
“Sarkisov can’t be trusted,” he said. “He told you he’d let you take the girl.”
“Yes.”
“And now he has her.”
“Probably a package deal,” I said. “It sounds like he only wanted Haldorn.”
“How would you feel if someone set you up for killing one of the most powerful people in Los Angeles?”
“I’d be a little hurt.”
“Sarkisov doesn’t hurt,” del Rio said. “He bleeds with anger. If he hasn’t killed this man already, he will soon. And the girl. How again did the girl get free of you? I thought this matter was all handled.”
I looked across to Sixkill. The big man raised his eyebrows and tilted his head.
“Easy come, easy go.”
“Not a good answer, my friend,” he said. “This woman. She is probably dead, too. I would leave it. I would pack my things and let Mr. Sixkill take you to the airport. I would fly home and let this be behind you.”
“A loss on the road?” I said.
“If you say so.”
“I can’t let that happen again,” I said.
“You?” he said. “I didn’t think you ever lost. Or at least admitted it.”
“Long time ago,” I said. “I don’t want it to happen again.”
Del Rio crossed over to the great desk again and reached for the crystal glass. He drained it quickly and set it down empty. He stood, hands in the pockets of his robe, beside Chollo, and then looked to me and Sixkill. Bobby Horse had left us alone in the room. A trapezoidal pattern of artificial light filtered through the leaded glass window and across a big Oriental rug.
“I don’t owe you anything,” del Rio said to me. “Nothing.”
“Nope.”
“And it would be foolish for a man in my position to make trouble with Sarkisov,” he said. “In such changing and tempestuous times.”
“Tempestuous,” I said. “Agreed.”
“But him,” he said, lifting his hand from his robe and pointing to Sixkill. “Him, I owe. Him I owe many favors for what he did. So perhaps we leave it up to our friend, Zebulon. Do you want to find this woman?”
Z looked to me with his hooded eyes and then back to del Rio. He nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
“Okay,” del Rio said, circling the desk and finding a place in a large rolling chair upholstered with thick leather and brass studs. He turned on a desk lamp, lifted the top on a humidor, and selected a fat cigar. “I would offer you a cigar. But I know none of you smoke.”
We waited as del Rio clipped off the end of the cigar with a pen knife and reached for a giant lighter on his desk. Once he got the cigar going, he leaned back in the padded chair, his face half shadowed and half in the desk light.
“Sarkisov keeps a house outside of Furlong at the edge of Hollywood,” he said. “It’s an old motel where many of his people live and sometimes work. They keep it like a clubhouse, full of drugs and booze. Sarkisov has new women from the old country brought in. This is where he breaks them in to do his work.”
“Nice,” Sixkill said.
“These people,” he said, “are not like the people who watched the false messiah on West Adams. The old motel has a big surrounding wall and a chained gate. If, and I don’t know if I am correct, this is where he is keeping this man Haldorn and your girl, they will make a lot of trouble. They are mean people with short tempers and many guns.”
I nodded. “Wonderful.”
“But if it’s as I suspect and they are dead, what does it matter now, anyway?”
“It matters,” I said.
“Leave it for the police.”
“We do that and she’s absolutely dead.”
“And this Haldorn?” del Rio said.
“He’s on his own,” I said. “All his parts.”
Del Rio leaned back into his chair, letting the smoke drift up from his cigar. His eyes lingering on me and then Chollo. He looked to Chollo and simply lifted his chin.
“Chollo knows where,” he said. “He’s watched this place many times for me. I never trusted that son of a bitch.”
I offered my hand. Del Rio reached out and shook mine.
53
The Motel Hollywood was a motel only Norman Bates’s mother could love. The place had probably offered clean rooms, color TVs, and AC long before Neil Armstrong had visited the moon. Now the entrance to the motor court was secured with a rolling and padlocked chain-link fence and blocked from Sunset Boulevard with a tall decorative concrete block wall. I looked for a historic marker for famous people who might’ve died there.
Z and I had strolled past separately twenty minutes ago, peering inside the gate and spotting a decrepit two-story house that had probably served as an office/lobby at one time, and six, maybe eight cabin-style buildings that had been built around it.
“If it’s all the same,” I said, “I prefer the Beverly Wilshire.”
“I’m getting bedbugs just looking at it.”
We exited the Mustang at the same time, Z circling behind to pop his trunk and pass me a pair of wire snippers. He grabbed his twelve-gauge, holding the stock under his jacket and letting the short barrel hang down by his thigh. I had the Browning 9 I’d borrowed.
We didn’t see Chollo, but we both knew he was there.
As we crossed the street, the wind pushed the grit and trash down the sidewalks, the tall palms shaking back and forth in the dark. One or two cars passed on Sunset. No one seemed to pay us any mind. I hoped Sarkisov’s people wouldn’t, either. Maybe it was past their bedtime and they were exhausted from a long, hard day of cutting drugs and dealing in stolen TVs and mattresses.
I snipped the lock from the rolling gate and slid it back far enough for us to pass.
I moved first, holding the Browning. Z followed.
I heard music inside, a melodic sitar and electronic keyboard coming from behind a tiny English Tudor with a slanting metal awning instead of a shingled roof. An ancient neon sign in a dirty window flashed NO VACANCY.
“No shit,” Z said, walking beside me, skirting the edges and keeping in shadow.
“Maybe they’ll make an exception,” I said. “I’ll tell them I used to date Dorothy Lamour.”
The asphalt had been broken up and hauled off long ago. The parking lot was now fine, packed dirt. The grit shifting back and forth in the high winds, glowing a pale red in the neon from the motel sign. Our feet made distinctive crunching sounds in the dirt as we walked over to a black Chevy Tahoe and crouched behind it.
Two men walked around the old motel office carrying automatic weapons on shoulder straps. They were both wearing black denim jackets and smoking cigarettes. One of them stopped cold and looked around, nodding to the other, and headed back to the front gate where I’d cut the lock. The wind pushed down off the mountains and into the basin, kicking up the dirt into whirls of brown dust. The men turned their heads and covered their eyes as they made their way back to the main house. Coughing. One of them had a shaved head and clipped beard. The other was shorter and fat, with small eyes and longish black hair. He had on an untucked black silk shirt and loose and sloppy black pants.
Z was on them first, raising his shotgun and asking them to stand still with some artful expletives.
They didn’t listen. And raised their guns.
I shot one. And Z blasted his friend. We knocked them both off their feet and onto their backs. It was quick and dirty work.
We continued to move forward. Two cabin doors flew open. A kid ran out holding a handgun while trying to pull on his pants. His hands were shaking.
A fat man rushed outside in black bikini briefs with an AR-15 rifle. He had black hair everywhere but the top of his head. Before he could get off a shot, we heard a crack from behind the fence and he tumbled onto his back like a flipped turtle.
I looked behind me. I didn’t see Chollo, but he had made his presence felt.
The kid dropped to the ground and tried to crawl back into the cabin. The wind was strong against us, pushing at our backs, as we moved forward in the dark, pointing our guns at the kid before he could get back inside. Z kept watch from behind a pillar, scanning the empty dirt courtyard. The loud rap music from the third cabin hadn’t stopped the entire time, the inside lit up like a dollhouse.
&nbs
p; Shadows passed in front of the windows. I reached down and grabbed the boy’s hair and lifted his head. “Sarkisov?”
He nodded. I dropped his head and picked up his pistol. I reached down again and snatched the collar of his shirt and pulled him to his feet. “Call him.”
The boy shook his head. Chin quivering. I knocked him hard across the back of the head with my Browning. I didn’t like doing it. I would’ve rather drop-kicked a kitten.
He stumbled, grasping the back of his head, but moved forward, finally getting off his knees, and approached the motel cabin with all the lights and music.
The boy just stood there.
I pushed him forward.
He shook his head again. I raised my gun.
The boy moved ahead, squinting through the wind and the dirt. He knocked on the door.
The door flew open and a man behind it blasted the kid with a quick sputter from his automatic rifle. He didn’t stop, spraying the weapon at us as we both shot at him. Z with three rapid blasts from the shotgun and me with four shots from the Browning.
The man fell hard and fast. A woman screamed.
There was a lot of shuffling. And yelling in what I figured to be Armenian.
On the front steps of the cabin, the boy stared up at me with wide eyes and an open mouth, trying to speak some words that didn’t seem to come. I called for Sarkisov. The lights went out in the little cabin. It grew very dark and hollow. The wind quieted down, leaving everything in an electric stillness.
My ears rang from the gunshots, the wind smelling burnt and acrid.
Sarkisov had lost four of his people. If he were in there, he wouldn’t come out easily. Sixkill and I headed back behind the Tahoe, waiting. The wind scattered paper and leaves, bright flowers fluttering down from a vine along the wall on Sunset. Z reached into his pocket and jacked in more shells. I reloaded my Browning.
The cabin was dark and quiet. Behind us, the two men we’d shot lay sprawled out in the dirt parking lot.