“So, have we thought of a name?”
XXXVI: CROSS PURPOSES
Michelle reached blearily for her phone, cursing whoever it was that had the nerve to be calling at such an uncivilized hour.
“What time is it?” she said into the receiver.
“Hello, Ms. Lyon?”
She felt drugged. She took the phone away from her ear and pulled up its clock. Nine in the morning. Fuck. Then she noticed the blinking light on Bill Silverman’s phone.
“Hang on,” she said. She reached for it and opened the message.
Garrett—Have something that will clear up matters for good. Must meet. Come to Nick’s garage, 10:00 AM.
Below was the address to the garage, but Michelle barely glanced at it. She didn’t have Bill Silverman’s cell phone at all. Just like that everything made sense. She had underestimated Mr. I-Sing-in-the-Shower, she realized. It was his phone she’d taken off the unconscious Bill Silverman. He and the screenwriter must have been in on it from the start. It explained why the actor had woken up too soon from Char’s cocktail, why he’d played the bumbling fool from the get-go. It was a conspiracy, and one that Cafferty Wade now appeared to be a part of, as well. After all, he’d been blathering about people being a threat to her. Maybe it was because was one of them.
She was suddenly alert. It took everything she had not to scream out in frustration. If Wade knew about Rachel, then the other conspirators might know about her, too. Panic crawled up the back of her stomach but she fought it down. It served no purpose. She forced herself to think rationally. The conspirators seemed to be working at cross purposes. First they’d killed Bill Silverman, now they were attempting to cut Wade out of the deal, not knowing he was already dead. Somebody had sent the blackmail photograph to Garrett’s phone, either because they didn’t know he’d swapped with Silverman, or because they meant for her to see it—maybe to cut Wade out of the deal, maybe to taunt her. This newest text implied at least one of the conspirators didn’t know about Garrett switching phones. These people, whoever they were, were cunning and dangerous, but they were also disorganized.
Knowing that fact, however, did her no good until she learned the full extent of the conspiracy. She needed to be at the meeting place mentioned in the text. There she could uncover everybody who was involved, confront them, and then..and then she didn’t know what. But she would do whatever it took to convince them she wasn’t somebody to toy with. She still had Bill Silverman’s gun. It would be fitting, she thought, her director Braxton’s voice filling her head, the sheer unexpectedity of Silverman having a hand in justice from beyond the grave.
She caught herself studying Char’s profile, softly rising and falling under the sheet, and forced herself to take a deep breath. It was ridiculous to suspect her lover. She’d trusted Char this long, and, more to the point, she’d never told her about Rachel. She still had no idea how that pig Wade had found her out. This whole thing was getting out of control. She had to do something.
She realized she still had her phone pressed to her ear.
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
The voice on the other end said, “My name is Jade, we met yesterday at your penthouse?”
“Sure, right, ” said Michelle, half-listening. Back in the Real World, she would have to deal with the mess that Silverman’s death had made of their new contract.
“I need to talk to you,” continued Jade. “The man who was there yesterday, who delivered the singing telegram? His name was Garrett, he’s wanted by the police. I need your help.” The woman was getting excited, and took a moment to audibly calm herself before going on. “I think he killed my partner, William, and I think I know why he did it. He and William never liked one another, and—”
“Wait,” said Michelle. The color had drained from her face at the mention of Garrett’s name. The conspiracy surrounded her! It was there leering at her literally every which way she turned. She thought furiously. There was a chance that this woman, Silverman’s writing partner, wasn’t actually in on the conspiracy, that this was merely a coincidence. But with everything else going on, it was a chance she couldn’t take. Why was this woman calling her, and why now? Why did she suspect the telegram guy—the fucking telegram guy!—who she didn’t know, of murdering Silverman, unless she knew far more about everything else than she let on.
“Let’s continue this in person,” said Michelle.
There was a pause. She could tell the other woman was unhappy at being cut off. This woman, Jade, had drive and pluckiness, both qualities Michelle might, under other circumstances, have admired.
“If you insist,” said Jade. “Coffee in half an hour?”
The timing suggested the woman wasn’t party to the upcoming meeting at ten o’clock, but timing alone wasn’t enough to exonerate her. Michelle had to be certain.
“Make it ten o’clock,” Michelle told her. “Write down this address and don’t be late.”
XXXVII: FOLLOW THE GOLDBRICKING ROAD
The van wouldn’t start.
It was a quarter to ten. Garrett was sitting shotgun and Reagan was in the back seat where she had tentatively agreed (under protest) to stay hunkered down out of sight until “The Big Strong Men” decided it was safe for her to come out. Garrett was wearing his tux jacket, but it did little for the damp morning chill. Reagan was engulfed in a borrowed sweatshirt. Johnson had on a corduroy jacket. The big man gave the overall impression, thought Garrett, of a stuffed animal escaped from the pages of a children’s book.
Morning traffic was already clogging up the Embarcadero.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic if we had to call a taxi?” said Garrett.
“Wouldn’t it be ironic if you were to say something useful for a change? Betsy can be temperamental in the morning. Give her time.”
“Give her last rites, more like it.”
“Maybe he’s right,” said Reagan. “Maybe we should call a cab.”
Johnson looked back at her in the mirror. “You tell Mr. Talks-Too-Much he’s the father yet? Relax,” he added. “I’m just making conversation. I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t already know you had.”
“I thought you weren’t in the mood to talk,” said Garrett.
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say, that’s different.” Johnson tried the starter again, and again the van wouldn’t turn over. “After I save your collective butts, you two damn well better settle down together and work through your bullshit.”
“Garrett will be a good father,” said Reagan.
“You’re using good as synonymous for something that isn’t.”
“He will be,” she insisted.
“You have a name yet?”
“Dorothy?” said Reagan.
“Dorothy,” replied Johnson.
“Yes,” said Reagan. “We’re trying it out.”
“What kind of fucked up name is that to give to a kid?”
“It was just a thought, is all,” said Reagan.
“It was a bad thought,” said Johnson. “Dorothy Lindsay? Really?”
“No,” said Garrett. “Dorothy Gaitskill.”
“You’re going to be one of those couples,” said Johnson flatly.
“Women hate my last name,” said Garrett. “Why do you think I don’t have any sisters?”
“You know it doesn’t work that way, right?”
Garrett looked at his watch. “Seriously, how long are we going to sit here pretending your van isn’t dead?”
“I have somebody we can call,” said Reagan.
Garrett rubbed his eyes. “Tell me you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Don’t be that way,” said Reagan. “He can help. Look,” she held up her phone, “I just booked him through his app, easy as that, so you can just suck up your dislike for a little while longer. He’s only two blocks away and we’re already late enough as it is.”
XXXVIII: JU’AN THE BALL
“You want me to take y
our bitch-ass where?”
“Nick’s garage,” Reagan repeated.
“It was a rhetorical question,” said Ju’an. “I was expressing disbelief.”
“Are you going to take us or not?” asked Garrett.
Ju’an shrugged. “I dropped you at Pickle’s. How’d you get here? You were supposed to be hiding out from that motherfucker with the glasses, who, I might add, got himself all over the news.”
“What? ”
Ju’an handed the morning’s paper to Reagan. She read the headline:
Late night shootout leaves three dead, unknown gunman and witness at large.
“How do you know it was the man with the glasses?” she asked.
“Because I read the articles in their entirety,” said Ju’an. “‘Suspect in mid-forties-to-sixties had glasses and wore stiff clothing.’ Tell me that’s not him. They say he got one in the shoulder. Maybe he bled out somewhere.”
“He got shot point blank in the chest and walked away from it,” said Johnson.
“Who’s this Magilla-the-Gorilla looking motherfucker?” Ju’an asked.
“I’m Tiny Johnson.”
“Goddamn,” said Ju’an. “And I thought I had problems. So what you’re telling me is this asshole can’t be killed, that he’s some kind of Freddy Kruger?” Ju’an shook his head sadly. “Your dumb ass is creating a mythology.”
“A what?” asked Reagan.
“A mythology. You’re all like, ‘He’s one badass motherfucker. Even if I kill his ass, he won’t die.’ You think he can’t be killed because you created a mythology in which he can’t be killed. It’s all in your head.”
“You’re talking about a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Garrett.
“Shut your motherfucking ass up. No, I am talking about a mythology.”
“He can be killed,” said Johnson, “just like anybody else.”
“But we would prefer to avoid him,” said Reagan.
Garrett opened the Escalade’s passenger door. “So speak up if you see a white van following us.”
Ju’an looked unhappy. “I didn’t say I was taking you.”
Reagan and Johnson began to get in anyway, so Ju’an hastily climbed back behind the wheel. “Don’t think you’re gonna not pay your fare this time. One free ass-saving in a twenty-four hour period, that’s all. This one’s gonna cost you.”
Garrett thought back to the hidden camera in their motel room, remembering how Ju’an had been the one who’d asked Pickle to put them in that specific room. Maybe Pickle hadn’t actually been the one to install the camera and then forget about it, as Garrett had originally assumed.
“What kind of movies did you say you directed?” he asked.
“I told you,” said Ju’an, puffing his chest out. “Blaxploitation.”
“No, you said Blaxploitation was going to make a comeback. You said you were doing other films in the meantime to stay in practice.”
Ju’an brought the engine rumbling to life. “Oh, right,” he said. “Uh, art films. Yeah.”
“Art films,” said Garrett. “Okay. And you weren’t hoping to maybe have us star in one of those art films, were you?”
“What are you talking about?” said Reagan
“I’m not talking about anything,” said Garrett. “Right, Ju’an?”
Ju’an stared murderously into the rearview. “Know what? Fuck it. You want go see Nick, let’s go see Nick. On the house, asshole. No charge. And I hope he fucks you in the ass, too, cause that’s what Nick Polito does best.”
XXXIX: GHOST IN THE WIND
Harlan Lang thought of himself as a happy person. Not the fake, ignorant kind of happy that surrounded him everywhere in the city, but happy in spite of his intimate relationship with a darkness nobody else would ever know. He had witnessed first-hand the maggot-filled evil that lurked under the skin of ordinary men and women. He knew the heinous price with which liberty had been bought and paid for in a little place called Vietnam, a place nobody much remembered anymore. A place that, while indelible, hadn’t broken him like it had broken so many of his fellow combatants.
He had gone over one of a generation of boys who couldn’t deal with their shit. Most of those boys had come home men who would never be able to deal with their shit or anybody else’s. It was pitiful, but that was war for you, little pussy bitches running around playing soldier. It hadn’t been that way for him. Peering into the moldy toilet bowl of human corruption had liberated him, given him a reason to be happy. It had been his crucible. He had come out of it supremely capable. He was a man who did what needed to be done, and right now what needed to be done was the repayment of an old debt.
It was a debt that could never be fully repaid, but he bore that fact without rancor. Some things went deeper than resentment, deeper than love. What he owed Cafferty Wade was the blood that flowed through his veins, no more, no less.
They never talked about that day, when he’d lain bleeding out in the hut of the thirteen-year-old prostitute he’d raped to death, stabbed in the back four times by her father before he had managed to press his sidearm into the aging Gook’s cheek and pull the trigger, fucking up his own hearing in the process. He’d felt bad about the girl. He’d offered the father all the money in his wallet as a gesture of goodwill, a veritable fortune for anyone in that backwater cesspool. Not that it had been his fault the girl had been too weak to handle his lust. But the father hadn’t seen it that way, and wouldn’t be appeased.
Wade’s unit had been passing through and Wade had been the only other O-negative in the bunch. Their medic had risked a field transfusion that saved Lang’s life. The rape was covered up, along with Wade’s act of heroism, but Lang would never forget. Wade didn’t take advantage of Lang’s debt to him often, but when he did, Lang never failed to oblige provided he was stateside. There wasn’t much call for freelance mercenary consulting in the US of A, so Lang went where the work was. But he’d been home for a few years now, nominally retired, and, to tell the truth, getting more than a little bored. So when Wade had called needing a favor, he’d suited up in his custom-tailored Miguel Caballero jacket and slacks, grabbed his go-bag, and been out the door in five minutes flat.
The present situation had gotten out of hand, he was willing to admit that much, but the gun he’d left at the diner couldn’t be traced to him and his face wasn’t in the papers. After he tied up loose ends he would be on the next plane to South America, worry-free on a beach drinking mojitos mere hours after that. He was a goddamn ghost in the wind, just as soon as he did right by Wade.
One place was as good as another, so he had slept in his van outside of the now-familiar garage he’d followed Polito to after the diner.
Back at Century Tower, after Lang had taken care of the man with the beard—that had been a stroke of luck, finding that asshole literally in his path on the way up to Wade’s penthouse—Lang had gone after the actor that the bearded man had described, easily picking him out on the street a block away.
When the truck had crashed into his van, he hadn’t known what to think. He’d made himself scarce until the interlopers had regained consciousness, then followed them as they’d fled the scene of their hit-and-run back to the same garage, with Nick Polito’s Taxi Associates & Co splash-painted high across the brick wall. The boys had argued out front with a man who was obviously their boss (a moment’s googling of his taxi service revealed it to be Polito himself) and who just as obviously hadn’t been happy about them returning empty-handed. Later, Lang had followed Polito in his Mercedes all the way to Oakland, where things had started to go sideways.
It had been pure coincidence, running into Polito again at Two Trees’ diner. Two Trees kept tabs on everybody else who’d served In Country, including Lang, but the crazy Indian was too cowardly to pose a threat. Besides, Two Trees had useful connections. The big man who’d shown up at the motel, who’d done what nobody else had been able to do in a very long time and surprised Lang by shooting first, had piqued his i
nterest. It was clear the man was ex-military. As such, Two Trees’ contacts would have been helpful in gathering intel on him, but with Two Trees’ behavior instantly arousing Lang’s suspicions, one thing had led to another.
Protecting Wade’s anonymity was paramount. Why Wade cared about a couple of assholes snapping nudie photos of his neighbor wasn’t Lang’s concern. The fact that the assholes couldn’t blackmail her if they were dead was, and so Lang had gone back to Polito’s garage and waited.
Now, he woke up from a cat nap to the sound of car doors slamming. He looked at his wrist chronometer. Just shy of ten o’clock. Two cars were parked out front of the side entrance to the garage, a tan Toyota and a white BMW. Two women were conversing on the sidewalk. One was blonde and imperious and the other was vaguely Asian and equally imperious. Lang recognized neither.
They disappeared around the corner but came back again after a few moments and knocked on the side door where Polito had gone in the night before. Lang assumed it meant they had tried the front door but gotten no response.
His instincts told him that these were two more of the blackmailers, proving that Polito’s garage was the epicenter of whatever was going on, and it made up his mind. Getting out, he began to walk down the street toward the garage. The side door opened and the blonde pushed her way inside, the dark-haired one following. Lang loosened the blade of the Tanto knife he carried on his belt. He reached the door just as it was closing. Bending down, he slipped the blade of his knife between the door and jam.
He continued on by and waited at the corner for a full minute in case somebody came to investigate the open door, but nobody did. For big-time blackmailers, these people were neither observant nor cautious. Retrieving his knife and holding it at the ready, he slipped inside the garage, easing the door behind him, leaving it open a crack in case it became necessary to double back.
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