by Robert Crais
I took the .38 out of the glove box and clipped it onto my waistband over my wallet. I got out and pulled on the jacket, then dug around under the seat until I found a roll of nickels. I slipped the nickel roll in my right pocket and walked back to the house.
The 914 was ticking in a little carport dug into the side of the mountain. The flat-roofed house sat on top of the garage and spilled to the right, nestling in an ivy bed as did so many houses in Los Angeles. There was a big plate glass window to the right of the door and a dormer window a little beyond that. The landscaping was uneven and shabby. Dead vines twined with live; lonely Saint Augustine runners purchased in bare spots along the unmaintained slope, outlining just as lonely sprigs of ice plant and cactus. Everything looked dusty: the 914, the carport, the brick steps leading up to the house, the house, the plants, the bugs crawling on the plants. Classy.
I crept up the steps to the door and listened. Murmurs, maybe, but impossible to tell if it was people or TV. I left the stoop and went to the right, creeping along on all fours under the big window and hoping the local rent-a-cops didn’t pick now to cruise by. I raised my head and looked. Living room. Big and empty and open all the way through to the back of the house. There was a kitchen in the back on the left and a freestanding fireplace just to the right of the big window. A shabby couch covered with something that looked like a bedspread stood next to the kind of bookshelves college kids make out of boards and cinder blocks. No books; just a stereo and some records and a big aquarium with green sides and too many plants and green around the water line. In the back, off the kitchen, there was a round dining table with spindly legs and two chairs. Newspaper sections were spread across the table, pinned there by a glass, a quarter filled with something I couldn’t identify. I was staring at the glass when Kimberly Marsh walked out of the kitchen and into the living room without a stitch of clothes. When she saw me she said, “Hey!” so loud I could hear her through the glass.
I waved at her and smiled. Then the front door opened and the Son of Kong appeared.
14
Up close, he was shorter than I had guessed, but his thighs and calves were thicker than in the picture and there was maybe a little more muscle across his chest. He’d changed clothes. His shirt was off, and he was wearing a pair of red gym shorts, so old and faded I couldn’t make out the name of the school. He was barefoot. There was a four-inch crescent-shaped scar on the front of his left shoulder and two long ugly zipper scars bracketing his left knee. The girl appeared in the doorway behind him, holding a sheet around herself. There were stains on the sheet. I said, “Hi, Kimberly. My name’s Elvis Cole. I want to talk to you about Morton Lang.”
She said, “Larry.”
Larry flicked his fingers back toward the house without taking his eyes off me. “Go pack. I’ll take care of this.” Larry’s voice had a whiny quality, as if he were a rich kid from a small town who’d been Mister Everything in school and was spoiled by it.
I ignored him. “I’m a private investigator, Kimberly. Morton Lang is dead.”
“Dead,” she said.
I nodded. If she was ready to collapse with grief, it didn’t show. “Yeah. We need to talk about it.”
Larry gestured to the house again. “Go on, Kimmie.” Kimmie. Okay, Jody. Let’s go, Buffy. He sort of nodded to himself, making a big deal out of sizing me up. “I got this guy by forty pounds. He’s mine.”
I said, “Larry, you wanna be dominant male, that’s okay by me. But it’s important that Kimberly and I talk about this.”
He shook his head. “Beat it, asshole.”
I pushed my jacket back so he could see the gun. “This ain’t like playing football, boy.”
He blinked, and the hard lines around his eyes softened, making him look even younger, then he yelled and came at me, leading with his face like a lot of ballplayers do. It only took him two hard strides to get to me, but moving so fast on the crumbly slope, his footing was weak and he was off-balance. I took one step uphill, planted, then hit him as hard as I could with the roll of nickels, getting some umph into it from my hips and carrying it up through my shoulder. His nose burst in a red and pink spray and he folded, stumbling and sliding downhill before the ivy and ice plants snagged him. He flopped around for a while, then grabbed his face and moaned. “Come on, Kimmie,” I said, “help me get him inside.”
We put him on the couch with his head back over the arm and gave him ice wrapped in a wet towel to hold on his face, then she went into the back to dress. While she was gone I filled a small pot with water, cracked in some ice cubes, and brought it to the dining room table to soak my hand. Larry stirred and looked at me out the corners of his eyes, trying not to bend his head much. “You hit me with something.” Sort of accusatory, like, You cheated.
Kimberly came back wearing a faded pair of cut-off jeans and a black POLTERGEIST tee shirt cut just below her breasts so her belly was exposed. Her body was lean and firm but she didn’t look as good as the 8 × 10. Take away the lights and the makeup and the pose, her nose had an uncomplimentary bend to it and her eyes said nothing. Even with the tan and the dimple in her chin, she looked puffy and worn. Life in the fast lane.
I said, “Why are two Mexicans sitting on your apartment and what does that have to do with Morton Lang?”
She glanced sort of vaguely at Larry, who stirred on the couch, then struggled up and gave me the eye. I took out the Dan Wesson. “If you come off that couch,” I said, “I’ll shoot you in the chest.”
He stayed where he was, both hands holding the red-splotched towel to his face. Kimberly positioned herself between me and the kitchen door, thumbs hooked down in the top of her shorts. Posing. She said, “Are you the police?’
I put the gun on the table, took out the photostat of my license with my dry hand and held it up. I said, “Think back five minutes, when we were outside, what I said.” Beneath the smell of kitchen grease and fishbowl was the burned tar scent of marijuana and sandalwood. And maybe the metallic after-smell that ether leaves from freebasing.
She didn’t look at the license. “Oh, yeah, private investigator.”
“Right. That means I don’t have to be nice. I don’t have to read rights. I don’t have to wait for your lawyer. I can kick the shit out of people and nobody can say dick.” Mr. Threat.
She shook her head and used her right foot to scratch her left. “I don’t know who they are.”
“Mort dropped out of sight last Friday. You with me, Kimmie?”
“Unh-hunh.”
“He took his son with him. Perry. You ever meet Perry?”
“Unh-unh.”
“Yesterday, the cops found Mort dead up by Lancaster. He was shot to death. The boy’s missing. Now Mort’s wife is missing. Maybe kidnapped. Those two Mexicans, maybe they want to make you missing, too.”
Larry grunted. “Spics.”
“What was the trouble about?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said, picking at her fingernail polish.
I looked past her to Larry. “Bullshit, Kimberly. Mort loved you. He would’ve said something to you.”
She followed my eyes to Larry and tried to remember how to look offended. “Mort was my mentor and my friend,” she said. I think she moued.
I looked back at Larry. “You her mentor, too?”
“Fuck off.”
I could see Mort’s card hanging by the thin wire from the wilted flower: For the girl who gives me life, all my love. Right, Mort. Asshole.
She paced in a small circle with her thumbs back in her shorts, then stood in the middle of the room. Show-and-tell time. “I’m scared.”
“With good ol’ Larry here?”
Larry gave me his tough look. She said, “Mort took me to this party to meet some guy. A guy from Mexico. A Financier.” She said financier like it was Duke or Earl or Governor. “Mort’s friend Garrett found him. Garrett’s a producer. When you’re starting out you have to meet producers and directors and the power people.”<
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“When was this?”
“Early last week. Tuesday.” Tuesday, Mort was still living at home, Ellen wasn’t yet being badgered into seeking a private investigator, the Lang children’s lives were shaky but still intact.
“Okay.”
“Mort said that Dom was thinking about backing one of Garrett’s movies, so it’d be good if they knew me for parts.”
“Yours or theirs?”
“Hunh?”
“Is Dom the Mexican?”
She nodded. “All they said was Dom. I don’t know his last name.” She giggled. I hate women who giggle. “He’s an older man. Really neat. Sort of old-fashioned, you know. He called me Miss Marsh.” She giggled again. “He used to be a bullfighter, only now he’s got oil and stuff.”
“Good connection,” Larry agreed.
I frowned at him.
“It was a big deal,” Kimberly said. “Mort told me to dress sexy and be real nice, you know, laugh at their jokes and smile a lot and follow his lead. Mort knew just what to do, you know. He’s great at getting with the right people and making the right connections.”
I thought of Mort sitting in his chair, looking at his photo album, crying. I thought of his steadily shrinking bank balance, all out and no in. I thought of Mort with four bullets in him. “Yeah, his strong point. Where was the party?”
She looked confused and gestured somewhere off into outer space. “Somewhere over the hill. I dunno. It was dark.”
“All right. What happened?”
“It was rad. We were hanging out, talking, doing lines. Everyone was very sophisticated. The dope was first-rate.”
“Mort, too?”
“What?”
“Doing coke.”
“Sure.”
I could see it: palatial living room, marble coffee table, crystal bowl with the white powder, everybody playing Pass the Mirror. Old Mort right in there with them direct from Elverton, Kansas, by way of Oz, laughing when they laugh, nodding when they nod, eyes nervous, darting, wondering if they accept him or if they’re just faking it. I couldn’t make the pictures fit. I couldn’t clip Mort out of the snapshot in his pool with the three kids, color in Versace threads, and drop him around that marble table with this woman and Garrett Rice and that life. Maybe Mort couldn’t make the picture fit, either. Maybe that had been his problem.
Kimberly giggled. “Dom really liked me, you know.”
I was getting tired of ‘you know.’ Larry took the towel away and grinned, but there was no humor in it. “It’s the business, man.” His nose was a mess.
“You’re going to need a doctor,” I said. “It’s broken.”
He stood up, wobbled, then went to the shelves by the slimy fishbowl. He took a slender blue cigarette from a little painted box and lit up, pulling deep. “For the pain.”
“Was anyone else there?”
“These people from Italy. They said they might want to get into movies, too. You know—”
“Yeah. Financiers. How much did Dom like you, Kimberly?”
She tried to look embarrassed but they probably hadn’t covered that in acting school. “Dom, you know, wanted to get to know me.” Giggle. That made four.
“How’d Mort feel about that?”
A shrug. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know,” I said carefully. “If I knew I wouldn’t be here with you and him listening to this.”
Larry giggled.
Kimberly focused on me like she wasn’t quite sure what I had said and gave me a pout. “Mort had to act like such an asshole. Dom is rich. Dom said he might make a three-picture deal and I could be in all of them.”
Larry giggled again. “The old spic fucked her brains out.”
I looked at him. “Shut up.”
Larry frowned and stared at the slime in the fish tank.
“When Dom and I came back, Mort got all upset and Dom started yelling in Spanish and Garrett was yelling and this Italian woman just kept laughing. Then Garrett got everybody calmed down and they went off and talked for a while and then Mort came back and we left. It just went all wrong. Mort had to act like such an asshole.”
Her story could explain Garrett Rice. A guy like Rice, he’d get pissed if his friend blew a deal just because he didn’t want his girlfriend humping for dollars. Guy like Garrett Rice, that’d be a pisser, and Rice certainly had been pissed.
“Mort tell you what they talked about when they went out?”
“We didn’t talk on the way home. I was so mad.”
“Sure,” I said. “Who could blame you.”
She cocked her head and gave me that sort-of-confused look again. “The next day he calls me and says we’re in trouble. He says he can’t talk because his wife is in the next room, but if anybody comes around the apartment I wasn’t to answer the door and that he’d call when it was okay again. I got so scared I called Larry and came up here.”
Larry sat up straighter and nodded. Defender of damsels.
“Did Mort say anything about the boy?”
“Unh-unh.” Kimberly started to sniffle. “I kept checking my answer machine but Mort never called back. Now you say he’s dead and there’s guys watching my apartment and I’m scared.”
Larry smirked. It didn’t look like much, considering his nose had evolved into a rutabaga. “Coupla spics. Let’m come and see what happens.”
“Yeah. Like with me.”
He frowned. “You hit me with something.”
“Mort got hit with four 9mm Parabellums, stupid.” I was at my limit. “A cop named Poitras is going to come around. Talk to him. He won’t hassle you about things that don’t matter. Just don’t try to act tough. He’s not as nice as me.”
I walked out through the living room past the fishbowl. It smelled like a toilet. Algae were thick and furry around the sides and on top and over the big rocks at the bottom, and there was a dense mat of seaweed that looked like colonic polyps. A white fish of indeterminate genus lay bloated and belly-up at the surface. I stopped at the front door and looked back at them. Larry took a toke on his joint and the tip glowed.
“Kimberly?”
She turned toward me, putting her hands in her back pockets and letting me see her body. It was nice. A long time ago she could’ve been a cheerleader or even the homecoming queen in Elverton, Kansas. Every boy’s desire. “Hunh?” she said.
“Mort was an asshole because he loved you.”
She put her right hand up under her Poltergeist tee shirt and scratched her right breast.
I went out and slammed the door.
15
The next morning I woke with brilliant white sunlight in my face, smelling coffee. The sliding glass doors were open and Joe Pike was out on the deck. He was wearing faded jeans and a gray sweat shirt with the sleeves cut off and blue Nikes and government issue pilots sunglasses. He rarely takes the glasses off. He never smiles. He never laughs. I’d known Joe Pike since 1973 and he has never violated those statements. He’s six feet one with short brown hair and muscled the way a fast cornerback is muscled, weighing in somewhere between one eighty-five and one-ninety. He had a red arrow tattooed on the outside of each shoulder when he was in The Nam. They pointed forward.
Pike had the rail section out and was sitting on the edge of the deck. The cat was in his lap. I pulled on a pair of sweat pants and went out. I said, “Goddamnit. If you broke the alarm again, you pay for it.”
“Slipped the latch on the sliding doors with a hacksaw blade. You didn’t arm the system. You don’t arm the system, it won’t keep out the bad guys.” Pike stroked the cat along the top of the shoulders, using slow, careful passes the way the cat likes.
I said, “I don’t like to keep out the bad guys. I like to let’m in and work out on them.”
“You should get a dog. A good dog, properly trained, you don’t need to arm him. He’s always armed.”
“What? You don’t think I’m tough enough?”
Pike sat silently.
“I got the cat.”
Pike nodded. “That is a problem.” He put the cat down. The cat flattened his ears, hissed, grabbed Pike’s hand and bit him, then darted away to the other side of the deck to crouch under my grill. He growled deep in his throat. Helluva cat. Pike stood up. “Come on,” he said, “I’ve got breakfast, then we can take a ride.”
Pike had put out plates and napkins and flatware. There was a bowl of pancake batter beside the stove and four eggs and a small pot of water simmering on a back burner. The big skillet was greased and waiting for the batter. I said, “How long you been here?”
“About an hour. You want eggs?”
“Yeah.” About an hour, doing all this. I might just as well have been on the moon.
Pike poured the coffee, then spooned the eggs into the simmering water and looked at his watch. It was a big steel Rolex. He said, “Tell me about it.”
By the time we sat down, each with two soft-boiled eggs smushed atop six pancakes and syrup and butter, I had told him. Pike nodded, forked in some pancake and egg, swallowed. “We’re not overburdened with useful intelligence.”
“One might say that, yes.”
“She say this guy Dom’s a matador?”
“Yes.” The pancakes were good. I wondered if he’d put cottage cheese in them.
“I put cottage cheese in these,” he said, reading my mind. “What do you think?”
I shrugged. “Okay.”
He ate. “You know what matador means?”
“Bullfighter.”
He shook his head. I could see little images of me in his glasses. “Bullfight is an American concept. It has no relevance to the actual event. Not only is the term irrelevant, it’s insulting. If a matador fights a bull, then they’re adversaries. That’s not what it’s about. The matador has to dominate the bull, not be equal to it. The bull’s death is preordained. The matador’s job is to bring him to it.”
What a thing to wake up to. I said, “So what does it mean?”
The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched. That’s the closest he comes to a smile. “Means ‘bringer of death.’ Nifty, huh?”