“Done that,” she replied, and pointed at the ground the stranger was now fine-raking. “I also checked under that window for footprints.”
The stranger rose up to full height and stepped out of the bushes, a brown-orange eye piercing the girl from above like an icicle shot straight through the heart.
“These are your footprints?!”
“No, not those,” she promised. “I never stood there.”
Adrian puffed out, then went back to work, grumbling between his teeth. “The fuck you following footprints for if you don’t care who killed him.”
“I was bored,” she answered, not noticing the absence of a question mark at the end of the previous line.
The stranger stopped again, on one knee, and removed their hat to flip their hair. The other eye—green—was now scanning her in full. Not just the surface. This one felt like a sunbeam while you’re drying out on the riverbank.
“My dad is a mobster, there are thugs in the garden and prostitutes in the pool,” she said with a shrug. “Not a very child-friendly environment.”
The stranger was paying attention to her now—maybe not full attention, but most of it. One hand scratched the other.
“There are worse places.”
The odd face loosened up a little. You could almost get a hint of front teeth spying behind the hair-thin lips.
The girl removed her sunglasses. Big dark eyes transformed her face from rubber-stamp pop art icon to actual eleven-year-old girl.
“I’m Ursula. You?”
A breeze blew at every character’s hair.
“Zooey.”
Adrian called time’s up and pulled Zooey back into the underbrush. The girl lowered her hand, which the stranger had not shaken.
“You’re a private detective?”
“Yup.”
“From San Francisco?”
“Indeed.”
“I love it there. I wish I could go.”
“I wish you were there already.”
“Are you going to interrogate me?”
“Yeah, because you need encouragement to talk.”
“I might have seen something.”
“You weren’t here when he was killed.”
“How do you know?”
Kimrean was now on tiptoes, spider-fingers scuttling onto the highest blossoms.
“How do you know?” the girl repeated.
Adrian breathed in a lungful of patience.
“Your tan. Your knees are darkest: you’ve been wearing long socks and a skirt until recently and you’re catching up now; you only got here for your brother’s funeral. I’m guessing you’re in a five-star summer boarding school for troubled children in Northern California. I’d say…Gillian Towers?”
“Cool.” She grinned. “Not brother—half brother. But I’m flattered you noticed my legs. And you know a lot about troubled children institutions. You been to Gillian Towers?”
Kimrean stepped out to her again for the ultimatum.
“Okay, kid, look—I’ve seen your routine. You’re a tattered child whose life spent in crime-paid luxury torn between your drug lord dad and money-laundering mom has smacked too many life lessons into you too quickly, forcing you to grow a carapace of protective sass under which a soft heart yearns for love—all really sad and sweet and food for thought. Now fuck off before I tell your daddy his little angel smokes pot.”
With that he started putting away his Detective Kit™.
The barefooted child on the lawn finished processing the speech and could only object, “I don’t smoke pot.”
“Yeah, you do, but you don’t know it,” Kimrean overruled. “Whoever you’re pinching your tobacco from, news flash: plain tobacco doesn’t smell that good.” They pocketed the sample vial and rounded on the child for the grace shot: “Impressed now, Shania?”
They abandoned the scene to join whoever was calling for them. A shaken-not-stirred Danny Mojave came running around the corner.
DANNY: Ayzee. (Noticing the kid; softer.) I hope you know what you’re doing; they’re talking total war on Villahermosa back there.
ADRIAN: Would you guys win a war against Villahermosa?
DANNY: Uh…yeah, probably.
ADRIAN: Then I’d say I’m doing fine. Give me your cell phone.
The kid approached, insect sunglasses back on her eyes.
“Daniel, can you drive me to the mall?”
“What? No, sorry, girl. I’m working. Maybe later.”
She looked down and turned around, making sure to display her disappointment for an invisible audience.
ADRIAN: Phone me, please?
DANNY: (Confidential.) You found something?
ADRIAN: Yeah, the kid smokes pot.
DANNY: (Falters, frowns.) Okay, now I know who’s stealing my cigarettes. And about the murder?
ADRIAN: Not much. The killer’s shoe size, height, and build.
DANNY: We know: size eight and a half; that makes him around five-eight. Heavy.
ADRIAN: Smaller. He didn’t disturb too many flowers and had to tiptoe to see through the window.
DANNY: So, he has big feet?
ADRIAN: Big shoes, actually. There’s not much pressure on the toes.
DANNY: (Visualizing.) Okay. So, what does that tell us?
Kimrean exhaled like either Adrian or Zooey thought they were smoking.
ADRIAN: Considering height and build, I could go with female, but in the present circumstances…I’d say Asian male.
DANNY: But the flower came from Mexico.
ADRIAN: Are you dense? I made that up. Do you think I know every flower in America? I only mentioned Mexico to buy you time. Phone.
DANNY: (Unpockets it, unlocks it.) Here. Remember you cannot call home base fro—
ZOOEY: HEEEY, Mr. Lyon!
The man was just hobbling up to them, out of breath, his pink face sporting the discombobulated expression that was becoming his staple in this chapter.
“What’s going on here?”
“We’re done!” Kimrean stated gleefully. “There’s really nothing left to do; your cops are very efficient, worth every cent you pay them. Uh, with your taxes, I mean. Danny darling, I’ll wait for you in the car.”
Mr. Lyon attempted to insert another line, but he was interrupted by the little girl joining back in:
“Papa, can someone drive me to town?”
“No, they can’t!” the old man snapped at her. “These people are working—they’re not here to attend to your whims!”
Kimrean heard the argument fade into the background while they strode up to the north side, cell phone in hand.
The estate was vast; it took them two and a half minutes on a straight line to reach the outer fence. At this latitude, the word garden was being clearly overstretched; the setting was a pinewood, if not wild, not tame either. Adrian located the cameras along the tall iron fence, too slow moving and poorly spaced. He ambled toward the right, holding Danny’s phone out in front of them like a compass, and stopped by a small clearing under a couple tall, easy-to-climb eucalypti. Adrian checked the network on the phone. Then he knelt down, examined the ground, and took a pinch of dirt to his nostrils.
There was nothing else to do. He trekked back to the path and then took the long way around the swimming pool, so that Zooey wouldn’t get distracted.
They resurfaced near the entrance, in sight of the sentries posted at the front gate, and Zooey waved at them cheerfully while Adrian opened the shotgun door to Danny’s blue Camaro, parked under a vine-walled pergola.
As soon as they shut the door, they noticed the marijuana scent.
“No way.”
They lifted the polyester car cover that lay in a bundle on the backseat, and Ursula Lyon stuck her head out.
“What are you—”
“Give me a break, okay? I just want a ride to town; it’s on your way!”
“Are you crazy?! Get out of the f—”
“Quiet!” she shushed, and ducked back under the cover.
The speed of the following events surprised even Kimrean themselves: Danny opened the driver’s door, plumped in, and before he had time to receive the distress signals from Adrian’s face he blurted out the next rant:
“I can’t believe this, the Effing-B-I! I’m gonna phone Chief Carlyle and tell him to tell them where to plant their bugs. Nice fucking teamwork!”
At this point he noticed Adrian’s face—just as Adrian was diving it into his palm.
“What?” Danny asked. “What?!”
“Wow.” Ursula emerged, little head sticking between the front seats like any kid passenger who was about to throw up in the car. “Shit. Okay. I know I shouldn’t have heard that.”
She looked like a child who just caught Santa taking off his padded red suit in an alley behind the Toys“R”Us. Or one who walked in on her own parents banging. Or walked in on her parents banging in Santa suits in an alley behind the Toys“R”Us. She confronted Danny.
“So…you’re a cop?”
Danny sat jaw-dropped, neatly listening to every sphincter in his body saying, Well, it was nice working here!
“Brilliant!” Adrian judged. “I mean, absolutely brilliant! One line, and you managed to catch an eleven-year-old up with the plot! Shit, there are Disney Classics harder to follow!”
Nobody talked for the next three or four minutes. They just sat there inside the yellow-striped pony car under the pergola while the sentries stood by the open gate and two other watchmen radioed each other, wondering what the holdup was; Danny soaked in cold sweat, Ursula still assimilating the revelation, Adrian searching for something to kick angrily, and Zooey pondering the best way to ask permission for a quick dip in the swimming pool and perhaps a piña colada.
“Okay,” Ursula said at last, breathing in. “First things first: you’re not gonna kill me, are you?”
“Damn, I wish I’d thought of that,” Adrian groaned.
“Ursula, listen,” Danny started, but Ursula cut him off before he could muster the words.
“Relax,” she said. “I won’t rat you out. Even if I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t be able to live with my conscience.”
That soothed the tension a little. Three out of four people in the car took a deep breath.
“Although,” Ursula reprised after that, “I would appreciate some compensation.”
“Excuse me?” Danny said. “We’re negotiating now?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Okay. Let’s make it easy then: you don’t tell your dad I’m police, I don’t tell him you smoke pot.”
“You’re kidding, right? I’m terrified of my father, but even I know that’s trading Baltic Avenue for Boardwalk.”
“What for what?”
“Like in Monopoly? Baltic Avenue is cheap and—”
“Will you shut the fuck up?!” Kimrean interrupted. “Jesus, I’m just realizing how annoying it is to have someone gloating about every smart thing they say! (To Danny, concerned.) Do I sound like that?”
“Adrian, what are we going to do?!” Danny begged.
A beige-suited goon with a radio in one hand and the other hovering over his hip stepped under the pergola. As though he’d heard the clapboard go, Danny slipped back into character, torqued the key in the ignition, and lowered his window.
“I’m driving the P.I. to the station and taking the kid to the mall. No need to bother the old man.”
The goon nodded and let the car roll out the gates, radioing for the page break.
4
Take the neon palaver, the plastic luxury, and the smell of bottled air and pine freshener common to all of San Carnal, and multiply by ten. That’s San Carnal’s mall right there.
Danny Mojave, Ursula Lyon, and A. Z. Kimrean occupied a stool-like table in front of a Taco Bell on the second-floor balcony in the atrium. Kimrean was wolfing down a Mission burrito with chorizo, pineapple, and sauerkraut. Ursula was drawing circles with a straw on the foamy surface of a chocolate milkshake. Incredibly annoying ambient music consisting of instrumental versions of ’60s and ’70s pop hits plagued the silence, masking a layer of subliminal messages playing on the PA system: Buy skiing gear now. Eat doughnuts. Fear foreigners.
“So what’s gonna happen to me?”
It was Ursula’s first attempt at an icebreaker. She sat on her stool like she was outside the principal’s office, thoughts in her head literally weighing her down.
Danny squished his third Newport on an eco-friendly paper ashtray. He had aged five years in the last thirty minutes. Fruit flies stared at him in amazement.
“Nothing, Ursula. What do you think is gonna happen?”
“When they arrest my father, are they gonna take me?”
“No. Of course not. You haven’t done anything.”
“My dad is a gangster. Isn’t there a law that says if you know someone is committing a crime and you don’t speak out, that’s a crime too? I saw it on Law & Order.”
“Yes, but you’re eleven. You are not supposed to be aware of everything going on in your home.”
“I’m supposed to be stupid because I’m eleven? I know what’s going on.”
Adrian jumped in, not caring or noticing that his mouth was full: “If you’re so perceptive, why didn’t you speak out?”
Ursula made a silent statement of disgust at Kimrean’s manners, then answered: “It’s one thing to notice other kids don’t have armed chauffeurs with prison tattoos; it’s another thing to be ready to send your parents to jail for it.”
Danny joined in on the disgust bus: “How can you eat in a moment like this?”
“I’m wondering myself,” Adrian admitted, before his left hand chucked the remainder of the burrito in his mouth.
“Okay, I’m not going to jail,” Ursula resumed. “Then what? You guys kick in the door and you arrest my dad and my mom back in Grand Cayman and you take the house and the cars and the bank accounts. What happens to me?”
Mojave shrugged, avoiding eye contact. Something in his voice undermined the pretension of indifference.
“I don’t know, kiddo. Not my job. I’m not staying long enough to find out.”
Ursula seemed to appreciate the honesty. She then turned to Kimrean: “What is your job?”
“I make sure it’s the cops who kick in your door.”
Ursula made sure to read between the lines. “Then it’s true. There’s gonna be a war.”
Danny removed his sunglasses. Fifty thousand watts’ worth of fluorescent light stabbed his eyes. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He had almost forgotten about the war.
“It’s not a hundred percent sure yet,” he said.
“Just in case, don’t order sushi for dinner,” Adrian advised. Zooey pointed at the milkshake. “Are you gonna finish that?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Nah, you hardly tried it.” (Pulls the glass closer.)
“I’m working on it!” (Pulls it back.)
“Not fast enough.”
(She takes one of the two straws and starts sucking; Ursula immediately takes the other one and sucks as hard as she can. The liquid descends rapidly as Zooey and Ursula drink, foreheads touching, eyes on each other, cheeks caved in like they’re trying to create an absolute vacuum in their mouths.)
(Ursula ends up exploding in a laugh, spraying chocolate all over Zooey and the table.)
“Aw, damn!” cried Zooey, making a big show of wiping her face. “ ‘Ursula used milk spout! It’s super effective!’ ”
Danny shifted to shoulder off Ursula’s boisterous laughter while he made a phone call.<
br />
* * *
—
After Taco Bell they went to the Rampage store on the first floor, and Ursula tried on a lot of clothes while Danny talked on the phone and Kimrean studied the security measures for purely professional reasons. Shrilling teenagers flocked around the clothes racks, popping fifteen-megaton gum bubbles and lying to each other with the keenness of authors raving on each other’s book jackets.
Danny hung up, crossed back through the tag detectors, and planted a foot on the bench next to Kimrean, whose hands were playing with a three-inch-wide leather belt with pink lollipops drawn between the spikes. Precisely then, Ursula blasted out of a fitting room in a neon-rimmed black shirt and glossy tights. She spun once before Zooey and raised the sunglasses she’d borrowed from Danny.
“Well?”
“Cool! Lose the leg warmers; no need to go full Jennifer Beals.”
“Who?”
“Forget it. Keep the shirt, try it with the shorts again and these shoes,” she advised, handing her a pair of Panzer-sized sneakers in colors only bees could perceive properly. “Platform sneakers need to be brought back; it’s up to cool people like us.”
Ursula took the shoes and pranced back into the fitting room.
“You’re good with kids,” Danny commented.
“I hate kids,” Adrian snarled. “They should keep them in incubators until…How old are you?”
“Thirty-three.”
“Until their thirty-fourth birthday.”
“I’m being summoned back to Xander’s penthouse.”
“Okay, drop me at the train station. I’ll tell Carlyle you send love.”
“What am I supposed to do, Ade?” His voice had dropped a full octave. “About the kid.”
“Who cares about her? She doesn’t alter your mission. She just slunk out of Fort Narc and so far no one cared, did they?”
Ursula ta-daed back before their eyes, her noodle legs looking like Hellboy’s right fist, ending in heavy-armored sneakers.
“Wow!” Zooey hollered. “Give this girl a battle-ax and a rideable white bear—she’s my new favorite manga heroine!”
“There’s a supercool bra back there,” Ursula pointed. “You should try it on; matches one of your eyes.”
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