He’d sunk the split and the onion rings and the top half of the bottle by the time Rikki made it back home. His main Mex had a brand-new mouse under his left eye, fresh blood on his knuckles.
Rikki reached down deep into his pants pocket and gave Newt his money back.
Newt counted it slowly, but even so, kept losing track of the amount. He tossed the roll on the bed. “He did something stupid, didn’t he?”
Rikki nodded, his slicked-back hair flashing like chrome under the lights.
“What happened, he tried to stiff you for a couple extra bucks?”
“Yeah, yeah. Like you say.”
“But you’re a macho guy, proud, and you refused to go along with it, so the dummy lost his temper and popped you one.”
Rikki nodded, grinning.
“Took you by surprise, otherwise he’d never of laid a finger on you.”
“Almos’ broke my nose. I seen flashing stars, all colours.”
“Blue, red, green … ”
“And yellow,” said Rikki, smiling. “There was lots of yellow.”
“So then what happened?”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Slick.”
“Yeah, Slick. Slick don’t have no guns. The house I meet him at? He don’t live there. Know what he tried to do? Mug me, steal the money. Whadda creep.”
“So what happened?”
“I cut his friend up quite a bit. Slick scrambles away but not too far. I cut him up too, pretty good.”
Newt said, “So we still need some guns.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m thirsty, let’s go down to the bar and get a drink.”
Newt said, “Cheaper to buy a bottle at a liquor store, drink in the room.”
Rikki, already heading for the door, totally ignored him, which came as a shock. Newt reached out to grab the stupid little greencard bastard by the scruff of the neck so he could pound some sense into him, then thought better of it. Frank and his bimbo wouldn’t be drinking in their room, no, they’d be yukking it up at the piano bar, enjoying the good life at Newt’s expense.
They took the elevator down to the bar, and there they were, those two lovebirds, sitting right where Newt knew they’d be. It was as if he had some strange power over them, that made them materialize exactly where he imagined them to be.
Newt stared at the back of Frank’s head as he strode briskly across the ornately patterned carpet towards the bar, concentrating on sending out such venomous vibes that Frank couldn’t help but pick up on them. With each step he took, Newt anticipated Frank turning towards him, his eyes wide with shock, whimpering pitifully as he realized what deep shit he was in.
But Frank was having too much fun; or Newt’s psychic powers weren’t up to scratch. And when Frank finally did notice Newt and Rikki standing beside him, his reaction was to beam hugely up at them, happy as a clam.
“Newt, what a pleasure! I was just telling Lulu all about you.”
“Yeah?” Newt stuck his hands in his pants pockets, tried to lean against the piano but grossly miscalculated the distance. Losing his balance, he staggered against the piano player, who cursed into the microphone, fended him off with one hand and improvised with the other. The sharp edge of the baby grand caught him in the ribs and knocked the wind out of him. Anguished, he sank to his knees.
Lulu said, “Nice to meet you, Newt.” The mini-guy with Newt was so darkly tanned he made Richard Prior look anaemic. He was wearing a mustard-coloured suit and the biggest belt buckle she had ever seen, a huge carved slab of silver. “You must be Rikki, right?”
“You heard about me?”
“Saw your picture.”
Rikki frowned. Was amazing, how many people thought because you from Los Angeles, you was in the biz.
“At the post office,” Lulu explained.
Rikki glared at Frank. Frank said, “It’s a joke.”
“Yeah?” Rikki helped Newt to his feet, stared at Lulu as he whispered something in Newt’s ear. He tried to sneak a look down Lulu’s neckline. She gave him a friendly smile.
Frank made a show of examining his watch. A gold Rolex, Newt couldn’t help but notice. Jeez, if Frank’d used his charge card to buy it, he’d kill him. Frank, still studying the watch, said, “You’re out pretty late, for a couple of guys from California. Stayed out of trouble, I hope.”
Newt eased on to the stool next to Lulu. He’d never seen such pale skin. He said, “We been cruising around, admiring the town, how clean the streets are.”
Lulu said, “How’d you get the cut, Rikki — staring too hard into a mirror?”
The bartender arrived with a fresh B-52 for Lulu and another double Glenfiddich straight up for Frank.
Newt saw that Frank and the bimbo were running up a tab. Was the bimbo gonna pay? Newt didn’t think so. The bartender waited. Newt ordered a glass of icewater, Rikki a beer. The bartender went away. Newt rested a clammy hand casually on Lulu’s naked shoulder, leaned across her to speak to Frank. The cash register needed a new ribbon, but from where he was sitting, it looked as if the bill was $111.48. Newt felt a high-pressure ridge bearing swiftly down on his cortex. His water arrived, and he rolled the cold glass across his burning forehead.
It had to be his money that was being guzzled down — Frank didn’t have that much of his own.
Frank said, “So, when’d you get in, Newt?”
“Earlier.”
“Have a good flight?”
“What’s to enjoy? Know what an airplane is, Frank? An elevator with wings.” Newt gave Lulu’s creamy white shoulder a squeeze. “So who was your last date, Bela Lugosi?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re so pale,” Newt said. “Or didn’t you notice?”
“I’m an albino.”
Rikki stared at her.
Newt said, “Know how to make a blonde’s eyes gleam? Shine a flashlight in her ear.”
Frank started to turn towards him.
Lulu said, “Look, I’d really appreciate it if you took your hand off my shoulder.”
“And put it exactly where, honey-pie?”
Lulu said, “So far up your ass you have to open your mouth to wave goodbye, sport.”
Rikki made a cheerful gurgling sound, wiped beer from his chin.
Newt suddenly took an interest in the piano. After a few minutes of snapping his fingers out of time with the music, he said, “Tough chick, Frank. But can she cook?”
But it was too little and far too late, and he knew it, and so did they all. Newt sipped moodily at his glass of water.
Frank became aware of someone testing the limits of his peripheral vision. He looked up. Roger. He waved, and Roger went away.
A few minutes later, Phil Estrada showed up, gliding so smoothly across the carpet towards them that Frank glanced quickly at Estrada’s feet to make sure he wasn’t wearing roller skates.
Rikki gave the security man a quick, fierce look that ran from Estrada’s shiny black shoes all the way to the soft flesh beneath his chin. The way Rikki took in Estrada reminded Frank of the way he’d seen a guy on the Santa Monica pier gut a fish, very fast and all at once. Phil didn’t seem to mind. He smiled at Lulu with every tooth in his mouth, then turned to Frank and said, “Going to introduce me to your new pals?”
Before Frank had time to react, Rikki said, “Time to call it a night, huh?”
Newt nodded his agreement. He finished his icewater, pointed at Frank and said, “My suite, tomorrow morning at ten sharp. Be there or be square.”
Frank nodded.
Phil Estrada smiled at Newt. His teeth looked as if they’d just been bleached and sharpened. He said, “You gentlemen staying at the hotel?”
Rikki drank the last of his beer and put the empty glass down on the baby grand’s keyboard. The piano player glanced up at him. Rikki said, “Know something, man? You play like my dog sings.”
“He need an agent?” said the musician, not missing a beat. Phil Estrada chuckled softly an
d patted him on the shoulder and wandered off.
Lulu waited until she was sure Newt and Rikki and Phil
were absolutely and positively beyond earshot, then turned to Frank and said, “Why didn’t you do something?”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. How does ‘kill them both’ sound for starters?”
“Take a look around. What d’you see? A bartender, piano player, that guy over there with the beard, Phil, those two lovebirds holding hands in the corner table … ”
“Fiftieth anniversary,” said Lulu, “aren’t they sweet.”
“Rog probably hiding behind one of the potted plants. Witnesses. I blew away Newt and Rikki, even though they clearly deserved it, any one of those people could point me out in court, testify, and drop me in the slammer for the next quarter-century. That movie, Alien. You ever see it? By the time I got out, it’d be like Stagecoach.”
Lulu smiled. “That’s who you remind me of, John Wayne.”
“Forget it. He was a good guy. I’m a bad guy.”
“Not from my point of view. And besides, people change, Frank.”
“That’s right. They get older, and less optimistic.” Frank knocked back the rest of his Scotch, signalled for another. “Slower, too. I wouldn’t stand a chance against those guys, not the two of them.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“What?”
Lulu pointed at herself. “Me.”
Frank’s eyes were dark, full of sorrow.
Lulu took his hand in hers, kissed the knuckles one by one. “What’re we going to do?”
“Survive,” said Frank. “I think probably that’s the main thing we oughtta work on right now — surviving.”
“You’re saying we should make a run for it?”
Frank said, “I don’t like this. I don’t like any of it. Rikki — nobody’d miss him. And Newt, he ain’t never gonna be in line for the Nobel Prize. But at the same time, I worked for the guy a couple, almost three years. His cheques never bounced. Christmas, he’d pay for a trip to Palm Springs, we’d eat turkey and play golf all weekend, it never cost me a dime.”
“Sure, and what’d you do for him?”
“That’s just it — almost nothing. Laughed at his dumb jokes. Chased away the door-to-door aluminum siding guys. Drove him wherever he wanted to go. Broke a few arms.”
“You ever kill anybody?”
“No, of course not.”
Lulu turned to the piano player, who seemed twice as big as he’d been a couple of minutes ago. “We’re trying to have a private conversation, just the two of us. Go slide down to the other end of the bench, if you don’t mind — and play a little louder.” To Frank she said, “Is this how it worked — you did the light stuff and Rikki was the heavy?”
“More or less.”
“So why’d Newt send you to Vancouver to kill a cop?” Frank said, “Like I tried to explain already, Parker shot him a few years back, and he had this crazy idea of getting even, taking her down. And he figured I wouldn’t mind doing the job, because I’d been shot too, and knew what it felt like.”
“Painful.”
“Yeah.”
“But Parker didn’t shoot you, did she?”
“No, but she’d rousted me, had been on my case.”
“Doing her job, that’s all.”
“I know, I know.”
“What’s her first name?”
Frank hesitated, then said, “Claire.”
“How could you shoot somebody with such a pretty name, Frank?”
Frank hung his head in shame. “I dunno.”
“When Newt asked you, did you act like you wanted to do it?”
“Not really. In fact I said I’d just as soon take a pass.”
“Then why didn’t Newt send Rikki? He likes killing people, from what I saw.”
“You got that right.”
“Well then?”
Frank mulled it over. He really hadn’t thought about it. “Maybe Rikki pushed him into it, sending me. Me and Rikki don’t get along too good.”
“Why’s that?”
“I couldn’t say. Rikki’s pretty crazy about himself, if you know what I mean. The guy shaves three or four times a day, is always cleaning his fingernails, combing his hair. He carries a toothbrush with him everywhere he goes, I’ve even seen him use it at the table, between courses.”
“He’s a vain person, is what you’re saying.”
“In spades. But here comes the funny part. Suppose we’re out at a nightclub or restaurant, or maybe some dopester’s birthday party … Frank trailed off, not sure how to put it. He tossed Newt’s credit card — the card had Frank’s name printed on it but because Newt was the principal cardholder he was responsible for all the bills — down on the bar.
Lulu said, “I know what you’re going to say — that the girls trample Rikki on their way to good old Frank.” She smiled into his eyes, ran her fingers through his hair. “You know why that is, don’t you? It’s because women can tell that you’re all man, and Rikki’s nothing but a lowlife bantam-weight slime-ball creepoid slug.”
“You kind of like me, is that it?”
Lulu trailed her fingers lightly over his thigh. “Is this a room key in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?”
The bartender scooped up Frank’s card, drifted away and idled back moments later. Frank tipped a fat twenty per cent and signed with a flourish.
Lulu tugged at his arm. He followed her across the lobby, into a waiting elevator, up to their room. He was tipsy, but not drunk, and believed there was no immediate need to worry about Rikki or Newt. They'd leave him alone until Parker had been killed.
He slipped the key into the lock and pushed open the door. The room was dark, quiet. Lulu pulled him on to the bed, switched on the bedside lamp with its ten-watt bulb and sexy pink shade and there was Rikki, inches away from them, smirking like a fiend.
21
At five o'clock in the morning the street was quiet except for the despondent gargling of a solitary unseen crow, and the muted drone of detective Dan Oikawa’s electric razor.
Oikawa spotted Willows in the rear-view mirror as the unmarked Ford pulled in behind his beige Chevy. He raised his hand in greeting.
Willows turned off the engine, and he and Parker got out of the car. Oikawa switched off his razor and put it in his jacket pocket, gratefully accepted the coffee and greasy bag of donuts Parker handed him.
“Breakfast, great." He pried the lid off the coffee. “Got any cream?"
“In the bag.”
“Perfect, perfect.”
Willows leaned against the car. There was a rumpled sleeping bag in the back seat, a battery-powered travel alarm clock on the ledge beneath the rear window. He said, “Where’s Ralph?"
Oikawa dumped a plastic container of cream into his coffee, put the lid back on and shook the cup, removed the lid and tossed it on the floor of the car. “He ran off in a huff when I refused to share my toothbrush.” Oikawa blew on the coffee, sipped gingerly. “Nah, the truth is, he had to take a leak."
Willows nodded. “Any action, so far?”
“Not until the donuts showed up. Morning paperboy’s about due. I suppose that’s something to look forward to.” Oikawa probed the bag. “Get any cinnamon?”
Parker said, “There’s two each of cinnamon, plain, and chocolate. You owe me three-fifty.”
“That include the coffee?”
Parker nodded.
Oikawa said, “Catch you later, payday’s on Wednesday, right?”
The crow started up again. Parker scanned the area, located it in a mature apple tree in the back yard of the property adjacent to Joey Ngo’s rented house.
Oikawa fished a cinnamon donut out of the bag, bit into it, chewed and swallowed, drank some coffee. “It started up about half an hour ago, crack of dawn.” He took another bite out of the donut, a bigger one this time. “I was sitting in the car, trying to keep my eyes open. The sk
y started to lighten, fade to blue. Then I saw this streak of pink, very thin, appear just above the horizon. Like someone had opened a door just wide enough to peek outside. There it was — the crack of dawn. I never realized what the expression meant; always thought it was supposed to be noisy — sort of like a gunshot.”
Oikawa ate another donut and wiped his fingers on a paper napkin. “I took a hike down the alley, to try to find out what the damn crow was yelling at. You wouldn’t believe the size of the lady’s underwear hanging on the line in the back yard. Maybe that’s what the damn bird’s so excited about.” Willows looked up as the front door of the rancher across the street from Joey Ngo’s house swung open. A plump redhead in a pink nightgown glanced quickly up and down the street. An early riser, thought Willows, eager for her morning paper.
Then Ralph Kearns stepped on to the porch, finished tucking in his shirt, gave her a quick kiss and trotted diagonally across the sun-bleached slope of the lawn towards the sidewalk.
Willows said, “How long has he been in there, Dan?”
“Beats me, Jack. Timing him ain’t part of my job description.”
Kearns’s grin faded as he noticed Willows and Parker watching him. His stride faltered, and he glanced back over his shoulder, as if hoping to survey the scene on the porch from Willows’ perspective.
Oikawa dipped in the bag for a third donut, and then remembered there’d only been two cinnamon and that he’d already eaten them both. Chocolate or plain? He mulled it over, but only for a moment.
Kearns spotted the bag of donuts. Was he smiling cheerfully, or smirking lasciviously? Parker couldn’t make up her mind.
Kearns lit a cigarette. “You guys are here a little early, aren’t you?
“Looks that way,” said Willows.
Kearns suddenly became very serious. “Now hold on, Jack. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong.”
“What am I thinking, Ralph?”
“That Barbara — Mrs. Hinton — looked like pretty hot stuff, wearing that nightgown, showing all that leg.”
Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 18