The Nice Guys

by Charles Ardai

  Healy took that moment to face himself in the goddamn mirror, take a good look at a what a middle-aged ex-avocado farmer looked like. Not too bad. Maybe not handsome like playboy over there, a few too many bruises and scars, but—

  “Pull over,” March said suddenly.

  Healy was drawn out of his reverie. “What?”

  “Pull over, pull over.” March was aiming a thumb out the window, looking up at a glass-and-steel tower with fancy elevators climbing the sides. “She’s not going to the airport.”

  Healy bent to look up through the windshield at the giant letters March was pointing out.

  The sign for the Burbank Airport Western Hotel cast a bright glow over the pavement. Behind it, maybe half a mile away, a jetliner climbed, climbed, and was gone. “She’s not flying. She’s meeting somebody.”

  Come in for a landing, a smaller sign on the hotel’s wall said. Visit THE FLIGHT DECK Lounge.

  Flt D.

  “Okay,” Healy said. “Let’s go.”

  32.

  Sometime around midnight, no doubt, the Flight Deck Lounge would be a happening spot, where businessmen visiting L.A. for a convention would put the moves on their female assistants or find a lady of the evening to rock them to sleep instead. But that was more than an hour away, and for now the room was empty, the only sound in the place coming from the bartender, a rat-faced character with a hand-painted necktie and wiry goatee who was racking glasses in anticipation of the coming rush.

  Healy and March bellied up to the bar.

  “Evening,” the barkeep said, wiping his hands on a towel. “What can I get you?”

  “Information,” March said. He held up the photo of Amelia they’d gotten from Kuttner. “You seen this girl? She probably came in in the last half hour…?”

  “Hey, I just work here,” the guy said.

  “No shit, Sherlock, that’s why I’m asking you,” March said.

  “Yeah, well. Memory gets a little foggy, you know.” The guy leaned forward from his side of the bar, tie dangling down into his little tub of olives. “What’s in it for me?”

  “He’ll stop doing it,” March said, pointing at Healy beside him.

  “Doing what?”

  Healy snatched the man’s tie in his fist, used it to pull his forehead down in a swift, sharp smack against the wood of the bar.

  “Ow!”

  “That,” March said.

  The man was holding his head. “Fuck!”

  “Now, we can do this the easy way,” Healy said, “or we can—” He paused. Maybe some clarification was in order. “We’re currently doing it the easy way,” he said.

  “Okay! Jesus,” the barkeep said. “The penthouse. She’s in the penthouse, top floor.” He rubbed the bruised spot over his eyebrow. “Are you happy?”

  “Yeah,” March said, and they turned to leave.

  “Guys, listen,” the barkeep said. “You don’t want to go up there. Trust me.”

  March and Healy came back.

  “These New York guys are up there,” the barkeep said, his voice anxious. “Business guys. They got these fucking bodyguards, the kind that had their balls removed, you know what I mean? What’s that called again?”

  “Marriage,” Healy muttered.

  “Just chill here,” the barkeep urged them. “She’s gonna come back down. Have a couple cold ones on me…”

  “Oh, not for me,” Healy said.

  “He makes a strong argument, though,” March said. Anyone offering free booze was making a strong argument as far as March was concerned.

  “You see?” the barkeep said, moving to fill a couple of glasses. “Reasonable. Very reasonable. Now, your buddy? That was a problem, he wasn’t reasonable.”

  Healy lowered his gaze. “Our buddy?”

  “The other guy looking for Amelia,” the barkeep said. He put the glasses down in front of them. “He wasn’t with you?”

  March shot Healy a look. “We don’t have friends,” he told the barkeep.

  “Where’d he go?” Healy asked. “This friend.”

  “Got in the elevator,” the barkeep said, “right before you fellows came in.”

  “Did you get a name?” Healy asked, trying to keep his voice casual.

  “John something.”

  Fuck. “Did you actually witness him getting into the elevator?”

  The guy’s voice dripped with sarcasm when he answered. “No, it was told to me by a wise old Indian. Of course I fucking witnessed it.”

  “Right,” Healy said. “Thanks.”

  March drank his beer, waited till the bartender had wandered over to the other end of the bar, then bent in close, so the guy couldn’t overhear. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Oh, it just makes sense,” Healy said, in a mild, calm voice. “Connects up.” There was no sense in panicking March. If he acted scared under the best of circumstances—

  “What makes sense?” March asked.

  “John-Boy,” Healy said. “Just something that Dufresne mentioned.”

  “What do you mean, he mentioned? Mentioned how?”

  “Oh, you know,” Healy said, “just, ‘There’s a guy, comin’ to kill you,’ that kind of crap.” He rolled his eyes.

  It did exactly zero good. March panicked. Healy could tell because his cheek kept twitching, even after he’d reached over and drunk Healy’s beer.

  “We should probably just stay here,” March said.

  “Smart move,” Healy admitted. “Unless, of course, he’s up there killing her right now.”

  “Come on, nobody’s getting killed at the Burbank Airport Hotel.”

  “Because…?”

  “That would be national news,” March said.

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Oh? So when’s the last time you were on the national news?”

  “February,” Healy said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  March was incredulous. “For what?”

  “I got shot,” Healy said. “In the diner.”

  “You got shot? Where?”

  “In my arm.” Healy pointed to his bicep. “I told you this last night.”

  “I don’t remember you telling me,” March said.

  “Guess you were asleep.”

  March nodded, and they both took a moment to consider the situation. Healy didn’t especially want to get shot again, and March clearly didn’t want to get shot for the first time. But sometimes you had to do what you had to do.

  “We should call the cops,” March said.

  “No, that’ll take too long,” Healy said. “I mean, she could die.”

  “You just said it was the right move to stay down here,” March said.

  “No, I said smart move. Different.”

  They stared at each other. Neither of them much wanted to go.

  But no one had ever accused them of being smart.

  They headed for the elevator.

  * * *

  The Muzak playing over the concealed speaker should’ve helped calm their jangled nerves, but if anything it made March more tense. He found himself fidgeting, feeling the weight of the cast on his arm, wishing he hadn’t had that second drink downstairs. Not that two beers was too many. Just, you know, two in two minutes. The indicator ticked off the floors as they rose. Penthouse, huh? At least it gave them some time to get mentally prepared to face this guy who was supposedly there to kill them.

  They called him John-Boy, like the kid on The Waltons? What did that mean? That he had a mole and a bad haircut? That he’d been around during the Depression? That would be nice, since it would mean he’d be in his sixties now, maybe not so spry anymore. Or did it just mean his name was John? Maybe his last name was Boy. You never knew. March had a cousin named April, April March. She’d hated her parents.

  He blinked a bunch.

  “Munich,” he said, and Healy turned to look at him.

  “What?”

  The word had just come to him, out of nowhere.
“Guy without his balls. A munich.”

  “Munich,” Healy said, “is a city in Germany. München. Munich. Yeah.”

  “You sure?”

  “My dad was stationed there.”

  “Right.” March thought for a moment longer. “Hitler only had one ball,” he said.

  Before Healy could respond to that nugget of wisdom, the elevator bell pinged and the doors started to open. “All right,” he muttered, grateful for the reprieve. “Here we go.”

  Before he could step out, though—before either of them could—they heard a sound from the corridor outside, something in between a cough and a wheeze. Looking out, they saw a man staggering toward them with one hand clutched to his throat. He was bald, bearded. No way of knowing what knife work he’d had done on him below the belt, but what he’d gotten above the necktie was pretty clear. Blood spilled out over his hand from a gaping slash, and he collapsed, face down on the wall-to-wall carpet.

  From the opposite direction came the sound of punches landing—one, two, like a slugger working out with a heavy bag in the gym. Then a man in a white tux fell back a few steps, caught between a bend in the corridor and the floor-to-ceiling glass picture window beside the elevator.

  Bullets followed him—from a gun with a silencer, judging by the sound—and blood bloomed on the man’s white jacket like so many red carnations. The glass behind him starred as the bullets struck it.

  Healy and March pulled their heads back into the elevator.

  March jabbed the Close Door button.

  After a second, the doors slowly slid shut.

  Healy didn’t say anything, and neither did March. They just faced forward. Listened to the Muzak. Until the sound of shattering glass and a man’s scream interrupted the soothing melody. They both turned to look and saw the man in the white tux go tumbling through the broken window, falling past them, out of sight.

  They faced forward again, waited patiently for the elevator to reach the lobby.

  March’s blinking was worse.

  When the bell pinged at the bottom, they strode out, crossing the lobby in fewer steps than either of them would’ve thought possible. They found the car right where they’d left it and sank into its bucket seats gratefully. Healy stepped on the gas and they roared off.

  But not fast enough—just half a block away they heard police sirens coming from the other direction. To avoid them, Healy took a sharp turn into a service alley behind the hotel. The cop cars zoomed past, four or five of them. Someone must’ve called it in, maybe the rat-faced bartender. All the more reason to get away while they could.

  March waited for Healy to slam into reverse and back out of the alley, but Healy didn’t.

  “What are we doing?” March asked.

  “I can’t just leave,” Healy said.

  “Why?”

  “She’s in danger, man. We have to do something about it.”

  “Are you nuts? It’s over. We stay, we could go down for it.”

  “Why?” Healy said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “Think,” March said. “We shoved that bartender around, we asked him about Amelia, we went upstairs—”

  “Even so,” Healy said. “We’ve still got to help her.”

  “She’s dead,” March said, and something in his voice made it clear he expected the two of them to join her at any minute.

  “What do you mean, she’s dead?”

  “Come on!”

  “She’s not dead,” Healy insisted.

  “Open your eyes, man! She’s fucking dead!”

  “You don’t know that.”

  The calmer Healy sounded, the more hysterical March got. He was screaming now, in a high-pitched voice that would’ve done his daughter credit.

  Suddenly a loud bang silenced them both and the car shook as if something heavy had just landed on the roof. A second later, two bare feet came into view through the windshield, climbing down onto the hood of the car. Then the hem of a canary-yellow dress.

  “Amelia,” March whispered.

  “I told you she wasn’t dead.”

  Standing unsteadily on the hood, Amelia Kuttner bent to look in at them through the windshield. March gave her a pained smile, and she started in recognition. She swung her arm up, revealing a handgun gripped tightly in her fist, and fired right at them.

  Fortunately, after smashing a golf ball-sized hole in the glass, the bullet sailed harmlessly between them, lodging in the back seat cushion. Amelia, meanwhile, was propelled backward off the hood by the recoil, landing in the alley in front of the car. They heard a loud clunk, and when they both leaped out and ran to her side, they found that she’d knocked herself unconscious against the pavement.

  March looked up at the dangling fire escape from which she’d jumped down onto the car and back at the unconscious girl.

  More sirens sounded in the distance.

  “Help me with her,” Healy said.

  They were old hands at this now. They resumed their Sid Shattuck positions—Healy at head, March at feet—and bundled her into the car.

  They left the gun behind.

  33.

  On the black-and-white television screen, a little glowing ball was bouncing back and forth between two paddles. Well, two vertical lines, anyway. Holly wasn’t too impressed. She knew every kid in L.A. was dying to play these things—Studio II, Atari, Telstar, whatever—but she didn’t know why her dad, who after all was a grown-up, had bought one.

  Between electronic boops, she heard a key in the front door lock. She jumped up as her father came in, his nice blue suit all rumpled.

  March was as startled to see her as she was to see him. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “Holy shit!” she shouted. Healy had just come through the door with the unconscious Amelia draped across his arms. “You got her!”

  “You’re supposed to be at Jessica’s,” March said.

  Jessica stood up from the couch, video-game controller in one hand, looking apologetic. “Yeah, sorry, Mr. March, my sister kicked us out, she’s having a guy over.”

  “Your sister’s such a slut,” March said.

  “Yeah, I know.” She put the controller down, and they all followed Healy into Holly’s bedroom, where he dumped Amelia unceremoniously on Holly’s bed. It didn’t wake her up, though she moaned slightly.

  “Hello?” Healy said, gently. “Amelia?”

  “Should we shake her shoulder?” March asked.

  “You know, my brother used to flick my ear, like that.” Healy demonstrated. “I hated that.”

  Holly said, “We shouldn’t be violent,” and at almost the exact same moment Jessica said, “We could just hit her.” The best friends looked at each other in mutual disbelief.

  “It could really hurt, I guess,” Jessica said, backing down. “I guess it’s not practical.”

  “We probably shouldn’t hit her if we want her to talk to us,” Healy said.

  They all agreed that was sensible. Anyway, it looked like maybe Amelia was stirring now. She was on her side, one arm stretched out above her head, and yes, her eyelids were definitely fluttering.

  In fact, Amelia was awake, having come to just in time to hear the suggestion that she be hit. She didn’t know where she was or who was standing around her, though a couple of the voices sounded reassuringly like little girls. Still. It was sometimes wise to wait a little, get your head together, before letting the people around you know you were on to them.

  She’d learned this the hard way in the movement, which is to say the protest group she’d founded and very nearly gotten kicked out of during a factional dispute last summer. Not a very different situation than this one, actually, though it hadn’t involved quite so much literal bloodshed. There’d been a party, and a lot of her friends had been there, they’d argued long into the night about tactics and strategy, the way you do when half the room is on pot and the other half is on acid; and then they’d fallen asleep, but she’d awakened to the sound of her first li
eutenant, a chick named Maureen, explaining to everyone else in the Steering Committee why she, Amelia, was a traitor to their cause and needed to be voted out of the group immediately.

  It hadn’t been easy keeping her eyes closed then, but she’d done it, and listened to the entire conversation, filing away in her head just who it was that came to her defense and who fell in line for Maureen’s little putsch. Naturally, it was the boys who thought Maureen was a genius. She’d listened and she’d heard, and then, when the discussion had moved on to other things—pollution, music, how nice Maureen’s tits were—she’d calmly stretched and “woken up,” and no one in the room knew she’d been awake for the whole thing. She had set things right over the following week, cleaning house, real Michael Corleone-type shit, leaving just her loyal crew in the group, and ever since that she’d had no problems. I mean, there were problems, of course, you always had problems in a protest group—not enough gas masks, whatever. But no betrayals from within. And all because she’d kept her eyes closed and listened.

  Which is what she was doing now. But they’d stopped talking, and clearly were just waiting for her to do or say something, so fuck it. She was awake.

  She let her eyelids flutter open.

  This was definitely a young girl’s room. And yeah, there were two of them standing there at the foot of the bed, staring at her like she was stuffed and mounted in a museum diorama. Then to either side of the bed—

  That guy! One of the ones she’d hired Healy to get off her back! He had a cast on his arm, so that was something, but clearly it hadn’t been enough. And on the other side, Healy himself, looking down at her with dad-like concern.

  “You were supposed to get those guys off of me,” she said to him. Dad.

  “It’s okay,” Healy said. “You’re safe.”

  “Do you know who they were? Who sent them?” This from the guy in the cast with the droopy I’m-hip-too ’stache, the one who by all accounts had been chasing after her for the past week, asking about her in every joint from Pegleg’s to the Iron Horse. March.