by Robert Crais
I left my car on Sunset Plaza and walked up the little cul-de-sac, gun loose in the holster and ready for the housecoated woman and her killer Yorkie.
Everything looked just as it had yesterday, only damp. No sign of Cleon’s Trans Am or any other car. No one had moved the letter tacked up by the cops. No lights or sounds came from the house. I walked straight up the drive, across the little motor court, and into the narrow alley alongside Rice’s garage as if I knew exactly where I was going and as if the gentleman of the house expected me.
There were three large plastic garbage cans, wet from the rain, with a heavy musty smell, and a chest-high chain-link gate knotted with ivy and bougainvillea. A little Master combo lock secured the latch. I looked back toward the street. Still free from dogs and neighbors and armed response patrols. I hopped the fence, walked the length of the garage, turned right past a pool pump and filter, then out a redwood gate to Garrett Rice’s pool deck. The pool was a tasteful oval, small, but still filling most of the backyard. The deck and the patio areas were flagstone. A flagstone retaining wall followed the curve of the pool where Rice’s lot had been carved out of the hillside, and the hill angled and rose away up behind the house. Little piles of pebbles and silt were on the back deck where they’d run off the hillside with the rain.
The back of the house was mostly glass, landscaped with ferns and bamboo and something that looked like a mimosa tree. There was a nice, gladelike feel to the place. Secluded. Probably just right for skinny-dipping with starlets and playing grabass.
The musty smell was stronger, the way a dark room in an old house might smell, wet and moldy and slightly sour. I kept trying to put it on the rain. Only it wasn’t the rain. Cleon Tyner was face down under a giant fern at the back of Garrett Rice’s house.
I slipped out my gun and went up to him, watching the windows and big glass doors. One of the big glass doors was open.
There was no pulse in his neck. His skin was cold and pliable over stiff muscles. He was lying mostly on the right side of his face, the left looking up and back toward the pool. His left eye was open but droopy, and rolled back in his head. I tried to close it but the eyelid wouldn’t go down. There were no pools of blood or bullet holes in his back. I tilted him up, saw chest wounds, then lowered him. Cleon had been out here quite a while, out here while I was ringing the front door bell yesterday, out here while the rain came down and churned the ground beneath him to mud. That Cleon, what a stick-in-the-mud.
I went into the house. It was damp and cold and wet on the floor where the rain had driven in under the soffit and through the open door. There was a Westec Alarm box just inside the draw drapes. All the lights showed green. It had been turned off.
Garrett Rice was on the kitchen floor beside a cook island. He was naked, and even in death his flesh hung loose and crinkly and pale, his sunlamp tan ending abruptly on his upper chest. There were contusions on his face and dried blood on his mouth and nose, and a single small-caliber bullet hole above his right ear. On the back of his left thigh was an ugly spiral burn the size and shape of the largest burner on the cooktop. There was another burn like it on his stomach. He’d voided himself.
I went back out through the living room to the open glass door, sucked in wet air, then searched what used to be Garrett Rice’s house for the dope. It didn’t take long, mostly because I knew I wouldn’t find anything. If the dope had been here, Garrett Rice would’ve turned it over long before his clothes were yanked off and he was pressed down onto a red-glowing stovetop.
Perry Lang!
I made an anonymous report to the cops, then tore down a shower curtain, took it outside, and covered Cleon Tyner’s body. I squatted by him, trying to think of something to say, but all that came to mind were questions. Sorry, Cleon. I’ll check on Betty, time to time. I went back to my car and drove into Westwood.
By the time I reached 11001, the clouds had broken the way they break when they’re going to seal up again. I used Barry Fein’s card key to get into his building through the parking garage. The cars were still in his parking slot, only they were reversed, the DeLorean on the inside now, the Porsche behind. I put the Corvette in the No Parking zone in front of the elevators, used the card key again, and rode up to 6.
Jonathan opened the door but didn’t step back, playing it tough. He stood a little crooked, as if his back bothered him. I was in the right mood to make it bother him a little more. I said, “Fuck with me I’ll kill you.”
Barry Fein’s voice came from inside. “For Christ’s sake, Jonathan. Jesus Christ, in the goddamn hall.”
A little smile broke crookedly on Jonathan’s face. He stepped out of the door, lifting his hands to show me they were empty. We went inside, him first.
Barry Fein was fidgeting around the big room. Charles sat on the couch, leaning forward with his forearms on his knees and his hands empty. A large gauze bandage was taped along his left jawline and another smaller gauze patch spotted his left cheek. His neck and the lower half of his face were shiny, as if he were wearing suntan lotion. His eyebrows were gone.
He said, “One day.”
I ignored him. “Where’d Rice move the dope, Barry?”
Barry paced. He said, “Listen, I asked everybody I could think of, right?, where Garrett might try to unload?”
Jonathan moved away from me to sit on the arm of the couch next to Charles. He rubbed Charles’s shoulders, then let his hidden hand drift down behind Charles’s back. I took out my gun and pointed it at Barry’s furry stomach. I said, “I’ll shoot him, Barry. And you, too.”
Barry rubbed at his hair. “Jesus Christ, Jonathan, would you get outta there. Shit!”
Jonathan went to stand beside the bar. I suggested Charles stand with him, and when he got up you could see the butt of a piece sticking out from behind the cushion. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, I didn’t know!” Barry screamed. He picked up a couch pillow and threw it at them. “ You shits, you shits trying to get me killed! ”
Jonathan and Charles looked sullen and mean, like a couple of fourth-grade psychopaths caught sticking pins into puppies.
I put the gun back on Barry. “You asked everyone you know,” I reminded him.
He hopped around, rolling his eyes and trying to pick up the thread. Ten in the morning and he was already in another universe. “Yeah, right. Look, you gotta open your mind, see? I called around. I asked. Everybody I ask, and believe me, I know everybody Garrett Rice would know, they say Garrett ain’t called. He ain’t been trying to move nothing.”
I shook my head. “That’s not what you’re supposed to tell me, Barry. You’re supposed to tell me who Rice sold it to and when he made the trade.” I dropped the muzzle down to his crotch, let it circle, raised it back to his eyes.
He squirmed like he had to pee. “I swear to Christ. I called. I asked. Rice ain’t been trying to move anything. ”
I took short breaths, thinking. Jonathan and Charles glared. Barry hopped up and down. Jesus Christ, what if Garrett Rice hadn’t had the dope after all? What if, all along, it had been an inside job, the Eskimo taking down two keys to sock away for his retirement, or one of the Italian guests Kimberly Marsh described. Or a cat burglar, just passing by. I stopped breathing altogether, then took a deep breath using my stomach, held it, then let it out slow. Focus and relax. I put my head on Perry Lang and kept it there; anyplace else and everything starts to fall apart, and maybe Perry and Ellen and the two girls with it.
I said, “You ask about two kilograms of lab-quality coke, it’s going to come up if anyone else has been trying to sell some.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Tell me.”
“This guy I know, he says a friend of his wants to sell some. You know, called him up, shopping price.”
“What and when?”
“Key and a half. Said it was 99 percent pure. Said the guy called him three or four days ago, you know, like I said, calling around shopping price.”
“Who’s the seller?�
��
“Guy named Larson Fisk.”
Great. Larson Fisk. “Who the hell is Larson Fisk?”
Barry looked impatient. “He’s an actor. You probably seen his face a million times. Day player, you know. I sold him some stuff. Come here.”
Barry hopped over to the bar past Jonathan and Charles. He pulled down a thick Academy Players Directory from a shelf beside the bar. “I got lotsa clients in here,” Barry said. “Shit, I get jokes all the time how I oughta have my own star on Hollywood Boulevard. Maybe one day, eh?”
He showed me Larson Fisk. Sure, I’d seen him before. Larson Fisk was Larry, Kimberly Marsh’s boyfriend.
32
The house above Universal was empty but not abandoned. The little red 914 was gone, but a rumpled shirt lay on the living room floor and a couple of Carl’s Junior shake cups sat on the dining room table. Lights burned in a back bathroom. I parked my car out of sight above the house, then came back, picked the front door lock, and let myself in. I walked through the house once, gun out, to see if maybe the cocaine had been left lying out in the open. It hadn’t.
I had ripped the rear bedroom apart and was starting on the little bath next to it when I heard car doors slam down below and a woman’s laugh, light and lutelike.
Kimberly Marsh and Larson Fisk were climbing the steps. She was in shorts and rumpled cream safari shirt tied off beneath her breasts with the sleeves rolled up, carrying her sandals. Sexy. Fisk was in blue gym trunks, beat-up Adidas running shoes, and a black muscle shirt. He was carrying a bag of groceries in each arm and smiling. She was smiling, too.
I went back to the front of the house, took out my gun, and stepped into the little coat closet behind the front door as their key went into the lock. The front door opened. Kimberly Marsh walked in. Larson Fisk followed her. When they were past me, I shoved open the closet door, took one step, planted my left foot, and kicked Larson Fisk on the outside of his left knee as hard as I could. His left knee was the one with the scars.
There was a wet snap similar to what you hear when you joint a chicken. Larry screamed and fell, dropping the grocery bags to catch himself. Something glass shattered and the near bag turned dark and wet. Oranges and pippin apples rolled out across the floor. One made it all the way into the dining room. Kimberly Marsh gasped sharply, spun around to look at Larry, and saw me. Larry was rocking back and forth on the floor, sometimes gripping his leg, sometimes pounding the floor with his right fist. His face was purple.
He called me a sonofabitch.
I waved my gun at him. “Come on, Larry. A sonofabitch would’ve put one behind your ear. Besides, now you can add another scar to your collection.”
He closed his eyes and rocked back, calling me a sonofabitch again, like a mantra, very softly. I shook my head. “You see,” I said to Kimberly, “some people are never satisfied.”
She had backed away until the plank shelves were pressing into her back. The big green fish tank with the dead fish was to her right. Why do blondes look good with green?
She didn’t appear particularly frightened. She said, “What are you doing?”
“Removing Larry as an active threat. He may be stupid, but he is strong. And mean.” I smiled at her.
Larry said, “It hurts! ”
She was relaxing. Her eyes never went to Larry, but her shoulders dropped just a hair, and her hands went down, and she stopped clenching her teeth. I imagined a window in her forehead, behind it little watchwork wheels and gears, spinning and rocking and making ticking sounds. I smiled wider.
She smiled back. “Did you find out what happened to Mort?”
“Unh-huh.”
“Thank God. Can I move back to my apartment now?”
“Nah. Not right now. Now, I want you to give me the cocaine.”
Her eyes got a little bigger, and that was it. She just stood there. The gears spun faster. The ticking got louder. I think of the damnedest things.
I wiggled the gun. I stopped smiling. “Dom wants his dope back, Kimberly.”
Her eyes flicked to Larry then back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I cocked the gun and I pointed it at Larry. “She doesn’t know, Larry.” Larry was watching the gun and clutching the knee. I said, “She sees the stuff just sitting around over at Duran’s, right? And thinks, boy, wouldn’t that be great to have. Only she’s got no way to get it out of the house. So she finds a phone and gives you a call and gets you involved. She throws it out the window and tells you where and you sneak over and pick it up. Risky, Larry. That took balls, with all the goons Duran keeps around. You do all that, and here I am pointing a gun at you, and now she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”
She flipped her head to get the blonde hair out of her eyes and smiled at me as if I’d just told her I thought she had sexy toenails. “That’s silly.” She stepped away from the shelves and cocked her head at me, lifting her ribs to pull her abdomen tight and pushing out her hips to the side. Moving on me. Like she’d seen gun molls do in a thousand movies.
I said, “How about you tell me, Larry? Before I do your other knee.”
Neither of them said anything, but you could hear the breathing.
I said, “Right now you guys are in a survivable position. If the cops walked in, all they could hang on you is possession with intent to distribute and obstruction of justice. They might push for an accessory to murder charge because of Mort but they wouldn’t get it. You give me the dope, then you’re no longer possessing. You give me the dope, and even though you’re a couple of scumbags, I’ll put in a word with the cops.”
Neither of them said anything, but the breathing was louder.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s go back to basics.” I pointed the gun at Larry’s good knee. “It’ll be a bone shot, Larry. You’ll limp.”
Larry nodded. “Okay.” His voice cracked.
“Don’t tell him.” Kimberly was calm.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s not your knee.”
Kimberly Marsh’s eyes got dark. “This stuff is worth a lot of money,” she said. “We could share. We could share a lot.”
“What about the boy?”
“What about him?”
Something hot throbbed in my head and I felt my face grow tight. “No wonder Mort went for you, Kimmie. You’re all class.” I toed Larry’s bad knee. He went purple again. “The dope.”
Kimberly yelled, “No!” then snatched something from the shelves, threw it at me, and plunged her hands into the slimy aquarium. As she did, Larry grabbed my legs. I hit him with the butt of the pistol, but he hung on, digging at my crotch. I hit him again, harder. His forehead split and blood spilled down over his nose and brow. Kimberly pulled what looked like a large brick from the algae and seaweed, and ran back toward the kitchen. Her arms were green from the slime, and the stink of fish was strong. Larry gasped, still trying to pull me down, but his grip was weaker. I hit him twice more, this time over his ear, and he let go.
I stumbled away from him and ran toward the back of the house, around through the dining room, and into the kitchen. Kimberly Marsh was clawing at the back door when I caught her and slapped her as hard as I could. She made an unh! sound and dropped the brick. It was about the size of a five-pound sack of Gold Medal flour. Bits of scum and seaweed still clung to it.
She scrambled after it, kicking at me and making grunting noises. There were flecks of saliva on her chin. I lifted her by the arm and hit her again. It was hot in the kitchen. I shook her and hit her once more, hard enough to knock her down. It hadn’t been necessary, but then, most things aren’t.
On the floor, she started to cry.
I picked up the dope and went back through the house. Larry was where he had fallen, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. He looked the way pro wrestlers look when they’ve popped blood capsules all over their faces, only he hurt. He hurt bad.
“She went all the way for you, Lar,” I said slowly. “Just like she did for Mo
rt.”
Larry’s eyes began to leak.
I went out the door and down the steps. He was crying. She was crying. But they weren’t crying for the same thing.
33
I drove to my office, called a woman I know at the phone company, and gave her Domingo Duran’s address in Los Feliz. She told me four phone numbers registered to Duran’s address. The first one gave me a tentative female voice with a heavy accent. When I asked to speak with Mr. Duran, she didn’t seem to understand, then there was a long pause and she hung up. Probably kitchen help.
On the second number a man with a very light accent said, “Mr. Duran’s residence.”
I said, “This is Elvis Cole, calling for Mr. Duran.”
The voice said pleasantly, “Mr. Duran is not available at present.”
“He’ll talk to me.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Mr. Duran is entertaining guests, you see.”
“Tell him it’s Cole. Tell him I want to talk about the dope.”
The line went dead. I hung up. Pinocchio’s eyes tocked back and forth, the second hand swept his face. I picked up one of the Jiminy Crickets, inspected it, and blew off dust. I should dust more often. What had Jiminy Cricket said? “ Hey, enough’s enough! ” The phone rang.
“Cole.”
The Eskimo said, “You do not help yourself.”
“It’s been that kind of day. Let’s talk trade. I got the dope.”
“Be at the curb in front of your building in twenty minutes.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
He didn’t say anything.
“Just a joke,” I said.
Fifteen minutes later the limo pulled up and the rear door opened. I got in, and we pulled into the alley beside the building. Kato wasn’t driving. This was another guy, probably a machete killer specially imported from Brazil. The Eskimo said, “Where is it?”
“Are we going to fool around or are we going to do business?”
He looked at me without moving. I think he was chewing a piece of Dentyne. He nodded. “All right.”