One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries)

by Walpow, Nathan

  Tape again, and another NEIGHBOR giving his opinion. He was standing in the street, right in front of my truck. “Yeah, it’s weird. I mean, we used to hear shots all the time around here, but not lately.”

  The NEIGHBOR was Woz.

  “What about drugs?” said the invisible reporter.

  “Oh, you know,” Woz said. “A little pot around, is all. But you got that stuff everywhere in the city. Even Beverly Hills, you got your people who want to smoke a little dope.”

  They went live yet again, and the reporter kept babbling, and I tuned out. Somehow Woz—after, I assumed, pumping a bunch of rounds into the Volkswagen—had managed to escape the firefight and make it back to his house and stash his gun before the cops arrived. Then he’d moseyed outside to play innocent bystander. Of course, sooner or later somebody was going to put together that Squig, the other night’s victim, lived on that very same street. But for the moment things were cool.

  Meanwhile, the one or two baldies and any other miscreants had fled the scene, leaving behind their mortally wounded Beetle, a large piece of evidence if I ever saw one.

  And speaking of stashing guns …

  I went into Gina’s bedroom, opened her closet, and took down the heavy Ferragamo shoebox at the back of the top shelf. I laid it carefully on her nightstand and took off the top. Nestled inside were Gina’s gun and an ammunition clip. I made room for the pistol in my pocket, took it out, carefully placed it in.

  But there was a kid in the place. She probably wouldn’t be there long, but any length of time with a loaded gun and a child in the house is too long. I picked up the .22 again, pointed it away from me, managed to flip out the cylinder. I laid one of the ever-present fabric samples on the bed, and dumped the bullets.

  “What’re you doing?”

  I jammed the gun in my pocket and snapped around. Aricela, newly cleaned up and with a wad of gauze taped to her arm, stood in the doorway to the bedroom. Gina’s Frankie Goes to Hollywood T-shirt reached past her knees.

  “I’m just emptying my pockets,” I said. Without taking my eyes off her I reached down with my free hand, wrapped the sample around the bullets, shoved the package in other pocket.

  “Looks like you’re putting stuff in them.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, kid.”

  “How come you’re acting all guilty?”

  “Gina doesn’t like me to empty my pockets on the bed.”

  “That’s dumb.”

  I gave her my most dazzling grin. “I agree.”

  “I’m gonna tell Gina what you said.”

  “Go right ahead, kiddo.” Kiddo?

  “Are you coming to watch TV?”

  “In a minute. Go ahead without me.”

  She went away. I closed the door and put “my” gun in with Gina’s. I almost added the bullets, but decided it was a bad idea. From what I’d seen of Aricela, loading a revolver was well within the range of her talents. Though if she was capable of that she could probably shove a clip in the bottom of Gina’s gun. Gina could deal with that.

  I put the top on the box, replaced the box on the shelf, and left the bullets in my pocket. I wasn’t totally comfortable with that—somehow, I thought, they might blow up in there—but it had to do for the time being.

  I washed my face and went into the living room. Aricela was surfing channels. She came to a Three’s Company on one of the nostalgia channels. Mr. Roper was trying to sneak a peek at one of the girls undressing. Aricela put down the clicker.

  I went in the kitchen with Gina. She’d put on coffee and water for tea and dug out the makings of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as well as a box of assorted Pepperidge Farm cookies. She put everything together and took a sandwich and cookies and a glass of milk in to Aricela. She came back in and we shared a sandwich. In a low voice I expanded on what had gone on since I left Beverly Center. I concluded with how I stashed the “girl’s gun” in her closet and told her my fears about her ammo. She said she’d take care of it. She went in the living room, saw the cookies were gone, replenished the supply. When she returned she said, “Now what?”

  “I suppose I get hold of Woz and—what?”

  She was shaking her head. “I mean about the kid.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We ought to call Family Services.”

  “We ought to,” I said.

  “It would be the right thing to do.”

  “I suppose. Though I guess we could do it in the morning.”

  “You mean, have her stay here tonight? She’s probably got parents looking for her. We could cause them pain and anguish.”

  “She says her parents are dead.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Not totally.” I craned my head around to check on Aricela. She’d moved on to The Dick Van Dyke Show, the one with the closet full of walnuts. “What if the Family Services people see her bullet wound? How’re we going to explain that?”

  “How can they tell it’s a bullet wound? They’re social workers, not forensics experts.”

  “They have ways.” I took another look at the kid. She was two feet from the screen. Morey Amsterdam was on one side of her head and Rose Marie on the other. “I guess I just don’t want to pour her into the system quite yet.”

  “The system.”

  “The bowels of bureaucracy.”

  “I think you’ve been hanging out with your hippie friends too much.”

  “Maybe.”

  She thought about it. “Okay. She stays here tonight. But in the morning we have to do something about her.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “What about you?”

  “What about me what?”

  “Are you staying here tonight?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. But, yeah, I think I will. I’ve missed sleeping with you. In the literal sense.”

  “Only in the literal sense?”

  “Well, the other too, but right now the literal sense is what I need.”

  “You’re sure we won’t set little Aricela a bad example? I mean, two unmarried people sharing a bed?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. I think little Aricela has seen a lot worse behavior than anything we could come up with.”

  Turned out I was on the money. She’d seen worse, all right. Way worse.

  Did You Steal My Money?

  Gina set to work convincing Aricela she ought to go to bed. I went in the bedroom, called information for Squig and Woz’s number, turned down their offer to connect me for forty-five cents, dialed it myself.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s Joe.”

  “Hey, Joe. Whaddaya know?”

  “I know you and your friends shot up the whole neighborhood a little while ago. I know you managed to avoid being killed or fingered and posed as an innocent bystander.”

  “Then you know as much as I do.”

  “Want to tell me what happened?”

  “It wasn’t much. I was sneaking up on the Vee-Dub when I heard the shots from over where you were. The guy in the Vee-Dub hears ’em too, and he jumps out with his gun out, and he sees me standing there, so he takes a shot. Only the gun jams. He throws it at me and takes off down the block. I run after him, I take a couple of shots.”

  “Hit him?”

  “Don’t think so. He kept running.”

  “Recognize him?”

  “Uh-uh. Too dark. He had his head shaved, is all I could tell.”

  “You the one shot up the VW?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What for?”

  “Had to shoot something, know what I mean?”

  No, psycho, not really. “Then what?”

  “Then the cops came, and the TV people, and I was standing around like a good citizen, and guess what. The TV people interviewed me, and I was on TV.”

  “I know.”

  “You saw?”

  “Of course I did. That’s how I knew you posed as an innocent bystander.”

  “Oh. R
ight.”

  “So what about the other guy? The one who came after me?”

  “I dunno. Never saw him. I figured you scared him away.”

  “Didn’t happen that way. He started shooting, I got my ass out of there.”

  “Pussy.”

  “Better to be a live pussy than a dead duck.” Reserve my place in the Stupid Remarks Hall of Fame. “You got any idea what those characters want?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “No drug deal gone sour, no screwing someone else’s wife?”

  “Nothing I can think of.”

  A couple of seconds went by. I wandered into the hall with the cordless.

  “Where you now?” he said.

  “Gina’s.”

  “She’s hot.”

  I looked into the living room. Gina and Aricela were deep in conversation. En español. Usually the only Spanish Gina uses is profanity.

  “Good fuck?” Woz said.

  I beat it back to the bedroom. “You know, this part of the conversation really isn’t necessary.”

  “I bet she is. Most of those Latin chicks are.”

  “Can we get back to the subject?”

  “What subject?”

  “Guns and stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “What do you plan to do next?”

  “Fuck, Joe, I don’t know. Lay low for a while, I guess. Maybe I’ll go over to Goldie’s and hang with her awhile.”

  “Good idea. Because sooner or later the cops are going to figure out that the guy who was shot the other night by someone in a dark VW lives on the same street as all the shit tonight went down on, and they’ll come knocking. You’re sure your stuff is hidden in a good place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me Goldie’s phone number.”

  “What for?”

  “What, you think I want to move in on her? So I can get hold of you if I need to.”

  We swapped old ladies’ numbers, I told him to be careful, he told me he could take care of any assholes who tried anything, we hung up. I felt someone watching me. I turned toward the doorway. Aricela was standing there.

  “What?” I said.

  “I’m supposed to say good night.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “Gina said I should.”

  “Then I guess you should.”

  “Can I stay here?”

  “You can tonight.”

  “Cool beans. What about after?”

  “You’ll have to take that up with Gina.”

  “You’re the man. What you say goes.”

  I went and knelt in front of her, gently put my hands on her shoulders. I spotted Gina a few feet away, in the hall, standing quietly with her arms crossed. “It doesn’t always work that way anymore, kid.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “Nope.”

  She thought about it a moment. “Okay. Good night.”

  “Night, kiddo. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  “Ewww.”

  “It’s an expression. There aren’t any bedbugs.”

  She smiled. A big, broad one, the first I’d seen. “I knew that. I was just fooling.” She turned to Gina. “You can show me my room now,” she said.

  Gina put Aricela to bed in the guest room and sat with her until the kid fell asleep, not more than five minutes. We got ready for bed and climbed in. She jumped right out, went to her dresser, pulled a white plastic bag from a drawer. “Here’s what I bought you.”

  From the shape, it had to be a record. I pulled it out. Splinter. The Place I Love.

  “A while back you said you were looking for this, and I saw a place called Amoeba Music, biggest record store I ever saw, and I went in and there it was.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “You don’t like it.”

  “I love it.”

  “It’s the wrong one.”

  “It’s the right one.”

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “I already found it. The day I ran into Squig and Woz. Up in North Hollywood. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Fuck.”

  “Actually, I found it twice. The second time at the Amoeba down here.”

  “Double fuck.”

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  “Screw that. I fucked up.”

  “How could you know?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Of course it’s the point.” I pulled the record out of the sleeve and did my inspection thing. “And as a matter of fact, the other copies are both scratched. I only bought the first one because it was better than nothing. And I bought the second because it was a little better than the first.” I tilted it five or ten degrees. “This one’s perfect.”

  “You can tell that by looking at it?”

  “Sure I can.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Okay, I can’t. But can I tell you how much you getting this for me means?”

  “I don’t know, can you?”

  “A whole hell of a lot. I love you.”

  And there it was. I’d said all three words, in the proper order, unprompted, spontaneously.

  “I love you too,” she said. “Jesus, are we sappy or what?”

  “I vote for ‘or what.’“

  She got back in bed. We held each other for a while, then rolled over on our backs. We lay there, hips touching, with only the lamp on my nightstand on, each finding something of intense interest on the ceiling.

  Finally I said, “What?”

  I felt her shrug. “Nothing.”

  “What kind of nothing?”

  “I was just thinking. It’s kind of … different having a kid in the house.”

  “Different.”

  “You know. Familial.”

  “And you’re a very familial person, with how you get along with your mother and everything.”

  “This is different.”

  I leaned on my elbow and propped my chin on my hand. “How is it different?”

  She tilted her head and looked up at me. “I’m not sure.”

  “Gi, you’ve always said having kids was the last thing in the world you wanted to do.”

  “Giving birth to them. Raising them through diapers and kindergarten and tons of snot. But that child in the other room is readymade.”

  “You make her sound like a set of drapes.”

  “The interior designer talking.” She waited for a response. I didn’t have one. “Someone else has done all the grunt work. That’s what I mean. I guess I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be nice someday to have a grown child?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it would.”

  “If that’s what you’re after, the one in the other room still has a way to go. Not to mention that she’s probably got parents looking for her.”

  “You think so?”

  “Seems likely. I don’t think a twelve-year-old—”

  “Thirteen. She’s thirteen. She told me that.”

  “Small for her age.”

  “So am I.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Thirteen, then. I don’t think a thirteen-year-old could have been living on the street for very long like she says she has.”

  “She’s pretty smart.”

  “The city’s pretty nasty.”

  She chewed on that. I lay back down and studied the ceiling some more. After a while her breathing became slow and regular. I turned off the light and went to sleep.

  Somebody was shaking me. I opened my eyes. Daylight. And Gina.

  “What?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Who?”

  “Aricela.”

  “Who?

  “Aricela. The kid. Remember?”

  Consciousness returned. I sat up. “She’s gone? Where?”

  “I don’t know, Portugal, you dumbass.”

  I threw off the covers, got up, went into the other bedroom. Sure enough, no Aricela. Just a slept-in bed. “Well, that takes care of tha
t,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s moved on. Had enough of us already.”

  “We have to find her.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re responsible for her.”

  “We are? After one night?”

  “You’re being a dick, Portugal, you know that?”

  I went to the front door. The doorknob lock was on, the deadbolt off. I shot it into place. “At least she didn’t climb out a window.”

  Gina glared, seemed about to say something, then dashed off into the kitchen. She opened the junk drawer, shuffled crap around, slammed it shut. “She took the money.”

  “What money?”

  “The money I keep in here so if I spend everything in my purse I have some for pizza deliveries and stuff like that.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know, twenty-five, thirty dollars, something like that.”

  “How the hell did she guess where it was?”

  “She knows people keep money in junk drawers. She’s probably pulled this scam on dozens of people.”

  “You mean the one where she gets shot and goes to their houses to get bandaged up?”

  “Now that you put it that way …”

  “The kid needs it more than you do.”

  “You’re obnoxious, you know that?” She pushed past me and into her bedroom. I followed. She grabbed some clothes, shed her nightgown, started dressing.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Going to look for her. She couldn’t have gotten far.”

  I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Stop.”

  She struggled to get loose. But only for a moment. Then she went limp.

  Then she was crying.

  Twice in four days. Definitely a record.

  She collapsed against me. I let her let the tears out, stroking her hair, mumbling soothing words. We stood like that however long, until she asked for a tissue. I disentangled and got her one. She used it up, grabbed some more, wiped her eyes, blew her nose, dabbed her eyes some more. She threw them in the general direction of the wastebasket. One went in. She took half a step toward the basket, said, “Fuck it,” looked at me and said, “What’s happening to me?”

  “I can hazard a guess.”