“Breakfast is ready.”
I felt Gina beside me. Which meant …
I opened my eyes. “Good morning, kiddo.”
“Morning. I made some of the bagels. And oatmeal. And I bought grapefruits.”
Gina sat up, yawned, ran her fingers through her hair. “You really should ask before you take money from the drawer.”
“I didn’t take money from the drawer.”
“Oh?”
“I took it from Joe’s wallet. I thought that would be fair, because you paid for everything else.”
There was a chair in the corner of the room. My shirt was hanging on the back, my shoes were under it, and my pants were folded on the seat just like I’d left them. I looked over there, then at Aricela. She gave back an innocent smile, said, “Come on, it’s gonna get cold,” turned, and disappeared.
“She took it from my wallet,” I said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Quiet as a mouse, that one is.”
“Sure is. Come on, it’s gonna get cold.”
Eating breakfast with Gina and Aricela was starting to feel natural. Like we’d been doing it for years. I found it disturbing. The last time anything like that had happened was when I started sleeping with Gina again. We just picked up where we’d left off over eighteen years before. The comfort level scared me then, and it scared me now.
We were nearly through breakfast when Aricela said, “I have an announcement.”
“Oh?” Gina and I both said.
“It’s that you shouldn’t take me to Family Services again, because I’ll just get away again.”
Gina said, “What makes you think …” It trailed away because she saw the way Aricela was looking at her. Couldn’t put anything past that kid.
“I know you did it because you think it’s what’s best,” Aricela said. “But it’s not. Those places suck. So I’m just gonna stay here for a while. I know you like having me around. So you see, it’s the best for everybody. ’Kay?”
“‘Kay,” I said.
“Okay,” Gina said.
“Cool beans,” Aricela said. “Now go in the other room while I clean up.”
We followed her orders. In the bedroom, Gina said, “Now what?”
“I’ll call Burns. You get to play mommy another day at least.”
“‘Kay. You want to play daddy?”
“Kind of. But there’s still at least one wacko with a gun out there. I don’t want to be attracting him to you and Aricela. Just in case.”
I called Burns when I got home, but got the machine and didn’t leave a message. I had a short chat with the canaries, made tea, went out to the greenhouse. The plants needed water. I got the hose, turned the spigot, started back for the greenhouse.
“Hey, Mr. Gardener.” Ronnie was lurking on the other side of the fence. She had her hair piled atop her head and wore a pair of sunglasses with DayGlo green frames.
“Morning,” I said.
“When can we get started?”
“With?”
“The ropes.”
“Maybe tomorrow. Got a lot to do today.”
“I read in the paper that Matt Damon is starting a new movie. Or project, that’s what they call them, right?”
“Right.”
“And I thought, it would really be great if I could get a part in that, because I’m a huge fan of his.”
“I think this is all going to be a lot harder than you’re expecting.”
“I know. I’m gonna have to pay some dues for a few months maybe.”
A few months. Kid had a lot to learn.
“But in the meantime, I thought maybe lightning could hit me, and I could get in to audition for this movie. I’m a huge fan of Matt’s. You know what I’d like?”
“What?”
“I want to be your protégé.”
“My what?”
“Isn’t that the word? You’ll be the wise older man, and you’ll help me become a big star.”
“I will?”
“Uh-huh. Say you will, okay?”
I knew I’d regret it later. And that “older man” business wasn’t very pleasing. But here I was running around getting shot at because I wanted to realize my dream, and she just wanted my help in achieving hers. “Sure, Ronnie. You can be my protégé.”
“Great!”
“I’ve really got to get to work now.”
“We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Okay.”
I killed a couple of hours in the greenhouse. It was good spending time with the plants again. They’d let me go off on my musical interlude, knowing I’d return, and when I came back they didn’t say a word. I watered, removed dead leaves, and plucked out the oxalis that always sprang up when I wasn’t looking. I banged in a couple of nails that had worked their way loose from the benches. There was a cracked panel in the roof that I’d bought a replacement for the previous summer, then never gotten around to putting in. It seemed like as good a time as any. I was almost done with the panel when a wasp wandered in, and I freaked out trying to escape it. While I waited for it to evacuate the premises I went inside for apple juice. Thus fortified, I called Woz.
I’d gone back and forth on it since returning home the morning before. Half the time I wanted to leave well enough alone. Just accept that he’d been trailing Deanna and me, or the man who’d been following us, and was in the right place at the right time to save our asses and assassinate another car.
The other half wanted to insist he tell me everything. Who he’d been following, and why, and for how long. And why, if he’d been on the scene, he’d taken so damned long to take Vinnie boy out.
As usual, I dithered. I decided to call him and see where the conversation went. If it didn’t lead to the latest shootout I’d let things be.
I usually let the phone ring six times before giving up. With Woz I gave it four extra. He just beat the ten-count. “Yo.”
“Hey.”
“Joe? How the hell are you?”
“Alive and well, thanks to you.” So much for vacillation.
“What’re you talking about, man?”
“The other night.”
“What happened the other night?”
“So it’s that way, is it?” I was a regular Edward G. Robinson.
“What way? I was sitting home watching the tube night before last.”
“Who said anything about night before last?”
“You did.”
“Uh-uh. I said ‘the other night.’“
“You did?”
“Trust me. I did.”
“Huh.” He was quiet so long I thought he’d nodded off.
“Woz.”
“We’re not having this conversation,” he said.
“My lips are sealed.”
“No, I don’t mean you keep it a secret. I mean we’re just not gonna have it. Less you know, the better.”
“Tell me one thing, then. What took you so long?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you were following—let me start over. If a person were somewhere and saw something going on he was going to try to stop, why would that person wait long enough for a couple dozen rounds of ammunition to be fired.”
“It might be because the person’s fucking fuel pump went out on him and he hadn’t got to the somewhere yet and he had to do some walking. All that’s if the person were doing what you’re saying, which I don’t know nothing about, so let’s talk about something else.”
“Fine. How’s Squig?”
“Little bugger’s getting better by the minute. He’s over at Bonnie’s where the housekeeper can wait on him hand and foot. And maybe dick, far as I know. Anything else you want?”
“Not today.”
“Then I’m getting off.”
He hung up. I hung up. The phone rang. I stared at it like it had never made noise before. The machine kicked in. My voice did its spiel. Elaine’s came over the speaker. “Pick up the goddamned phone. I know you’re there
. I just called you and it was busy.”
I picked it up. “Hi.”
“You have got to get call waiting.”
“Soon as I get a beeper, cousin dear. What’s up?”
“You got the AT&T job.”
“Cool beans.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
“A Jackie Chan movie. Let me get a pencil.”
Rollo the parrot and I were booked for the following Monday at one of the new studios in Manhattan Beach. I wrote down the details and got off the phone. I made a grilled cheese sandwich to celebrate. My new favorite, though I took the lazy man’s way out and stuck it in the toaster oven. I took it outside, made sure the wasp was gone, and ate the sandwich while I finished with the fiberglass. Then I poured more apple juice and took the newspaper out front.
I’d been there half an hour when Ronnie showed up. She was dressed relatively sedately in tank top and denim shorts, and carrying a translucent blue plastic glass. She climbed the two steps and sat in the other wicker chair, sucked some of her drink through a straw, and said, “Want an ear?”
“No, thanks, I’ve already got two.”
She smiled, not convincingly. At first I thought she didn’t get the joke, such as it was. I was wrong. “That was funny the first time I heard it in junior high,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“You’re going to help me.”
“Please. Not now.”
She shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. I meant … you’re the only friend I’ve got here.”
“What about Theta?”
“She’s my cousin.”
“She can still be your friend. My cousin Elaine’s my friend.”
Another headshake. “Theta’s too weird. The whole gang of them, they’re all weird. I didn’t know I had such a weird family.”
“None of us do.”
“So you’re my only friend here, and friends don’t work just one way. Something’s bothering you. Maybe I can help.”
I took a sip, watched a mockingbird chase a crow, turned to Ronnie. “You’re not as—”
“Dumb?”
“I was going to say ‘naive.’ You’re not as naive as you seem.”
“Some of it’s an act.”
“Thousands of pretty young actresses do that same act. Those who don’t stand out.”
“Is this a rope that you’re showing me?”
“I guess so.” I smiled. “Yeah, consider it your first rope.”
“That’s some rope.” She sipped her whatever-it-was and I my juice. “How long have you been at it?”
“Coming up on thirty years. I fell into a job managing a theater and ended up doing some plays and Elaine, who’s an agent—and, yes, I’ll introduce you to her—decided one day I’d be good in commercials.”
“You didn’t want to be an actor when you were a kid?”
“No. I wanted to be a musician.”
“I heard you playing. You’re a heck of a guitarist. You must have been playing a long time.”
“I just got back into it. Then I ran into a couple of guys I was in a band with back in the day.”
“Tell me more.”
I spent the next hour doing just that. I told her about Mark and Ginger’s and the Platypuses, past and present, and about my troubled youth. She said her mother thought the sixties were overrated, and I expounded on that for a while, eventually reaching the conclusion that they were everything they were cracked up to be. I got off into the band’s reunion and the search for Toby Bonner and the gunmen. I told her what little I remembered about the road trip I took with Toby out to the desert, and how Deanna thought he might be where we’d gone to.
Ronnie had never heard of Toby. I went inside and put his last record on and opened the front window so the sound came through. After a few tracks she said Toby’s singing and playing made her sad, but in a good way.
Eventually I said it was her turn for this-is-my-life.
“Me?” she said. “I’m not very interesting.”
“Rope number two: never tell anyone you’re boring.”
“Okay.”
“And here’s another, free of charge. This one you can take or leave, because there’s lots of people in this town who would disagree with me. Stop dyeing your hair. Young blonds are a dime a dozen.”
“I thought it looked real natural.”
“It does. But I’ve seen that it isn’t.”
A moment of confusion, then she got it. She was embarrassed for all of three seconds. Then she broke into a stunning smile. I knew casting directors who would kill for that smile.
“How come I haven’t seen that smile before?” I said.
“I guess I’ve been using my sexy gal smile. Like this.”
A lot of guys would have liked it. Lips full, eyes slightly hooded.
“The real one’s going to get you commercial work. Trust me on this.”
“Okay.”
“You were going to tell me about yourself.”
“Like what?”
“Like, I don’t even know how old you are.”
“I’m nineteen. How old are you?”
“Forty-eight.”
“That’s how old my mom is.”
“The one who says the sixties are overrated.”
“Uh-huh. Course in Bonesaw, we didn’t get the sixties till the seventies.”
“And your real name? Veronica?”
There was that smile again. I started a mental list of casting people I would get her in to see. “A lot of people don’t know that.”
“Like in the comic book.”
“That’s right. I used to read those Archie comics all the time, and I rooted for Veronica, even though she was a snooty stuck-up bitch and Betty was a nice girl. I would read the stories over and over, and visit the drugstore every day when there was a new one due. I got in trouble once in Brownies because I was reading a comic when I was supposed to be making a lanyard.”
“I don’t think I know anyone who was a Brownie. Or at least who admits it. Were you a Girl Scout too?”
“Uh-uh. When I finished Brownies I had enough of that stuff.”
“Why were they called Brownies, anyway? Were they supposed to be like elves?”
“Sure, that, and the brown uniforms. Though now that I think about it we probably had the brown uniforms because—Joe? Joe, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I reached over and gave her a fatherly pat on the knee. “Maybe I have,” I said.
Go to the Mirror
I use my parents’ bedroom for storage now, except for the chicken-wired-off corner that the canaries live in. A couple of them chirped a greeting when Ronnie and I came in. I made for the closet while Ronnie occupied herself peep-peeping at them. I pushed aside my father’s army coat and my mother’s wedding dress and whatever else was on the rod and pulled out the hatboxes and other junk piled up in the back. I was pretty sure what I was looking for was somewhere in the closet. I pulled off lids and undid strings and breathed dust for several minutes, finding nothing of interest except the little plastic submarine I’d gotten by sending away to a cereal company. You put baking powder in it and it sank and surfaced, sank and surfaced. Fun for all ages.
The top shelf was full of shoeboxes. I reached for one and another fell on my head. It was full of report cards and other souvenirs of my youth. I got a chair from the dining room and stood on it. Ronnie’d tired of her new friends and stood by while I scouted things out. The next box was filled with old paperback books. A Bell for Adano, The Prisoner of Zenda, The Day Lincoln Was Shot. A couple of Westerns, which I put aside for my father. He used to love them. Then a couple by someone named Fredric Brown, and finally the prize, the tattered copy of The Carpetbaggers I used to sneak out of my parents’ dresser when they weren’t home. I put that one aside too.
The next shoebox was full of model train cabooses. The one after that, salt and pepper shakers inscribed with the names of tourist traps. Then
one with, strangely enough, a pair of black high-heeled shoes.
“Mind telling me what you’re looking for?” Ronnie said.
“Pictures.”
“Why are you all of a sudden looking for pictures?”
“We were talking about Brownies.”
“So?”
“So I remembered back when I was a teenager I had a Brownie camera.”
“A what?”
“A Brownie. It’s what Kodak called some of their cameras back then. And I think I took it with me when I went on the road trip with Toby.”
“What good will that do? It’s not going to tell you how to get there.”
It had seemed a good idea when I thought of it. But she was right. What good would pictures of the secret place do if they didn’t come with directions? “As long as I’ve made this much of a mess, I might as well keep looking.”
We went through the rest of the shoeboxes and found nothing. That left a cardboard carton that had originally held boxes of Girl Scout cookies. That came down too. I opened it and found three round, colorful cookie tins from Solvang. I pried the lid off the first and was rewarded with a slew of photos. Mostly black-and-whites. Pictures of my grandparents and of my parents’ wedding and of me when I was a kid. I looked at my mother in her gown and at it hanging in the closet and for a moment I couldn’t look at anything else.
When I snapped out of it I picked up the tins and took them into the living room. I went through every photo in the first one, and found a lot of old memories, but none of them was Toby. Same with the second tin, except a lot of the shots were in color. They were from my pre-teen years. In one I was standing behind the three-speed bike I got in lieu of a Bar Mitzvah.
In the third cookie tin, I started to look like me. There I was helping my father paint a chair. There I was proudly holding up the first record I ever bought, the Marketts’ Out of Limits. There I was with my first guitar.
But there was nothing remotely resembling Toby. Nothing that would help find him. Nothing except my childhood.
Until, maybe a dozen pictures from the bottom, I found a photo that sent me back to 1968.
Two girls in 1960s two-piece bathing suits. One with light hair, tall and slim, holding the end of a garden hose. The other dark-haired, buxom, her eyes caught in the middle of a blink.
One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Page 22