H is for HOMICIDE

by Sue Grafton

  “Which is what?”

  “Quit horsing around and get serious. She shoulda married me when I asked her. I’m not stupid, you know. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve been as patient as I’m gonna be. And that goes for you, too. You got that?”

  I stared at him, at a loss for words. His view of the world was so skewed there was no reasoning with him. He really seemed to see himself as innocent, the victim of a circumstance in which everyone was responsible for his behavior except him. Like every other “victim” I’ve known, he clung to his “one-down” position as justification for his abuse of other people.

  Raymond picked up the car phone and punched in a number. ” ‘Ey, Luis. Raymond. Put some clothes on, we’re swinging by to pick you up.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes. And bring the mutt.”

  He started the car then and pulled out, hanging a left onto a main artery as we headed south again. I glanced out the window. Raymond was driving at a sedate forty miles an hour. We were now on Sepulveda, not far from the airport. Not a wonderful neighborhood, but I thought I’d be safe until I could get a call through to the cops. I opened the car door. Raymond speeded up.

  “Please stop the car. I’m getting out,” I said.

  He picked up the gun again and pointed it at me. “Close the door.”

  I did as I was told. He turned his attention to the road again. In the glow from the streetlights, I studied his profile, hair still damp from the shower, the tousle of curls, dark eyes, long lashes, the dimple in his chin. He was bare-chested, barefoot, his skin very pale. I could see the faint scarring in the crooks of his arms. My guess was that after the intensity of the chase and the rush of adrenaline, the euphoric effects of his shooting up were beginning to wane. His ticcing had returned. The mysterious connections in his neurological circuitry were touching off a series of reactions, as if he were enduring tiny jolts of electricity. His mouth came open and he jerked his neck to the right. His body jumped with the same irrepressible response I’ve felt when a doctor pops with his rubber hammer on my patellar reflex. In that quick tap, there isn’t any way to prevent my foot from flying out. Raymond seemed to live with the constant assault of invisible rubber hammers, which rapped him randomly at all hours of the day, testing every reflex… little elves and fairies tapping on him like a boot. If his gun hand jerked the wrong way, he was going to plug me full of holes. My own adrenaline had seeped away, leaving me depleted.

  “Oh, God, Raymond. Please. I just want to go home,” I said wearily.

  “I’m not going to let you out here. It’s too dangerous. You wouldn’t last a block.”

  I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of his concern. There he was, holding me at gunpoint, probably willing to kill me if it came to that, but he didn’t want me out on the streets in a questionable neighborhood. Raymond punched in another number. He really reminded me of some high-powered business exec.

  Someone answered on the other end.

  “Hey, yeah,” he said. “I got a problem. Somebody just stole my car…”

  I slouched down on my spine, knees propped against the dashboard, listening with wonder as Raymond availed himself of city police services in the matter of his missing Cadillac. From his end of the conversation, I gathered he was going to have to go over to the 77th Division and file a stolen vehicle report, but he was the soul of cooperation, Mr. Righteous Citizen rallying the forces of law and order to his cause. He hung up and we drove in silence as far as Luis’s place.

  We pulled over at the curb and Raymond gave a quick beep. A moment later, Luis appeared with Perro at his side.

  Raymond pulled on the emergency brake and got out on the driver’s side. “You drive,” he said to Luis.

  Luis put the dog in the front seat between us and got behind the wheel. “Where we going?”

  “Police station.”

  Luis took off. Perro leaned against me, panting bad breath. I could tell he would have preferred the window seat himself so he could hang his head out and let his ears flap in the passing breeze.

  Luis watched Raymond in the rearview mirror with guarded interest. “So what’s happening?”

  “Bibianna stole the Caddy. We gotta file a report.”

  “Bibianna stole the Caddy?”

  “Yeah, can you believe that? After all I’ve done for her? I called Chopper and sent him after her. I don’t have time for that shit, you know what I’m talking about?”

  Luis made no comment. I saw him slide a look in my direction, but what was I going to say?

  We reached the 77th Division police station. Luis parked on the street and got out of the car, peering into the backseat while Raymond gave him instructions about the stolen Caddy. “What about the registration?” he asked.

  “It’s in the car,” Raymond said irritably.

  “You want me to give ‘em your telephone number?”

  “How else are they going to notify me when they find the car?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, ‘oh,’ ” Raymond said.

  Luis disappeared.

  “Guy’s a fuckin’ pinhead,” Raymond said to himself. He kicked the back of my seat. “I still got a gun on you,” he said. “I ain’t forgettin’ it was you helped Bibianna get away.”

  I waited in the car with Raymond, pinned in place by Perro’s weight, wishing a cop would saunter by so that I could scream for help. Several patrol cars gunned past us, but no one seemed to realize that this tacky-looking Anglo was Nancy Drew in disguise. I stared out at the police station not fifty feet away.

  Luis came back to the car and got in without a word. He took a quick look in the rearview mirror. I turned around and looked myself, realizing belatedly that Raymond had nodded off.

  Once we reached the apartment complex, Luis had to help him up the stairs. I went up first, with the dog bringing up the rear. Raymond was awake but seemed groggy and out of it. When we reached the apartment, Luis unlocked the door. For a moment, the exterior lights fell on Raymond’s bare back and I saw that his skin was crisscrossed with scars, like a webbing of white diamonds. The old cuts had healed but had never entirely gone away. The even spacing suggested quite methodical work.

  Inside the apartment, I scanned the living room, searching for the handbag I’d left behind earlier. I spotted it on the floor, shoved halfway under the upholstered chair. It had apparently been kicked to one side during the struggle with Raymond and the top was now yawning open. Luis held Raymond’s gun and he motioned me toward the couch. I took a seat. From that angle, the butt of the SIG-Sauer was clearly visible in the handbag. I willed myself to look away. I didn’t dare make a move for it for fear Luis would catch sight of it. Raymond staggered off to bed.

  I was forced to sleep on the couch that night. Perro guarded the front door while Luis dozed in the chair, keeping watch over me, Raymond’s gun in hand. The kitchen bulb glowed like a nightlight. Now and then, Luis and I would stare at each other across the dimly lighted room, his dark eyes devoid of any feeling whatsoever. It’s the same look you get from a lover when he’s moved on to someone new. Whatever moments you might have shared get buried under layers of hostility and indifference.

  I was jolted awake at eight by a banging on the front door. Perro started barking savagely. I swung my feet off the couch and got up, automatically moving toward the door. Luis beat me to it. He had the dog by the collar. He opened the door and I saw Dawna on the threshold in a nifty black suit. Oh, great. This was what Dolan and Santos called “Don’t worry about Dawna, we’ll keep her out of circulation.” Raymond emerged from the master bedroom, pulling his shirt on. He was still barefoot, wearing his wrinkled chinos from the night before. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “It’s Dawna,” Luis said.

  As Raymond moved to the door, I leaned over the upholstered chair and eased my handbag out from under it, closing the flap across the butt of the gun.

  Luis had turned. “Sit down.”

  “I’m sitting,” I said irrit
ably. I took a seat in the upholstered chair, feigning boredom while Raymond and Dawna went through murmured greetings. Her face had crumpled at the sight of him. Raymond put his arms around her and rocked her where they stood. Wait till she got a load of me. The only comfort I had was the handbag, which now rested to the right of the chair, just beyond my fingertips. Luis had moved into the kitchen and he was leaning against the kitchen counter, rolling a joint with complete absorption. Stoned on Sunday morning. Just what we all needed. Dawna sat down on the couch, still crying into Raymond’s handkerchief.

  Her face was Kabuki white, her mouth a pout of bright red. Her hair had been newly bleached to the color of typing paper, standing up in spikes as if somebody’d folded it in quarters and cut it with a pair of scissors. The effect was of an albino rooster. Where her suit jacket gaped open, I caught sight of a thickly padded gauze bandage, secured with adhesive tape. She didn’t look so hot and my guess was her injury had taken its toll. I could see Perro lying on the floor near the couch, staring at the juicy part of Dawna’s leg. I studied her with dread and anxiety. Once she regained her composure, she was going to notice me. There was a fair chance she’d remember me from the CF offices, but what was I going to do?

  Chapter 22

  *

  The tricky part of any lie is trying to figure out how you’d behave if you were innocent. I couldn’t act like I didn’t know Dawna Maldonado at all. We’d both been there Tuesday night when Chago was killed. Should I treat her as a friend or foe? Under the circumstances, it seemed wise to keep my mouth shut and let the scenario play out as it would, like improvisational theater. As there was no escaping, I tucked the handbag under my arm and moved over to the kitchen table. I sat down, placing the bag casually near one leg of my chair. I picked up Bibianna’s ragged deck of cards. I shuffled the cards, trying to remember how Bibianna set up the solitaire she always played.

  Meanwhile, conversation between Raymond and Dawna had turned to the shooting. It was just at that point that Dawna finally caught sight of me. “What’s she doing here?”

  Oh, well, I thought, here we go.

  Raymond seemed startled by her reaction, which had a distinctly hostile tone to it. “Oh, sorry. This is Hannah. She’s a friend of Bibianna’s.”

  Dawna’s eyes were ice blue, lined with black, her gaze calculating. “Why don’t you ask her! She was with ‘em that night.”

  “She was?”

  “She was there at the restaurant, sitting at the table with ‘em when I got off the phone.”

  Raymond seemed confused. “You’re talking about Hannah?”

  “God, Raymond. I just got done sayin’ that, didn’t I?”

  He turned to me. “I thought you met Bibianna in jail. I thought you said you were cellmates.”

  I started laying cards out like this was no big deal. Seven stacks, first card up, the other six facedown. “I never said that. We got thrown in the slammer together, but I’d met her before that, at a singles bar. I figured she’d told you or I’d have said something myself.”

  Next round, skip the first pile. The face-up card went on the second pile, the other five facedown. Just playing solitaire here, casual as all get-out. Luis was eavesdropping, being careful not to call attention to himself lest Raymond take off after him.

  “What the fuck were you doin’ there with her and Jimmy Tate?”

  Ah, he’d figured out it was Tate, probably from the description Dawna’d given him of the guy. “I wasn’t doing anything. We’d just gone next door for a bite to eat when those two showed up.”

  “Bibianna was with Jimmy Tate?”

  Dawna snorted. “Jesus, Raymond. What’s the matter with you? You sound like a parrot.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see how much she was enjoying herself. In her family dynamic, she was probably the kid who puffed up her self-importance by tattling on all her siblings.

  Raymond ignored her, focusing on me. “How come you never told me she was with him that night?”

  “Jimmy Tate was with me. We ran into Bibianna at the bar and asked her to join us for a bite to eat. What’s the big deal?”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  I stopped dealing out the cards. “You don’t believe me?”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  “Wait a minute, Raymond. I’ve known you all of five days. So how come I’m suddenly accountable to you for my behavior?”

  Raymond’s eyes were glittering, his voice too soft to suit me. “Dawna says Tate was the one killed my brother. Did you know that?”

  Oops. Actually I did know that. I said nothing, wondering why my mouth was suddenly so dry. I couldn’t think of an adequate response and for once the glib lie didn’t spring that readily to mind.

  “Answer me,” he said. “Tate killed my brother?”

  I picked my way through the possibilities, not wanting to commit myself to a course of action just yet. “I don’t know,” I said. “When the shooting started, I hit the pavement.”

  “You didn’t see Tate with a gun?”

  “Well, I knew Tate had a gun, but I don’t know what he did with it because I wasn’t looking.”

  “What about Chago? You knew he was hit. Who you think did that?”

  “I have no idea. Honestly. I didn’t have a clue what was happening. All I know is Tate and I run into Bibianna, we go next door for a bite to eat, and next thing I know these two goons show up and take Bibianna off at gunpoint. Shooting breaks out, cops show up. Bibianna and I are hauled off to jail…”

  I was on slightly safer ground here because I knew Dawna had disappeared about the time Chago was hit. I was working on the assumption that she didn’t have any idea what had gone on after that. Actually, I wasn’t as nervous about the current subject as I was about the possibility of her remembering she’d seen me at the California Fidelity offices.

  She’d been studying my face, her brow furrowed with one of those quizzical looks that indicate a marine layer blanking out memory. Any minute now the fog might begin to lift. “She’s bullshitting you, Raymond.”

  “Just let me handle this,” he said irritably. He turned away and lit a cigarette, watching my face as he took the first drag of smoke.

  The phone rang. The four of us turned and stared. Luis moved first, picking up the receiver. “Hello?” He listened briefly, then covered the mouthpiece with his right palm. “Cop on the line says they found the car.”

  Raymond took the phone. “Hello?… Yeah, this is him… Anybody hurt? Oh, really. Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Where is that? Uh-huh… yeah. Where’s the car now? Yeah, right. I know the place… Hun, he did? Hey, that’s too bad.”

  Raymond got off the phone with a glance at Luis. “Bibianna had an accident up in Topanga Canyon. Chopper pushed the Caddy off a cliff, from what this guy says.”

  “No shit,” Luis said.

  I could feel my heart beating in my throat. “What happened to Bibianna? Is she okay?”

  Raymond waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.

  She’s at St. John’s. Get a jacket, baby-doll. We got work to do.” He flashed a grin at Luis. “This is great. Caddy’s totaled. We’re talking twenty-five hundred bucks.” He caught sight of my face. “What are you lookin’ at? I got a legitimate auto claim here,” he said self-righteously.

  “What about me?” Dawna said, protesting.

  “You can come with us if you want or you can stay here and sleep. You look beat. We’ll be back in an hour and then go over to the funeral home.”

  She stared indecisively, then conceded. “You go on. I’ll grab some rest.”

  Raymond drove way too aggressively for traffic conditions. I was sandwiched between him and Luis in the front seat, one hand braced on the dashboard, making small involuntary sounds each time Raymond changed lanes without warning or pushed the Ford up within a few feet of somebody’s back bumper before he pulled out and around, passing them with a dark backward scowl. His jaw was set, his tics almost constant, and everything
in life was someone else’s fault. Even Luis began to react, murmuring, “Jesus,” at one of Raymond’s hair-raising near misses.

  The two talked across me as if I were empty space, so it took me a moment to realize what they were saying.

  Raymond said, “Stupid bitch must have got off the 101 at Topanga. God, how dumb can you get? That’s the middle of nowhere. You know that road?”

  “Hey, that’s rugged,” Luis said.

  “The worst. Mountains sticking straight up. Sheer drops off the sides. She should have stayed in the populated areas and found a cop. She’s not going to get any help out there. All Chopper had to do was wait till she hit one of those hairpin turns and boom!” Raymond gestured his contempt. “Cop says he must have rammed into the Caddy’s rear end and got himself hung up but good.” He made a diving motion with his hand.

  I glanced at Raymond. “He went off, too?”

  Raymond gave me a look like I’d suddenly started speaking English. “What do you think we’ve been talking about? Chopper’s dead and she’s not that far from it. Serves her right. You didn’t figure that out? Bibianna’s in whatchacallit… intensive care.”

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “What is it with you? You gonna make that my fault, too? Bibianna steals my car and totals the fuckin’ thing and I’m to blame?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Raymond. Take responsibility. This is all your doing and you know it.”

  “Don’t push your luck, bitch. I didn’t do nothin’!” Raymond’s face darkened and he drove in stony silence. I could feel anxiety seeping into my chest wall, squeezing my digestive system.

  We got off the 405 at the Santa Monica Freeway, heading west as far as the Cloverfield exit, which we took and then turned right. I’d been to St. John’s some years ago, and by my recollection, it was not far away, somewhere around 21st or 22nd Street, between Santa Monica Boulevard and Wilshire. It was ten-thirty by now. Hospitals are rigorous about visits to ICU, but Raymond would no doubt bull his way in.