Strip

by Thomas Perry

  “Jimmy, by now you must have guessed that I can’t explain to you how this guy’s fucked-up mind works. He just does what he does.”

  “That’s your excuse for not wanting to look at things too closely.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it is or it’s something else. We’ve got a really simple thing here. We work for a guy, and he wants us to find out whether those girls know anything new about Carver. We find them and ask what they know. We’re not getting paid to persuade our boss that what he asked for isn’t what he wants. We’re getting paid to do what he asked, even if it’s pointless, like moving bricks from one pile to another and back.”

  “This isn’t moving bricks. It’s killing a guy. I think it would be smart to figure out if he’s really the right guy. Otherwise, we take on a lot of risk and might have to go out all over again and kill somebody else.”

  Jerry shrugged. “That’s what we do. And if we have to do it twice, he’ll have to keep us on the payroll that much longer.”

  “There’s the club up there. That’s where we found her.”

  “I don’t think she’ll be there this time of day. It’s not even noon. But pull over anyway, and I’ll go check it out.” Jimmy glided to the curb and Jerry jumped out and trotted to the front door of the club. Jimmy sat for a few minutes, staring at the club and reflecting on how bad a building painted black looked on a bright summer morning.

  Jerry came out and got into the passenger seat. “Not there, of course. I know she works in a car place during the day. It’s not far from here.”

  Jimmy pulled away from the curb into traffic. “What does she do in a car place?”

  “Sells cars.”

  “Yeah? What kind?”

  “Toyotas, mostly.”

  “She know a lot about cars?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she probably has to know something. I mean, people ask questions before they shell out for anything as big as a car. If you don’t know the answers, they’ll go to another lot.”

  “So where are we going?”

  “I’m checking it out.” He fiddled with his iPhone, poking the screen with his finger, turning it and tweaking it to enlarge the display, and staring at it intently. “Got it on the map. Her Toyota place is down La Cienega not more than ten minutes south of here.” He held the phone up to show Jimmy. “See that red dot?”

  “Get that out of my face. I’m trying to drive.” But he couldn’t help glancing at it. “There are dozens of red dots on that map.”

  Jerry pulled it back and studied it. “But only one is her red dot. Turn and go west on Santa Monica Boulevard, left on La Cienega, and keep going until we’re there.”

  They inched along in traffic for twenty minutes before they freed themselves from the congestion. They were driving through the sudden range of strangely shaped hills south of the city that sprouted oil wells, and then in the flatlands that must have been swamp before the airport was put in. The businesses by the road were all big—plazas, carpet warehouses, car lots. Then they reached the Toyota dealership.

  Jimmy swung his car into the entrance, found the visitors’ parking lot, and parked. They got out and walked toward the showrooms. When they were only halfway there, a trim man in his thirties wearing the pants from a dark suit and a white shirt and red tie blocked their way. “Hello, gentlemen. What can I show you today?”

  “Not sure,” Jerry said. He glanced at his brother, then at the long aisles of shiny new automobiles in twenty shapes and sizes and a dozen colors. “You’ve got a lot of cars.”

  Jimmy said, “Is this the lot where Sandy Belknap works?”

  “Sandy … Belknap?” He looked as though he were trying to make out the shape of a distant object in a dense fog. The Gaffney brothers silently agreed that the man was a terrible salesman, that Sandy Belknap did work there, but that he really wasn’t interested in letting her get a sale he wanted.

  Jerry stepped into the space in front of the man’s eyes. “Yeah. You know. Twenty-five, about five feet five with long blond hair, the only woman car salesman on this lot, and probably one of three you’ve ever met?”

  The man’s body took a step backward without his volition, and his mouth began to smile, but not his eyes. “Oh, I know who you mean. Let me see if she’s here this afternoon. Maybe she’ll be free to help us find the right deal for you.”

  As soon as he had enough room, he turned and began to walk quickly toward the showroom.

  Jimmy said, “I don’t think you had to scare the shit out of him.”

  “He’s going to get her. He isn’t standing here wasting our time and making us crazy with his pitch for a car we don’t want.”

  “I don’t want to look like a pair of thugs. We should look like regular, sane people, and see if we can get to talk to Sandy.”

  “Look what he found.” Jerry nodded in the direction of the showroom door.

  Sandy wore a blue summer dress with straps that left her smooth, tanned shoulders bare, and as she came closer they could see a pair of blue stud earrings with small sapphires that made her eyes look bluer. She seemed to have recognized them through the big showroom window, so when she reached them she gave each of them a quick hug and an air-kiss. “Hi, guys.” She looked at Jimmy. “It’s Jeremy, right? And you’re—”

  “I’m Jimmy and he’s Jerry.”

  “Close. How have you been?”

  It was clear to the Gaffney brothers that their first meeting with her was not coming out of her prodigious memory as clearly as she wished. “We’re fine,” said Jimmy. He stepped closer to her, shouldering Jerry out of the way, and took her arm gently. “I’m a little nervous about maybe wasting your time, because I’m not sure whether a Toyota is what I want.”

  She looked up at him and gave her professional smile. “Don’t worry, Jimmy. No pressure. I’m only here to show you what we have and answer questions. Of course, I think that once you see what we’ve got, you’ll be tempted. I get a lot of sales from people who are just looking.”

  “At you?” Jerry said.

  She expertly smothered a sarcastic retort that was in her head. “Thank you, Jerry, but I really do mean the cars.” Jimmy was the one who had said he was shopping, so she never really diverted her attention from his eyes. “What sort of car are you thinking about?”

  “I’m not really sure of a model. I want something that will be kind of cool, but not, you know, ridiculous.”

  “You’re not an SUV guy, are you?”

  “No. I hate driving those big-ass things.”

  She feigned a chill of delight. “I’m so glad we got that out of the way.” She wasn’t, because the profit margins were highest on SUVs. “So you really do mean cool. I know what you’re after—something sleek and sexy. Come on and I’ll show you something that ought to fit.”

  She led them to a low, streamlined, dark blue car with a front end that swept upward almost from the pavement back in a single curve over the roof and down to the road behind. Under the rear bumper were four chrome tailpipes, and a big silver L in a circle on the grille.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a Lexus IS F. It’s got a five-liter, eight-cylinder engine that packs four hundred horsepower. See? Four doors, a very nice interior. It turns out only fifteen hundred RPMs at sixty.”

  He looked troubled. “I don’t know.”

  Sandy put her arm around Jimmy. “Just tell me you think it’s as beautiful as I do.”

  “I do,” he said. “What’s it like to drive?”

  “Have you got a few minutes to find out?”

  He gazed at the blue car and her blue eyes and said, “Yeah. I’ll make time.”

  “I’ll get the keys.”

  The brothers watched her walk back to the showroom. Jerry said, “I’d like to give her a test ride,” loudly enough so Jimmy was afraid she might have heard. She disappeared into an office off the showroom floor for a couple of seconds and then reappeared. The brothers watched her all the way as though she were walki
ng a tightrope. She handed Jimmy the keys and then opened the back door.

  “No,” Jimmy said. “Jerry will sit in the back. He makes me nervous.”

  They got into the car and Jimmy started the engine, then very tentatively pulled forward a few feet.

  She said, “If you go out La Cienega toward the airport, you can get on the freeway.” She watched him pull the car off the lot and accelerate.

  Jimmy said, “You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

  “Yes. You know, I really appreciate that I only met you socially one time, and you remembered me when it was time to look for a car.”

  “Not that. It was about something else.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Jimmy, but I’m dating somebody pretty steadily right now.”

  “He can forget that if you can,” Jerry said from disturbingly close to the back of her head.

  She considered turning around in her seat to give him a glare, but she had begun to sense that there was something wrong with the Gaffney brothers, and it might not be to her advantage to make her discomfort overt.

  “It wasn’t that,” Jimmy said. “Last time I saw you, we talked about a guy named Joe Carver. I wondered if you had seen him since then.”

  “Who was he, again?”

  “I asked you if you or your friends had noticed any guy who was suddenly throwing around a lot of cash in the Hollywood clubs, probably somebody who hadn’t been in town long. You said it was Joe Carver.”

  “Oh, yeah. We talked about other things too, but I remember.”

  “Have you seen him around since then?”

  “You know, I saw him about three times right after that, but then he disappeared.”

  Jimmy turned up the entrance ramp to the freeway and accelerated so quickly that she was pinned in her seat for a moment. When the car’s speed leveled off, she recovered her focus. “Feel that power?”

  “Pretty good,” said Jimmy. “I like the way it feels, the way it steers.”

  “It’s like a sports car with guts, and it still has terrific comfort and a good ride. I can tell you that if you drive up in this, a woman is going to be persuaded from the beginning that you’re somebody to pay attention to. And it costs less than a Jag sedan or a Mercedes. She won’t know that, of course. Practically nobody has one of these yet.”

  Jerry reached over the seat. “I’d like you to take a look at this.”

  She looked warily at his hand. In it was a small black wallet that had a gold police badge and beside it a laminated ID card with Jerry’s picture and the words “Detective Sergeant Allan Reid.”

  “I thought your name was Jerry.”

  Jimmy’s irritated voice said to Jerry, “Is that necessary?”

  “I think it is.”

  Sandy said, “I take it you’re not really looking for a car.”

  “No, ma’am. We’re looking for an armed robber. And anybody who might be helping him or concealing his whereabouts.”

  “It’s a shame you wasted your time with me, then. I don’t know anything about that. Can you take me back to the lot, please? I need to sell some cars.”

  “I’m afraid we need to talk with you about this today,” said Jerry. “Since this apparently isn’t a comfortable place for you to talk, we’ll do this at the station.” He said to Jimmy, “Detective Foley, can you aim this thing for the Parker Center?” He leaned back in his seat, and she could see a shoulder holster with a gun.

  “Oh my God,” Sandy said. “There’s no reason to arrest me. I swear I haven’t seen him since about four weeks ago at that club.”

  Jerry said, “This isn’t an arrest—at least not yet. You’re part of an important undercover investigation. We need to know where this man is, Miss Belknap. As of last night, it became a matter of life and death.”

  “Life and death?”

  Jimmy became Detective Foley. His voice was deep and terse. “One of the victims was shot last night. The one who pulled the trigger wasn’t Joe Carver. It was a companion.”

  “What kind of companion?” She thought she knew.

  “A young woman,” Jerry said. He stared at her, his eyes narrowing. “How tall are you?”

  “I’m five-five.” She looked as though she were in danger of fainting. “Why?”

  “I was just trying to eliminate you.”

  “I’m not the one. I never robbed a bank. I never would. And besides, I was working yesterday from nine in the morning until well after the banks closed—around nine at night.”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “Home to change, and then out to a club. It was Wash, in Hollywood.”

  “Anybody see you there?”

  “I don’t know. Sure. There were hundreds of people.”

  “Anybody who will remember?”

  “I was with my boyfriend.”

  Jerry took a pen and a small address book from his pocket, and pretended to write. “Boyfriend. That’s convenient. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

  “Paul Herrenberg.”

  “Address?”

  “Nineteen eighty-five North Vermont, Apartment Three.”

  “What time did you get home last night?”

  “I … uh, don’t remember the exact hour. It was pretty late.” There was a thin glow of sweat beginning to appear on her forehead and upper lip.

  Jerry read her face. “Did you really go home, or did you go to his house?”

  “His house,” she said.

  “Miss Belknap—”

  “I was thinking it’s the same thing, really. Either you’re out or you’re home, and we were home. It’s like my home too, anyway.”

  “Why is that?”

  She saw what was happening, but she couldn’t stop being defensive. “I don’t know. He’s my boyfriend. We were in Hollywood. It was easier to go right up Vermont instead of driving all the way down here.”

  “You sleep there often, don’t you?”

  “Well, we’re practically engaged.”

  “When’s the wedding?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “Has he asked you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So you’re not almost engaged. You just go to this man’s house to sleep with him.”

  “He’s my boyfriend. It’s not as if—”

  “Was he your boyfriend when we interviewed you the first time?”

  “Well, no. I guess not.”

  “That was less than a month ago.”

  “What? Is there a timetable for these things?”

  “That’s what I was wondering. Isn’t there?”

  “Why are you being mean to me?”

  Jerry studied her with detachment. “I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, Miss Belknap. But there are questions that need to be answered. If you’d like, when we get to the station we can have other detectives interview you.”

  “No,” she said. “No. That’s not necessary. I don’t need to go there. I wasn’t involved in a robbery and don’t know anything about one. A month ago you asked me if anybody new was throwing cash around, and I gave you the name of one guy like that, and then forgot about the whole thing.”

  “You tipped us off to Joe Carver.”

  “I wasn’t saying he was a robber. I don’t know him, really, and I haven’t laid eyes on him since. There might be ten thousand guys like him in L.A., and any one of them could be—”

  “You named Joe Carver, and we’ve had it confirmed by other sources. Out of all those ten thousand guys, you picked the right one. Coincidence? Lucky guess?”

  “Of course it is. Now please, take me back to the lot. My boss will be getting upset.” She was very sorry she had told them to get on the freeway. They were moving along at seventy-five, and she had the sensation that they were taking her farther and farther from safety.

  “Let’s be honest and open with each other, Miss Belknap. We have a repeat armed robbery suspect who struck again last night, and left a victim shot. He’s stepped over the line. From now on any
body who comes into contact with him is in immediate danger. He’s got to be hunted down fast. You’re our best link to him. If you were us, what would you be saying? What would you ask Sandy Belknap to do?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “That’s not fair.”

  “What isn’t fair?”

  “You can’t expect me to be the bait for you to catch Joe Carver.”

  “There’s an evil man out there who robs people. He’s going to kill his next victim. And here you are, our best witness. Aren’t you inclined to help?”

  “I already did, and that’s what got me here.”

  “When he kills somebody this week, how will you feel?”

  “As though it’s none of my business.”

  “It is your business, more than anybody else’s.”

  “Didn’t I say I can’t do what you want? Wasn’t that me?”

  Jerry Gaffney sighed wearily and looked at Jimmy in the rearview mirror. “You want to tell her?”

  Jimmy said, “I guess I should.” He turned to Sandy. “The reason people decide to become a snitch or wear a wire is usually to get a lighter sentence themselves. Or sometimes if they give us somebody, they’re not charged at all.”

  “A wire? Oh my God!”

  “Don’t worry. We’re not asking you to do that.”

  “But you’re implying that if I don’t help you, I’ll be charged with bank robbery.”

  “Well, not only that. It was the woman who actually shot the victim. And unfortunately banks are insured by the FDIC. There’s no parole and no time off for good behavior with federal felonies. You’d be in prison until menopause is a dim memory.”

  Sandy Belknap was trying to manage her face, to keep it calm and at least minimally smooth, but it kept betraying her. Her lower lip was beginning to quiver, her forehead wrinkling badly before she noticed it, and then her eyes began to overflow with tears. “What do I have to do?”

  “We need a way of putting our hands on Joe Carver,” said Jimmy. “You need to devise a plan to do that. We’ll protect you and help you carry out your plan, and then we’ll take Carver away.”

  “I don’t know how to do this.” She had her face in her hands this time, crying.

  Jerry rolled his eyes at Jimmy in the mirror. “I’ll tell you where I’d start. First I’d tell everybody I know that I had a thing for Joe Carver—that I only met him a couple of times, but couldn’t stop thinking about him. I’d be especially sure to tell your girlfriends who go to clubs. Make it a real story—that it’s the craziest thing, but you’ve been dreaming about him and you really need to see him in real life, if only to get him out of your mind.”