“Just some Mexican. Like I said, never had to go any farther.”
“You should only need to brush up on your English. London will be your first stop.”
“It’s your dime, Mr. Kidd. Going back to what I said, take my advice and leave this alone and even get yourself a couple of bodyguards. I know some people.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Do you pack a piece?”
“I can. I’m licensed.”
“Keep it close. These are some fine looking women, I’ll give you that, but I wouldn’t trust these dames no farther than a long shot from a short barrel. You ask me—”
“I didn’t, Sam.”
The man laughed quietly again. “You’re one crazy bastard, Mr. Kidd.”
I poured another shot, then moseyed my crazy-bastard carriage to my bedroom. Peligrosso was the brand of my tequila, which is Spanish for dangerous, and by the way this thirty-day countdown was heading, it made for a suitable spirit to partake heartily in. I never used to drink before five p.m., before a year ago when the perfume monster Giorgio Armani began doing weird things inside my nocturnal siesta. I had to put the questions out of my head, and one way to do this was to give my brain alcohol.
I kept dwelling on Emily’s mysterious message. She and I shared ownership of this house, and she was, for the better part of any given year, away on business. She lived mostly in Europe, and returned to Newport Beach three times a year, staying either a day or a month’s time, depending on how well we got along. She owned a famous line of women’s clothing, cosmetics, and fragrances, all labeled after her, Emily, and all worth in excess of a billion dollars, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
I had a gut feeling Emily knew Catherine Fleming and why Catherine and her small band of dancing marauders were catting around Newport Beach. A strong sense urged me to call her, to find out what the hell that letter meant, yet another sense, an impulsive, scheming kind, swayed me otherwise. I downed the shot and decided to put my day job on the shelf, so to speak, and prepare myself for an afternoon with a gorgeous eccentric whom I hoped would play the compulsory pawn and help me advance my game.
7
Yuko Akagi was her name, my midday tryst. She was Japanese, beautiful, and living lavishly off her tycoon Papa-san’s generous stipend. She was safe, as Janes went, without the worry of a husband, and she was, putting it mildly, extremely horny.
Most Asian women are, I’ve realized, wealthy and horny, or at least their intentions seem to be. I suppose it had to do with an ancestral conformity of some kind, provoking them toward all things haughty and naughty. And Yuko craved her fair share of the naughty, especially when it came to athletically built, white-male pieces-of-ass under forty, in which I fit the bill.
“I like when you massage oil on my ass, Johnny,” Yuko said this afternoon.
She called me Johnny, and sometimes cowboy. She lived in a small house I had sold her in Newport Beach on 32nd Street. The property was modest by beachfront standards and had a small, exposed patio that bordered the busy sidewalk along the beach. She owned a much larger and more luxurious home down the coast in Dana Point, yet she chose this small house to reside in throughout the summer. As she explained it, she wanted to watch all the beautifully bronzed people strolling by. These people were mostly gawky kids on skateboards crowded in with the usual dumpy tourists.
But what she enjoyed the most was lying naked on a lounge chair on the patio with me rubbing her down with Spf15. And today was no exception. I massaged the sticky goop onto her bum and breasts and in and around certain crevices and so forth, manhandling our playful romp into something clumsily pornographic. Afterward she reclined on the patio—her private property, she would erroneously stipulate—sunbathing into the bronze nymph she aspired to be.
My role became even more ridiculous when I’d have to chase away all the kids and dumpy tourists riveted at the edge of the patio. That was usually when I’d pick her up and carry her into the house and to her bed. That was also when she’d be smearing a slippery salve of sex wax all over me.
“Johnny?” Yuko said, moments later.
“Yes?”
“Do you feel rike rowrife (lowlife) doing what you do?”
“Rowrife, no, but I do feel darn sticky.” The lotion began to dry, feeling like taut sutures on my skin. Inside Yuko’s broken English was an amusingly offbeat articulation of R sounds for L sounds.
“Do you have to go home?” she asked.
“I have to shower.”
“We can swim again in ocean. We swim naked this time.”
I let that one hang for a moment.
“Johnny?”
“Yes.”
“Sunning oil smells nice.”
I wanted to sleep suddenly, which was always the case for me after a healthy purging of mojo, to drift inside that attaboy stratum where all men go after they’ve just scratched a notch. Instead, I propped myself on my elbow, watching Yuko slip off into a catnap with her face eerily doll like. Then, like a hound summoned by a dinner bell, I scoped out her throat, watching the shimmering, sunning-oil smoothness of quivering muscles along her neck. I eased in closer and drew in a thin sniff, zeroing in on that smell, that feeling...no scent of Giorgio’s ghost today, only the intense reek of Banana Boat.
She opened her eyes and said, “I want you to go to store for me, Johnny. I need things.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“I own you, Johnny. Now you here, so I own you—Johnny?”
“Yes?”
“You ruv me, cowboy?”
“The way a man ruvs a toy, I suppose.” I hated this part of the sport, when the post-coital afterglow morphed into an honest study of feelings.
“Fucking is for a man, but today was for me. Don’t you feel rike rowrife?”
“Not today.” I took a deep breath and decided to fish out the reason I laid slathered in a sex lubricate that smelled like coconuts and bananas. I asked, “So what’s the word in the village square? Any newly arrived cougars, gold diggers, or man eaters I should know about?”
“If I tell you, cowboy, what you give for me?”
“An extra ten hours of fantasy time.” When dealing with an eggshell like Yuko, it was best to keep the favors coming and the small talk as bull-shittingly smooth as possible. I needed her insight into Newport Beach’s social scene, in which she was a regular gadfly.
“If we swim naked, you have deal, cowboy.”
“It’s illegal to swim naked on a public beach, Yuko.”
“I have money and can pay bail. Take or reave.”
I chuckled and thought, what the hell. “You’re on. But I get to wear my swim trunks down to the beach; I don’t want my boys getting bruised.”
She giggled and said, “Deal, cowboy. Hey, we meet again, I want whiskers on face, cowboy hat on head, cowboy boots on feet—got it?”
“Got it.” Some of the women I’ve entertained, and Yuko was no exception, got off on fantasies of cowboys, bad-boy bikers, or macho cops with well-hung nightsticks. Bottom line, if they wanted me wearing nothing but a ten-gallon Stetson and a gun belt, who was I to object? They had their fetishes, I had mine.
She reached for my crotch and began massaging my boys. “You want her, huh, Johnny?”
“Want whom, Yuko?” I flinched, “Easy down there, huh?”
“The one who just come to harbor. Cute blonde with body and hair rike Barbie. She moves rike cat and she owns you now, Johnny.”
Bingo. I knew I could count on this gadfly.
“I can feel in your hands when you massaging oil on my ass. Most of time your brain and heart are fucking many places, but now you onry you want her.”
“What do you know about her?” I guided Yuko’s hand away from my boys.
“She dangerous, cowboy, dangerous rike cat who hunts pussy, boy toy man rike you.” Like a bad-guy character in a cheesy samurai movie, she cackled a laugh. “By the wray,” she said, “I’m running
erection committee for assembryman Tanaka reerection. I need donors at fundraiser next week. You rich guy and Tanaka need money to win, so you be at rarry (rally) okay?”
“And how does the honorable Assemblyman feel about the preservation of citrus ranches?”
“What?”
“Never mind. You might want work on your English a little, Yuko. It’s pronounced election, not erection.”
“Hey, you think I don’t good job for Tanaka erection?”
“I think you’ll do a wonderful job for both his erection and his reerection, but for the sake of his donors, you’d better work on your delivery.”
“You be there, okay, cowboy? We need money.”
“I’ll pencil it in.” I wanted to guffaw out a hardy-har-har, or at least snicker at Yuko’s unashamed naïveté. Instead, I zeroed in on my mission. “So what’s the word in the village? Anyone know which boy toys Barbie is hunting?”
“Most people here are birdbrains, don’t know shit. But I know ninja. This cat is cute rike Barbie and smart rike ninja bitch. There’s other one too rike white skin cat who walk beside her all the time.”
“Does this white cat have long black hair and a slinking shape like a dancer?”
“That’s the one. You know these cats, neh?”
“I’ve watched them dance a few times.”
“They bad girls. I know because I know ninja, and ninja in Newport Beach and hunting your ass, cowboy.” More cheesy laughter.
After confirming Yuko’s validation of Newport Beach’s recently landed femme ninjas, and not much else, I rose from the bed. “I need to shower,” I said.
Yuko grabbed my arm. “I read newspaper, Johnny. I hear talk in the harbor about what ninja bitches want—they murder bad boys rike you.” She sprung to the floor, then stooped down and reached under the bed and with a smooth jerk of her arm a long sword appeared.
“It’s katana, Japanese word for sword,” she announced, posing her petite, nude figure, quite erotically, into a fighting stance. “I know art of Samurai.” She lurched forward and whipped the air with two quick strokes of the long blade. “Rike teeth of tiger, katana cuts skin to bone.” She balanced the blade close to my nose until the cool steel touched my cheek. She added, “Samurai means servant of rord (lord).” She bowed her head humbly. I nearly laughed. “I protect you, cowboy.”
I thought about that for a moment and said, “I can protect myself, Yuko, but thanks anyway.” I pushed the blade aside and got out of bed. I went into the bathroom and stepped into the shower, keeping my attention guardedly through the glass stall. Like Saddle Soap rinsing off a stud’s leather mount, the goop of sex wax melted from my bronzed skin. As I toweled off, Yuko’s voice carried through the bathroom door, “Hey! What about our naked swim, cowboy?”
“I need a rain check on that, Yuko,” I called out. “I forgot I had another psychopath, I mean, another appointment this afternoon.”
“Yeah? Riar! (liar) Hey, don’t forget, we meet again, you have whiskers, cowboy hat and cowboy boots—got it?”
“Should I hang a Marlboro on my lips too, ma’am?”
“You rearry piss me off, Johnny!” Her bare feet slapped the ceramic-tile flooring, trailing away into the house.
I dressed and entered the living room. Yuko had gone outside to the patio again and reclined naked on the lounge chair. I considered my bronzed nymph for a moment, barefaced and bare ass alongside the world. I escaped out the backdoor with a needed grin on my face.
8
My friend Roger Singh and I had an appointment at the Pub Select, a microbrewery located on Balboa peninsula. Roger was from India but educated in the United States, and he owned his own real estate brokerage firm, in which he employed me as one of his many agents. We had been friends since college, Tulane University, and after four years of college, steeped in Cajun twang, gumbo, and the sordid adventures of endless frat parties, we both returned home to California. My college bud hit the ground running, spring boarding a career in fortune making. And me, I chose a path more dysfunctionally traveled, leaching off one’s family pickings and discontented heritage.
Roger had been away on sabbatical for three months, and we were meeting this afternoon to get current with our affairs and conduct some business. Yet I knew the real reason he wanted to see me, the reason anyone with a compulsion toward a billion-dollar portfolio would want to pal around with a man of my nefarious reputation, particularly one in possession of a large parcel of prime OC real estate.
As I moved through the crowded room, I saw Roger seated at a table but with another person, Detective Mick Balosky. I checked my watch and realized I was several minutes early. I slowed my pace and blended into the crowd. Roger with Mick Balosky, I mused. A Eurasian sultan seated with a sports-bar toad. Go figure.
I approached the two of them discreetly, noticing their tense moods, the way they spared in heated discussion. I then placed myself at the table like a shadow, causing Roger to spring to his feet. “Jack...long time, no see.” He grasped my hand, shaking it heartily. “How are you, my friend?”
“I’m good, Rog.” I looked across the table. “Mick,” I muttered, without any emotion. I didn’t reach for Mick’s hand because I knew he wouldn’t reach back. He aimed his pale gray, toady eyes on me. The toad was Detective Mick Baloski, the same detective who had assisted Lieutenant Sullivan regarding the arrest of one Lena McGuire from the dance studio several days ago. Mick was also the one driving the unmarked patrol car on the ferry the other day.
“Please, sit, Jack,” Roger said. “What would you like to drink?”
“A Honey Blonde,” I answered. I caught a glimpse of Roger’s face; it was his usual jovial self, yet uneasy, teetering on liable.
He reached out and signaled a waitress, then pronounced across the room in his delicate, Indian accent, “Another beer, Honey Blonde, please.” Roger was a Cary Grant in dark skin, tall and slender and always well dressed with a polished importance about him. He turned the heads of most when he entered a room. “How are sales, my friend, both lawful and copulating?” Although Roger’s sarcasm appeared urbane, those who knew him best, like me, were aware of his many social quirks, particularly his placement of candid words at the wrong time.
“Nothing’s changed, Rog.”
Mick sat quietly with a clear glass of octane in front of him. Like most heavy drinkers, Mick had a ruddy, swollen complexion.
“Mick was telling me about a case he’s been working regarding these peculiar murders in the harbor as of late,” Roger said. “Weren’t you, Mick?”
“That’s right.” Mick’s voice had a raspy tone to it, like a demon child with a bad cold.
A pretty waitress brought my beer, then asked if we needed more refreshment. After we confirmed our contentment, she wiggled her supple curves across the room.
“Have you heard about the murders?” Mick asked me.
“I’ve read.”
Mick swallowed the last of his drink and said, “Two guys found dead, slashed all to hell, two different nights. A fire was set at the last one. The killer tried to cremate the vic, but the fire team got there in time, so we got evidence.” Mick’s half-drunken face aimed straight at me.
“Any leads yet?” I asked.
“That’s off the record, Mr. Kidd. Although the way you cat around you may be farther along on this case than me and my partner.”
I really hated this guy. He was a walking, talking anal orifice who threw his weight around like an adolescent with a badge. He also knew of my infamous affairs by way of his own bad marriage. From causes of desperation that led his then wife to either enrage her husband or fulfill her fantasies, she tapped into my ulterior world and propositioned me. I refused, of course, but Mick caught wind of his wife’s intention and has blamed me ever since for his failed marriage.
“Got to go,” Mick said as he stood. “I see you two darlings of easy street have things to talk about.” He paid for his drink, stiffing the waiter with only a five spot. “
You boys going on the annual fishing derby next month? It’s open to anyone in the harbor.” Mick’s sudden buddy-like behavior regarding a fishing trip with a bunch of guys on a sixty-foot charter, casting lines, talking sports, chortling about the best tits and ass they’d ever seen, I knew, had nothing to do with sincerity. Instead, the fat toad was baiting me for a parting shot.
“I believe I’m spoken for that weekend,” Roger said.
“You know the weekend, don’t you, Jacky boy? It’s the same weekend of that pussy dance tournament you’re starring in.” The toad’s face leered down at me. “That’s when you’ll be prancing around with all the girls, right, Jacky boy?”
Do I know these toads, or what? “And how is it that you know I’m dancing in a tournament that weekend, Mick?” My hand squeezed the cold pint tightly.
“Down at the station we’re on to just about everything you do. We all got bets on how long it’ll take before a jealous husband snuffs you out. What is it about you turning tricks anyway, Jacky boy? Can’t you be happy with just one fishing hole?”
There was a look about Mick Balosky that deserved, quite sadistically, to be bitch slapped with a hard rubber hose. “Go to hell, Mick,” I grumbled.
Mick stood and blurted out his nasally, demon-child laugh—his teeth, all nine or ten of them—stuck out of his mouth like broken piano keys. “You college boys keep your dicks clean—oh, and do be careful where you dip yours, Jacky boy. There seems to be a mad cat loose.” Mick lugged his toady smirk and oversized corpulence away from the table and toward the door.
Roger said, “Don’t worry about Mick, my friend. He’s a simpleton, a pawn that will storm into that place of sacrifice for those like us.”
I felt my heartbeat decelerate along with a plunge of muscle-hardening testosterone. My attention drew slowly from the simpleton and toward Roger. There was definitely a change of tone in my best friend’s voice today. Bravado or subjugation, I wasn’t sure, but it was the kind of style and approach guys like Roger were not good at keeping close to the vest.
The Irresistible Muse of Jack Kidd Page 5