“You want to chill out?”
“Right, like, I’m taking classes and stuff. I don’t feel like—”
“I thought you were going out of town?”
“No, I am, I just…”
“And now you don’t feel like working on this anymore? Kid, let me explain something to you. You don’t just come and go on these jobs. You don’t just do it when you feel like it. You’re part of this. This isn’t a game.”
I firmed myself up. “Listen, Mr. Grisham. I’m quitting. I’m off the case. If you want your money back, I’ll give it back.”
There was a long, ominous pause. “No,” he said. His tone had a slippery, devious tone to it now. “That won’t be necessary. I’m just curious though. What happened that made you change your mind?”
“I don’t like this sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing is that?”
“Situations that I don’t completely understand.”
There was another long, dangerous silence. “All right,” came his voice again. “Consider yourself relieved of duty. Where do I send the last check?”
“I don’t want any more money,” I said.
“Kid, I have to send it to you. It’s on the books…. Let’s see here….” There was a pause. “You want it care of Hope Stillwell? 137 Garland Street? Venice, California? Is that right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And you still live in the tree house in the back?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“All right then, the check is in the mail.”
I hung up. Then I stopped for a second.
How did he know about the tree house?
That night, I had a vivid dream. I was in a police station and Mugs was there, being questioned about a crime he swore he didn’t commit. Everyone knew he was lying and it was announced he would get the death penalty. He cried and begged to the police but they took him to the execution room anyway. I watched them drag him down the hallway. They were going to chop off his hands for some reason. And then electrocute him. Just when they closed the door, I heard him yell my name. “Cali!” he cried. “Tell them the truth! Tell them the truth!”
I jerked awake, my face cold and damp. I sat up and turned on my light. It took several minutes to calm myself down.
I texted Ailis, even though it was three in the morning. She didn’t answer. I stared at the plywood walls of my tree house. They reminded me of the insides of a coffin. I texted Reese. I didn’t want to tell her about my creepy dream so I wrote:
I’m officially off your case. Let me know if I can help in any way.
She wrote back immediately, even though it was so late:
Thank you. Where are you?
I wrote back:
In my tree house.
She wrote:
You have a tree house? Are you serious? Can I come see it?
I wrote back:
Your dad’s people know where I live. They might be watching it.
She wrote:
You’re smart. It’s a good thing someone is. Some other time then.
On Tuesday, I went to GED class. Afterward, Jax and I hung out at his place. He lived in his uncle’s garage. It was a nice setup, lots more room than I had, with space heaters and a TV and a couch to sleep on. The only problem was the uncle, who was an ex-military guy. He had all this Navy Seals crap. He’d have a couple beers and out would come the combat knives and the surveillance gear and the night-vision goggles.
I went home after that. It was always weird to go from “Here’s how you stab a guy in the neck” at Jax’s house, to “Here’s how you cleanse your chakras” at Hope’s.
I let myself in. Hope and everyone were asleep and I crept through to my tree house. I lay down for a few minutes, but as soon as the silence settled in around me, I knew sleep would be impossible. It was Mugs. I was going to dream about him again.
So I got up and climbed back down my ladder and hit the boardwalk with my skateboard. It was after midnight now. The shops were locked up tight. Most of the street people were asleep. I pushed up to a decent speed and coasted along. I was riding a new longboard I’d just bought. It rolled like a Cadillac, smooth, silent, effortless. I’d bought some new clothes, too, and new shoes, which I was wearing. All of this so I could go into nicer places like the youth hostel, or the Nike store, without drawing attention to myself. So I could pursue my investigations. So I could be, in a way, invisible.
That was if I still had a chance to be a private investigator. The Mugs thing was weighing on my mind. And the situation with Reese hadn’t turned out so great either. If I kept quitting in the middle of jobs, I wouldn’t last very long in the business.
I passed the homeless people camped out on the boardwalk, most of them zipped up in their sleeping bags, a few still awake, their heads propped up, reading old paperbacks in the dark, or just lying there, alone in the world, staring into the night sky, the sounds of surf in the distance.
I cruised to the north end of the boardwalk and then decided to continue up to Santa Monica. That required traveling another two miles on the deserted bike path. I sped up, rolling easy on my brand-new polyurethane wheels, feeling the comfort of my new ninety-dollar skate shoes.
I’d gone about a half mile or so when I sensed something behind me. I looked back. I didn’t see anything. I kept going, pushing a little harder, cruising alongside an empty beach parking lot.
A moment later, I sensed something again… movement… was someone behind me…?
I looked back. Nothing.
I kept going, but I kept my speed up with steady pushes. I remembered this guy once telling me that in terms of street survival, speed is always the best weapon. Better than a gun, a knife, martial arts, whatever. The guy who can’t be caught is the safest.
I looked back. This time I did see something. Two people far behind me. Skaters. They were cruising too. They did not appear to be hurrying. Or following me. They were just there. They would push a bit, coast a bit. They were lanky guys and pretty fast. They were keeping up with me, more or less.
I pushed hard and coasted too, letting my clean new wheels do the work. I watched my shadow stretch out ahead of me, and then back, as I passed beneath the parking lot lights. I stood sideways and made myself thin, to decrease wind resistance. I glanced back behind me. They were still there. They were staying with me. And since I was moving at top speed, I knew their presence was not as innocent as it seemed.
I started looking around for places to bail, places to get off the bike path and make a run for it, toward civilization. But I was now in the no-man’s-land between Venice and Santa Monica. On my right were large empty parking lots and the steep dirt hill that led up to Main Street. On my left was a hundred yards of sand and then the ocean. If I ditched the bike path and tried to run for it, they’d see me. And if they could skate this fast, they could probably run pretty fast too.
I glanced back again. This time the light was better. I couldn’t see their faces but something about the motion of their bodies, of their silhouettes… and then I knew… and a chill went through my body….
The Evil Twins.
They were now just thirty yards behind me, and gaining a little with every push.
SEVENTEEN
They wouldn’t kill me. They’d just knock me around a little. The Chad Mitchell treatment. It was the board they’d want, and my shoes, and the hundred bucks in cash I unfortunately had in my wallet.
I kept pushing. I could see the lights of the Santa Monica Pier up ahead of me. But I’d never make it that far. Another big parking lot came up on my right. I felt something then, an instinctual urge to make my move now.
I turned sharply to my right and took off, pushing frantically across the uneven parking lot asphalt. The twins were caught off guard, for a moment. But they both made the turn and in a few seconds they were right behind me again. They’d actually gained on me.
So much for my instincts.
I pushed hard and kept my sp
eed up. My wheels were hitting bits of sand, little rocks, stuff my big expensive wheels worked well on. They were on shorter boards, had smaller wheels, and yet I couldn’t seem to gain any ground.
Then a lucky break: One of them hit something. He fell off his board and then had to run back to retrieve it. That gave me a little breathing room.
I developed a strategy now. I would ditch my board at the edge of the parking lot and try to outclimb them up the dirt cliff to Main Street. They’d get my board but I wouldn’t take a beating and I’d still have my cash and my shoes and my wallet.
I pushed with everything I had to get across that parking lot. When I approached the edge of the lot, I crouched down, bent my knees, and let my board hit the concrete curb at full speed. I flew off it, breaking into a full sprint. I hit the dirt cliff and scrambled upward. This all worked pretty well, and yet, half way up, the two of them were still right at my heels. The closest one, the blond twin, was hardly ten feet behind me. They were good climbers it turned out. They were apparently good at everything.
I tried evasive climbing. I zigzagged up the cliff. I was taking crazy risks, clawing my way up the steepest parts. But I couldn’t lose them. Just twenty feet from the top, the blond twin, lunged upward and caught my foot. It was like an iron shackle had been locked onto me. I kicked at him, twisted, spun to get away. His grip was unbreakable.
I started to slip and I grabbed for a bush. The dark-haired twin came up beside me. He grabbed the back of my pants. I struggled to hold on but they had me now. Far below, I could see the black asphalt of the parking lot.
“Okay!” I barked, clinging to the bush. “You got me! I give up!”
I looked into the face of the dark-haired twin beside me. He smiled in his creepy way.
“I’ll give you whatever,” I said, breathing hard from the climb. “Just don’t throw me down.”
“Dude,” he said, smiling. “You made us climb all the way up here. We have to throw you down.”
It wasn’t actually a cliff. It was more like a very steep hill.
They threw me down it.
I rolled and tumbled and landed on the hard parking lot surface. They were on me instantly. They were total pros, a few kicks, a couple punches, and then they cleaned me out: My wallet. My phone. My loose change. My belt. My new shoes. My board. Even my hoodie, which thanks to my fall, had a big rip in the elbow.
When it was over, they got back on their boards and skated leisurely away, across the parking lot, carrying my stuff. I stayed where I was, rolled up on my side in the dirt. When I was sure they were gone, I slowly turned over and sat up. I spat blood onto the gravel. I felt my mouth and my jaw. My teeth were okay, thank God. I checked the rest of my face, my hands, my fingers. Everything hurt, but nothing was broken.
I struggled to my feet and took a deep painful breath. Then I rolled off my socks, stuck them in my pockets and started the long walk home, barefoot.
EIGHTEEN
The next morning, I had a huge black eye when I showed up at the basketball courts. Naturally, Jax and Diego wanted to hear what happened. So I told the story.
Some of the older guys started nodding immediately. They knew about the Evil Twins. One dude said they were from Long Beach and they rotated around to different beach areas to steal stuff and mug people. Another guy thought they were brothers. Another person said they used to steal cars for a guy, who sent them on container ships to the Philippines,. Whoever they were, the twins were notorious. “If you ever encounter them…” one latecomer warned us.
“Oh, I’ve encountered them,” I said, pointing at my swollen face.
So then everyone got pissed off that they’d mugged me. People said we should hunt them down and show them who controlled Venice Beach. Everyone except Jojo who interrupted the macho talk and said we needed to forgive. “Always forgive,” he told me, gripping my forearm. “Always forgive.”
After that we got back to basketball and everyone forgot about the Evil Twins. I had Jojo on my team for several games and we smoked everyone, which made me feel better.
That afternoon, Jax, Diego and I went to get pizza. Strawberry was there, sitting on the curb with her PIZZA SLICE $1.99 sign, staring into space.
We got some slices and went to the chess tables. Strawberry and Jax had never met and they stared at each other a lot, neither of them being good talkers. Strawberry noticed Jax’s numerous head scars and moved closer to look. She would touch one, and Jax would explain how he got it. “A guy hit me with a hammer,” he would say. Or “I fell off a train in New Mexico.” Or “I got in a fight with a rack of Hostess Cupcakes.” It was pretty funny. Both Strawberry and Jax had head issues it turned out. Strawberry said she picked at her scalp when she got nervous. She showed us the numerous scabs and scars on her own head. So then Jax saw a dog tied up, with one of those plastic cones around his head and he snuck over and took the cone off, and tried to put it on Strawberry. Everyone thought this was hilarious except the guy who owned the dog.
Later, sitting around in the grass, Strawberry started hitting Jax. Not hard, just every few minutes, she would reach over and punch him in the gut, or in the shoulder. Could Strawberry like Jax? She sure liked punching him. And Jax didn’t mind. Sometimes he’d catch her arm and do a slow motion karate move on her, narrating in a movie voice: “The feeble blow is neutralized and countered with a lethal face smash….”
The two of them together were pretty funny. Diego and I both said how it was the first time we ever saw Strawberry laugh.
Ailis and I went to another alien-invasion movie a couple nights later. Underground Attack Force it was called. The basic story was that aliens embedded special pods in our planet ten thousand years ago. Now, after lying dormant all that time, the earth had reached a certain temperature and the aliens were waking up. Naturally, they started blasting the crap out of everything. There was some good urban destruction, including downtown Los Angeles getting melted into a concrete soup by a radium particle beam. I hardly ever went to downtown LA. But I saw it get destroyed a lot in movies.
Afterward, Ailis and I drove around. We talked about the Reese case. Had I done the right thing, by quitting? We talked about other issues of the private-investigator business. Like which cases you should take and which cases you should avoid. And how much you need to know before you took a job. And what sort of agreement you needed to have with the people you worked for.
Ailis was a good person to have this conversation with. She had a logical mind. And a good business sense. She helped me see things in a clearer way.
“You should be my partner,” I said at one point, sort of joking, but sort of not.
Ailis looked over at me. “Would you want me to?”
She was serious.
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “Would you want to be?”
We both kind of hesitated. The idea of us being together in any way, was very difficult. For both of us.
“I’ve thought about it,” she said finally. “It seems like you would need another person.”
It was weird because one part of me was like, no way do you want Ailis in your business. But another part of me saw the advantages. She was smart. She was good on computers. She had a car. Plus, I could talk to her about things. That was the best part. Someone to bounce ideas off. Or just to have ideas in the first place.
“Do you think we could work together?” she said.
“We’ve done okay so far,” I answered.
“I have to admit,” she said, staring at the steering wheel. “Since you told me about Reese, that’s all I think about.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I like having a problem to solve,” she said. “Something to think about. Something that actually matters.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean. I hate that I don’t have a new person to look for. I’m so bored right now.”
Ailis and I both fell silent.
“We could try it,” I said.
“Yeah,
we could see how it goes,” she said.
We both sat there for a moment, unsure of what to say or do next.
The following morning, I was heading to the Venice library to study for my first GED exam. I’d never really studied for anything before and I told Hope about my class during breakfast. She gave me some pointers. Then beautiful Olivia showed up and the two of them looked at my books and gave me advice, leaning over me and telling me stories about when they were in high school and studying for tests.
When I finally left, I hopped on my old crappy skateboard and cruised along the street toward the library. At the end of the block, the door of a white Mercedes opened. An older man got out. He was wearing a light gray suit, with a white handkerchief in the pocket. He stepped into the street in front of me and held up his hand for me to stop.
I did, but I kept back. There was something about the guy.. For one thing, he was too well dressed for this neighborhood.
“You’re Robert,” he said to me, noticing that I was keeping my distance.
“People call me Cali,” I said, checking the Mercedes to see if he was alone. He appeared to be.
“Okay, Cali,” he said. “I didn’t mean to alarm you. I was wondering if we could talk.”
“And who are you?” I said, doing a quick scan of the rest of the street, and behind me.
He smiled pleasantly. “My name is Richard. Richard Abernathy. I’m Reese’s father.”
NINETEEN
I didn’t answer right away. It took me a second to process what he’d said.
Mr. Abernathy seemed to understand this and stood patiently beside his car. It was very shiny. It was brand-new.
“Have you found Reese yet?” I asked, still not moving.
“No. We haven’t. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can we go somewhere?”
We went to Seed, the same place I took Reese. We both ordered ice teas and sat at one of the tables by the window. I kept my mouth shut and waited for him to do the talking.
“I wanted you to know,” he told me, stirring his tea. “I spoke with Reese last night. She called. I was so relieved to hear her voice….”
The Prince of Venice Beach Page 10