“Scared?” he said. “No, baby. Scared is scared of me.”
Benicia frowned and Ecks wondered whether he had said too much. He worked the gas pedal to keep the engine turning over as she looked out of the passenger’s window at the plaster wall that had blocked the passenger door from opening.
When they took off she pressed her right palm against the glass.
“You need the heat?” he asked.
“Maybe a little.”
Ecks fooled around with the knobs.
“Music?” he said.
“No, thanks.”
“I’m sorry about last night.”
“Sorry about what?” She swiveled her shoulders to face him.
“I’m not no Romeo.”
“I always thought that Juliet made bad choices.”
“That and the condom breakin’ like that.”
“Do you have any diseases?”
“Church gave me a clean bill of health.”
“The church?”
“They look after their members.”
Carlo was a Panamanian who lived with his sister and grandmother on Hauser near Wilshire. At fifteen he was short and dusky, with odd light brown eyes that seemed to have a language of their own. He ran out from the doorway of the dark apartment building at five minutes to four.
“Hey, Mr. Noland.” Carlo waved before climbing into the canvas-covered back of the truck.
Damien lived off Fairfax and Wilshire. He was blond and Jewish, lanky, with a good throwing arm. He climbed in next to Benicia, pushing her closer to Xavier.
“Good to see you, Mr. Noland,” the dark-eyed sandy-haired kid said.
Seeing Damien reminded Ecks of Lenny O lying unconscious somewhere in the back rooms of the West Hollywood hardware store.
“This is Miss Torres,” Ecks said.
“Pleased to meet you,” Damien said with a smile.
“Me too,” Carlo added, sticking his head in through the window connecting the cab to the back of the truck.
Angelique was waiting on the sidewalk in blue jeans and a blue hoodie. Those work clothes could not hide her tall, elegant form. Her black skin and white eyes were in stark, beautiful relief.
She climbed into the back with Carlo and the truck drove to the distribution hut on Sepulveda.
At the big aluminum shelter, Benicia followed as Ecks and the kids grabbed hundred-issue bundles from the floor. After they’d loaded a dozen bundles into the truck, Carlo and Angelique climbed into the back and started folding papers to quarter size and wrapped them with blue rubber bands from a big plastic bag.
In the meanwhile Ecks and Damien moved thirty-five more bundles, throwing them into the back of the truck. Carlo and Angelique were hidden by stacks of bound newspapers.
“Ain’t seen you in a while, Ecks,” a big red-faced man said just as the Parishioner was about to climb into the driver’s seat.
“Been busy with church business, Elmo.”
“Oh,” the rotund newspaper distributor said, unconvinced. “I thought you sold out to Bud.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
Ecks slammed the door and drove off toward the thin band of orange light the sun made as the earth turned.
They worked delivering newspapers from four forty-six until seven forty-eight. On long stretches where there were lots of customers, all three kids jumped out and ran down the street after the truck, throwing their little missiles onto porches and lawns. At large apartment buildings they scrambled up stairs—moving fast.
“How do they remember them all?” Benicia asked when Ecks had parked at the end of a long block of apartment buildings.
“They got a program in their smartphones that gives ’em a checklist. They mark ’em off as they go.”
“You pay for their phones?”
“Just the data plan and limited text so we stay in touch. They pay for calls and anything extra.”
On blocks where there were only one or two drops, Damien, with his unerring eye, threw papers from the window. He never missed.
“Dad says that I’m like Sandy Koufax,” he said when Benicia complimented his throw.
“Who’s that?” she asked.
Ecks dropped the kids off at Fairfax High at seven fifty-eight. Then he drove back downtown to Benicia’s car. When they stopped at the curb in front of the parking garage, it was she who leaned over to kiss him.
“I had a really great time,” she said.
“Yeah,” Ecks said, feeling unaccustomed nervousness. “Me too.”
“I could have said no,” she said again.
“Why didn’t you? I would have listened.”
“It was the right time,” she said with a smile.
Ecks kissed her and then walked her into the garage, waited while she started the engine of her Saab, and watched as she drove off.
He got to the Waffle House by nine thirty-five and asked for a booth away from the broad window that looked out on La Brea. There he had time to drink a cup of black coffee and take inventory of his situation.
Benol had started the ball rolling. It was she who hired the detective, and then went to Frank asking for help locating Brayton and the children she kidnapped.
Brayton was dead.
One of the boys was dead.
Doris killed her kidnapper and only confidante, her pimp and sometimes aunt—Sedra. Doris also tried to kill Ecks, drugged George, and was at the scene of Hank’s murder—toting a gun.
Swan was dying. Father Frank’s church had secret baptisms. And Ecks felt like a chrysalis about to vomit forth a new man into the world.
The world? Ecks pressed both thumbs on the bone just above where his eyes met.
Not the world, this world. This world where people were getting murdered and children were not taught to read; where a woman could set up shop on the corner in a peaceful neighborhood dealing in slavery and murder.
“Hello, Mr. Noland.”
Looking up, Ecks saw Benol standing next to the booth.
It was as if he had conjured her with his mind. This feeling was so strong that he felt no compunction to greet her.
“Can I sit down?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Did you go to the Farmers’ Market?” she asked.
Xavier Rule maintained his silence. His eyes tightened as he scrutinized his client.
“Are you going to speak?” she demanded.
“Tell me how you came to know Jerry Jocelyn.”
She flinched in response to the verbal slap.
“How did you?” she said, and then, “The hotel, of course. You were waiting for me to come in. You saw him with me.”
“That’s the answer to your question. Now how about mine?”
Benol was wearing a gray dress with a cobalt collar. Ecks wore black cotton pants and a dark blue T-shirt, his work uniform.
“He called me,” she said, looking down at the red tabletop.
At that moment a waitress, whose name tag read Yolanda, came up to the table.
“What can I get you children?” the big woman asked.
She was both older and darker than the Parishioner. Yolanda called everybody child. Her fat cheeks and crafty eyes made for pleasant banter on days when a bad mood hit Ecks.
“Chicken and waffles,” the Parishioner said. “And more coffee for me.”
“I’ll take coffee, black,” Benol uttered, and Yolanda went away.
“How did he get your number?” Ecks asked, sounding like a jealous boyfriend needing to know all the steps taken to infidelity.
“I asked him but he didn’t say. I figured that he spoke to the detective or someone the detective had spoken to. He knew what I was looking for. He said that he was trying to find the boys too. He promised me a payday of fifteen thousand dollars if, when I found the boys, I turned the names over to him first.”
“And here you were already looking for them.”
“Yes, I know.”
“That really doesn’t make
too much sense.”
“Jerry said that he knew certain parties that were interested in finding out what happened to the boys. They were willing to pay good money for the information. I figured it must have been some relative. I didn’t see anything wrong with helping out the boys’ families.”
“If he was willing to pay you fifteen thousand then there must have been a lot more somewhere.”
“Yes. I don’t know the sum exactly, but Jerry, I bet, is getting ten times what I am.”
“More’n a hundred thousand dollars,” Xavier Rule said. “That really doesn’t make any sense at all.”
“Maybe it does,” Benol said with questionable certainty. “Jerry said that it has something to do with an inheritance, that the family can only collect if their son survives. And he also indicated that they had a certain amount of concern for the other lost boys.”
“That why Hank is dead?”
“He was a drug addict. Maybe his death didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping?”
“You believe that?”
“I told Jerry about Henry after he was killed.”
“But you didn’t tell Frank about Jerry.”
“He came to me after I went to Frank.”
“But you were still using the church,” Ecks countered.
“No. I always wanted to find those boys. Ask Theodora. So what if I could make a little money on the side? I’d been let go from my temp job. If Jerry wasn’t putting me up in that hotel I’d be homeless. My savings ran out a week ago.”
The waitress came with the food and drinks.
“You children play nice now,” she said before swinging her big hips back toward the kitchen service window.
“So what do you think happened, Bennie?”
“Henry was murdered.”
“And who do you suppose did that?”
Benol just stared at the question and the questioner.
Ecks went to work on the waffle and three pieces of deep-fried chicken. Whenever he was faced with difficult problems his appetite kicked in. The waffles were served with margarine and imitation maple syrup but he wasn’t particular.
“I don’t know,” Benol said at least three minutes after Ecks had asked the last question.
“Did you tell Jerry about the boy’s death?” Ecks asked through a mouthful of waffle.
“I can’t find him. He’s not answering his phone and his receptionist says that he’s on vacation. I don’t know—maybe it’s just a coincidence that Henry is dead.”
“Uh-huh,” Xavier said, putting down his fork. “You shouldn’t go back to that hotel.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re telling the truth then you just might be expendable.”
Benol closed her eyes and opened them, trying hard to see something that was hidden.
“What did I do?”
“Kidnapping, accomplice to murder, conspiracy,” Ecks said. “There are all kinds of things that the law could throw at you.…”
Ecks trailed off midsentence because he was about to say that maybe all three boys were the target of murder. It was his turn to close his eyes. There were so many suspects and players.
“I was able to keep the guy I communicated with away from the Nut Hut.”
“Was he the third child?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
They sat quietly long enough for Yolanda to come take the dishes and leave a flimsy yellow bill.
“I found Brayton,” Ecks said at last.
“Where?”
“At his house.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“He didn’t know anything that I hadn’t already figured out.”
“I’d … I’d like to talk to him.”
“He was leaving town when we spoke. Sounded like he was planning a long trip.”
“Did he say anything about me?” the child in Benol asked.
“No. Not one word.”
This final rejection seemed to break Benol. She hung her head and exhaled, a solitary foot soldier ordered by a higher power to capitulate.
“Where should I go?” Benol asked. “Jerry was paying the rent at the hotel.”
Ecks reached into the pocket on his left hip and pulled out a roll of twenty twenty-dollar bills. This he handed to his minister’s client.
“Four hundred dollars,” he said. “Take it and get a bed at the downtown YWCA. I’ll call you the minute I know something.”
“What about the fifteen thousand?”
“Did you ever really think that that lawyer was gonna pay you, girl?”
Again Benol temporarily lost the power of speech. Xavier had put into words the question that she was unwilling to ask herself—there was nothing else to say.
“Will you call me tomorrow? Please,” she asked.
“Before the sun goes down.”
Frank was serious about the privacy and protection of his parishioners. There were two houses in Coldwater Canyon that belonged to the church, through unaffiliated individuals. The safe house was on Mill Valley Way. It was a pleasant little flattop bungalow with a deck that looked out over Los Angeles.
If any member of the congregation or other friend of Frank’s got in trouble, they were often brought to the safe house to wait for plane tickets or news.
Xavier was once asked to bring the church’s youngest member, Juan Margoles, there after the fifteen-year-old had killed his father. Even though the boy had shot the elder Margoles in the back of the head, Frank and his cabinet of six judges had deemed the act self-defense and agreed to get the young man to safety.
The Parishioner didn’t question the verdict. He’d never relied on the law for any kind of justice, and so he drove the boy to the house in the dead of night. No one had told him what had happened after that drop-off, and he never asked.
The safe house was on Mill Valley Way, but the guardhouse was where Ecks was headed that noon. The guardhouse was located on Pleasant Circle. The route there was different from Mill Valley Way, but the guardhouse’s small backyard was less than one hundred and fifty yards away from the safe house.
Ecks could see the safe house from the window in the kitchen. There were also sixteen hidden cameras that, when turned on, revealed every corner of the hideout.
Ecks turned on the four-by-four block of video monitors and sat back with a snifter of cognac. He rarely drank brandy, but that had been Swan’s favorite drink. He would toast his friend and see what might happen in the safe house on the hill.
At one thirty-three the thug in the ugly green suit approached the front door of the house on Mill Valley Way. The entrance was hidden from view by a hundred kinds of vegetation, but Ecks saw the man clearly on monitor five. Green Suit pushed the buzzer and Ecks heard it over the audio connection. Then came the knock. Buzzer again. Knock. There was a two-second delay between the action and sounds.
Then the man in green jiggled the doorknob. When he found that it was locked he turned and walked away.
Fourteen minutes passed and the man returned with three friends—one of whom Ecks recognized.
“Hm.”
A short, fancy little man in a well-cut buff-colored suit knelt in front of the door and had it open in under three minutes.
Ecks watched the crew from monitor to monitor as they went through the house. Green and Buff did a very professional search. This didn’t bother Ecks, because the safe house would be clean of any evidence or clues that might lead to the church.
Accompanying the gunsels was a tall, good-looking man in an elegantly cut cream-colored suit, and Jerry Jocelyn in dark blue business attire.
“Nobody here and nuthin’ else either,” said the man in green to the stylish boss.
“That’s right, Mr. Martindale,” the shorter lock-pick man added.
“Okay,” Martindale said. “Let’s just sit. Jesse?”
“Yes, boss?” the man in the buff suit said.
“Is there a window that looks down on the path up here?”
&n
bsp; “Yep.”
“Keep a lookout.”
Ecks watched as Jesse moved from monitor seven to thirteen.
“Link,” Martindale said.
“Yes, Mr. Martindale?” Hideous Green answered.
“You find a place to keep a lookout for somebody coming from behind.”
“Why would they do that?” Link asked.
The images on the black-and-white screens were a little blurry, but Ecks could see clearly the hard look Martindale had for the minion Link.
“But I’ll go look,” Link said hastily. Then he walked into monitor eleven, pulled up a straight-backed chair, and gazed out a window that gave a view of the side and back of the house.
If Ecks looked out of his window he would have been able to stare Link in the face.
“Have a seat,” Martindale said to Jocelyn when the other men had gone to their posts.
The lawyer/pimp took a wood-frame chair with a bulging striped cushion.
Martindale approached the yellow couch, inspected it first with his eyes and then with his hands. Finally, when he was satisfied that there was no danger to his clothes, he sat down and sighed.
“So how’s it going, Jer?”
“The surfer’s dead and our guy’s got a day pass downtown on Thursday.”
“So it’s just Noland, this Lenny O kid, and that other business and we’re through.”
“I don’t know why we have to bother with Lenny,” Jocelyn said. “We know it’s not him.”
“If some bright-eyed cop catches wise then it won’t look like we picked and choosed. Keeps ’em off balance.”
“And what about the other thing?”
“No choice there either,” Martindale said. “Too bad.”
“Yeah.” Jerry Jocelyn seemed to have true lament.
“Not that.”
“No? Then what, Chick?”
“I used to really like Los Angeles. But you know, it’s got too crowded over the years. A man can’t make a living like he used to. And even when there’s money comin’ in, there’s no more pleasure. You know, I’ve done it all and now everything tastes like chicken.”
“So where you going after this?”
“If I told you then I’d have to kill you,” Martindale said, and Ecks didn’t think that it was a lie.
Parishioner Page 21