The girl smiled. “Cup of coffee?”
Jake shrugged and tossed a five-dollar bill into the plastic dish. “Make it a double.”
“Big spender. Look out.” She poured the thick black fluid into a Styrofoam cup and gave it to Jake. She held out her other hand to shake his. “I’m Morgan. The engineer.” Her grip was surprisingly strong. Jake noticed narrow muscles roping up her forearms. She saw him notice. “Yoga. You ever try it?”
“I was doing downward dogs before you were in diapers. I gave it up—inner peace, all that crap. Just give me a few heavy things to lift every once in a while. The occasional horse to ride.”
Morgan smiled. “Studio’s through here,” she said, leading Jake into a room with two old armchairs facing each other in front of a tattered blue curtain. “I’ll be right over there.” She pointed to the window through which Jake could see a giant mixing board. “If you need anything.”
At that moment a tall, blonde woman rushed into the room. “Jake, this is Logan.” Morgan grinned.
The reporter also flashed her white teeth at Jake. The woman, clearly Carlen’s latest “girlfriend,” sat with Jake in front of the cameras and nervously asked polite questions about Porter, leaning forward with what she thought was amiable sympathy.
When the interview was done, Morgan gave Jake a thumbs-up through the window. On his way out, Jake found her and gave her his card.
“You ever need any legal advice, you call me,” he said. “Those yoga teachers are torts just waiting to happen.”
Morgan checked her watch. “I’m off right now.” Her aquamarine eyes were bright and teasing, and she wiped a purple-streaked shank of hair off her forehead. Jake paused. This could be just what he had been looking for, to help him shut off his mind.
“Do you know Olive’s at the Venetian?”
“Hate it. How about Opal?”
Jake grinned. “Ten minutes?”
“Twenty.”
Opal was poolside on a rooftop, with a view of all Las Vegas shimmering around it. Morgan was late, so Jake ordered a tequila shot and waited on a ruby-red, velvet-cushioned stool. When Morgan ambled up, unapologetic, they had a drink, then decided to skip dinner. The tension between them was mounting pleasurably. Jake followed Morgan’s black Jetta back to her apartment. Inside, she opened a bottle of wine and lit about eight dozen candles in the living room. She didn’t have a lot of furniture, but there was a long, low table and some scratchy kilims and a huge pile of floor cushions that could have come out of a yurt in Mongolia. Her approach wasn’t a bit shy or coy, and when they were naked and fucking on the floor, her toned athletic body moved with confidence. She had beautiful, strong legs and broad shoulders … Jake found he needed to fixate on each individual body part just to keep his mind from caving in with thoughts of Porter and Suzanne, of the whole mess of who and why, and of the sordid aftermath of hairs and blood and skin …
* * *
“Hey, big spender.” Morgan was shaking him.
“What time is it?” Jake mumbled, embarrassed and irritated with himself.
“We dozed off. It’s almost two.”
“Shit. I’ve got to go.”
“It’s okay. I was getting ready to kick you out,” Morgan teased, without a trace of guilt or agenda. “Nice job.”
“Yeah. You too.” Jake dressed quickly. He kissed her cheek, then jogged down the stairs to his car, pushing the remote on his keychain. The Mercedes blinked at him, and he got in behind the wheel. Morgan waved and disappeared behind her door. Jake felt completely dislocated. Morgan had shaken him out of a dream he didn’t want to be having—but one he hadn’t wanted to wake up from. The songstress from Shrake’s nightclub, wearing nothing but the Marilyn wig and black gloves, was singing to him in an empty room. He sat on a chair in the middle of the room. Her gloved hands wrapped around the mike, but instead of singing lyrics into it, she was singing questions that didn’t quite make sense: “When did you see Porter?” “Why did you see him?” “Which way did Porter fall?”
And then Jake had noticed that all around the perimeter of the room were television cameras, each operated by someone he knew. Suzanne peered around the eyepiece of hers, mouthing questions. He saw the pig-eyed nightclub owner. Alana Sutter. The FBI agents, Norris and Brewer. Cooper and Randy Carlen were there. The singer-dancer in the platinum wig was moving closer and closer. There was a voyeuristic quality to having an audience, and he was enjoying it. In one fluid movement, the Marilyn look-alike straddled him, and as she leaned forward, breathing, “Hey, big spender …,” Morgan had jostled him awake.
A thought suddenly occurred to Jake as he revved the engine and backed out of the parking place. He could just ask the Marilyn dancer a few questions. He was wide-awake now anyway. He steered the car in the direction of the nightclub, secretly pleased to have come up with an official reason (or maybe it was just an excuse) to visit a certain blonde wig. Though he couldn’t believe that, after all the horizontal action with Morgan, he was getting aroused by just thinking about the woman in the red satin dress.
* * *
The man guarding the back door of the club either recognized Jake or wasn’t getting paid enough, because he nodded the celebrity attorney through with barely a blink as he pocketed his twenty-dollar bill. Jake strode down a backstage hallway, invigorated, suddenly wide-awake with purpose. He found the door he was looking for and threw it open.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Half a dozen dancers looked up, bored. Their dressing room was cramped and stuffy, thick with the smell of cigarettes, perfume, and sweat.
“I’m looking for the girl who does the Marilyn act.”
“Join the club,” droned a tall Asian dancer in a green evening gown. “She left us in the shitter tonight, without a headlining act.” She dragged a tube of red lipstick across her mouth and then pushed past Jake. “Excuse me, I’m on.” Jake stepped back courteously, and the woman winked as she passed him.
“Kelly didn’t show up today,” rasped another voice. Jake looked appreciatively at a petite, pale redhead in a black silk kimono. She dangled a cigarette between her fingers and sat back in her chair, her feet up on the makeup counter. “Some of her stuff is still here.” The redhead poked her cigarette toward a pile of costumes in the corner, abandoning any sense of concern for privacy or confidentiality.
“Do you mind?” asked Jake, gesturing to the pile. “She might have left me a clue or a note,” he added, taking a calculated risk with this falsehood. Perhaps he would be told that Kelly had somebody and it wasn’t him—information that could be helpful.
The redhead shrugged. “I don’t care.”
Jake dug through the dresses, five or six of them, in red and black. Underneath were some high-heeled shoes and gloves. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he knew this wasn’t it.
“She leave anything else?”
“Nope. Took her makeup kit.”
“You could look in here.” Another dancer, who appeared to be seventeen at the very most, materialized at Jake’s elbow. She smiled at him, and Jake noticed the faintest scar running from between her nostrils to her upper lip. At the end of the room was a closet door. The girl opened it and Jake jolted, then laughed. The closet had four shelves, and on every shelf stood three Styrofoam heads, each wearing a wig. There were red, black, blonde, and brunette wigs, along with three platinum blonde ones. His hunch was completely crazy. Like he’d thought before, how many Marilyn wigs were there in Las Vegas? In less than twenty-four hours, he’d seen at least five.
Jake smiled at the young dancer. “Your big bad boss around?”
“I just saw him at the bar.”
“Thanks,” said Jake, then whispered, “Get out of this place as soon as you can.”
The girl looked at him, surprised. “You mean tonight?” she called after him, confused.
Jake entered the club through a door at the end of the hall and headed for the bar. He could see the owner at a dark table in the back, sitting by
a showgirl who looked like Britney Spears. His hand was on her back, and his thumb was worming its way under her halter top.
Shrake was known to be a liar and a cheat, a balding cherub of a man with the unforgiving eyes of a hyena. Their meeting the night before had been less than friendly, as Jake recalled it now. While Brooks had been engrossed in “Marilyn Monroe’s” act, Shrake had scurried up to him with a briefcase. He’d opened it on his lap. It was filled with money, of course. Jake had been annoyed.
“You trying to ask me for a favor?” he’d said, jerking his chin at the briefcase.
Shrake had pulled back, feigning injury. Pulling his chubby face into a serious expression, he’d simpered, “I got a pal up on murder one.”
“A hit?”
“I’d say, uh, self-defense.”
Jake sighed. “What does the DA say?”
“Seems they found fifty G’s on my friend.”
“You want me to go to all the trouble of seducing a jury and the media for a bill-collecting hit man? I don’t think so.”
“It’s a retainer. Fifty G’s, to be exact.” Shrake had peered expectantly at Jake’s face. Jake’s eyes flicked to the briefcase, then back to the singer.
“Well?” pressed Shrake.
“Know what I need more than that? Spiritual balance.”
Shrake’s jaw twitched. “You could buy a whole bunch of spiritual balance with this.”
Jake had tipped the last of his drink into his mouth, keeping his eyes on Marilyn. Then something in Kelly’s look caught his attention. While her seduction act was razor-sharp, he noticed a sense of purpose with every movement. She was searching every corner of the room. For a split second, their eyes locked. There was a sudden sense of recognition in her expression. But in an instant a protective shield came across her face.
Who the hell are you? he had said to himself. Aloud, he’d replied to the mobster, “Here’s where we differ, hombre. You see cash in that briefcase. I see a media circus, grueling, tedious work, and boredom.”
Shrake raised his voice. “This guy saved my life once. I promised him I’d convince you to get him off.”
“Relax. Lawyers make up eleven percent of the world’s population. Seventy percent of those lawyers live here in the U.S. of A. You’ll find somebody.” Jake had enjoyed pulling statistics from midair and making them sound real. “I don’t represent bill-collecting hit men,” he had added, noticing the chanteuse just inches away. With his elbow, he had pushed the briefcase closed.
Shrake had scuttled angrily away.
Now, Jake sauntered over to Shrake’s table and planted both hands on it as he leaned over the small man.
“What the fuck?” Shrake shouted. The Britney Spears showgirl took a drag on her cigarette.
“I hear your prized possession didn’t show up today. I’d like to lay an eye on her again.”
“You’re right. Bitch isn’t here. Those kinds of girls disappear overnight.”
“What’d you do, try to rape her?”
“Fuck, man, are you kidding?” whined Shrake. “That one was untouchable. Tough as nails.” The girl next to him smirked. Jake smiled at her. “You’ll never see her here again.”
“I want her address.”
Shrake’s eyes narrowed. “Well, get in line.”
“I can turn you into a quivering mass of snot in the courtroom.”
“You’re not scaring—”
“The juvenile prostitutes you’ve got working at your bar. Your friend with the fifty G’s. Your needle dick—”
“Alright, alright,” the club owner scowled. Jake followed him back to his office, which stank of beer and dirty socks. Shrake undid the combination lock on a small black filing cabinet. Shuffling through a stack of papers, he mumbled to himself, “Fucking lawyers.” He threw a page at Jake. “This is what she filled out when she started working here.”
Jake looked at the paper. NAME: KELLY JENSEN. AGE: 24. ADDRESS: 2518 MANZANITA LANE. Stapled to the sheet was a Xerox of her driver’s license. Jake squinted at the picture. The woman wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were intensely focused, set above high cheekbones. Her hair looked sleek and glossy, even in the photocopy. She looked nothing like Marilyn Monroe. But she did look familiar, even without her costume, in a beautiful-showgirl sort of way. Jake folded the papers in half lengthwise and slid them into his inside jacket pocket to keep himself from staring too hard.
Shrake had seen him looking, though.
“That girl thinks her shit don’t stink,” he said, running the back of his wrist across his nose. “She ain’t gonna give you the time of day.”
“You know, Shrake, you’re the kind of guy who thinks it’s raining when someone spits on you.”
Shrake grumbled as he put the folder away. “You got what you wanted. Get the fuck out of my club.”
* * *
Jake’s heart pounded as he drove to Kelly Jensen’s house. He wasn’t sure what he would say if he found her there. It was the middle of the night. He knew this might not go over well.
Reaching Manzanita Lane, a street of circa-1970 tract houses, he slowed. A few of the driveways had boats or RVs in them. Most of the houses, however, appeared to have huddled down, as if shivering in the desert-cold night. Twenty-five-twelve, twenty-five-fourteen, twenty-five-sixteen. Jake drove two houses past Kelly’s, shut off the lights and engine, and watched the house in his rearview mirror. It was completely dark. No porch light. Jake reached for the flashlight in his glove box and got out of the car. The street was deserted too. The only sounds were the whoosh of traffic on a nearby boulevard and the crackling of power lines overhead.
Jake crept up to the house, gauging the windows. There were no signs of life. He edged over to a side gate, trying the latch. It opened easily, and he stole along the side of the house. The backyard was overgrown with flowers and decorated with an assortment of scarecrows obviously created by children. A concrete patio covered by a wooden pergola painted red was just outside a sliding-glass door that led inside. On impulse, Jake tried it. To his surprise, it slid open. Fighting logic, he stepped in and closed it behind him.
When his eyes adjusted to the darkened interior, he found himself in a room that seemed entirely beige, from the carpets to the walls to the canvas sofa that looked newly covered. Long, parallel strips of moonlight stretched across the floor, swaying in time with the swinging vertical blinds. Jake flicked on the flashlight and threw some light around the room. He was in a little living area. The front door was directly across from the sliding-glass door he had entered; a hall cut through the room to both the left and the right. The place seemed small and old-fashioned, but clean and freshly painted.
Jake chose the hall to the left and crept lightly across the carpet, stopping every few seconds to listen. Three doors led off the hallway. The first was a bathroom. Jake wiggled his arm up into his shirtsleeve and used the fabric to cover his hand before opening the drawers. He saw about two dozen plastic makeup containers and gobs of assorted skin-colored putty. In contrast, the medicine cabinet was empty.
Jake moved to another room and saw a queen-sized bed stripped of sheets, a dresser, a TV. The dresser was empty except for a lavender sachet in the corner of the top drawer. The closet contained only coat hangers. Jake turned on the TV: MSNBC. He turned it off.
He went through the third door and found two twin beds, also stripped. A poster of van Gogh’s Irises was on the wall and a basket of dried flowers on a side table. He slid open the closet. It was empty except for some child-sized coat hangers.
Did this woman have kids? Jake’s curiosity deepened.
He went back down the hallway and crossed through the living room into the kitchen. It was very clean and, like the other rooms, almost totally empty. A narrow yellow countertop ran underneath a window that overlooked the front yard. Yellow curtains with red cherries on them framed the window. The fridge was yellow too. Inside, it was pretty bare: an old milk carton, some slices of American cheese. A small round ta
ble, painted red, stood next to the fridge, along with three chairs. Jake found some empty soup tins in the trash can under the sink.
He wandered back to the living room again, not sure what he was looking for. He turned on the TV. It was tuned to QVC. He turned it off, pushed EJECT on the DVD player. After a whine and a click, a disk slid out: Sesame Street Dance with Me. So she did have kids, or at least kids lived here too. Jake sank down on the couch and let his mind wander. What was he really doing here? Breaking into a woman’s house to try to get a date?
His thoughts looped back to his original excuse for coming here. A platinum blonde wig had been found in Porter’s hotel room. This nightclub singer, Kelly Jensen, had worn a platinum blonde wig on the night of Porter’s murder. Jake laughed aloud. Not much of a connection. He pictured a hairstylist being cross-examined into admitting that any number of platinum blonde wigs could be combed into a Monroe style. Even so, he pressed the idea further. Kelly Jensen left her job—and her house—the day after Porter’s murder. Still not much of a connection. There had been blonde hairs in Porter’s hotel room bed. Kelly Jensen’s driver’s license said she had blonde hair. It was too ridiculous. Jake knew that even he could never lead a jury to connect those faint dots. So again the question raised itself, why was he here?
A second later, someone was pounding on the front door. Jake flew behind the end of the couch and held his breath.
“Who’s in there? I’ve got a bat.” A man’s voice. Boom, boom, boom. Something heavy, presumably the bat, struck the door. “Open up. We know you’re in there.”
Jake tried to calculate the time it would take him to open the sliding-glass door, sprint across the weedy backyard, and scale the cinder-block wall.
The front doorknob jiggled.
“We seen your light,” came the man’s voice. There was some mumbling, and Jake thought he heard a woman’s voice, too. Even if he got across the yard and over the fence, he would have to come back for his car. He couldn’t risk doing that right away, with the man standing there, but he didn’t want to leave it either. Even though it was two houses down, the Mercedes was out of place in this neighborhood.
The Gray Zone Page 6