Black

by Russell Blake

  “You got it. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Her breasts cast some kind of a spell.”

  “Maybe she has mini-syringes in them and she drugged you.”

  “She tried that with a margarita the last time I was here.”

  “Second to last,” Stan corrected. “Last time her husband played piñata on the front steps.”

  “Oh. That.”

  “So how was it?”

  “What?”

  “The margarita?”

  “Kind of like her. Sweet, but high octane. Packed a wallop.”

  “I’m definitely reconsidering the PI thing.”

  “It’s not all sex-starved temptresses and boozing and solving crimes.”

  “I’m okay with the no solving crimes part. Listen. Seriously. Can you keep your pie hole shut about something if I tell you?”

  “Of course. My lips are sealed. What’s up?”

  “When you called me? I was just reading over the forensics report on our buddy Freddie.”

  “Mister Paparazzi. The punching bag.”

  “That’s him. Turns out Hunter didn’t kill him.”

  Black suddenly craved a cigarette more than he would have thought possible. “Come again?”

  “He was poisoned. Somebody gave him a hot shot in the hospital.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Right. I’m working on my comedy act. Which is why I want to know where you get your suits.”

  “But why?”

  “Why would I want to dress like you?”

  “No, why would someone knock Freddie off in the hospital?”

  “My hunch is, because they could. Probably the same perp who’s been whacking the photogs. It fits. Opportunistic.”

  “I’ll say.” Black cleared his throat. “You think this is related?”

  “What do I know? I liked Hunter for the killings.”

  “But what’s the motive? Why kill them both?”

  “That, my friend, is the question of the day. Assuming that the same wing nut knocked them both off. We’re still a long way from that.”

  They turned and meandered back to where Meagan was waiting. The evening was now almost upon them as the technicians continued their work, basking in the high-voltage glare of the portable work lights.

  Black took Meagan’s hands in his and faced her. “Meagan, I’ve got to get going. Detective Colt here is the best. He’ll take good care of you.”

  Worry flickered across her face. “Do you have to?”

  “I’m afraid so. I have another case I’m working.” Black didn’t want to tell her the real reason he thought it was a good idea to leave.

  “Okay, then…thanks…I guess. For all of this…”

  “No problem. The police can handle it from here.”

  She seemed about to say something, and then reconsidered and instead, nodded.

  He could feel both her and Stan’s eyes following him as he made his way back to the Cadillac, his head spinning at the ramifications of what he’d discovered.

  Hunter had been murdered.

  As had Freddie.

  And none of it made the slightest sense.

  Chapter 28

  The evening reeked of uncombusted fuel and desperation as Black wheeled down the Sunset Strip on his way home. Lifted trucks with gawping country boys blared twangy redneck boot-stomping anthems as they prowled by defiantly parading rocker chicks in lacquered micro-skirts, their hair a riotous rainbow of individuality. Low-riders crept along filled with gangsta wannabes looking for any excuse to prove how tough they were by squeezing a trigger, the police presence slim deterrent to a sixteen-year old hell-bent on making his bones. Traffic moved along in fits and starts, the evening flow coagulating at major arteries before dispersing once past the center of the action.

  The city of angels had caught Black in its tractor beam twenty-three years ago – an oasis where infinite dreams and the restless young came to party and die. Little had changed over time other than the price of heroin and the music pulsing out at those who paid homage to the glitter gods. It had all seemed so vital and possible back then, but the corrosive effect of hindsight had eroded the cozy mirage, revealing a house of mirrors filled with hollow promises. But each generation had to live for its moment, and Los Angeles’ seeming perpetual possibility was a powerful lure for those who believed that appearances were more important than dismal reality.

  He turned onto Normandie and followed a beaten Volvo down the grade, then made a left on his street. Graffiti adorned the dumpsters next to the construction site four buildings from the Paradise Palms, proclaiming the block to be the turf of contentious warlords still in high school. As absurd as it seemed, lives were regularly lost over one group of teens disrespecting the others’ block, the permanence of their poor choices a testament to the frailty of what passed for civilization in the shadows of the Hollywood sign.

  Black slid from behind the wheel and checked to ensure his top was secure before slipping the anti-theft club on and fixing it in place with a secure thunk. He locked his door, considered whether this was really the week he wanted to give up smoking, and moved resignedly to his fate. The lights were on in Gracie’s unit, a reflected television’s image illuminating the blinds with colored flashes of meaningless imagery, and Black had to knock twice before she came to the door, the stale stink of nicotine and rotgut wafting behind her.

  “Well, look who’s here! The prodigal returns,” she said with a cackle, and then her face grew serious. “I’m guessing you aren’t here for a social call.”

  “I have a favor to ask you, Gracie,” he said, trying to keep the bone tiredness out of his voice.

  “Anything, Angel. Anything at all.”

  “I’m going to have Cesar work on the Cadillac tomorrow, and I need to borrow your car.”

  “You want to drive La Bomba? No problema, Angel. She still runs like a scared rabbit. Don’t let her aging looks fool you. She’s a thoroughbred. They don’t build ’em like that anymore.”

  Gracie was right about that. The ancient Mercedes was as solid as the Matterhorn and with a little TLC would outlive them all.

  “No, they don’t. And they don’t make them like you, either. You’re a lifesaver.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, you silver-tongued devil. You wanna come in for a drink?”

  “I don’t know, Gracie. I’m kind of beat.”

  “Come on. Just one. I’ll even break out the good stuff.” An obvious lie. Gracie didn’t have anything but glorified grain alcohol that came in plastic drugstore jugs. Black fixed on her slightly glazed eyes, hungry for any kind of company, her skin so translucent he could see the web of blue veins at her temples, and felt a surge of compassion. For Gracie, the days just blended together, some a little better than others, her life but one long bout of inebriation and hangovers, the Paradise Palms her paradise lost.

  “You know me too well. I could never turn down a lady and a drink,” he said, and followed her into her unit.

  “Jared. Turn the damned TV down, would you?” she yelled over inane eighties sitcom music, and her nephew obligingly complied. Blackjack glowered at him from beside an obviously artificial fern in an off-color plastic pot, and Black absently wondered what it was about him and cats.

  “You find the guys that ripped me off?” Jared asked, his belligerence no better squelched than the prior week.

  “I’m working on it. You get a job?” Black replied, swatting the ball back over the net to him.

  “I’m so proud of him. He got a position at a shop on Melrose. A high-end electronics store,” Gracie answered for him. “You want soda and ice, or straight up?” she asked Black.

  “Ice and soda, Gracie. And a light pour tonight, okay?” he answered, then returned to Jared. “I found where one of them lives, and I staked it out for a night. He never came home. I’ve been by a couple of times, but no go. So I’m going out tonight to see if he’s at any of the usual haunts.”

  “How are you going to re
cognize him?” Jared asked, distrustful of Black’s facile explanation.

  As well he should be. Given that Black had no idea.

  “I’ll spread some cash around with the bartenders. A guy like this Preacher is going to be known. A regular. Probably does a little dealing on the side to support his con game. Or vice versa. Someone’s going to have seen him recently, unless he left town.”

  “With my luck he already spent the cash,” Jared said sullenly, his eyes returning to the Married with Children rerun.

  “Could be. But I made you a promise, and I intend to keep it.”

  “Don’t sweat it. At the rate I’m going I’ll have made it all back by the time I’m your age,” Jared said, the eventuality of him ever advancing to the far reaches of decrepitude Black represented clearly unimaginable.

  “I see you’ve been working on your retail courtesy. It’s infectious. Keep up the good work.”

  “Don’t you look handsome tonight, honey! I swear, you’re as smooth as a baboon’s backside. Love the hat. Men don’t know how to wear a hat anymore. It’s a shame,” she announced as she tottered toward him clutching two overflowing plastic glasses, hers amber with two ice cubes, his pale yellow with four. He moved to meet her halfway and made a show of taking his drink and sipping it appreciatively. As always, it tasted like a combination of battery acid and lye, and he closed his eyes and feigned delighted surprise as it burned its way down his esophagus.

  “Mmm. This is exceptional tonight, Gracie. You’ve outdone yourself again,” he declared, his gag reflex threatening as he exhaled slowly, fighting to keep from choking, tears welling as his eyes stung.

  “I know. I won’t even tell you what I paid for this. Highway robbery. I thought they made everything in China nowadays?”

  “Everything but the good stuff.”

  “Hear, hear.”

  Black stood, trying not to sink into depression at Gracie’s squalid surroundings, for all their shabbiness still better than anything he’d managed to assemble for his life, and took another pull on the liquid fire she’d concocted. He could only imagine what hers tasted like. The fumes alone could strip paint.

  “So what are you going to do if you find him?” Gracie asked, then drained a quarter of her glass without blinking.

  “Downbeat him with a pipe until he coughs up the money.”

  “And if he doesn’t have it?”

  “I’ll make finding it his life’s biggest problem. That’s how I deal with deadbeats and thieves. They’ll gladly go steal it from someone else if you become a large enough irritant.”

  “Back in the day, the bookies would send out a couple of goons with baseball bats and a blow torch. Which one they’d use depended on whether it was their first or second visit. Nobody wanted to owe them money for long.”

  “Ah, the good ol’ hang ’em upside down and take the torch to ’em days. Gets me all choked up to think about ’em.”

  “Like Archie Bunker used to say, right?”

  “In fewer words, certainly.”

  Jared scowled like Black had just drowned his puppy. “That’s it? That’s the plan? Intimidate or beat the cash out of them?”

  “Do you have a better suggestion? I’m always interested in input from a high-roller producer type,” Black said.

  Jared crossed his arms and sank deeper into the couch. Blackjack seemed to match his mood, and displayed solidarity by going to sleep.

  “That’s what I thought. How about this? I do the job I’m paid to, and you pray I’m successful so you don’t have to sell beepers for the rest of the year,” Black suggested.

  “They don’t sell beepers anymore.”

  Black’s expression didn’t change. “They don’t?”

  Jared rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the TV.

  Gracie took up her usual position on a stool at the breakfast bar and took another mammoth swig of her libation. “What’s a beeper?”

  By the time Black left he was already buzzing, the cheap alcohol having gone straight to his head on an empty stomach. He resolved to grab another health burger at the Hawaiian place to straighten out his attitude, and mounted the stairs to his place to change into something lower-key for prowling the clubs. The truth was that he’d had no intention of going out that night, but after a day like he’d had, a few drinks might be just the ticket, and who knew? Maybe he’d run across the Preacher boy and put the fear of Jaysus into him. Stranger things had happened.

  He recycled his Hawaiian shirt and slicked his hair back with a comb, Elvis style, avoiding careful scrutiny of his reflection in favor of a general optimistic impression. Screw everyone that thought he looked like a douche. He had style. Panache. Something that had passed into a bygone era, but that he aspired to. And what of it? Where was the harm in that? He could do a lot worse than to let a little Maltese Falcon slip into his life. At least Gracie got it. Which chilled him and depressed him even more.

  One cocktail at the first club turned into three, and Black began to feel like life wasn’t so bad after all. No sign of anyone named Preacher, but then again, Los Angeles was a big city. Maybe he’d stop by the shitbird’s place on the way home.

  After three more drinks at a second nightspot, that idea took a back seat to wondering how he was going to get back to his apartment without winding up with a DUI collar.

  When he made it within three blocks of his house without getting pulled over, he decided to celebrate with a half pint of Old Grandad and a pack of Marlboro reds. He was just parking down the street from the Paradise Palms when his phone rang, and he vaguely processed Stan informing him that a rush order from forensics had confirmed that the substance they’d found at Hunter’s was human blood.

  His soiled, beige-carpeted floor seemed to be rocking like the deck of a ship in a storm when he finally persuaded his door to unlock, and thankfully he was never far from a wall with which to steady himself. The bottle didn’t last long, and the final impression he had as he collapsed onto his bed and closed his eyes, only for a second, fully clothed and huffing like he’d run a marathon, was that he might have overdone it, just a little.

  Chapter 29

  Darkness cloaked the street, the sound of traffic from the larger arteries faded now at four in the morning. The moon had already made its nightly arc across the charcoal sky, and the city was as still as it got. Rap music thumped dully from an open window of the apartment building on the corner, faint evidence of a party winding down, the celebration muted to avoid a visit from the police.

  A dark brown furry form slunk along the gutter, hoping for a tidbit as it made its nightly loop around the neighborhood, lord of its domain as long as it avoided tires and the occasional loose pet. It paused by an overflowing garbage can, weighing the benefits of leaping up and gnawing the dark green trash bag open, until it stiffened, startled by a scrape from down the block.

  A lone figure hugged the shadows as it made its way down the sidewalk, rubber-soled running shoes padding softly against the hard concrete. The figure stopped near a large oak tree, one of the few concessions to nature left on the street, and surveyed the area to ensure that nobody was watching. Satisfied, it moved along the seemingly endless string of cars until arriving at its objective. With a fluid motion the stealthy shape shrugged off its black backpack and disappeared from the rodent’s view.

  Ten minutes later the running shoes traversed the remainder of the block, continuing on until rounding the corner and disappearing into the gloom, the errand completed.

  Chapter 30

  Jackhammer pounding from Black’s front door reverberated inside the cramped apartment. He sat up and his head swam. Nausea overwhelmed him, and he had to choke back the sour bile that threatened to seep out of his nose as he fought for breath. A tight band of agony had been fastened around his head, a medieval torture device fit for the Inquisition, and it was all he could do to keep from vomiting from the pain.

  “Black. Yo, man, what up, homeboy? You in there? I ain’t got all
day. Some of us got to work for a living, you know?”

  Cesar’s voice sliced through the walls and into Black’s brain like a lance of white-hot agony, and it all came back to him as he forced his eyes open. He was lying face down on his bed, his shirt bunched up around his chest, his slacks now wrinkled beyond salvation.

  The Cadillac. Being responsible. Taking care of business.

  Black sat up and swallowed the metallic taste of partially metabolized whiskey and cigarettes. He vaguely recalled the series of bad decisions that had led up to him passing out, but the knocking from his front door interrupted his quiet introspection.

  “Crap. Just a second, Cesar. I’m in the can.”

  “Okay, homeboy, no problem. Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, an’ all,” Cesar answered, a man of boundless discretion.

  Two minutes later Black’s crusted red eyes peered through a crack in the door as he winced away the worst of the harsh morning light. The Earth must have moved nearer the sun while he’d been sleeping because the glare was blinding. Black avoided looking directly at Cesar’s goateed face, two tears tattooed below his left eye, and handed him the Eldorado key on a ring with his The Club key. Cesar appraised him and nodded knowingly after taking in his matted hair, dusting of beard, and face lined and creased from the folds of the blanket.

  “Sorry, man. I…I got the flu,” Black said, his voice sounding phlegmy and gravelly, cracking on the final word.

  “Yeah. We all been there, man. Lot a that going around, you know?”

  “So I hear.”

  “Awright. I’ll take the boat into the shop and letchou know what the damage is later on today, okay, vato?”

  “Sure thing. Just call whenever. You know the number.”

  “Yeah, uh huh. And you got money, right? We straight on that?” Cesar asked.

  “Sure. Of course. I’m flush this week.”

  “Cool. Okay, then. We good.”

  Black shut the door and turned to face his living room, then leaned against the door and slid until he was sitting on the floor. What the hell had he been thinking? Good God almighty. What was it? Tuesday? It wasn’t his birthday or Christmas, so why had he gone out on a bender like that and gotten obliterated?