by Robert Crais
The group of smiling people gathered around Bradley and congratulated him and said it was long deserved and didn’t Sheila look lovely and wasn’t Mimi getting pretty. Somebody took a photo. Sheila gave everyone an arc-light smile and draped herself on her husband’s arm and looked adoring and proud and was everything he could have wanted her to be. She didn’t look like she hated it or hated him or hated the goddamned building. Nancy Reagan would’ve been proud.
A square-faced guy in gray slacks and a blue blazer and a gold and yellow rep tie moved up to Jillian’s elbow, said something, then the two of them moved over to me. He put out his hand. “Jack Ellis. You Cole?”
“Yeah. Where’d you do your time?” Ellis wore ex-cop like a bad coat.
“You can tell, huh?”
“Sure.”
“Detroit.”
“Rough beat.”
Ellis nodded, pleased. “Murder City, brother. Murder City.” Murder City. These cops.
We moved into the lobby and up an escalator to the mezzanine floor. The lower three floors were boutiques and travel agencies and bookstores and art galleries surrounding a lobby interior big enough to park the Goodyear blimp. There was a sign at the top of the escalator that read PACIFIC MEN’S CLUB LUNCHEON with ANGELES ROOM beneath it and an arrow pointing down a short corridor. People who looked like guests milled around and two overweight guys dressed like Ellis stood off to the side, looking like security. Ellis said, “I’ve got eight people in for this. Two up here on the mezzanine, two more in the Angeles Room, two in the lobby, and two in the kitchen entrance behind the podium.”
Bradley and his knot of admirers continued along the corridor, passing the Angeles Room. I thought about saying something, but after all, it was their hotel. They should know where we were going.
I said, “There any other halls or entrances off the Angeles Room besides the kitchen entrance?”
“The Blue Corridor. I got no people there because that’s where we’ll be. We wait in there and when they’re ready for the show to start we can get into the Angeles Room from a side door.”
I nodded and looked at Jillian Becker. “What’s on the program?”
“It shouldn’t take more than an hour and a half. First, lunch is served, then the president of the association makes a few introductory remarks, and then Bradley speaks for about fifteen minutes and we go home.”
We went through an unmarked door and along a sterile tile corridor and through another unmarked door and then we were in the Blue Corridor and then the Blue Room. Both the corridor and the room were blue. Four successful-looking Asian-American men were there, along with a tall black man and an older white guy with glasses and the mayor of Los Angeles. Everybody smiled and kissed Sheila’s cheek and shook Bradley’s hand. There was back-slapping and more photographs and everybody ignored Mimi. She stood to the side with her head down as if she were looking for lint on her dress.
I leaned close to her and whispered, “How you doin’?”
She looked up at me the way you look at someone when they’ve said something that surprises you. I patted her shoulder and said softly, “Stay close, kid. I’ll take care of you.”
She gave me the serious goldfish face, then went back to staring at her dress.
“Hey, Mimi.”
She looked at me again.
“I think the dress looks great.”
Her mouth tightened and bent. A smile.
Jillian Becker came up behind me and tapped at her wrist. “Ten minutes.”
“Maybe we should synchronize watches.”
She frowned.
“I’m going to take a look outside. I’ll be back in five.” I told Ellis to stay with Bradley and told both Mimi and Sheila to stay put. Mimi made the crooked mouth again. Sheila told me she was horny, and asked wouldn’t I like to do something about it. Nothing like cooperation.
I went along the Blue Corridor and out into what a little sign said was the Angeles Room and thought, nope, maybe the sign was wrong. Maybe this was really the UN. Maybe a king was about to be crowned. Maybe aliens had landed and this was where they were going to make their address. Then I saw Joe Pike. It was the Angeles Room, all right.
Eighty tables, eight people per table. Video cams set up on a little platform at the rear of a place that might be called a grand ballroom if you thought small. Press people. A dais with seating for twenty-four. Pacific Men’s Club Man of the Month. Who would’ve thought it. About sixty percent of the faces were Asian. The rest were black and white and brown and nobody looked too concerned about making the next Mercedes payment. I recognized five city council members and a red-haired television newswoman I’d had a crush on for about three years and the Tashiros. Maybe the Pacific Men’s Club was the hot ticket in town. Maybe Steven Spielberg had tried to get in and been turned away. Maybe I could get the newswoman’s phone number.
Pike drifted up to me. “This sucks.”
That Joe.
“I could off anybody in this place five times over.”
“Could you off someone and get away with you here?”
Head shake. “I’m too good even for me.”
I said, “It starts in ten minutes. Door I came from is off the Blue Corridor. They’re in a room down the corridor. We come out that room, along the corridor, through the door, and up to the dais.” I told him where Ellis had put his men. “You take the right side of the dais. I’ll come out with them and take the left.”
Pike nodded and drifted away, head slowly swiveling as he scanned the crowd from behind the sunglasses.
I went back to the Blue Room. Bradley Warren was seated on a nice leather couch, smiling with four or five new arrivals, probably people who would sit on the dais. The little room was getting crowded and smoky and I didn’t like it. Jack Ellis looked nervous. Bradley laughed at something somebody said, then got up and went to a little table where someone had put out white wine and San Pellegrino water. I edged up to him and said, “Do you know all these people?”
“Of course.”
“Any way to clear them out?”
“Don’t be absurd, Cole. Does everything look all right?”
“You’re asking my opinion, I say blow this off and go home.”
“Don’t be absurd.” I guess he liked the sound of it.
“All right.”
“You’re being paid to protect us. Do that.”
If he kept it up, he was going to have to pay someone to protect him from me.
More people squeezed into the little room. Jack Ellis went out and then came back. There were maybe twenty-five people in the room now, more coming in and some going out, and then Jillian Becker went over to Bradley and said, “It’s time,” loud enough for me to hear. I looked around, figuring to get Sheila and Mimi and Bradley into a group. Sheila was nodding at a very heavy white guy who smiled a great deal. I said, “Where’s Mimi?”
Sheila looked confused. “Mimi?”
I went out into the hall. There were more people coming along the corridor and others going into the Angeles Room but there was no Mimi. Jack Ellis came out and then Jillian Becker. Ellis said, “She asked one of the busboys for the bathroom.”
“Where is it?”
“Just around the corner to the left. I got a man down there.” We were trotting as he said it, picking up speed, Ellis breathing hard after twenty feet. We went around one corner then around another and into a dirty white hall with an exit sign at the far end. There was a men’s room door and a women’s room door halfway down its length. Jack Ellis’s man was lying facedown in front of the women’s room door with one leg crossed over the other and his right hand behind his back. Ellis said, “Christ, Davis,” and puffed forward. Davis groaned and rolled over as he said it.
I pulled my gun and pushed first into the women’s room and then into the men’s. Empty. I ran down to the exit door and kicked through it and ran down two flights of stairs and through another door into the hotel’s laundry. There were huge commercial washers a
nd steam-circulating systems and dryers that could handle a hundred sheets at a crack. But there was no Mimi.
In Vietnam I had learned that the worst parts of life and death are not where you look for them. Like the sniper’s bullet that takes off a buddy’s head as you stand side by side at a latrine griping about foot sores, the worst parts hover softly in the shadows and happen when you are not looking. The worst of life stays hidden until death.
On a heavy gray security door that led onto a service drive beneath the hotel, someone had written WE WARNED YOU in red spray paint. Beneath it they had drawn a rising sun.
13
When the first wave of cops and FBI got there, they sealed off the Blue Corridor and herded all the principals into the Blue Room and sealed that off, too. An FBI agent named Reese put the arm on me and Ellis and brought us outside and walked us past the restrooms and down the stairs. Reese was about fifty, with very long arms and pool player’s hands. He was about the color of fine French roast coffee, and he looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in twenty years.
He said, “How long this guy Davis been working for you, Ellis?”
“Two years. He’s an ex-cop. All my guys are ex-cops. So am I.” He said it nervous.
Reese nodded. “Davis says he’s standing down the hall back up by the bathrooms grabbing a smoke when the girl comes by, goes into the women’s room. Says the next thing he knows this gook dude is coming out the women’s room and gives him one on the head and that’s it.” Reese squinted at us. Maybe doing his impression of a gook dude. “That sound good to you?”
Jack Ellis chewed the inside of his mouth and said, “Uh-huh.”
In the laundry there were cops and feds taking pictures of the paint job and talking to Chicano guys in green coveralls with NEW NIPPON HOTEL on the back. Reese ignored them. “Didn’t anybody tell the girl not to go off alone?” He squatted down to look at something on the floor as he said it. Maybe a clue.
Ellis looked at me. I said, “She was told.”
Reese got up, maybe saw another clue, squatted again in a different place. “But she went anyway. And when she went, nobody went with her.”
I said, “That’s it.”
He stood up again and looked at us. “Little girl gotta go potty. That’s no big deal. Happens every day. Nothing to worry about, right?” A little smile hit at the corner of his mouth and went away. “Only when you got serious criminals out there, and they’re saying things, maybe going potty, maybe that’s something to think about. Maybe calling the police when the threats are made, maybe that’s something to think about, too.” He looked from Ellis to me and back to Ellis. “Maybe the cops are here, maybe the little girl does her diddle and comes back and this never happens.”
Ellis didn’t say anything.
Reese looked at me. “I talked to a dick named Poitras about you. He said you know the moves. What happened, this one get outta hand?”
Ellis said, “Look, Mr. Warren signs the checks, right? He says jump, I say which side of my ass you want me to land on?”
Reese’s eyes went back to Ellis and flagged to half-mast. I think it was his disdainful look. “How long were you a cop?”
Ellis chewed harder at his mouth.
I said, “You gonna bust our ass about this all day or we gonna try to get something done?”
Reese put the look on me.
I said, “We shoulda brought you guys in. We wanted to bring you guys in. But Ellis is right. It’s Warren’s ticket and he said no. That’s half-assed, but there it is. So this is what we’re left with. We can stand here and you can work out on us or we can move past it.”
Reese’s eyes went to half-mast again, then he turned to look at the door with the paint. He sucked at a tooth while he looked. “Poitras said you got Joe Pike for a partner. That true?”
“Yeah.”
Reese shook his head. “Ain’t that some shit.” He finished sucking on the tooth and turned back to me. “Tell me what you got, from the beginning.”
I gave it to him from the beginning. I had told it so many times to so many cops I thought about making mimeographed copies and handing them out. When I told the part about Nobu Ishida, Jack Ellis said, “Holy shit.”
We went back up the stairs to the Blue Room. There were cops talking to Bradley Warren and Sheila Warren and the hotel manager and the people who organized the Pacific Men’s Club luncheon. Reese stopped in the door and said, “Which one’s Pike?”
Pike was standing in a corner, out of the way. “Him.”
Reese nodded and sucked the tooth again. “Do tell,” he said softly.
“You want to meet him?”
Reese gave me flat eyes, then went over and stood by two dicks who were talking to Bradley Warren. Sheila was sitting on the couch, leaning forward into the detective who was interviewing her, touching his thigh every once in a while for emphasis. Jillian Becker stood by the bar. Her eyes were puffy and her mascara had run.
When Bradley saw me, he glared, and said, “What happened to my daughter?” His face was flushed.
Jillian said, “Brad.”
He snapped his eyes to her. “I asked him an appropriate question. Should I have you research his answer?”
Jillian went very red.
I said, “They knew you were going to be here. They had someone come up through the laundry. Maybe he waited in the restroom or maybe he walked around and was in here with us. We won’t know that until we find him.”
“I don’t like these ‘maybes.’ Maybe is a weak word.”
Reese said, “Maybe somebody shoulda brought the cops in.”
Bradley ignored him. “I paid for security and I got nothing.” He stabbed a finger at Jack Ellis. “You’re fired.”
Ellis really worked at the inside of his mouth. Bradley Warren looked at me. “And you? What did you do?” He looked at Jillian Becker again. “The one you insisted I hire. What did you say about him?”
I said, “Be careful, Bradley.”
Warren pointed at me. “You’re fired, too.” He looked at Pike. “You, too. Get out. Get out. All of you.”
Everyone in the small tight room was staring at us. Even the cops had stopped doing cop things. Jack Ellis swallowed hard, started to say something, but finally just nodded and walked out. I looked at Sheila Warren. There was something bright and anxious in her eyes. Her hand was on the arm of the big cop, frozen there. Jillian Becker stared at the floor.
Reese said, “Take it easy, Mr. Warren. I got a few questions.”
Bradley Warren sucked in some air, let it out, then glanced at his watch. “I hope it won’t take too long,” he said. “Maybe they can still make the presentation.”
Joe Pike said, “Fuck you.”
We left.
14
Pike took me back to the Warren house, dropped me off, and drove away without saying anything. I got into the Corvette, went down Beverly Glen into Westwood, and stopped at a little Vietnamese place I know. Ten tables, most of them doubles, cleanly done in pale pinks and pastel blues and run by a Vietnamese man and his wife and their two daughters. The daughters are in their twenties and quite pretty. At the back of the restaurant, where they have the cash register, there’s a little color snapshot of the man wearing a South Vietnamese Regular Army uniform. Major. He looked a lot younger then. I spent eleven months in Vietnam, but I’ve never told the man. I often eat in his restaurant.
The man smiled when he saw me. “The usual?”
I gave him one of my best smiles. “Sure. To go.”
I sat at the little table for two they have in the window of the place and waited and watched the people moving past along Westwood Boulevard and felt hollow. There were college kids and general-issue pedestrians and two cops walking a beat, one of them smiling at a girl in a gauzy cotton halter and white and black tiger-striped aerobic tights. The tights started just above her navel and stopped just below her knees. Her calves were tanned. I wondered if the cop would be smiling as much if h
e had just gotten fired from a job because a kid he had been hired to protect had gotten snatched anyway. Probably not. I wondered if the girl in the white and black tights would smile back quite so brightly. Probably not.
The oldest daughter brought my food from the kitchen while her father rang up the bill. She put the bag on the table and said, “Squid with garlic and pepper, and a double order of vegetable rice.” I wondered if she could see it on my forehead: Elvis Cole, Failed Protector. She gave me a warm smile and said, “I put a container of chili sauce in the bag, like always.” Nope. Probably couldn’t see it.
I went down to Santa Monica and east to my office. At any number of traffic lights and intersections I waited for people to look my way and point and say nasty things, but no one did. Word was still under wraps.
I put the Corvette in its spot in the parking garage and rode up in the elevator and went into my office and closed the door. There was a message on my answering machine from someone looking for Bob, but that was probably a wrong number. Or maybe it wasn’t a wrong number. Maybe I was in the wrong office. Maybe I was in the wrong life.
I put the food on my desk and took off my jacket and put it on a wooden coat hanger and hung it on the back of the door. I took the Dan Wesson out of its holster and put it in my top right drawer, then slipped out of the rig and tossed it onto one of the director’s chairs across from my desk, then went over to the little refrigerator and got out a bottle of Negra Modelo beer and opened it and went back to my desk and sat and listened to the quiet. It was peaceful in the office. I liked that. No worries. No sense of loss or unfulfilled obligations. No guilt. I thought about a song a little friend of mine sings: I’m a big brown mouse, I go marching through the house, and I’m not afraid of anything! I sang it softly to myself and sipped the Modelo. Modelo is ideal for soothing that hollow feeling. I think that’s why they make it.