by L. A. Morse
“This is my car.”
“So what?”
“So get off it.”
“I don’t think so, man. It’s pretty comfortable.” He slammed the fender with his hand.
Christ, I thought, doesn’t it ever end?
“Suit yourself,” I said. I got in and started the engine.
He was laughing it up and mugging for the benefit of the girls. Quite a comedian.
I waited until I saw a break in the traffic. I turned the wheels hard and floored it. He sat on the front of the ear until centrifugal force took over. He went flying off, landing on a parked car.
I didn’t bother to look back as I drove down the street. All I wanted was to get off the Strip, get home, and have a scalding hot shower and a big glass of gin.
Things were starting to sort themselves out.
And I had been right.
It had been a pretty good evening.
In my apartment, I turned on my answering machine to see if there were any messages.
There was one from a happy-sounding Clarissa Acker: “Hey, Hunter. I’ve been thinking about your ass.”
Shit.
I had been thinking about hers.
SIX
I woke up early to the sounds of summer in Los Angeles. Through the cardboard walls of my apartment I heard some clown on the television screaming about how you should be shot for using the wrong laundry detergent. From the apartment on the other side, some woman was screaming at her husband that she would shoot him if he ever came home drunk again. A radio somewhere was screaming about a series of unsolved shootings in the San Fernando Valley. Down in the back alley kids were firing cap pistols at one another and yelling insanely.
It was only seven o’clock and already it felt like it was more than 80 degrees. It was going to be another bitch of a day.
I had a dull ache at the base of my skull and in my right shoulder from when Domingo’s messenger threw me against the wall, but other than that I felt okay. A lot better than those punks from last night were feeling, I knew that. Just thinking about it made some of my soreness disappear.
I got up and stood under a cold shower until I was fully awake. I thought about getting dressed but decided to put it off as long as possible because of the heat. Wrapping a towel around my waist I made breakfast.
Four eggs scrambled with a handful of burning-hot jalapeno chiles, toast, and a couple of cups of double-strength black coffee, and I felt my system begin to function again.
I washed up the dishes and settled down to read the paper with another cup of coffee. I usually don’t pay much attention to the news since it hardly ever seems new. I mean, anyone with any sense at all knows exactly what’s going to be in the paper. The names change from time to time, but the stories stay the same. Anyone who is surprised at “surprising developments” is either a congenital idiot or has been living in a soap-opera fantasy world. The news that morning was the usual mix of violence in the streets, corruption in high places, and incompetence everywhere, along with what passes for human interest in L.A.—a woman raped by a love-starved Great Dane, a deranged millionaire who wanted to be buried at Disneyland, some joker who was crushed to death by the giant ball of aluminum foil he had collected for thirty-years—the usual stuff. I was glad to put the paper aside when the knock on the door told me Charlie Watkins had arrived.
Charlie never looked that good, always kind of harassed and jumpy, like he expected to be hit from behind at any moment. He’d been like this ever since his wife ran off with some hippie in a camper. Even though it happened a few years back, Charlie still acted as though it was yesterday, and every time he saw me, he told me about it, like it was a new development.
It had been a while since I had seen him, and he was looking even a little worse than usual. He had dark, puffy circles under his eyes. His synthetic seersucker suit hung limply on his body, dried sweat stains showing on the back and under the arms. It might just have been the heat, but, looking at Charlie, I got a feeling of incipient disaster. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t think it would be healthy to be around him for any length of time. It was starting to affect me after he’d been in my apartment for only a minute, and I was glad I was not his partner. Knowing what to expect, I nonetheless asked him how things were going.
“Not so good, Sam. Not so good. You know my wife left me. Ran off with some goddamn hippie. And in a camper! Jesus, I just don’t understand it. She didn’t even like to go into the backyard. Jesus.” He shook his head in a bewildered way and put a couple of large, chalky-looking tablets in his mouth and chewed them with a small, rapid motion like a rabbit nibbling a lettuce leaf. Whatever he was eating seemed to foam up a little at the corners of his mouth, and his lower lip was flecked with stray bits of tablet. He made a sour expression and gingerly rubbed his stomach, leaving dirty smudges where his fingers had touched his white wash-and- wear shirt. He saw the dirt smears and shrugged his shoulders in a resigned, helpless sort of way.
Poor Charlie. We’d been pretty good friends in Viet Nam, and it bothered me to see that he was such a mess, but there was nothing I could do to help him. If he was going to pull himself together, he’d have to do it himself. To change the subject, I asked how things were with the Narco boys.
He made a face. “Jesus, Sam, we’re just going crazy. There’s all kinds of shit on the streets—real good quality stuff—and we just can’t get a line on it. And it’s been like this for some time. Usually, you hear some talk—something—but we’ve got zero. So, of course, the word comes down from on high, they want some action. They sit in their air-conditioned offices, and maybe go home early for some cool drinks, but the statistics aren’t so good, and they want some action, so we bust our butts for twelve-fourteen hours a day in 120-degree weather, and come up empty. It’s really getting us down.”
Charlie did take his work seriously, I’ll say that for him. He wasn’t very good at it, but he sure tried. And he was a hundred percent straight, which is something for a Narco cop. Some people said he was too dumb to be otherwise, but Charlie was just a decent guy doing a job he wasn’t cut out for.
“And as if all that wasn’t enough,” Charlie continued with a shake of his head, “they’re really coming down on me, giving me a lot of gas. I’ll admit it, I’ve screwed up a few times recently, and they’re telling me to get my act together. I’ve got to come up with something good pretty soon or it’s bye-bye. But thanks to you, old buddy, I may have found just the thing.”
“What did I do?”
“Well, you know you asked me to look into the Black Knight Club?”
I nodded. Of course I knew. Get on with it, Charlie.
“Well, I saw a couple of interesting names there. Names connected with some people we’ve had our eye on for a while. Nothing very solid, but something to consider.”
“What names?”
“Now, Sam, you’re a good friend, but I can’t tell you that right now. I want to check it out before I talk about it. I think I’ll even take a few days off, you know, do some work on my own time. If this turns out to be anything, it could be just what I needed to get back in good graces with the higher-ups.”
He looked more enthusiastic than I’d seen him for some time, so I decided not to press him on that. Instead, 1 asked if he’d gotten anything for me.
“I got you a couple of things, but there was hardly anything in the file—just a few notes and that. I brought you something, but, Jesus, Sam, don’t tell anybody because I’ll really be in the shit for doing this. Anyway, they had two copies, so I hope they won’t miss one.”
He passed across a single sheet of expensive paper, folded in half like a card, with elegant printing on the inside face. It was a prospectus for the Black Knight Club:
“The Black Knight Club is an exclusive club providing facilities for sophisticated gentlemen with particular and discriminating tastes.
“In an atmosphere of the utmost discretion, the member will find attention to detail and exactin
g service that will cater to his every whim and fancy.
“There are nightly shows featuring international entertainers in performances that are exciting, stimulating, and that display talents and abilities of considerable virtuosity and uniqueness.
“For the tired executive wishing to relax after a hard day, there are private facilities carefully appointed in a variety of styles—classic, contemporary, and exotic—in which the member will be able to make his dreams become reality.
“Additionally there is a full range of recreational services and equipment, and even the most particular member will find the precise diversion for which he is searching.
“Granted the fees are considerable, but membership is carefully limited to ensure complete exclusivity. When it is considered that the club provides all the pleasure that money can buy, the fees cannot be thought to be excessive.”
I had to laugh. It sounded like some health spa, but it wasn’t hard to imagine what went on there. They might just as well flash WHOREHOUSE in red neon letters. Still, everything was vague enough to keep them out of trouble if the wrong person saw the notice. And it seemed to be working. Very few people knew about the place.
“That’s a help, Charlie. It confirms some things that I’ve heard. What else do you have?”
“Just this.” He handed me a scrap of paper. On it was written the name Nicky Faro, and an address in the Hollywood Hills.
“Who’s this?”
“It was a name in the file. The series of numbers that followed it looked like payoffs. I’d say that was the snitch inside the club.”
“Now this might be useful,” I said, grinning in a way that seemed to make Charlie uncomfortable.
“Jesus, Sam, take it easy with that, will you? If it ever gets out I gave that to you, there’s going to be a lot of trouble. If that Faro guy’s cover is blown, we’re all in for it.”
“I’ll be careful,” I said, though we both knew I wouldn’t necessarily be.
“Jesus, that is one hell of a big favor I just did for you, old buddy.” He still couldn’t fully believe that he’d done it, and he popped another tablet in his mouth.
“I know, Charlie. Thanks,” I said, and I meant it.
“I’ll do you another favor,” he said when the tablet had stopped foaming. “I’ll give you some good advice. Be careful with that club. It looks like a very heavy operation, and you might upset some mean people.” I looked questioningly at him and he continued. “Almost as soon as I got done looking at the file, this Vice guy, Ratchitt, comes to see me. You know who he is?”
“I’ve heard of him. He’s dirty.”
Charlie looked nervously around. “Jesus, old buddy, you said it, not me, but you may be right. He’s got a big house and a yacht and fancy clothes and nice cars, and he’s always bragging about them. Burroughs, my partner, hates his guts. Won’t even stay in the same room with the guy.... Well, anyway, he comes down to see me. Says he heard I was asking about the Black Knight—he seems to hear everything, that guy. He wants to know why. I gave him a song and dance about checking an alibi, and so on, and he seemed to buy it. But then he said to make sure I stayed far away from that place—that there was a long-standing investigation going on, and that he didn’t want anybody poking around and fucking it up. Can you believe it? A long-standing investigation? With about three pieces of paper in the file?”
“The rest is probably in a safe deposit box somewhere, drawing big dividends.”
“Jesus, Sam. I don’t even want to think about it. I just thought you should know, though, that this is Ratchitt’s territory, and that’s one mean son of a bitch. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.”
“I’ll keep it in mind, Charlie.”
“Yeah,” he laughed sadly. “Sure you will. I know you, Sam.... What’s this all about?”
I said I really didn’t know, and then I told him about what had happened the day before. I asked him if he knew about any Domingo. He thought for a minute.
“No, no help.... Say, wasn’t there a private eye on television a long time ago—when we would have been kids—that was called Domingo or Dominic or something like that? You remember that? I thought he was really cool.”
“If you say so.” Big help, Charlie. Shit. No wonder the city was being buried in dope.
“Maybe it was somebody else.... Anyway, I think I know who the guy is who threw you around.”
“Yeah?” That would be a big help.
“Yeah. It’s got to be an ex-wrestler who was called something like Mountain Cyclone, I think it was. Don’t know his real name. But that was a long time ago. I think he killed somebody in the ring. If I remember the story right, the guy was incredibly strong, but really dumb. He couldn’t absorb the fact that it was all phony—that he had to follow a script. One day he was supposed to throw somebody out of the ring. Instead of putting the guy over the ropes and letting him drop on his feet, Mountain heaved him into the tenth row. The guy’s spine was broken in about four places and he died. Needless to say, Mountain didn’t wrestle any more, and I don’t know what happened to him, but it sounds like your guy. Any help?”
“It’s someplace to start.”
“Glad to help, old buddy. But just take it easy. These are some nice acquaintances you’ve got, real nice. Jesus. Well, I’ve got to go now. I got some things of my own to check out.”
“You sure you should do that on your own? Shouldn’t you bring your partner into it?”
“I can look after myself, old buddy.”
Sure, Charlie. Fuck it, I had my own problems, and I didn’t know why I should be concerned about him. I had only saved his life, I didn’t own it.
Anyway, I thanked him for his help, and he got up. He seemed a little bit more determined than when he came in. I watched as he purposefully crossed the room, opened the bathroom door, and went in. A second later he came out, an embarrassed look on his face, went to the right door, and exited. I shook my head. Some detective—he can’t even find the front door. Watch out, you dope pushers, Popeye Watkins is in town.
I still had plenty of time before I went to see Maycroft, so I decided to take another shower. It wasn’t just the steadily rising temperature. Watkins had left me feeling vaguely depressed, and I wanted to wash his visit away.
I got in the shower and adjusted the head to the hardest spray. I let it run as hot as it would go, and after a couple of minutes the bathroom was completely steamed up. I turned off the hot and ran the straight cold. After I alternated hot and cold several more times, the last remaining kinks in my back had just about disappeared.
I wasn’t singing arias or anything like that, but I still didn’t hear my apartment door open. I didn’t know anyone had come in until the bathroom door opened. I must really have been slipping to let something like that happen. Either that, or some of the incipient disaster that Charlie Watkins carried around had rubbed off.
I stuck my head around the shower curtain and saw that it could have been a lot worse. It could have been The Mountain That Walks Like A Man, or a number of other unwanted visitors. Instead, it was only the daughter of the woman who manages the apartment building. Her name was Candi or Cindi or Bambi or one of those goddamn dumb names that were dropped on kids by parents who were terminally warped by the Mickey Mouse Club.
She was sixteen and pretty delectable if you like them that young. I had no particular prejudices either way, though I usually preferred them a bit older. I had boffed her mother a couple of times. Not bad, but she tried a little too hard to look like her daughter’s sister. She came close, but not close enough. The girl knew that I had made it with her mother, and she in turn had been trying to make me for some time now. Nice healthy mother-daughter competition. For no particular reason I had successfully resisted the girl’s advances, and, as is nearly always the case, this only made her try harder.
So there she was in my bathroom wearing a bikini that can only be described as minimal—three very small triangles of cloth, strategically place
d, and held there by thin bits of string. It was the kind of bathing suit that, except for L.A., the Riveria, and Copacabana Beach, was only seen in magazines. She was tall and pleasantly thin with nice firm flesh. Her breasts were small, but well shaped and perfectly suited to her body. Her nipples were erect and visible through the thin fabric of the top. Her belly was beautifully rounded, and she arched her back to thrust it forward in the provocative stance that many adolescent girls display. She was blonde and pretty in a slutty sort of way that exactly suited her name, Suzi or Sherri or whatever it was. I figured she must have had boys howling around her like tomcats.
“Hi, Sam,” she said, grinning, displaying teeth that were a tribute to an orthodontist’s skill.
“Don’t you know it’s not polite to come into a man’s bathroom without being invited.”
She shook her long hair. “I didn’t know that. See, I told you there’s all kinds of things you can teach me.” She let the tip of her tongue run over her lips like she had seen some starlet do in the movies.
“I don’t suppose your mother knows you’re up here?”
“She’s away all day.”
“Do you think she’d approve?”
“Who cares? I’m old enough to do what I want—whatever I want.” She said the last phrase in a way that left no doubt about the meaning of “whatever.” “Why? Do you think she’d be jealous?”
We both knew her mother would be, and while I didn’t give a shit one way or the other, I wasn’t going to give the little bitch the satisfaction of saying so.
“Well? What do you want?” I said, although I knew the answer well enough.
“I was lonely. I wanted company, so I—”
“So you hung around outside, and when you heard the shower running, you came in, thinking I’d be at a disadvantage and I couldn’t throw you out.”
At least she could still blush, which she did, and which served to make her prettier. But then to cover her embarrassment, she started to pout, and that didn’t help her any.