Point Doom

by Fante, Dan

  “Hey, try some different questions.”

  “We were going over the inventory from your friend’s apartment again. One of our victim’s socks is missing. A dirty sock. How about that? Do you know anything about that?”

  “That’s the same kind of question, Detective. The answer is that I have my own dirty socks. I don’t need anyone else’s.”

  “Screw you, Fiorella.”

  “Is that all?”

  “No it isn’t,” Archer hissed. “Here’s something different. Something else came up—something else you left out.”

  “What would that be?”

  “You are a former private investigator, apparently. You never mentioned that occupation.”

  “So what? You never asked. That was a long time ago. L.A. is a different planet.”

  “Let’s talk straight here. Let’s cut it right to the bone. That be okay with you?”

  “You mean, as opposed to you working me like some kinda street rockhead slammed up against a black-and-white? I’m listening.”

  “There’s something more than a little off about you—something kinky. I can smell it. I think you sort of fell into this thing and . . . ”

  “And what?”

  “After Taboo found out that you did your detective work in New York, he ran a known-acquaintances search. That stuff set off quite a few bells. Bottom line, we all need to sit down again. Now. Today.”

  “Will I need an attorney, Archer? Because that’s the direction we’re heading in here. I’ll make the call after we hang up.”

  “You know people—people in New York. You have, or used to have, interesting friends.”

  “I’m a car salesman, Archer. Period. My friend is dead. Period. You, Detective, are talking out your ass.”

  “Were a car salesman. As of today.”

  “Fuck you, Archer!” I said, then clicked the Off button on my cell.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, now carless, I took the northbound bus across Centinela Avenue to Wilshire Boulevard, then transferred to the westbound Santa Monica bus. Both rides took over an hour.

  I got off at Lincoln Boulevard and walked east to Woody’s apartment building.

  When I got to the corner I looked down the block and saw that a line of yellow cop tape was stretched around the entrance to his apartment house and there was still a patrol car parked in front.

  Woody had lived in an older building and it didn’t surprise me to find out there wasn’t a garage at all. I just hadn’t noticed. I needed to find his car. Apparently, my friend had been a street parker, a rough task in Santa Monica without a fake Handicapped sticker. In exchange for the lower apartment rent and no garage, street parking residents have the privilege of spending up to two hours a day looking for a legal spot in their neighborhood.

  I began circling the block on foot from the opposite direction, searching for a red four-door Honda, hoping the blues hadn’t yet gotten around to IDing the car and picking it up.

  No soap.

  So I widened my search until I located Woody’s car, with a parking ticket on the windshield, tucked into a spot on Eleventh Street, two blocks north of Arizona. My luck was holding.

  No pedestrians were nearby, so, after pulling the ticket off the windshield, I stuck my friend’s car key into the door.

  I fired up the motor, then made a U-turn in the direction of Ocean Avenue, putting as much distance between me and Woody’s building as possible. Five minutes later, on Ocean Avenue, near the jogging path on the cliffs above the Pacific, I found a spot and pulled in.

  My friend kept his car, like his apartment, very neat—there was nothing on the seats or the floor, no trash, no papers. Even the plastic black floor mats were scrubbed clean.

  In the glove compartment were a few soft-rock CDs and a porn DVD. No Cole Porter.

  I put the stuff back in the glove compartment, then began running my hand in the crack between the backrest and seat cushion of the passenger seat. I came up with two round, light-orange pills. They looked familiar. I remembered seeing something like them before, after the incident with my ex’s boyfriend. The pills had been prescribed for me but I never took them.

  My friend Woody did not take any meds—nothing stronger than Tylenol and antacids—so I stuffed the two tablets into my pants pocket.

  The trunk of the car was like the rest of the stuff in Woody’s life before he died: clean and neat. In it was a gym bag containing workout clothes and a razor, aftershave, and deodorant. That was it.

  HEADING SOUTH ON Lincoln Boulevard I drove toward the impound lot on Glencoe Avenue in Marina del Rey, the neighborhood where I’d been a few hours earlier with Vikki. Bruffy’s Towing was where my mom’s torched car had been towed.

  I parked Woody’s Honda down the block and walked back to the fenced-in impound entrance. It had been over ten days since my car fire and I was hoping like hell that Mom’s shitbox would still be in the tow yard. If it was, I would soon have what I needed.

  I showed ID to the guy at the booth, who was yakking on his cell phone, pinching the thing between his shoulder and his ear. He typed my name into his computer while he continued yakking. My last name was a match for the legal owner and the guy looked up and pointed. “Aisle three,” he said. “About halfway down.”

  I’d caught another lucky break.

  I made my way through the ocean of damaged and rotting metal until I found Mom’s burned-up Honda backed into a slot in the middle of a long row.

  There were surveillance cameras on both ends of the lane but by stooping down I was pretty sure I was out of camera view.

  Using a Phillips screwdriver I’d kept in the glove box, I took off the license plates, which hadn’t been damaged in the car fire.

  I tucked them inside my jacket, stood up, then walked back to the exit gate. So far, so good.

  IT WAS TIME to do some grunt detective work with the pills in my pocket, but first I’d deal with Woody’s car.

  I drove his Honda back to Short Avenue, parked, and waited, three buildings away from my apartment house. Twenty minutes later, when I was reasonably sure there was no one on the building—no unmarked cars on the street and no activity—I went inside my apartment.

  At the bottom of a half-empty cardboard box, in the closet that Archer had opened but had been a little too quick in searching, I found what I had hoped would still be there: a bogus New York City detective’s badge I hadn’t touched in five years. It was in the pocket of one of my wadded-up, out-of-date sports jackets.

  Needing a safe place to swap out the license plates, I drove the Honda to the intersection of Culver Boulevard and the Marina Freeway to an unmanned self-storage lot.

  Parking Woody’s car in one of the many vacant spaces that faced Ballona Creek at the side of the building, I switched the plates: my mom’s Honda for his. They were the same year. Barring a VIN number check, I had my own ride again. I was in business—at least until Archer and Afrika sorted out the details. That’d probably take a couple more days.

  My hands were shaking. It wasn’t my nerves or too much caffeine. It was something else. I needed a sugar fix. So I pulled a five from my pants and fed it into a soda-vending machine outside the storage units, got change in quarters, and bought myself two nice sugary Pepsis. My father had been a serious diabetic for many years before his death. I’d been told more than once that I was headed down that road. Without the booze, these days I often had an intense craving for sweets—whatever sugar I could get.

  As I was standing beside the vending machine’s alcove, drinking the first of my Pepsis, a man and a little girl came out of the storage building’s double doors, pushing a wide, four-wheel dolly loaded down with half a dozen large cardboard boxes. The girl was seven or eight years old and on the thin side. The man, who I took for her dad, was midthirties, unshaved, and dotted with tattoos. He had a red drinker’s face and was weari
ng a camouflage T-shirt and a blue Dodgers cap.

  Their tan, beat-up SUV was parked three spaces from Woody’s Honda. When they got to the car, pushing the dolly, I could hear the guy hissing at his kid under his breath: “Stupid! Stupid little bitch! Didn’t I tell you just to leave the goddamn teddy bears? What’s your fucking problem?! You’re still a baby—a moron. You’ll never grow up!”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Screw it!” he yelled. “Just stand there and don’t touch anything—you dumb twat!”

  After he’d loaded the boxes inside his SUV he threw his arms in the air and turned back to the kid. “Where’s the fucking microwave?”

  “You left it, Daddy. It’s back in the room.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me! That’s one of the things we came for. What the matter with you?”

  “I guess I forgot, Daddy.”

  “Shit! Okay okay, just stay here and watch the car. Do you think you can do that, stupid?”

  “Okay, Daddy.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  AFTER HE’D DISAPPEARED into the building I crossed the pavement to throw one of my Pepsi cans away in a large metal bin that was near the little girl. She was sitting on a metal bench against the side of the building, her hands in her lap. We were five feet apart.

  “Hi,” I said, popping a new Pepsi.

  “Hi.”

  “Was that your daddy who went inside?”

  “Yeah, that’s my dad.”

  “So—you must be moving. Is that why you’re here today?”

  “Uh-uh. We moved two weeks ago. Before school started. We’re picking up some stuff that didn’t fit in the truck.”

  I sat down near her on the bench. This kid was very cute and sweet. “Where did you guys move to? Close by?” I asked.

  “We moved to Playa del Rey, near the beach. They just painted our apartment. It’s blue. I love blue. My mom and dad are separated now and I’m going to a new school.”

  “Hey, that’s nice. Do you like the new school?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay. My teacher is Ms. Alvarez. She’s nice.”

  Then the little girl’s eyes drifted to something on my shirt and she smiled. “I like your cross,” she said. “I like jewelry. It’s really pretty.”

  I fingered the silver crucifix hanging from my neck. It had fallen outside my shirt. I’d owned the thing for twenty-five years and never took it off. It had been a high school graduation present from my mom. “Thanks,” I said. “It’s kind of my lucky charm.”

  “It’s really pretty.”

  I smiled at the kid. “Hey, do you have a lucky charm?” I said.

  “I have dolls on my bed at home but I don’t have a real necklace.”

  “Do you want to see it?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I worked the cross off over my head and collected it and the chain in the palm of my hand. “Open your hands,” I said. “Put them together and make them into a cup.”

  She extended both cupped hands and I dropped the cross and chain into them.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “Yeah, I think so too. You know,” I said, “you’re a smart girl and you’re really pretty too. You should have a lucky charm. My lucky charm has protected me for a long time. When is your next birthday?”

  “I’ll be nine in two months. Maybe I’ll get one like that when I’m nine or ten—when I’m older.”

  “That’s a long time to wait—two months. That’s a long time to go without a lucky charm. A charm is a thing you can count on to make you feel better when you’re sad—like when your daddy yells at you. You just hold it tight and then you feel better right away.”

  “My daddy gets upset. Mom says he gets upset too much.”

  “I know what we can do,” I said. “You can have mine. Would you like to do that?”

  “Sure. But it’s yours. You won’t have one if you give it to me.”

  “That’s okay,” I said, “I don’t need it anymore and I’ve been looking for someone to give it to. Someone who needs good luck. I want you to have it.”

  I took the chain and cross from her hands and slipped it over her head on to her neck. Her smile lit up the parking lot and could have stopped the traffic on Culver Boulevard.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thanks a lot. It’s really nice and beautiful too.”

  “So tell me your name,” I said.

  “Janie. I’m Janie. That’s me.”

  “Well Janie, that lucky charm is for you but you can’t tell anybody where you got it. Is that okay? I mean if somebody sees it and asks about it just say you found it here by this bench. Will you do that?”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “And any time you are sad or worried or unhappy, just hold it in your hand and remember everything will be okay. Will you do that?”

  “Okay. I’ll do that. What’s your name, mister?”

  “JD. My name is JD.”

  JANIE AND I sat on the bench and talked for a couple of more minutes and then her dad came through the double doors of the storage building, carrying the microwave oven. He saw us sitting together on the bench and made a face that reflected his mood. “Hi,” I said, “I was talking to your daughter. Your little girl. She’s a great kid.”

  The guy eyed me up and down, then set the microwave at his feet on the concrete. His hands were on his hips. “Yeah, so . . . who are you?”

  I tried to keep my expression even. “She’s a great little girl. We were talking—making friends.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s swell. So how ’bout minding your own fucking business, pal? How ’bout getting up from that bench and leaving my kid alone? I don’t like her talking to strangers. That okay with you?”

  “You know,” I said, “I heard you yelling at her before. You might try to go a little easy on her. She’s a sweet kid.”

  He glared at me, then took two steps closer. “So, okay, how ’bout this: Drink your pussy soda and get in your little red pussy car and leave me and my kid alone. Think you can handle that?”

  “You need to be nicer to your little girl. That’s my suggestion.”

  Now he was walking toward me. His face was red and he looked ready for trouble.

  I stood up. My intention was not to bust the guy up. I didn’t want to do that in front of his kid. So when he tried to push me, instead of delivering a blow that would break several facial bones and cause plenty of bleeding, I sidestepped the thrust, grabbed him by that arm, and used his momentum to trip him. When he was down, I slammed one knee into his crotch, then used them both to pin his shoulders. My hands were at pressure points at his throat.

  “Have you got a cell phone, friend?” I whispered.

  “What?” he croaked in pain.

  “Have you got a cell phone?”

  “Yeahhhh, I got a fucking cell phone.”

  “Pull it out.”

  I allowed him to reach down into his pants with a free hand and fish for the phone. He held it up.

  “Punch in 9-1-1,” I said, easing the pressure of my hand on his throat.

  “Wha for?”

  “You might need an ambulance, and if that happens your daughter Janie is going to need a ride home.”

  SIXTEEN

  My next stop was at a Rite-Aid Pharmacy on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. At the prescription counter I asked to see the pharmacist. The guy who came up to talk to me was a tall Latino wearing a white smock with a green nameplate on the front. It read “Roberto Galvan” in fancy calligraphy. He was young and hip and clearly gay, with two thick sterling silver ear piercings.

  There was no one else with him in the department other than the girl twenty feet away at the drop-off counter.

  I flipped open my New York City gold detective shield, then dropped the two pills from my pocket on
to the thick glass counter in front of me. “Roberto,” I said, “I need your help. I need some answers.”

  “Detectiff?” he lisped, rolling his eyes. “A New York City detectiff?”

  “Correct, I said. ”We’re involved in an ongoing investigation. The person of interest we’re looking for has been taking these pills. Someone from his school sold them to him. Can you tell me what they are and what effect they have?”

  Now Galvan was all business. Unfazed. “Company policy, Detective. I’m not permitted to give out that information. You’ll have to call corporate.”

  He began walking away.

  I held up the badge again and spoke loudly. “This is an emergency situation, Galvan. There’s a life on the line here. We need your help now!”

  The young guy turned back and studied my face. Finally, he picked up one of the pills. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

  He stepped behind a tall partition. I could only see the top of his head. I wasn’t sure whether he was making a call or examining the pill. All I could do was wait.

  A couple of minutes later he was back, holding a hard plastic cutting board. The round, light-orange tablet I had given him had been crushed to a powder on the board’s surface.

  “Okay, look,” he said. “You can’t hold me to this and I can’t be a hundred percent sure, just by sight.”

  I shook my head. “You’re the pharmacist. Just give me your opinion of what it is.”

  “It’s lithium. The pill is in a generic form. Lithium carbonate. Is the person taking this drug also on antipsychotic medication?”

  “No idea,” I said with an even face.

  “There can be harsh side effects if this medication is stopped abruptly.”

  “That sounds right. I’m dealing with someone that’s pretty unstable.”

  The pharmacist eyed me again. “That’s all I can tell,” he said. “By the way, what’s a New York City cop doing in Marina del Rey?”

  “Stalking an asshole, sir,” I snarled.

  I swept the remaining pill off the counter. “We appreciate your assistance in this matter, Roberto. Have a nice day.”