by Fante, Dan
“Before we begin, Sydnye, you have to show Father how much you like him. You remember, just like we did the other times. Only this time I’m standing up. Remember?”
“I remember, Father.”
“I want Matt to watch, Sydnye. I want him to see how you do it. Now get down on your knees, child.”
“I don’t like the smell in here, Father. It stinks in here.”
“I know. I know it stinks. The smell is entirely unpleasant. But you’ll adjust to it. In time, child, it won’t bother you at all.”
TWENTY-FOUR
After meeting Mendoza’s men, Davis and Majuski, at the Raddison in Santa Barbara and giving them enough information to handle their assignment, I registered Mom and Coco at the desk under Coco’s name—it was safer.
Then, leaving through the hotel’s rear entrance, I moved on to the Canary Hotel nearby.
After everything was set up, I got back in Mom’s Escalade and headed south, alone, toward L.A.
MY FIRST STOP back on the West Side was at the surplus store on Venice Boulevard near Motor Avenue. I picked up what I needed there, then decided to phone Archer. I told the detective what had happened earlier at Mom’s house with Swan’s man and the moves I’d made to protect her and Coco. Archer agreed to meet me near police headquarters in Santa Monica, at the bar Chez Jay on Ocean Avenue. He said he’d bring Sydnye’s package and whatever else he had that was current on Swan. When I asked for his help with Mom and Coco, he said his hands were tied. There was no way he could get authorization for police protection in Santa Barbara. No crime had been committed.
AN HOUR LATER I was drinking my Diet Coke and Archer his shooter at Chez Jay’s planked bar. Archer was not a subtle guy. He looked over both his shoulders, saw we were okay, then passed me what I needed. “You’re in over your head on this,” he whispered. “Just do me a favor and keep me up to speed as you go.”
“You told me you’d been bumped on this. Is that why you can’t get me help with my mother? Is that it?”
Archer nodded. “I might surprise you. I can still make a few moves if push comes to shove. I’m working on your Santa Barbara problem. I’ve got a friend or two left—whacked-out celebrity stalker cop that I am. If I ask the right way I can sometimes get what I need. I’ll let you know. But it isn’t me or your mother I’m worried about. You just poked a nasty gorilla with a sharp stick.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got the old boy’s attention. The best way I know to get a gorilla to sit up and start snorting is to use that stick.”
”I never got the chance. Swan had his lawyers in the way every time I got close. My question to you is, are you sure about this? You can still back away. Your family’s on the line now.”
“I’m ready,” I said. “And I’m not backing off.”
Archer was sneering. “Swan recognized me at his AA birthday bash the other day. Between that and what happened at your mom’s house, he’s spooked and he’s looking over both shoulders. Any update on Sydnye?”
“Not yet. But if Swan knows, then his kid knows too. I’m drawing them out of their hole.”
“She’s probably close by. Closer than you think. And get rid of everything I just gave you, especially the information about the witness I had. No paper traces, okay?”
“Okay.”
AFTER I LEFT Archer, I walked to Mom’s Escalade, which was parked at a meter on Ocean Avenue, twenty yards away. I removed my now authentic Handicapped placard from the inside rearview mirror and started the engine. On the seat next to me was the thin file on Sydnye and more backup documentation on Karl Swan. My eyes were stinging from tiredness and I decided to close them for a couple of minutes.
WAKING UP, I looked down at the instrument panel and saw that I’d been asleep for ninety minutes. I’d also burned a quarter of a tank in Mom’s gas-guzzling Escalade.
I lit a cigarette and sucked in a deep hit, remembering to put the front windows down so Mom wouldn’t be too pissed off about the residual stink of tobacco. After that I pulled Archer’s files from the envelope on the seat next to me.
The stuff on Sydnye was contained in a clear plastic folder. While I was opening it, one of the sharp edges on the side cut a nasty little slash in my finger. Blood immediately appeared and began running down into my hand and dripping onto the leather seat. I had to dig in Mom’s glove box for several tissues to contain the mess.
The pages I read on Swan all had the Santa Monica Police Department masthead taped over, obscured. Archer had been careful. Almost everything we’d discussed before about Sydnye Swan and the witness Archer had found was there in his notes, along with the mention of Sydnye’s past involvement in martial arts and yoga and two websites and the list of possible known acquaintances. A workout studio in Brentwood on San Vicente Boulevard named Maha Combat was named as the place she may have trained.
After looking the file over again, I made some detail notes on the pocket pad I carried inside my jacket and then, as agreed with Archer, I got ready to destroy what he had given me.
Getting out of the Escalade, I walked to a street garbage can near Chez Jay’s entrance, removed the plastic report cover so I wouldn’t cut my hand again, then tore half of the actual paperwork into quarters, tossing the upper and lower quarter of the pages into the trash.
Then I crossed Ocean Avenue and did the same thing with the remainder of the file at another street can. After that I threw the plastic report cover on top.
I WAS CLOSE enough to Sherman Toyota that I decided to drive by and maybe get Vikki’s attention from outside the showroom without going in. I’d had two calls from her cell number in the last twenty-four hours that I hadn’t responded to, plus another I didn’t recognize. I wanted to check in with her, in person.
It was Wednesday. I remembered that Wednesday was Max’s scheduled day off.
I rolled slowly past the dealership on my way to park the Escalade, looking along Lincoln Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard for tan Crown Vics as I went. I also glanced across the open sales lot, trying to spot Max’s SUV. It wasn’t there.
I WAS SITTING in the Escalade with the passenger window down at the far end of the property, trying to spot Vikki, when Fernando stepped out from between two late-model Hybrids on the row of cars facing Ninth Street. He wasn’t smiling. “Jou push jou lukk, majn.”
“What’s up, amigo?”
“Cops been hejr too timz again in the lass couple days lookin’ por jou. Jou muss be hot as chit, Chay-Dee.”
I smiled at him while glancing over his shoulder at the showroom doors. “I try to keep moving, my friend. Hey,” I said, “where’s Vikki? I don’t see her demo. Is she inside?”
“No majn, cheesa quit. Jus walk in do Max’s offiz and tsay cheesa quit. Yserdae.”
“No kidding, that was sudden. What happened?”
“Done kno, majn. Cheeza juss go. No goo bye, no kiss my hass, no nocin. Den I hask Max. He juss sae min jour own bizniz. Maricon preek.”
VIKKI’S APARTMENT WAS only four blocks away. I parked mom’s Escalade near the corner of California and Sixth and walked down the block to her building.
I was about to ring her front-door buzzer when a couple came out of the elevator next to the entrance door. The guy swung the door open for his lady, then held it open for me to enter. West Side yuppies out for a night on the town. I nodded thanks to the guy as I entered the building.
When I got to Vikki’s floor I felt a knot in my stomach. As I walked down the hall my brain began flashing on doing the same thing at my friend Woody’s place only days before. The feeling rattled me and my head began thumping harder than ususal.
Above me, as I got to her door, the hallway ceiling bulb was out. I was standing in cold semidarkness.
I sloughed off the bad thoughts. This was going to be a glad-to-see-you greeting. I liked this girl.
I knocked three times, then waited.
Then I heard flip-flop footsteps against the parquet flooring of her interior front hallway. “Yes,” a voice called through the door.
“It’s JD, Vikki. I was in the neighborhood.”
It took ten seconds until she answered. “Oh. Hey, look, I’ve been sick. Call me, okay?”
“I’m just dropping by to say hi. Open the door.”
Another long pause, then: “Okay. Okay. Give me a minute.”
“Sure,” I said, “take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
It took a couple more minutes until I heard the double-locks flip and the door came open.
Vikki was without makeup and was wearing a dark robe cinched tight at the waist. Her hair was unwashed and she looked tired, older, sadder. “Yes,” she said, looking past me down the hall.
“Well, hey, howya doing?” I said. “You’ve been sick, huh?”
“Look, do you mind—some other time, okay?”
I was still smiling, trying to keep it going, still working off of the good vibes at our last meeting. “Well, can I at least come in for a minute?”
Her eyes wouldn’t connect with mine. “I just said I was sick.”
I rested my hand against the door frame next to her head. “What’s wrong here? What’s going on, Vikki?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “I just told you. Didn’t you listen?”
As I lowered my hand from the door frame, its metal sealer lining scraped against my cut finger and I said, “Ouch.”
I looked at the hand. It was bleeding again.
“I’m coming in,” I said, and started to push past her.
She reluctantly backed away and let me move inside. “What’s wrong,” she half-whispered.
“Nothing. I cut my finger. It’s bleeding.”
The living-room curtains were drawn and the only interior light came from the TV. The sound had been muted. On the coffee table was a near-empty bottle of the expensive-looking wine I’d seen the last time I was here. Next to it was a tall, smudged glass with nothing in it. I remembered Vikki telling me that she didn’t like TV.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re watching the tube. You must be really sick.”
Vikki flicked on a lamp. Her eyes were flat. “What do you want here? What do you want with me?”
“Look, Fernando told me that you quit at Sherman. Just walked into Max’s office and quit. What was that about?”
Now her eyes darkened. “Okay, I quit. So what? Why is that your business?”
Blood was running down my finger and into my hand. I held it up. “I need to use your bathroom. I need to wash this off.”
She pointed to a door ten feet away. “It’s there.”
INSIDE THE BATHROOM I closed the door, then turned on the hot water. Next to the faucet was a holder for Vikki’s toothbrushes and a pink soap dish, and next to that I saw a white, flat plastic cap.
While I was waiting for the water to heat up, I glanced at my face in the mirror. Something was very wrong here. It was like this woman didn’t know me. My face in the mirror confirmed the feeling.
Holding the white plastic cap in my hand, I quietly pulled the medicine cabinet open. The top two shelves were full of prescription vials, as many as a dozen of them. Grouped together were four containers of sleeping pills. One of the vials was labeled Zaleplon. I’d been given Zaleplon before in the nuthouse for my insomnia. It was quick and effective but had only worked well for me short-term. I popped the vial open, dropped two of them into my hand, then slid the rest back into the vial. One night soon I would use them to get a decent night’s sleep.
On the bottom shelf, by itself, was an open container with only a couple of pills left inside. The cap in my hand fit the top of that vial.
I pulled the unlabeled bottle out and looked at the small pills inside. They were orange.
Then, remembering, I reached into my left front pants pocket and scrounged at the bottom. I came up with the orange pill I had asked the pharmacist about. I set it on the sink, away from the faucet, then removed one of Vikki’s tablets from the vial. Hers were an exact match in shade and size. I had found that pill between the seats of Woody’s Honda, and I knew that Woody never took meds. Those weren’t his. Suddenly—today—my friend Vikki had abruptly shape-shifted herself into another person. A person who took the same kind of meds I had found.
My mind began clicking. Vikki? Jesus!
AFTER WASHING MY finger I patted the cut dry with toilet paper, tossed the wad into the crapper, then flushed it. Replacing the pill in the vial, I tucked it into the coat of my leather bomber jacket.
Standing there staring at my image in the mirror, I went back over what I knew about the woman in the living room—about what had happened over the last several weeks.
She had come to work for Sherman Toyota a few days after I’d started, almost as if on cue—just appearing on the sales floor one day. Then, shortly after—very shortly after—she’d begun showing interest in me. A coincidence? Was Vikki’s coming to work at the Toyota dealership part of some kind of plot? Her hostility and indifference just now had been the tell, a red flag. I had to know and I had to know now.
Quietly leaving the bathroom I made my way back into the dimly lit living room.
Vikki was standing next to her couch several feet away with one hand in her robe’s pocket and the other holding a corded phone, whispering. She hadn’t heard me. “I know,” she was saying in a low voice. “So what now?”
“Hang up, Vikki!” I boomed.
Turning toward me, she spit the words in my direction: “Get out of here! Get away from me!”
In one motion I pulled the phone from her hand, then yanked its wiring out of the wall.
Our bodies were now two feet apart.
Removing the pill vial from my jacket pocket, I held it up for her to see. “How long have you been taking these?” I demanded.
“None of your goddamn business!”
“These are the same pills that I found in my friend Woody’s car after he was killed.”
“Get out of my apartment! Now!”
“Tell me about Sydnye Swan, Vikki.”
I saw the muzzle of the gun for only a second as it came up in her left hand.
My reflex was to turn my body. Then I heard the sound and felt the impact at the same time.
Before she could fire a second time I used a crisscross slapping move to knock the gun to the floor. It was a small-caliber automatic.
Grabbing her by the hair I pulled her to the couch and shoved my knee into her stomach. Hard. While she was gasping for breath I yanked the belt from my pants loops and wrapped it around her wrists.
Then I leaned back and pulled my coat open.
The bullet that had penetrated the left side of my leather bomber jacket had ripped through the inside pocket. The notebook I carried there had a hole in it. Then the slug had exited at the back of the jacket. Point-blank range. Her bullet had missed me by no more than an inch.
Now she was kicking and spitting curses and trying to bite me. I needed answers.
On her coffee table was a copy of the L.A. Times. I tore a page away, wadded it up, then stuffed it in Vikki’s mouth.
Pulling her off the couch, I began dragging her to the rear of the apartment—to her bedroom.
I pushed the door open, flipped the light switch, and saw a four-poster bed.
With my Beretta in one hand I hauled Vikki across to the bed and dumped her onto it.
“It’s time for us to talk,” I said evenly, tightening the belt around her hands. Then I slammed my knee into her stomach again.
While she lay there gasping I got up and went to the closet door and slid it open. There I found a rack of belts and yanked the entire apparatus out of the wall mount and onto th
e carpeted floor.
It took a few minutes to bind her up with several of her own belts. I strapped her down, spread-eagled, faceup, on the bed.
Near us on the floor was a pink T-shirt. I stuffed it in her mouth, replacing the wad of newspaper.
Now that she was secure I decided to do a quick toss of the room. Next to the bed was her two-drawer nightstand. I started there, opening the top drawer and checking for more weapons.
What was inside gave me everything I needed to know about my girlfriend Vikki. There was a box of bullets for a Colt .25 automatic. Beneath it was a stack of magazines, all with the same title: Cuffed. The same magazine that was in Woody’s apartment near his murdered body. Bingo!
Reaching across the bed I pulled the T-shirt from her mouth, then whispered in Vikki’s ear: “I see that you’re a Cuffed fan.”
She rolled her eyes, then cleared her throat. “You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
I had to smile. “Actually, I now know exactly who you are.”
Vikki looked at me and sneered.
When I yanked her robe open she yelled, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing!”
After stuffing the T-shirt back into her mouth I began cutting away her robe, using the sharp, six-inch folding knife that I’d bought at the pawn shop. After each piece was cut away I tossed it on the floor.
For the first time I saw fear register in her eyes. I now had her attention.
Climbing on top of Vikki, I straddled her upper body with my legs. “Now, lady,” I said in an even voice, “it’s question and answer time. The game we’ll play is called truth or torture. Here’s how it goes: I ask you a question, and if you lie to me, then I begin hurting you. Are you ready?”
I pulled the gag from her mouth.
She coughed, then shook her head. “You can’t do this,” she hissed. “You’d better let me go. You don’t scare me.”