Roger kept glancing over at them, paying attention to whatever Courtney was saying. She was talking about how she and Roger were going to use the money from the reunion special to move and start a family.
“Courtney! Shut up about that!” he yelled.
The girl flinched. Anne looked up in alarm.
I wondered what she’d said. But I didn’t care that much. What I cared about was that he’d just given alarm signal number two: yelling at someone who wasn’t already yelling at him. I tapped my fingers in a V across my mouth. Anne looked at me and nodded. She’d picked up that things were not good. If I got to three—and that seemed likely, given how hard Roger seemed to be pushing the drugs on me—we were gone. We hadn’t had this much trouble in Baldwin Park.
“What do you do now?” I asked Roger, as though he hadn’t screamed at Courtney three seconds before.
He was still eyeing her. “I’m on a show.” The vaguest of all possible job descriptions in a town where everyone I ran into was peripherally involved with the movie/TV business. Of course, I lived with a famous actor, and it was amazing how fast people became peripheral around a star. “What about you?”
“Not much yet. I only moved here a few months ago.” My lack of steady employment was as much by design as it was anything else.
“Oh? Where from?”
“Las Vegas.”
“Yeah? Cocktail waitress?” He grinned. His teeth seemed stained. Perhaps he was a cigarette smoker. The discoloration seemed darker than the usual yellowish smoking tint. Probably used products more serious than tobacco. Meth was a possibility.
“Psychic advisor.”
His foot dropped to the ground by the bed. “No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Yeah? You really psychic? You got the second sight?”
Courtney swiveled around in her chair, whatever she was saying to Anne completely forgotten. “You’re a psychic? Really?”
That accent. I could see why she’d have trouble getting work in Hollywood, because the words were nearly impenetrable. But it remained unadulterated by the American Standard accent everyone was rushing to adopt. I rolled her vowels around in my head.
Her teeth didn’t look so great, either. Not a great look for someone who wanted to be known for being beautiful.
“Can you read me?” she asked.
Roger jumped off the bed and yelled “No!” at Courtney.
There’s two kinds of people who don’t want to talk to psychics: those who think psychics are frauds, and those who are worried the psychics know something. People who think psychics are frauds are, for the most part, annoyed by them, not deeply angry toward them.
Roger’s immediate anger—signaling the accompanying fear that I was going to learn something—worried me. Alarm signal number three, everybody scramble into the lifeboats. Now.
“Anne.” I stood up.
She reached for her bag. “It’s okay, we’re done.”
Roger pointed at me, his arm extended and held rigid. “Hold on a minute.”
I held up both hands, palms out. “We’re going now. You two have fun.”
“Roger, calm yourself down,” Courtney told him.
Her placid voice seemed to enrage him further. “Shut up, Court.” He stalked toward me, crowding me up against the desk. “Why are you here?”
“Get away from me,” I told him.
He stood right in front of me. “Shut the fuck up, bitch.” Spittle flew out of his mouth and landed on my face.
He wasn’t someone on my list to French kiss anytime soon. He didn’t rate having his saliva anywhere on my face.
I held his gaze and didn’t blink. “My friend and I are leaving. Back away.”
“You looking for something here?” he yelled. He reached for the desk drawer.
Which was right behind me. So he had to press up against me to get to it. And he put his hand on my stomach to pin me in place.
Yeah. That wasn’t happening.
I raised my leg and stomped down on his foot as hard as I could, and when he startled I elbowed him in the stomach sharply. Then I did it again. He staggered back against the bed with the clothes on it.
“Roger!” Courtney screamed.
“Jesus Christ,” Anne added.
I looked at Anne. “The car!”
She opened the room’s door. “Come on!” she yelled at Courtney, which surprised me. Not only was she trying to get Courtney out of there, but she’d clearly decided I could handle myself.
“Roger, stop,” Courtney said.
And Roger reached out and shoved her, this wispy girl who probably didn’t weigh over one hundred pounds. She flew backward and her head cracked against the edge of the table she’d been sitting at with Anne. Her head made a dull thwopp when it hit, like a fat softball at a slow speed.
I kicked Roger in the crotch, hard. I’d worn boots for a reason. If I’m going to fight, I plan on inflicting permanent physical injury. When it’s down to me or the other guy, I plan on being the one to walk away.
Roger folded into a tight ball and vomited on the carpet. Great. I could ignore him for a bit, then.
Anne ran over to where Courtney lay, moaning. That she was making any noise was a good sign. If someone doesn’t make any noise or move within a very short time after getting hit in the head, they might have a serious brain injury or cranial bleeding.
“Get in the bloody car!” I yelled.
Turned out Roger wasn’t quite as incapacitated as I’d thought he was. He reached out and grabbed my ankle, which pulled me backward to the ground. I landed on my back and my head hit the floor. He launched himself with a surprising burst of energy on top of me, landing a weak but stinging punch to the side of my ribcage, followed by a hit to the side of my face. That one hurt much more than the ribcage one did.
“Bitch!” he yelled.
Bitch: the modern version of the kiai from martial arts. Tiresome.
Instead of taking advantage of his superior position and really hammering me into the thin carpet, he reached up, toward that desk drawer he seemed so damned fixated on.
His agitation about that desk warned me I’d better keep Roger from getting into that drawer if any of us were going to get out of here alive.
“Call 911!” I added.
Behind me I heard Anne finally jump up and run out of the room. The sounds of traffic on West 3rd Street nearby were loud and the warm outdoor breeze wafted over me, so the door was open, thank God. Perhaps someone passing by could create enough of a distraction that I could really lay the hurt on Roger.
I reached up and jabbed my fingers into the underside of his throat. He twisted away from the drawer and toward me, which gave me enough time to push him backward into the desk chair. Which took him off me and allowed me to scramble to my feet and take stock of the situation.
Anne: outside. Good.
Courtney was pushing herself into a sitting position, holding the side of her head and squinting in pain. Tears leaked out of her eyes without any sobbing motion on her part. And she was looking at Roger. Instead of, you know, getting the hell out of there.
I wasn’t going to waste time saving her if she wasn’t invested in saving herself.
I dashed out of the room and into the parking lot, where Anne’s car idled, waiting for me, pointed toward the exit. I yanked open the door, jumped in, and said, “Drive!”
She drove. I didn’t have my seatbelt on before she took the first right and I damn near flew into the driver’s seat. Hermes Trismegistus, my entire left side hurt. He must have gotten a good punch in.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was wavering, like she was about to lose her entire mind.
“I’m okay. Drive somewhere public. And fast.”
“He had a gun,” she said. She pressed her hand over her mouth and started hyperventilating. “I think he had a gun!”
So I was right about the drawer. I was willing to bet he had a few other things in there, but I didn’t care. We were out.
Now that the adrenaline rush was over, I realized my back hurt from where I had hit the floor. The back of my head hurt, too. And my jaw was beginning to throb with pain from where he’d punched me. My left side hurt from where I’d bashed into Anne. Today was not my day.
Anne kept turning her head to look at me, which terrified me given how erratic her driving was right now. Up ahead was the familiar large red oval marking a Ralph’s supermarket. I jabbed my finger at the parking lot. “Drive! There! What are you looking at? Is he behind us?”
She shook her head, vibrating back and forth. “Oh God oh God oh God.”
“Park, would you?” My stomach felt like crap.
The car thumped over the uneven curb cut into the Ralph’s parking lot. The jostling made me feel like I was going to vomit all over myself. “Park, and stop moving this car.”
She parked the car. I don’t think she lined it up between the lines very well. L.A. drivers tend to be cavalier about following parking space recommendations.
“Did you call the police?” I asked. My side was really starting to hurt.
“I have to call an ambulance!” she yelled. Anne was really sliding into hysteria now, with tears washing all over her face and her eyes scrunched up.
“An ambulance can wait. Call the—”
“You’re bleeding!”
As soon as she said it, I tasted copper in my mouth. My fingers touched the corner of my lips and came away red. Dammit, I was bleeding. My teeth felt secure, though—it was probably a cut on the inside of my mouth. I wouldn’t be able to drink my coffee hot for a few days.
Then I felt the trickle on my forehead and reached up to feel wetness. My fingertips were covered in a decent amount of blood.
“Don’t worry,” I said. My words began to slur and I had to concentrate to keep using the right accent. Now would be a very bad time to start sounding like someone from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. “Head wounds always bleed the worst.”
“Not that,” she screamed, and then she pointed to my ribs. “There.”
A large red spot had bloomed on the gray fabric of my sweater.
I licked my lips. “Stevie’s going to murder me if I ruin my clothes.”
Then I stopped talking.
CHAPTER TWO
EVENTUALLY THE PARAMEDICS cut the sweater off, so I no longer worried about whether Stevie would complain about the stains. When they lifted me out of Anne’s car, the passenger seat was painted with blood. I had enough awareness of what was going on to feel guilty about that.
One of the paramedics was white and the other one was black and I still lost track of who was doing what. One of them gave me a few stitches in the side before the ambulance took me to a hospital. I told them I’d rather be treated in the Ralph’s parking lot, because frankly I’d had worse injuries that I’d left untreated and I’d rather not deal with hospitals. But no, they wanted to get x-rays of my side, because something, maybe a rough blade I hadn’t even seen in Roger’s hands, had given me a serious slice over my left ribs.
Anne had become hysterical at the sight of blood. Not being able to do anything while the paramedics worked on me made her incoherent. When she wasn’t allowed to come with me in the ambulance, she was crying so much I had to touch her hand to get her attention. I told her I’d text her to tell her what hospital I was at, and did she have anyone who could come get her to drive her home? For some reason, saying that made her completely lose it, so today’s lesson was that Anne could not deal with blood and violence. As my stretcher went into the ambulance, a police officer introduced himself and asked for a statement. My final words to Anne were, “Call your lawyer before saying anything, you idiot,” but she didn’t seem to hear me. Or perhaps I wasn’t saying them very well.
I took my own advice to heart and called my lawyer from the ambulance. He said he’d come find me. Which meant, he was coming to take care of me.
I love my lawyer. Not in a sexual way. That would just mess up what was a stunningly useful relationship for me.
Obviously, I didn’t call Stevie. If I thought Anne was on the verge of madness about the fight and my injuries, my sister Stevie would have immediately entered a comatose state, reversible only by divine intervention. She had never dealt with my more serious altercations well, and there have been a fair number that have driven her into hysterics over the years. The moment she heard my mission to help Anne with a story had ended in a fight that landed me in the hospital, she would demand my promise to stay home with her forever and ever, only the two of us, where it was safe.
Or some definition of safe, at any rate. After all, not too long ago someone had tried to kill me at the fabulous Pacific Palisades estate where we lived. I’ve inspired that sort of reaction a few times too many in my life.
At the hospital, the residents cleaned me up, x-rayed me, and did a CAT scan to see if any of the blows to my head had had any serious effect. The whole time, a uniformed cop kept telling them loudly, within my earshot, that he needed to take my statement on this matter right now.
I wondered why my little squabble with Roger Sabo might be so important he needed to talk to me right now, before I finished receiving a medical examination.
My lawyer, Nathaniel Ross, finally showed up and told the cop to leave me the hell alone until such time as I was ready to talk. Which on Nathaniel’s calendar would be penciled in under “never.” That made the police officer mad. I didn’t care. The Vicodin was starting to kick in and my mood began to show significant improvement. The wonders of narcotics.
Nathaniel closed the curtains around my bed for a modicum of privacy as we spoke. We both knew the officer was standing right outside—the side of his black shoe was clearly visible. He rolled his eyes, as if to say, Can you believe this guy?
I hadn’t felt much like smiling since I’d arrived at the hospital, but my lawyer’s arrival cheered me up immensely.
Nathaniel didn’t have the drop-dead good looks so many people in Los Angeles do—he was in his late thirties, and his blond hair was thinning on top, and his face wasn’t completely symmetrical. If we met at a party I’d have passed him over and moved on to see who else was there. But he was comfortable staring me directly in the eyes, without flirtation or menace or lust or any of the usual emotions I’ve gotten from men over the years, and his directness was both reassuring and attractive.
Nathaniel Ross was incredibly secure in how good a job he was doing being the one and only Nathaniel Ross.
My flirtations with him were merely perfunctory. Our relationship was fine as it was, and he never flirted back, which was for the best. And it was comforting having someone take care of me for once, even if it was only because at the moment I couldn’t take care of myself.
He leaned close to me so he could whisper. “What the fuck happened this time, Drusilla?”
“You should see the other guy,” I whispered back.
“If you want to press charges, we need to do it as soon as possible. However, circumstances being what they are....”
I knew what he meant.
On the one hand, Roger Sabo was an abusive fuck who deserved absolutely everything I could hit him with, physically and legally. He had assaulted me. He’d thrown Courtney across the room like a rag doll. He was so comfortable doing it, he’d clearly done it before. On top of all that, he was a terrible conversationalist.
There was nothing about Roger Sabo I didn’t hate.
On the other hand, filing charges could mean publicity, and publicity meant exposure. I was quite possibly the only person in Los Angeles who didn’t want her face on the evening news. While trapped in the City of Angels, I had exactly one job to do: avoid attention.
“I’m high right now. I’ll make a bad decision, no matter what I do.”
He nodded. He was well aware of the sort of restrictions I chafed under. As long as I lived here under the name of Drusilla Thorne, Nathaniel Ross was my prison warden.
At least I wasn’t the one paying his h
ourly rate.
I motioned him closer. “Will you call Stevie for me?”
“And tell her what?”
Good question. I smiled. “Tell her I met a man in a motel this afternoon and we got busy.”
Nathaniel snorted under his breath as he shook his head. “Okay. I’ll think of something. Something better than that.”
“Thank you.” I patted his hand. “You take such good care of me. I should marry someone like you. My stepfather would be thrilled.”
Nathaniel dragged his hand away from mine.
Since I wasn’t up to much physical movement, I had to settle for mentally slapping myself for saying something so stupid.
No, not the marriage proposal. That didn’t even rate on the idiocy scale compared to the other thing.
Did I say stepfather out loud? Nathaniel was a smart guy. He had to have figured out the relationship between Roberto Montesinos and me, but no one was supposed to acknowledge it. Especially as Roberto Montesinos’s stepdaughter was alive and well and probably partying in South Beach this weekend.
“What I mean is—”
Nathaniel stood up. “The dope’s kicking in. Don’t say another word. To anyone. At all. I mean it.”
The curtain was pulled to the side and one of the residents walked in. “How are we doing?” she asked.
Had I seen her before during my visit? I had no idea. The drugs the hospital had put me on were magnificent.
Now, if Roger had offered me some of these without the accompanying beating, I might have been interested.
“Your tests are clear. No internal bleeding. No concussion.”
Nathaniel folded his arms. “Do you need to keep her here?”
The resident shook her head. “We can keep her here overnight, but—”
“What do I need to do to check her out?” Nathaniel said.
The resident handed him a couple of forms. “Here’s her prescriptions.”
A diminutive brown woman in a form-fitting blue skirt suit and holding a thin plastic shopping bag walked up to my bed. Her kitten heels clicked against the white vinyl floors with a dancer’s rhythm. Carmela Tanner, Nathaniel’s scarily effective assistant.
Everybody Takes The Money (The Drusilla Thorne Mysteries) Page 2