“Okay, thanks.”
When the beautiful guy came back with my drink, there was no charge and he didn’t leave. In fact, he didn’t say a word. Instead, he settled in beside me with a drink of his own. I searched the place for Gus, hoped he wouldn’t have trouble finding the place and wondered if he’d wait for me outside or come in. “Where’d you have to go for this drink?” I asked.
“The bartender in the other room really knows how to make a drink. Nice and strong.”
“What’s in the other room?”
“Spanking.”
I decided that I really needed to have more of an objective perspective, like maybe I should leave. I held the gin in my hand but didn’t drink it.
“So, what are you doing here, Joan?” asked the underwear model.
I almost dropped my glass. I closed my mouth, opened it again. “Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
“Are you here because of Autumn Riley?” he asked.
A closing in came over me, as if I were playing some karmic video game where everything that moved was a threat. He leaned in toward me, as if to whisper in my ear. I put my drink down. When he put his arm around my waist, I snaked my hand around his forearm, twisted it hard, grabbed my gun, and stuck it in his ribs.
“Whoa, whoa, hold on there,” he said with a grimace.
It required all the control I had not to take him down. It’s a reaction I have to men who pounce on me.
“You’re not invited, get it? I don’t let strangers put their arms around me.”
“Calm down,” he said. “You’re losing our cover here. You should act like we know each other.”
“Don’t worry, your cover’s not blown. They probably think we do this all the time, that we’re into it.”
“Can I have my arm back?”
“Please.”
“Please?” he said.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t know you and already I don’t like you much.” I released him and slipped the gun back into my holster.
“You are tense, babe, you need to relax,” he said.
“What’s your name?”
“You can call me Eduardo,” he said. “But my friends call me Coastal.”
“Coastal?” I asked. This was becoming the case of weird names.
He nodded and casually took a sip of his drink like women pull guns on him all the time.
“That’s a name?”
“Coastal, as in Coastal Eddy.”
I’d heard of him somewhere. My mind did a quick computer check and I recalled an article in the LA Weekly, a radical newspaper, declaring Coastal Eddy as a great environmental hero.
“You’re the guy that organized those people and saved the whale that got stuck on Topanga beach?”
He nodded.
“You’re not anything like what I had imagined.”
“Oh, this.” He looked at his own washboard stomach and his lower body clad in leather. “It’s a disguise.”
“Very convincing,” I said. “You had me going.”
“Did I?” he smiled at me.
I gave him a hard look. “What do you want? What is this?” I demanded.
“I want to know who killed Autumn Riley,” he said.
I thought about that for a moment and took a stab. “Were you the one talking with the Rileys at the memorial chapel?”
“I was talking with them,” he said.
“Are you working for them?” I asked.
“No, I’m not, as a matter of fact.”
A vulnerable and pained energy stirred the atmosphere between us. His brown eyes were injured, accusatory. I thought it had been a fair question.
“I’m not working for anyone,” he said regaining his composure. “You might say I’m an investigator.”
“Oh, an investigator,” I said.
He gave me a cool assessing look, then he downed his drink.
“Look, I have to go,” he said. “It was not so nice to meet you. Good luck.”
“Wait. Did you take a walk with Autumn the night she died?”
From his expression you’d think I had just slapped him in the face. His brown eyes were incensed.
“No. I wasn’t there,” he said, and then his voice became a wistful whisper. “I wish I had been, maybe she’d still be alive.”
Then he moved away from me, into the crowd, his majesty among the thrall. I glanced over at Addams. He was patting La Crisia on the head. Jeez. How much of an advantage did the guy need in a relationship? When I looked back, Coastal Eddy was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly he had slipped off to.
I had to take a pee.
When I entered the women’s room, the huge woman-lump had the underage girl pinned down in a corner, her forearm pressed hard on the whimpering young thing’s clavicle. The lump’s other hand was snaking around in the girl’s low-rise jeans. Without thinking, I kicked the fat woman in the ass—it was a knee-jerk response. The lump let the girl go and turned on me, getting a vice grip on my neck. I kneed her in the groin, giving her pubic bone a good crunch. The chick in the low-rise jeans dashed out the door.
I’m not exactly used to fighting women of any size, certainly not as large as this one. She smelled remarkably like rancid bacon. When she bent over to grab her crotch in pain, I gave her another knee to the nose which sent her backwards against the wall. Blood spurted out her nose. I pulled out my badge to settle the argument. She was holding her bleeding nose and leaning against the bathroom wall, which was covered with for-a-good-time-call graffiti. She held her hand up. I took that as a truce and went into one of the stalls because like I said, I had to pee. I heard the lump outside the stall, shuffle over to the sink, curse, run water, and pull out a number of paper towels. I figured she was cleaning up her bloody nose.
“Why didn’t you say you were a cop?” she whined.
In my mind, I prepared a little speech for her on rape, and I wasn’t going to mince my words. Not that I had time to arrest her right then. Who really could say what was acceptable behavior in what was apparently an S&M club? When I unlocked my stall door to exit, the lump rushed me, pushing the door into my breast and then knocking me back against the toilet with the palm of her huge hand. The back of my neck hit the corner of the porcelain tank cover and I remember worrying that I’d broken my neck when I blacked out.
When I came to, I was on the bathroom floor, still in the stall. I got to my feet fast and saw stars for a moment so I rested, my hands hanging on the bathroom stall door, and took several deep breaths. I had to admit that my self-defense was a little rusty. It’s hard for me to forgive my mistakes. Besides, in police work it can be fatal. Some first day back this was turning out to be. Maybe I should have stayed in New Orleans. I looked around the bathroom stall, made sure I still had my badge and gun, and said a prayer of thanks for that—oh, and that my neck wasn’t broken. When you wake up in a bathroom stall, you must be grateful for the small things.
As I moved through the club, I did a quick survey of the room and the bar, but the two lumps were nowhere to be seen. Nor was Gus. I moved fast toward the doorman at the end of the red hallway and he hastily undid the chain without a word. I got the feeling that maybe I was not the first person to walk out of that place in a hurry.
As I pulled out of the De Sade’s Cage parking lot, someone flung their body in front of my car and I had to slam on my brakes. It was The Barb. He kicked the side of my car twice. So, I thought, okay, maybe the evening wouldn’t be a complete loss. I pulled over to the side of the street and got out. The Barb was foaming at the mouth he was so mad, or maybe it was the recreational drugs. His hair shot out in short spikes. He was thin, extremely thin.
He ran away cursing and I gave chase, tackled him from behind. We rolled across the sidewalk and I could smell rum on his breath, coming out of his pores. I got his body pinned beneath me and held him there. “What the fuck?” he screamed. “Are you a cop?” I detected an Australian accent.
“Good guess
. I want to ask you some questions. You know anybody by the name of Autumn Riley?”
“Never ‘eard of her.”
“Get up, we’re gonna have a little chat.”
He snarled and got up on his feet in one angry move. “Fuckin’ dyke.”
I dragged him to the side of my car, where he had kicked it. “Stand here and don’t go anywhere.”
I inspected the car. The Barb had left a short rubber skid, but there was no dent. I spotted Gus as he drove by in his gray sedan. He took in the scene in a blink, pulled past us, and parked. I grabbed The Barb by the arm and jerked him over to Gus, threw him in the back seat of the sedan. Gus was smoking a cigarette. He had a wry grin on his face. I got in and sat in the front seat beside him, took a deep breath. “Who’s your friend?”
“Meet The Barb, he’s from the Australian circus.”
Gus turned around and gave him the once-over. “What he do?” he asked.
“Nothin’ much, just kicked my car. He’s friends with some Haitian guy named Dewey. And he had a little conversation that included money changing hands with two large lumps at the bar.”
“Is that against the law?” asked The Barb.
“What was the money for?” I asked.
“They owed me some cash. Why do you ask?”
I looked at Gus in exasperation. I wasn’t going to let on in front of the Barb that the woman-lump had kicked my ass in the women’s room.
Gus turned to The Barb. “You give drugs to any nice young ladies lately?”
“Fuck off.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Gus.
“What, at De Sade’s Cage?”
“No, here in America.”
“You the INS or what?”
“His friend, Dewey, used to work for a doctor in Haiti,” I said. “They were dispensing a lot of drugs.”
“Not me. No drugs on me. Go ahead, search. You cops? Go ‘head, write me a misdemeanor for being drunk in public or something like that and I’ll go my merry way.”
“I think you need a ride home. Where to?” asked Gus.
“I don’t need no fucking ride.”
“I say you do,” said Gus. “What’s the address?”
Dewey came out of the club, craned his neck around. His dreadlocks cast a shadow of gargantuan snakes against the concrete wall of the club.
“Your buddy is looking for you,” I said.
“Naw, he ain’t,” said The Barb.
I got out of the car and walked over to Dewey, flashed my badge, and brought him to the car, sitting him next to his friend in back. The Barb relented and gave us an address on Pico and said, “You know, I’m a producer. You should be careful how you treat me.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “What do you produce?”
“Nothing too big in this country. I’ve had a hard time going here. But back in Australia I did a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Music videos, things like that.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for your rising star,” I said.
“You do that. I’m not the first one to have a hard past. You know Madonna? She ate out of dumpsters before she got discovered.”
“You going to get discovered?” asked Gus.
“No, not exactly. More like I’m gonna do the discovering.”
The guy was talky, probably because of the high. “How did you and Dewey, here, meet?” I asked.
“Oh, wull…I was on a spiritual quest.”
“A drug quest or a spiritual quest?”
“In some religions it’s the same thing. But mine was spiritual, definitely spiritual.”
“And?” I asked.
“I went to Haiti and met Dewey in this nice little village. His mother was a famous voodum. She taught Dewey everything she knew. Me and him just hit it off.” Dewey looked uneasy with the conversation.
“So, you’ve been together ever since?” I asked.
“I’d say so, that’s about it.”
“What did you learn?” asked Gus.
“Eh, what?” said The Barb.
“What did you learn on your spiritual quest?”
“Oh, that. Wull, it’s simple really. Evil begets evil.”
“Shut up, mon. Don’t run your mouf,” said Dewey.
I looked over at Dewey. He became terribly fascinated by something outside the window and turned away from me.
“How come you decided to move to America, Dewey?” I asked.
“I ain’t moved here. I’m jus’ visitink.”
We pulled up to a green motel with a hundred flags painted all over it. Gus and I walked The Barb and Dewey up to the motel room and invited ourselves in.
“No, you’re not coming in,” said The Barb.
“We’re coming in,” said Gus, “or we’re taking you downtown, your choice. While we’re booking you, we’ll get a search warrant. Either way, we’re coming in.”
“Fuck! Come on in then. Shit.”
We went into a filthy room with a double bed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said looking at the carpet. “Gus, you see what I see?”
It was a red carpet, the cheap kind that you usually find in cut-rate motels. Gus looked at the dirty spotted carpeting and nodded.
“You guys gay?” I asked.
“Naw, man,” said The Barb.
“You sleep in the same bed,” I said.
“No way, we don’t,” said Dewey. “Not gay, no. We’re like brothers.”
“I’m touched,” I said, continuing the search.
We checked it out thoroughly but got nothing but a bag of weed under the mattress. No pictures, no clothing, nothing to connect them to Autumn Riley. Gus leaned against the wall and smoked a cigarette. In the bathroom, a piece of barbed wire was on the sink. I got a bad feeling off it.
“What’s this?” I asked as I waved it in The Barb’s face.
“It’s a gag. Someone gave it to me for a joke.”
I bagged the barbed wire, then cut fibers from the carpet and bagged them, too. Dewey was resigned and got into the car quickly like he wanted to get on with it. On the other hand, I was about to put The Barb into the back for the ride downtown when he decided he didn’t want to go. A struggle ensued.
“Get in the fuckink car, mon,” said Dewey.
The Barb quit struggling as if Dewey had offered him profound spiritual advice, but not before I had grabbed him by the hair and got a handful of short blond stubbies. I bagged that, too. Once both suspects were secured inside the sedan, Gus and I stood there for a moment looking at our relatively easy quarry. I could hear a low rumbling of an argument between the two men inside the car even though the windows were closed.
“Australia, Haiti. Quite an international set we have here,” Gus said.
“Oh, yeah, an Australian voice on the phone and a Haitian voodoo doll. Makes you think. Plus, they were mighty strung out in that private club. I had a little run-in with a mean fat lady. Though ‘lady’ might not be the right word to describe her.”
“What kind of run-in?”
“Let’s just say that if I ever see her again I’m going to arrest her for assault on a police officer. I gave her a chance but she came back for more, snuck up on me.”
“All in a day’s work. She doesn’t sound too smart.”
“Not exactly an intellectual crowd. I did have an interesting exchange with a whale saver concerned about our Autumn Riley.”
“A little late for concern, I’d say. You say an environmental activist? In there?” Gus was incredulous.
I nodded. “Said his name was Coastal Eddy.”
“You mean the wildlife hero?”
I nodded again. “He sort of came on to me. I’d seen him at the memorial talking to Mrs. Riley. And that producer, Addams, is a total freak.”
“How so?” Gus asked.
“He had a girl on a leash. He was patting her head like a dog.”
Gus chuckled and said, “Sounds like he must be in terrible mourning. I must
say, you had a lot more fun than I did.”
On the ride downtown, Dewey chanted a strange sort of mantra. His voice began as a low hum and gradually moved up to a higher pitch. The Barb hummed along in a sort of harmony. I listened for a while, trying to figure it out. It vaguely reminded me of my grandmother. I pulled down the visor and looked in the vanity mirror to see Dewey’s eyes roll up in his head and tears stream down his face as he turned up the volume. The Barb’s eyes were rolled up in his head as well. To say that I found it disturbing would be an understatement.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to admit it got under my skin.
“Shut up,” I said. “Open your eyes or I’m going to open them for you.”
Dewey continued his mantra but The Barb had the wherewithal to open his eyes and look at me.
“Tell him to stop that now,” I said.
The Barb punched Dewey in the arm. Dewey’s eyes came down and he stopped his caterwaulin’.
“What? What is it?” he asked Barb.
“Lady cop doesn’t like it.”
Dewey’s blue eyes calmly took me in. “It’s my religion. Dis is still a free country, right?”
“Ain’t nothin’ free in this country,” I said.
“I tink dis qualifies as police brutality.”
“You know, you come here from somewhere else, usually from some really horrible shit, and the first thing you claim is free country. Like it’s some kind of pass for your criminal activities. I bet there’s a reason why you decided to leave your nice little village.”
“Unless you a Native American, you a foreigner too,” Dewey insisted.
“Yeah? It just so happens I am part Native American.”
“Well, den pardon me Ms. Part Native American. But let me jus say dat quite a few Americans have come to my country and not all of dem were of high moral integrity.”
“Is that supposed to be an excuse?”
“I’m jus’ saying.”
“You know how to make a voodoo doll?” I asked.
“Sure, no problem. You need one?”
“Yeah, I need one for a coupla assholes I know, they’re really pissing me off and I’d like for them to pay for their deeds.”
“What dey do to you?”
“Not me I’m worried about. It’s a young lady by the name of Autumn Riley.”
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