Jason’s reaction was worse than she had expected. He obviously hadn’t heard a thing about the suit. His jaw dropped and his face went ashy. He had trouble finding his voice, and when he found it, it broke. "He wants—what?" he said.
She explained what Quentin de Beers was up to, and all the while he just cocked his head and watched her like a dog she had sneaked up on and kicked. "Look, I’m sorry. You didn’t need another shock. Hasn’t your mother talked to you in the last day or so?"
"No. I ... went out hiking today. When I called her from the store, she was... we only talked about Molly."
"I have a declaration here"—Nina pulled it out of the briefcase—"that I need you to read. I wrote it for your sister to sign, so it has her name on it, but the information is the same. Read it, please. Talk to your mother. If you are willing to sign it I need you to bring it down to my office in the Starlake Building by tomorrow morning at the latest so we can put it in final form and submit it to the Court. At the latest, right?"
She walked over and gave him the draft declaration with her business card. He was more than a foot taller than she was. She seemed to be handing paper to an uncomprehending wall. "It’s important, Jason."
His father had been killed, his sister had just tried to kill herself, and while he was still reeling, he had learned that his grandfather had sued his mother. She hoped he had a point of stability inside him. His mother and sister did not, and somebody had to try to keep them grounded.
"The hearing is on Thursday morning in the main Superior Court. Day after tomorrow, unless your grandfather and your mother settle it earlier. You can come if you want, but you don’t have to be there."
He folded the papers up carefully and pushed them into his pocket. "I have to think," he said to himself. She wanted to calm him down before he got out on the road; so she asked, just trying to ratchet down the conversation a little, "Jason? What’s a sugar rocket?"
"Oh, that’s Kenny’s book. He’s a mad scientist. I’d introduce you, but he’s out." He passed a hand over his eyes.
"Are you okay?" Nina asked. It was past eight, and she became aware that she was so tired and hungry, she wasn’t even sure about driving home. "I’m going now."
He held the door open for her, car keys in his hand, his eyes somewhere else.
10
"YEAH, FINS. A BIG GAS-GUZZLER FROM THE FIFTIES, early sixties. Chrysler, Buick, Pontiac, maybe. White, with the big ones. What were the biggest years for the fins? Nineteen fifty-eight? Fifty-nine? You tell me."
Sitting cross-legged on the bed and munching on a toasted sourdough bagel with salmon and cream cheese, Paul was making his telephone rounds. At barely nine o’clock in the morning, some of the places on his list hadn’t opened yet. He would get to them later.
"Fins. How many fins you get turned in as a trade-in each year? Maybe two? You can look for me. Oh, yes, you can. Come up with the car I want and there’s a bonus in it for you... it’s a private collector. Nothing to do with the cops or the DMV—just a minute, somebody’s at the door."
A tacky suit stood at the door, with a beat-up car salesman in it. Paul could tell he was a salesman because he had the salesman’s smile, big on teeth and small on warmth, under a black bristly mustache. Heavyset, he wore his hair combed straight back. In the buttonhole of his jacket a white rosebud sent out its own flowery greeting.
"Gotta go," Paul said.
Hanging up, he surveyed his visitor, who held out his hand and said, "Munir El-Barouki. How do you do? You are Mr. van Wagoner?"
"Come on in."
Inside the room, El-Barouki said, "Nice place to do business. You’re a private investigator, right?"
"That’s right."
"I always wanted to do that, but I’ll never get a license now. Little problem down South. Wow, that’s a nice semiauto you have on the table there."
"So what brings you to my humble hotel room?"
El-Barouki ignored this. He said, "I used to carry a custom forty-five when I worked executive protection. You know what they say: ’One shot stops, the bad guy drops.’ Customized by Bill Wilson out of Arkansas. Had the feed ramp polished, had it throated, had the ejection port flared, added a Beavertail safety. A set of cocobolo grips by Kim Ahrends. A Wilson barrel and a Videcki trigger. And a set of Bo-Mar sights. I loved that gun."
"We all love our guns," Paul said. "What happened to it?"
"Lost my license to carry. Started selling used Caddys in Chico, Merced, other places, and ended up in Tahoe a few years ago. Gambled away my stake and got stuck here, actually. So, what you got there? Looks like a Sig P210."
"Close," Paul said. "CZ-75 nine millimeter. Fifteen rounds and one in the chamber. Almost as accurate as the Sig. One of the original wonder nines."
"Preban magazines, huh?" El-Barouki said, edging up toward the gun. Paul reached over to pick it up.
"Yeah. Straight from the factory in Brno."
"My brother-in-law had a CZ. I know the type. You can carry it cocked and locked."
"You got it," said Paul. He figured El-Barouki would get to the point soon enough. Besides, he liked having his gun admired. Other people had pets; he had a relationship with his gun. It was beautiful and sexy and fit his hand perfectly. He held it in his palm so El-Barouki could get a good look.
"Course, the nine millimeter doesn’t have the stopping power of the forty-five," El-Barouki said.
"I use hollow points," Paul said. "Black Rhinos. Almost as effective as a forty-five and carries twice as many."
"Still, you can’t beat a full metal jacket in a big bore. You know what they say: ’They all fall to hardball.’ "
"If you shoot straight, they all fall, period," Paul said. He put the gun away, gently, in its holster. "So," he said.
El-Barouki took the hint. "You called my place of employment this morning, Sierra Cadillac. My boss told me about the call. He’s new, and I was around three years ago."
"Go on. You’re a car salesman?"
"That’s what I do, move the metal. I may know the car you’re looking for. How much is the bonus?"
"If it really is the car I’m looking for, and you give me the location, I’ll give you a hundred bucks."
"Hundred bucks? Don’t waste my time." El-Barouki headed for the door, turning his head to eye Paul and see how he was taking it. Paul watched him put his hand on the knob, hesitate, and turn back. "There are special circumstances with this car," El-Barouki said.
"I’m listening."
"I handled the transaction privately. Not through Sierra."
"What transaction?"
"A guy paid me to get rid of it. I didn’t want to run it through the lot, just in case, you know?"
"In case it was hot, yeah, I know."
El-Barouki shrugged. "Well, who knew? Anyway, I drove it home. If there was a problem, it wasn’t my problem. I sold it to a tourist from Whittier, town outside Los Angeles, cheap."
"When exactly was this?’’ Paul said.
"Make it five hundred, we can get into the details."
"It’s chilly out there. Close the door on your way out," Paul told him.
"Three hundred."
"Two-fifty. My final offer."
"I could get into trouble about this," El-Barouki complained, "Plus I had to take off work." Seeing Paul unmoved, he tried again. "Mr. van Wagoner, you’re killing me, I’ve got expenses—"
"You’ve already collected from both the seller and the buyer," Paul interrupted. "You didn’t report the income to the IRS. You sold cars off the job. That could get you fired. So let’s say we need each other at this point. And unlike your clients at the car shop, I won’t waste my time listening to you natter on in the hopes that you can shake another couple of bucks out of me. Two-fifty."
"And no trouble?"
"No trouble."
"Okay. There are always side deals to be made. One condition. You let me hold the gun for a minute before we start."
Sighing, Paul worked the slide and ej
ected the bullet in the chamber into his hand, then pressed the magazine release and withdrew the clip. He handed the gun to El-Barouki, who weighed it, tested the grip, looked down the barrel and aligned the front sight at a bird pecking at seeds outside on the windowsill.
"Pow," he said, recoiling his hand. "He’s history."
The bird took the hint and flew away. El-Barouki smiled, handing the gun back. "You’ve got a nice piece there."
Paul tucked the gun back into its holster.
"Okay. This all happened in September, three years ago. The car was a white 1959 Pontiac Catalina in good shape, clean, little crack in one of the headlights, coupla dings. That’s it. The buyer paid one thousand for it, a great deal considering the blue book for a classic in that condition."
Paul had grabbed his notebook off the table and was making rapid notes.
"Who was the seller?" he said.
"We’ll get to that in a minute. The buyer’s name was Bryan Bright. He said his family had a Catalina in the sixties and he had always wanted another one. Here’s his address." He handed over a dirty slip of paper.
Paul said again, "The seller?"
"No name."
"What about the registration?"
"I forgot what it said."
"You put any of the sale papers through the DMV?"
"No, I put the two dudes in touch and they handled the rest themselves."
"What did the seller look like?"
El-Barouki was shaking his head. "He was maybe forty, fifty. Not young. I’m not too clear on how he looked. This was three years ago, you know."
"How much did he pay you to forget his name and what he looked like?"
"A little extra," El-Barouki said. "And he also said he’d personally cut my nuts off if I told anyone else—so you know, I’m forgetful."
"I can relate. But you didn’t promise not to describe the car he drove."
El-Barouki thought about this, and said, "He drove the Catalina in and left on foot. There’s a 7-Eleven down the road. Maybe he called a taxi from there."
"What about the license plate?" Paul asked, but El-Barouki was already shaking his head. He wasn’t going to ID the seller, period. Paul decided that if he could work backward from the trail of documents he might locate the seller. "What else can you tell me?"
"Just ... I always felt funny about it. The car wasn’t hot, that much I checked out, but the situation felt hot. Not long after, the dealership got a call from the cops. They were looking for a light-colored car that had been in an accident. I mean, that wasn’t necessarily the Catalina. I can’t even say it was in an accident. But I always wondered..."
"Yeah?"
"What’d the guy do?" El-Barouki said, almost in a whisper.
Paul gave him his money and a business card, saying, "I’ll be in touch."
By one o’clock, Paul had caught the daily flight to Los Angeles from the Tahoe airport. Bryan Bright hadn’t been listed in phone information, but El-Barouki had given him a lead that was too good to sit on.
The small prop plane ripped in and out of the cloud banks, jolting its way out of the mountains. Down below, the foothills looked untouched, a sprawl of forest camouflaging the one-lane roads, pickup trucks, bars, and cabins.
The plane bumped again, but the three other passengers didn’t seem to notice. The steward sat up front, reading a magazine. No movie, no peanuts, no lovely lady leaning over him with a drink.
His right knee gave him a warning twinge. Efficiency, compactness, and frugality were all very well for small, stingy robots, Paul thought, trying to find a new configuration for his long legs, which were being tortured by the seat in front. He could appreciate why Bryan Bright would buy an old car with fins that got about eight miles to the gallon. The Catalina would have leg room delightful to stretch out in, and a trunk roomy enough to carry the TV set down to the repair shop.
After an hour and a half and a stop somewhere in the Central Valley, Paul woke from a nap to the brown haze suspended over the L.A. basin. Traveling directly into the murky sunlight with its deceitful way of adding a healthy golden glow to everything it touched, they landed without incident and Paul followed the pilots out the corridor and into a blast of broiling-hot smog. City of fallen angels!
To honor the spirit of the occasion, Paul had decided to rent a big car, but all the agency offered was a Chrysler Le Baron convertible, a Lilliput to yesteryear’s Brobdingnags. Consulting his map, he saw that East Whittier was just across town—about fifty miles, that would be. He slipped shades on his face, got in the car, and merged onto the clogged freeway. Hot wind and exhaust fumes blasted his face, causing his eyes to sting and water so badly he had to wipe the tears away with his sleeve.
He had thought a convertible would be cool, but in about five minutes he pulled over to raise the vinyl hood and turn on the air-conditioning. Unfortunately, the hood latch in front was broken. He drove on, watching with irritation as the other drivers in their tightly sealed air-conditioned cars sailed by.
As he made his way across the gargantuan, stifling city, with nothing but graffiti-blotched sound walls and dusty ice plant to distract him, he let go of the Case and thought about women, his favorite meditation topic, more engrossing even than guns or what to have for dinner.
He was tired of following Nina around like a love-starved puppy. By God, he’d prove it with Kim. The sheer cockiness of this mental pronouncement forced him to look at a possibility, one he didn’t particularly care to see. Was Kim just a reaction to Nina?
Kim is sexy, he thought, classic. She’s got a nose like the ones on Roman coins, and she exudes femaleness, serenity. She works at home. She likes being there, likes cooking there, likes me there. She’s artistic, fascinating, and worth going after.
But what about the celibacy riff she had laid on him? What about "I don’t date"? She was definitely hetero; he had seen the mist rise in her eyes when he kissed her. She wouldn’t be worth going after if she didn’t put up an obstacle or two.
He wondered if Nina would even notice. Let her find out from Collier. Let her know he had somebody else.
Coming to a clear stretch of road, he whizzed past an eighteen-wheeler already doing seventy. Chinks in the sound walls offered a glimpse of block after block of dilapidated tract houses. According to the signs, he had passed through Hawthorne, Gardena, Watts, Lynwood, the edge of Compton, Paramount, and Bellflower.
He turned north on the 605. The traffic thickened and slowed, as if the heat had coagulated it. Norwalk, Downey, Santa Fe Springs ... might as well get off here. He could drive out Telegraph Road and end up in East Whittier, his destination.
Dumpy ranch houses. Ritzy ranch houses. Dry concrete culverts and identical strip malls, each with its convenience store and fast-food outlet. At four o’clock it was still so hot he could smell the asphalt melting.
He found the sameness depressing. More than once he convinced himself that he had driven in circles. Surely the evil empire couldn’t go on much farther. He was driving through the center of the postwar American dream, surrounded by fifty miles, maybe a hundred miles, of one-story three-bedroom two-bath two-car-garage gimcrack houses, with wall-to-wall carpeting and a barbecue pit out back.
At last he turned onto a cul-de-sac called Avalon Place and came to the home of Bryan Bright. Just like all the others, it was painted stucco, with an oil stain in the driveway and a jumble of bicycles on the porch. Paul pulled right into the wide driveway. He had planned a little covert surveillance before he approached the man, but it was too fucking hot.
At the front door, he knocked but got no answer. He thought he could guess exactly what time Bright would be pulling up from his job in the dying aerospace industry. Down the street he bought himself a six-pack of diet cola, then parked right in Bright’s driveway, where a half-dead tree near the driveway shed a meager shade. There he passed the next hour, the hottest hour of his life.
With a thunderous roar and a cloud of oily exhaust, just after six, right t
o the minute according to Paul’s projected schedule, Bryan Bright bumped into the driveway next to the Le Baron. Paul was just returning from the backyard, where he had been forced to take a whiz after downing the entire six-pack.
"Hey! What are you doing in my backyard!" the man said, climbing out of the big, sleek car. Not a car: an automobile. Twenty feet long, so heavy it scraped the bottom on the slight incline of the driveway, white-walled and blindingly chromed, it had been repainted a glimmering black. At the rear of the vehicle, sticking eight inches into the air, winking their twin red orbicular lights, the fins looked hilarious or hip, depending on the observer’s point of view. To Paul they looked like red triangles in a painting.
A 1959 Pontiac Catalina, Paul thought with satisfaction.
"Sorry," he said. "I was just looking for you. Thought you might be out back." He walked over to the car, looked at the headlights. Not a ding. He looked at the windshield. Nothing he could see. "This is some car."
"Who are you?" the man demanded. He was about thirty, pink-faced, balding fast, wearing wraparound sunglasses and carrying a lunch box.
"My name’s Paul van Wagoner. Are you Mr. Bright?"
"Yes."
"I’m a private investigator, Mr. Bright. May I talk to you for a minute?"
"What about?"
"Your car."
"What about my car? What’s this about?"
"Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Bright. I’m looking for a previous owner. It’s got nothing to do with you."
"Oh. Well, I just drove thirty-five miles on the freeway, and I had a long day at the office. My wife and kids will be home soon. So why don’t you come back after supper."
"I just flew five hundred miles and drove another fifty to see you as soon as I could, Mr. Bright. Give me a break. It’s too hot to stand around out here. Let’s go inside."
Bright looked at Paul’s rental car, and said, "Never drive in a convertible around here in August. You’ll get sunstroke. Only tourists drive convertibles. The sun’s too strong to ride around like that. Wheel gets too hot to touch, and the vinyl seats on that thing, they’ll—"
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