by Robert Crais
Chen said, “I can do this. I’ll take care of it.”
Pike got out and walked away.
Chen stared after him, thinking Pike wasn’t so bad when you got to know him. Not so scary, even though, well, you know, he was scary.
You’re my friend, John.
Chen lifted out the glasses. He held them up, one by one, and saw the clean definition of fingerprint smudges even through the plastic wrappers. Chen smiled. The coroner had five unidentified stiffs, and now he would have two more. Everyone would be scratching their heads, wondering who in hell these guys were, but they wouldn’t know-
– until John Chen told them.
Chen smiled even wider.
The guns would keep until tomorrow, but now was the best time for the glasses. The lab crew was reduced, Harriet was gone, and no one would ask what he was doing. Chen stuffed the guns under his seat, locked his car, and hurried inside with the glasses.
Chen wanted to identify these guys, not only for himself and what he would get from it, but for Pike. He did not want to let down his friend Joe Pike.
24
Pike stopped for takeout from an Indian restaurant in Silver Lake even though Cole dropped off food earlier that day. He bought a spinach and cheese dish called saag paneer, vegetable jalfrezi, and garlic naan, thinking the girl would like them, and a quart of a sweet yogurt drink called lassi. The lassi was rich like a milk shake, and flavored with mango. Pike enjoyed smelling the strong spices-the garlic and garam masala; the coriander and cardamom. They reminded him of the rocky villages and jungle basins where he had first eaten these things. Pike was starving. A queasy hunger had grown in him as the stress burned from his system.
The sun was long down by the time Pike arrived at their house and turned into the drive. Everything looked fine. The door was closed and the shades glowed from the light within the house. In the abrupt silence when he turned off the car, his ears still whined, though less now than before. Pike was not going to tell the girl about Luis and Jorge, but he would tell her he had made progress, and thought that might make her feel better about things.
Pike locked the car, went to the door, and let himself in. He remembered how his silent appearances frightened her, so this time he announced himself. He knocked twice, then opened the door.
“It’s me.”
Pike felt the silence as he stepped inside. Cole’s iPod was on the coffee table beside an open bottle of water. Her magazines were on the floor. The house was bright with light, but Pike heard nothing. He concentrated, listening past the whine, thinking she might be playing with him because she hated the way he always surprised her, but he knew it was wrong. The silence of an empty house is like no other silence.
Pike lowered the bag of food to the floor. He drew the Kimber and held it down along his leg.
“Larkin?”
Pike moved, and was at her bedroom. He moved again, checking the second bedroom, the bath, and the kitchen. Larkin was not in the house. The rooms and their things were in order and in place, and showed no sign of a struggle. The windows were intact. The back door was locked, but he opened it, checked the backyard, then moved back through the house. The doors had not been jimmied or broken.
Pike looked for a note. No note.
Her purse and other bags were still in her bedroom. If she ran away she had not taken them.
Pike let himself out the front door and stood in the darkness on the tiny porch. He listened, feeling the neighborhood-the streetlight above its pool of silver, the open houses with golden windows, the movement of the neighbors on their porches and within their homes. Life was normal. Men with guns had not come here. No one had carried a struggling girl out to a car or heard a woman screaming. Larkin had likely walked away.
Pike stepped off the porch and went to the street, trying to decide which way she would go, and why. She had credit cards and some cash, but no phone with which to call her friends or a car. Pike decided she had probably walked down to Sunset Boulevard to find a phone, but then a woman on the porch across the street laughed. They were an older couple, and had been on their porch every night, listening to the Dodgers. Tonight their radio played music, but Pike could hear their voices clearly.
He stepped between the cars through the pool of silver light.
He said, “Excuse me.”
Their porch was lit only by the light coming from within their house. The red tips of their cigarettes floated in the dark like fireflies.
The man drew on his cigarette, and the coal flared. He lowered the volume on the radio.
He said, “Good evening.”
He spoke in a formal manner with a Russian accent.
Pike said, “I’m from across the street.”
The woman waved her cigarette.
“We know this. We see you and the young lady.”
“Did you see the young lady today?”
Neither of them answered. They sat in cheap aluminum lawn chairs, shadowed in the dim light. The old man drew on his cigarette again.
Pike said, “I think she went for a walk. Did you see which way she went?”
The old man grunted, but with a spin that gave it meaning.
Pike said, “What?”
The woman said, “This is your wife?”
Pike read the weight in her question and took sex off the table.
“My sister.”
The old man said, “Ah.”
Something played on the woman’s face that suggested she didn’t believe him, and she seemed to be thinking about how to answer. She finally decided and waved her cigarette toward the street.
“She go with the boys.”
The old man said, “Armenians.”
The woman nodded, as if that said it all.
“She talk with them, the way they stand there all the time, them and their car, and she go with them.”
Pike said, “When was this?”
“Not so long. We had just come out with the tea.”
An hour ago. No more than an hour.
Pike said, “The Armenians. Where do they live?”
The woman jabbed her cigarette to the side.
“Next door, there. They are all cousins, they say, cousins and brothers. Armenians all say they are cousins, but you never know.”
The old man said, “Armenians.”
The house the old woman pointed to was dark, and the BMW was not on the street. She seemed to read Pike’s thoughts.
“No one is home there. They all drive away.”
“You hear them say where they were going?”
The woman tipped her chair back and craned her head toward the open window.
“Rolo! Rolo, come here!”
A boy wearing a Lakers jersey pushed through the screen door. He was tall and skinny, and Pike figured him for fourteen or fifteen.
“Yes, Gramma?”
“The Armenians, what is that place where they go?”
“I don’t know.”
The old man seemed irritated and flipped his hand in a little wave, saying stop kidding around.
“The Armenians. That club where you must never go.”
The old woman cocked a brow at Pike.
“He knows. He talks with those Armenian boys. The young one. They have this club.”
Rolo looked embarrassed, but described what sounded like a dance club not far away in Los Feliz. Rolo didn’t remember the name, but described it well enough-an older building north of Sunset that had been freshly whitewashed and had a single word on its side. Rolo didn’t remember the word, but thought it was something with a “Y.”
Pike found the building twenty minutes later, just north of Sunset where it was wedged between an Armenian bookstore and a Vietnamese-French bakery. The sign across the top of the building read CLUB YEREVAN. Beneath it, a red leather door was wedged open. Three heavy men stood on the sidewalk outside the door, talking and smoking, two in short-sleeved dress shirts and one in a gleaming leather jacket. A smaller sign above the door read
PARKING IN REAR.
Pike turned at the corner. An alley behind the storefronts led to a parking lot, where a parking valet in a tiny kiosk guarded the entrance. It was still early, but already the lot was filling, with one valet waiting at the kiosk while another parked a car. A small group of people was gathered at the club’s back door.
Pike didn’t waste time with the parking lot or attempt to find the BMW. She would be here or she wouldn’t, and if she wasn’t he would move fast to continue his search. Pike pulled over behind the Vietnamese bakery and got out of his car. The valet at the kiosk saw him and hurried across the alley, waving his hands.
“You cannot park there. Parking there is not allowed.”
Pike ignored him and pushed through the crowd. The whine was back, and louder than ever, but Pike didn’t notice. He shoved past young women with brown cigarettes and smiling men whose eyes never left the women. He stepped into a long narrow hall where more people lined the walls, shouting at each other over a booming hip-hop dance mix that still could not drown out the whine. He shoved open the men’s room door, looked, then shoved open the women’s room. The people around him laughed or stared, but Pike moved on without paying attention.
The hall turned, then turned again. More and more people were packed in the hall as Pike neared its end, and the music grew louder with a throbbing bass beat, only now the beat was underscored by the crowd. The people were chanting, their palms overhead, pushing with the beat as they raised the roof, chanting-
GO baybee, GO baybee, GO baybee, GO-!
Pike threaded between the sweating bodies that spilled into the main room, and saw her. Larkin was up on the bar, peeled to her bra, playing the crowd like a stripper as she rocked her ass with the chant. She made a slow turn, running her hands from her hair to her crotch as she squatted toward the bar, making the nasty smile, and all Pike saw was the dolphin, jumping free over her hips, screaming to be recognized.
The girl saw him as he reached the bar, and stopped dancing as abruptly as if she were a child caught being naughty. She straightened and stared down at him, looking guilty and scared. Pike stopped at her feet, and in that moment they were the only two people not raising the roof.
Pike shouted over the pounding bass.
“Get down.”
She didn’t move. Her face was sad in a way he found confusing. He didn’t tell her a second time. He wasn’t sure she had heard him.
Larkin did not resist when he pulled her off the bar.
Pike turned away with the girl, and the crowd did not know what to make of it, some laughing, others booing; but then the two oldest cousins and a thick man with a large belly fronted him, the oldest cousin stepping close to block Pike’s way as the thick man grabbed Pike’s arm. Pike caught the man’s thumb even as it touched him, peeling away his hand, rolling the hand like water turned by a rock, snapping the man face-first into the floor like a wave exploding on shore.
The people around them pulled back.
Pike had not looked away from the oldest cousin, and did not look away now.
The crowd surrounding them edged farther away. No one moved. Finally, when Pike felt they understood, he led the girl out of that place.
25
The people crowding the hall and the back door had not seen her dancing or what happened at the bar, but Pike pulled her directly to the car. She got in without a word. He backed out of the alley fast, then jammed it for Sunset, all the while deciding what to do about the cousins, and whether or not they should go back to the house. Pike was angry, but anger would only get in the way. His job was to keep her alive. He didn’t speak until they were two blocks away.
“Did you tell them who you are?”
“No.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Mona.”
“What?”
“My name. They had to call me something. I told them Mona.”
Pike kept watch in the mirror, checking to see if they were being followed.
“Did anyone recognize you?”
“I don’t-how would I know?”
“The way someone looked at you. Someone might have said something.”
“No.”
“The questions they asked. A comment.”
“Just dancing. They asked if I dance. They asked what movies I like. Stuff.”
They were four blocks away when Pike pulled to the curb outside a liquor store. He cupped her jaw in his hand and tipped her face toward the oncoming headlights.
“Are you drunk?”
“I told you I don’t drink. I’m sober a year.”
“High?”
“A year.”
He studied the play of light in her eyes and decided she was telling the truth. He let go, but she grabbed his hand and kept it to her face. He tugged but she held tight, and he didn’t want to hurt her.
She said, “Take off those stupid glasses. Do you know how creepy this is, you with the glasses? Nobody wears sunglasses at night. Let me see. You looked at my eyes, let me see yours.”
She had wanted to see his eyes up in the desert when they met. She had been all attitude then, but now she was angry and frightened.
Pike said, “They’re just eyes.”
He opened her fingers and took back his hand. Gently, so he would not hurt her. Not like with the man at the bar.
“What you did could get us both killed. Do you want to die? Is that what you’re doing?”
“That’s stupid-”
“Tell me what you want to do. You want to go home, I’ll take you home. You want to live, I will end this.”
“I didn’t-”
Pike clamped both her hands in his.
“I will sell my life dear, but not for a suicide. I will not waste my life.”
She stared for a moment as if she was confused.
“I’m not asking you to-”
Pike gripped her hands harder and cut her off again.
“If you want to go home, let’s go. If you want to die, go home, then die, because I will not allow it.”
Maybe he squeezed too hard. His hands were gristle and bone and calloused, and he was strong. Her chin dimpled and her eyes filled with tears.
“All I was doing was driving my car!”
Pike slapped the steering wheel.
“This wheel, it doesn’t care. The air we’re breathing, doesn’t care. Suck it up-”
“You’re an asshole!”
“Do you want to live or go dancing? I can have you home in twenty minutes.”
“You don’t know what it’s like being me!”
“You don’t know what it’s like being me.”
Headlights and taillights played on her, moving the way light plays in water; yellow and green and blue lights on the shops and signs around them painted her with a confusion of moving color. She didn’t speak, and didn’t seem able to speak.
Pike softened his voice.
“Tell me you want to live.”
“I want to live.”
“Say it again.”
“I want to live!”
Pike let go of her hands, but she still didn’t move. He straightened behind the wheel.
“We’re not so different.”
The girl burst out laughing.
“Ohmigod! Oh my God- dude! Maybe you’re high!”
Pike put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake. Their sameness seemed obvious.
“You want to be seen; me, I want to be invisible. It’s all the same.”
The girl stared at him, then straightened herself the way he had straightened himself.
She said, “An idealist.”
Pike didn’t know what she was saying, so he shook his head.
She said, “Your friend. Elvis. He said you’re an idealist.”
Pike pulled out into traffic.
“He thinks he’s funny.”
She started to say something but fell silent the way people are silent when they think. They drove back to the house in that silence,
but once, just the once, she reached out and squeezed his arm, and once, just the once, he patted her hand.
26
Later, when the rhythm of her breathing suggested the girl had fallen asleep there on the couch, Pike turned off the final lamp, and the room and the house went dark. He would go out later, and wanted no light when he opened the door.
Pike sat quietly, watching her. They had eaten the Indian food, though not much of it; speaking little, her mostly, making fun of the music on Cole’s iPod, and now, still wearing the headphones, she had fallen asleep.
The girl seemed even younger in sleep, and smaller, as if part of her had vanished into the couch. With her asleep, Pike believed he was seeing her Original Person. Pike believed each person created himself or herself; you built yourself from the inside out, with the tensions and will of the inside person holding the outside person together. The outside person was the face you showed the world; it was your mask, your camouflage, your message, and, perhaps, your means. It existed only so long as the inside person held it together, and when the inside person could no longer hold the mask together, the outside person dissolved and you would see the original person. Pike had observed that sleep could sometimes loosen the hold. Booze, dope, and extreme emotions could all loosen the hold; the weaker the grasp, the more easily loosened. Then you saw the person within the person. Pike often pondered these things. The trick was to reach a place where the inside person and the outside person were the same. The closer someone got to this place, the stronger they would become. Pike believed that Cole was such a person, his inside and outside very close to being one and the same. Pike admired him for it. Pike also pondered whether Cole had accomplished this through design and effort, or was one with himself because oneness was his natural state. Either way, Pike considered this a feat of enormous import and studied Cole to learn more. Pike’s inside person had built a fortress. The fortress had served, but Pike hoped for more. A fortress was a lonely place in which to live.