His expression angry, Lyndon was standing in front of her holding a pistol trained on her and yelling at her.
Brody couldn’t hear what he was saying.
Apprehensive for Deirdre’s safety, Brody reached for the SIG Sauer P365 compact 9 mm pistol concealed in the leather DeSantis holster of his Velcro shoulder rig and withdrew it. He used to carry a SIG P938, but he switched over because of the P365’s greater magazine capacity. The P365 could hold thirteen rounds versus the P938’s seven and was almost the same size.
He tapped on the windowpane with his knuckles.
No response.
He tapped harder this time, his visage intense. He didn’t want to have to shoot Lyndon, intending to scare the guy with the sight of his pistol instead.
Lyndon whirled around at the noise at his window and picked up on Brody, who was holding up his SIG outside the pane.
Irate, Lyndon stormed toward the front door and flung it open, gun in hand.
“Put the gun down,” said Brody.
“I have every right to shoot you,” said Lyndon, eying Brody’s pistol. “This is my house.”
“You’re assaulting your wife.”
“No, he’s not,” said Deirdre from the living room. “Don’t worry about it.”
Brody looked uncertain. He couldn’t figure out what was going on. Why would she say Lyndon wasn’t assaulting her when she was tied to a chair and the guy was waving a gun at her?
“Put your gun down,” Lyndon told Brody.
Confused, Brody made a move to holster his SIG, not convinced he was doing the right thing. If Deirdre wasn’t complaining, he decided it was best not to get involved in a domestic dispute. Cops always warned that domestic disputes were the worst to investigate because they could either erupt into violence or, just as easily, passionate kisses.
“Come on inside,” said Deirdre.
Lyndon softened his angry expression, lowered his weapon, and backed away from the door to allow Brody to enter the house. Black sunglasses perched on the top of his head, Lyndon was wearing black track pants with white piping down the legs and a white T.
As Brody entered, Lyndon shut the door behind him.
“What’s going on?” said Brody, approaching the bound Deirdre.
“It’s an act,” she said, the anguish gone from her face as if it had never existed. She looked quite composed.
“What?” said Brody in bewilderment.
“I didn’t know insurance agents carried guns,” said Lyndon, his voice tinged with suspicion.
Their idea of BDSM? wondered Brody.
“I’ve had my life threatened,” he said. “I have a concealed-carry permit.”
“So I’m not your only would-be customer who took offense at your stupid questions.”
Brody ignored the dig. “What’s this all about?”
“We don’t have to tell you anything. You’re trespassing. I could throw you out of here right now. Or—shoot you. And no jury in the world would convict me.”
“Honey, it’s nothing,” said Deirdre. “He thought our act was for real.”
“What’s this about an act?” said Brody.
“We like to play games,” said Lyndon, “if it’s any of your business.”
“You got her tied to a chair. What kind of a sick game is this?”
“Is it any of your business what I do in the privacy of my home?”
“It is if you’re torturing someone.”
“Nothing like that happened,” said Deirdre.
“You looked like you were in pain.”
“She’s an actress,” said Lyndon.
“We were rehearsing a scene,” said Deirdre.
“You’re gonna be in his movie?” said Brody, scratching his head.
“No,” said Lyndon. “I compare her to the talent I’m representing at my agency.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Deirdre’s a great actress. The actresses in my agency have to perform as well as she does in a scene or I won’t represent them for a movie they want to be in.”
“So this was all a performance?”
“Yeah,” said Deirdre. “We had no idea anyone would show up at our window. You scared the living daylights out of me when I saw you there.”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” demanded Lyndon.
Brody fumbled for an answer. Thinking the guy would be at work he hadn’t expected Lyndon to be here.
“I want to ask you more question about your policy,” said Brody, thinking on his feet.
Actually, it was Deirdre Brody wanted to ask questions, but he had no intention of telling Lyndon, who didn’t know Brody was working for her, as far as Brody knew.
“Untie me, honey,” said Deirdre.
“You ruined everything,” Lyndon told Brody, approaching Deirdre.
“I believed you were torturing her or were gonna kill her. You had a frigging piece in your hand.”
“We do our scenes realistically,” said Lyndon, untying Deirdre.
“You had me conned,” said Brody. “This game is on the sick side, if you ask me.”
“You don’t understand love, do you?” said Deirdre.
“Probably not.”
“If you don’t understand love, you shouldn’t judge.”
“I didn’t know it was a game.”
“It’s not really a game,” said Lyndon. “It helps me in my job.”
“You don’t like playing the game of love?” Deirdre asked Brody.
“Not when it puts people’s lives at stake,” he answered.
“You must not be married.”
“You’re right.”
“Well, don’t take it out on us,” said Lyndon, with a smirk.
“Why aren’t you married?” said Deirdre.
“I’m shy,” said Brody.
“You got a lot to be shy about,” said Lyndon.
Brody felt like clobbering Lyndon’s face.
“Do you have a sense of inadequacy?” Lyndon went on, picking up on Brody’s anger.
Brody said nothing.
Was involving him part of Deirdre’s and Lyndon’s sex games that they played with each other? Brody wondered. Had he accidentally become part of the game? Or was Deirdre’s hiring him a setup to seduce him into their game as an unwitting pawn? Had they been playing him all along? Brody wondered.
He needed to step back, get a grip, and concentrate on his job. Blowing his stack wouldn’t solve anything, he decided.
“Neither one of you looked like you were having fun,” said Brody.
“Like Deirdre, I too was playing a part,” said Lyndon.
“You looked like you were gonna coldcock her or pistol-whip her.”
“It was all an act. I should report you to the cops for home invasion. I don’t want your damn insurance.”
“You’d be a perfect candidate. It’s a good idea to plan ahead for the sake of your family before your time is up.”
“Yeah? I still think I should report you to the cops.”
“It was all a big mistake,” Deirdre told Lyndon, standing by his side and massaging his arm. “This man here had no idea we were staging a scene for entertainment.”
Brody didn’t want to get into this. What spouses did for recreational purposes was none of his business—unless one of them had hired him to find out if the other was fooling around with another woman. Of course, he couldn’t bring that little matter up, because Lyndon had no idea his wife had hired Brody for just such a purpose. Or was Lyndon in on the game from the get-go? Was hiring Brody Lyndon’s idea in the first place?
“Life insurance is all about planning ahead,” said Brody. “Planning for your loved ones.”
“I know what it is,” said Lyndon. “And I know I don’t want to buy it from you.”
“I’m the best at my job. I’ll make you the best deal.”
“You come barging in here with a gun and you think I’m gonna buy insurance from you?”
“You would’ve done the
same in my shoes.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I mind my own business.”
“And you’d let somebody be tortured and shot before your very eyes? I don’t think so.”
“Everybody’s upset,” said Deirdre. She turned to Brody. “Maybe you better leave and come back another time.”
“You don’t have to come back at all,” Lyndon told Brody.
“It’s never too late to plan for your future,” said Brody.
“I don’t have time for this,” said Lyndon, and glanced at his wristwatch. “I have to get to the office.”
Brody decided to retreat.
He walked out the door, got into his Mini, drove out of the driveway, and waited at the end of the block for Lyndon to leave in his Porsche.
Chapter 15
After Marcello checked into his nondescript LA hotel he decided to go sightseeing to pass the time. As yet, he had no idea of his target. The mastro di giornata would contact him by satphone and inform him when it was time.
For now, Marcello decided to pay a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits.
To make the journey there he needed a ride. He never used Uber because they wanted a credit card. He used only cash to prevent anyone from tracing his movement by tracking his credit-card payments.
Instead he took a cab driven by a black guy with dreadlocks and bright white teeth that lit up when he grinned.
“Where to, boss?” said the cabbie.
“The tar pits.”
“You got it.”
Fifteen minutes later, Marcello strolled around the black pool of tar, its syrupy surface broken by an occasional rupturing bubble, where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers drowned in agony, thrashing in their death throes as they descended into the murky depths to suffocate, alone and in terror.
What a horrible way to go, struggling in futility to escape from a pool of ooze, decided Marcello. There was something about death that obsessed him, especially violent death. Death per se did nothing for him. It was the violent aspect of it that attracted him, the violence mingled with the horror. A woolly mammoth roaring in terror as it died. The thought thrilled Marcello.
Even as a boy he had felt the same way about death.
When he had gone to St. Leo’s Church in San Luca and set eyes on a reproduction of Botticelli’s painting of St. Sebastian on the vestibule wall, he had become fixated on the arrows sticking out of St. Sebastian’s half-naked body tied to a tree. He could not draw his eyes away from the scene—all the arrows sticking out of St. Sebastian’s twisted body as he languished on the tree in extremis.
He had learned later that St. Sebastian had not died from the arrows. St. Sebastian had survived and gone on to harangue the Roman emperor Diocletian about his persecution of Christianity, the same man that had ordered him tied up and shot with arrows. This time to make certain St. Sebastian died, Diocletian had ordered him beaten to death with cudgels, or stoned to death—whichever historical source you believed.
But Botticelli had decided to paint St. Sebastian tied to a tree, his agonized body perforated by arrows, to all appearances on the verge of death, blood trickling from a wound in his abdomen and soaking his loincloth.
The flow of blood from Sebastian’s wound enthralled Marcello.
Marcello could stand in front of the painting for hours and stare at it in wonder. It became his incentive to attend church. Hoping he might become a priest, his mother had thought he had wanted to go to church to pray, but all the while it was to view Botticelli’s painting.
The trail of vermilion blood that flowed down Sebastian’s abdomen and stained his white loincloth red excited Marcello. The painting filled him with a strange longing. There was something about bloodletting. How could anyone not be fascinated by it? he wondered.
Maybe that was why he had shot Luigi—to see the scumbag’s blood flow. Part of the reason, anyway. The main reason was to see the son of a bitch dead, of course, for the insults he had hurled at Marcello’s mother.
Marcello banished the memories from his mind and returned to the present to eye the statue of the woolly mammoth dying in the tar pits. No blood. The animal had lost no blood as it had died. Its death left Marcello unsatisfied. For death to satisfy him, he needed to see bloodshed. Pain was essential, as well. The pain was there, clearly visible in the writhing of the mammoth. But no blood.
He wandered away from the tar pits toward a grassy hillock. There was a greyish yellow haze in the sky. He assumed it was the smog that Los Angeles was famous for. He could do without it. Otherwise, it was a nice day with an azure sky so bright and hard it looked like it would crack like an eggshell any minute. A balmy breeze gentled his face.
Thinking about the mammoth’s suffering final moments Marcello was itching for the mastro di giornata to call him so he could execute the contract given to him by the capo crimine.
Marcello needed to see the gushing of blood to keep his psyche from descending into a slough of depression. He needed to stave off the hopeless despond that enveloped his mind when he wasn’t on the hunt. Visions of his life being snuffed out pointlessly would overwhelm him if he didn’t get back into action soon.
What was taking the mastro di giornata so long to call him?
Marcello stifled an anguished scream.
Chapter 16
Brody tailed Lyndon’s Porsche 911 to Hollywood via Sunset Boulevard, careful to stay far enough back that Lyndon wouldn’t suspect he was being followed.
As Brody followed, he kept seeing the same black Lincoln Navigator between him and Lyndon’s Porsche. He wondered when the Lincoln would turn off. It never did. It kept following the Porsche.
It appeared somebody else was tailing Lyndon. Who would want to subject Lyndon to surveillance? wondered Brody.
Shortly after Lyndon passed Highland Avenue, he stopped at the curb and picked up a good-looking full-lipped twentysomething blonde wearing a short pink dress.
Slowing down, reaching for his iPhone, one hand on his steering wheel, Brody managed to snap a picture of the blonde.
Lyndon continued to drive down Sunset till he reached his high-rise steel-and-glass office building, where he parked in an underground garage manned by a rotund, middle-aged uniformed guard with a white mustache, a bulbous pocked nose, and a blowsy face.
Brody wondered what the Lincoln was going to do. It kept heading east on Sunset.
Doubting the guard would let him enter the lot, Brody parked at a meter on the side of the street and pondered his next move.
A jonesing addict shuffled down the sidewalk in baggy clothes, his face bursting with sweat, and passed Brody.
Brody wondered why Lyndon would take the woman he had picked up to his office. It could be that she worked there.
He took out his cell phone and studied the photo he had snapped of her. He enlarged the image with his fingers so he could get a better look at her face. Even close up, he didn’t recognize her. If she was an actress, she wasn’t famous. Not that he was an expert on actresses.
Lowering his cell phone he looked through his windshield. He saw that the Lincoln was stopped at the next traffic light.
On the spur of the moment he decided to follow the Lincoln. Sitting outside Lyndon’s office waiting for him to leave the building wouldn’t bear fruit.
He wanted to find out who would want to tail Lyndon, or who had hired the tail.
Brody fired his ignition and pulled out into traffic to follow the Lincoln.
They drove past rock clubs and Irish pubs that inhabited the strip, along with girls with purple hair and nose rings, a transient rummaging through a wastebasket with a folded umbrella, and a guy dressed up like Superman.
The Lincoln hung an abrupt right.
Distracted for a moment by a jaywalking peroxide blonde with black stiletto heels who strutted in front of him, Brody slammed on his brakes and almost missed the Lincoln’s maneuver, which he caught out of the corner of his eye.
Looking like she was about to tip over, the top half of
her black satin blouse unbuttoned to reveal most of her prominent breasts that were spilling out, the blonde glared at him for nearly hitting her.
“You think looking’s for free?” she said as she stood in front of his fender.
“Are you hurt?” he said.
“Watch where you’re goin’,” she said, and pounded his left front fender with her fist.
No harm no foul, he thought. He wished she would get out of his way so he wouldn’t lose the Lincoln.
She wobbled on her heels across the street, car horns blasting at her. She gave everybody the finger, as she continued jaywalking across the boulevard.
Chapter 17
Brody raced to the intersection and hung a sharp right through the amber light in pursuit of the Lincoln, his tires shrieking.
He didn’t see it. The Lincoln had vanished.
He cursed.
He kept driving, letting up on the gas. As he drove slowly toward Fountain Avenue, he looked up and down it for any sign of the Lincoln. It was nowhere to be seen.
He had no idea where it had gone. He kept driving till he reached Hollywood Boulevard and stopped at the light, where he checked right and left to locate the Lincoln. Unable to spot it, he decided to hang a right on a hunch and tooled past the nondescript ocher-tiled Tiki, one of the last triple-X porn theaters in Hollywood, an area where they had proliferated in the eighties and home of the infamous Pussycat Theaters. The porn-saturated Internet had driven them all out of business.
He remembered his first visit to a porn theater in his teens. There was a tantalizing sense of evil as he had entered the dark theater, a den of iniquity that had a smatter of people in attendance spread helter-skelter and sitting in furtive hunches. A faint scent of cheap perfume, perhaps left by a relaxing hooker, had impregnated the seat where he had sat.
He sensed the same impression of evil when he had visited his first hooker, but with more pungency. And he had smelled a tincture of cheap perfume emanating from her nipples as well as from the louche ambience of the cathouse—
A car slammed into him from behind, jerking his head back against his seat’s headrest.
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