“He bought me dinner last week.”
“Dad’s a sweetie pie, for sure.”
Aw, shit.
“You’re not a real Goth,” Mira said to Lucy.
“I’m not?”
“No tats, no metal. You’re a pretender. But that’s cool.”
No metal. Meaning no random piercings, like a safety pin through her eyelids or a spike through the roof of her mouth into her brain. I never got that piercings thing. Seems like it probably started out with kids saying “screw you” to their parents and to the entire world, but then it became the thing to do to be cool and unique like everyone else around you. But what do I know? What I do know is if someone accidentally bumped the switch on a nearby MRI machine it would pull the entire face off some of these kids leaving a mask of torn, bloody flesh.
I hoped this comment wouldn’t go where I didn’t want it to go, but I said, “I saw Ramon in Wildcat tonight, Mira. It looked like he was in a cast or something.”
She shrugged. “He is. Some guy in the bar like a week ago beat Ramon up real bad for no reason.”
“No reason, huh? That’s cold.”
“Uh-huh. Ramon was just getting a drink and this guy went off on him like unreal.”
“Ramon ever go off on anyone?” I asked.
“Well … he sort of can. Sometimes. Like if someone gets in his face.”
“Do people get in his face very often?”
“A little. Sometimes.” She looked at me. “You look older now. Um, I don’t mean like, like bad, but … kinda older than you did.”
“It’s been almost a week. People age.”
She thought about that for a moment. “I guess.”
“So, did Ramon have anything interesting to say?”
She shrugged. “Nothing special. Just that his arm hurts like a son of a bitch if he doesn’t take his pills … um, sorry about the language. It’s just, that’s what he said.”
“It’s okay.”
Lucy said, “So, what about this guy he had a fight with? Did he say who it was?”
“No. Just some big guy who went nuts. It was afternoon so the place was about empty. No one saw it, not even the bartender girl ’cause she was in the back getting something.”
Lucy reached out and gently touched Mira’s lower lip. It had been split, but it was healing. “How’d this happen?”
Mira backed away. She touched her lip and looked at me. “I told you, didn’t I?”
“Did you?”
“Don’t you remember? That day you knocked on Lori’s door. She’s in 211 at the apartments.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I was … I sort of tripped and fell, hit my mouth on the back of a chair.”
Different story. Neither one was what had happened, but I saw no point in pursing it.
Lucy said, “Will Ramon be okay with you going away with us like this?”
Mira shrugged. “I don’t know. Ramon is, well, he’s up and down a lot.”
“If he’s not okay with you leaving, what will he do?”
“Do?”
“To you,” Lucy said.
“Well … um, maybe sorta yell at me.”
“Are you two like involved?”
Mira looked down at her hands. “Sometimes. Sorta. Not like all the time.”
“He knows other girls?”
“Well, sure. Lots.”
Quietly, Lucy said, “Do you ever think you should … get away? From him.”
Mira wouldn’t look at her. Or at me. “I dunno.” Then she looked up. “But then, go where? Do what?”
“Just … get away from him, and from Wildcat and the bar scene. Find a new place to live. Never go back.”
Mira hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
And that’s where we left it. I drove Mira back to Second Street, let her off a block west of Wildcat. She could go back to Wildcat or to the apartment building where she could circulate in the rooms, find a place to stay the night. But it was still early, not long after nine, dark outside, neon flashing, people laughing, cars rolling by. Friday night, party time. When I looked in the rearview mirror, she was headed back to Wildcat.
Sometimes it doesn’t take, no matter what you say.
* * *
I lay awake for a while, eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. What could I have done differently? Nothing, except not go into Wildcat. And leave Ma in that place? Which I had, once Surry was on the floor and out of it. Best I could do now was never go back for any reason.
I tried to put Surry out of my mind.
Then there was the Soranden investigation, such as it was. Soranden. Were we spinning our wheels?
“Yes,” Lucy said sleepily.
“Yes, what?” I asked.
“Yes, we’re kinda spinning our wheels.”
“You read minds now?”
She lifted her head, stared at me. “You said, ‘Soranden.’ Then you said, ‘Were we spinning our wheels?’ so I said yes even though what you said was past tense, which, if you think about it, is kinda weird.”
“I said it out loud?”
“How else would you say it?”
“To myself.”
“Well, you didn’t.”
Jesus. “Sorry ’bout that, kiddo.”
“Not to worry. Perfectly natural. I’ve got a grandfather who does that. Except he’s in a nursing home and doesn’t remember who I am.”
Yeah, great.
* * *
Saturday morning, staring at Soranden’s detritus.
“This sucks,” Lucy said. “Now what?”
“Your favorite question.”
“I’m just looking for direction from my leader so we can head out and take on the world.”
“I’ve got some Prozac around here somewhere. I think it’s expired, but it might still kick in.”
“You took Prozac? When? Why?”
“Kidding, kiddo.”
“Too bad. I could use a hit, lookin’ at this stuff.”
We were in my office and the investigative fever wasn’t exactly swelling in my breast. Or Lucy’s. “How ’bout we give it a break?” I said. “Hit it again later when we’re fresh.”
“Suits me. Now what?”
“Let’s phone Rufus, blow off the workout and head out of town.”
“Groovy. Got someplace in mind?”
“Yep. How about I meet your parents?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits momentarily, then a big smile broke through. “Guys often meet the parents when they’re about to pop the question. Or … we could be married in less than two hours, and then we could go see my parents, give them the good news. How ’bout that?”
This was a topic that came up every week or two. I still wasn’t sure how to handle it.
But I didn’t have to. She gave me a big hug and a kiss that weakened my knees. “No pressure,” she said. “One day you’ll be ready and you’ll ask me and when you do we’ll be married inside two hours—if we’re in Reno or Vegas when you ask. If we’re in like Barbados or Fiji or Bangladesh—which would be really something, and I’m not thinking Bangladesh would be at the top of the list—then probably not. So right now, you don’t have to say ‘no’ or say anything at all. But visiting my parents is … um, maybe not such a super wonderful terrific idea.”
“Why not?”
“They’re sorta strange. Well, my mother anyway.”
“Who, if you remember, I spoke to about an hour after we met in order to verify your age since you looked seventeen. Or less. Which you still do much of the time.”
“I do remember. It’s only been three months and my mind is still sharp.”
“That wasn’t a dig, was it, Cupcake?”
“Would I?”
“Yes, you would. But back up. Your mother didn’t sound at all strange to me. She sounded nice. And sophisticated.”
“Strange might not’ve been the best adjective. I should’ve said my family isn’t … well, entirely normal.”
&n
bsp; “I can handle abnormal as long as it doesn’t involve guns or exotic poisons or relatives chained in basements. Or hangings. I hate family hangings.”
She didn’t laugh. “It’s not abnormal like any of those.”
“Then … let’s go.”
“Only if you promise you won’t … judge me by them. Or by their situation.”
I stared at her. “That sounds ominous.”
“I don’t mean it to be ominous. Just a kind of warning.”
“Warnings are ominous.”
“Just don’t judge, okay? Please?”
Whew.
* * *
The drive to San Francisco was pleasant. Fewer people were going to work on a Saturday, and the summer vacation crowd had thinned out. Lucy didn’t say anything more about her parents. We kept it light, talking about knife fights, voracious ants carting brain cells out of skulls, things like that.
Before we left, I phoned Ma, made sure she’d made it out of Wildcat alive. She had. She said Surry was slid onto a gurney and hauled away in an ambulance after being dragged out from under people’s feet at the bar. An ambulance. How ’bout that? I might’ve bounced his head off the floor a little too hard. Or not. That knife business had me more than a trifle riled. Last person I ever wanted to see again was Ramon Surry, though Soranden would probably be pretty ugly by now so I didn’t want the rest of him to turn up.
“Luce and I are headed to San Fran,” I told Ma.
“Gonna visit the parents, huh?”
Nothing gets by her.
“Yep.”
“Good luck,” Ma said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Good luck means good luck. Google it.” She hung up.
Sonofabitch.
So we headed out in Lucy’s Mustang, nice new top on it, day in the seventies. West on I-80, into California, past Truckee, over Donner Summit, past Sacramento, Davis, Berkeley, and Oakland, across the Bay Bridge, and into the city.
I was driving. “Where to now?”
She pointed. “Straight for a little while. I’ll let you know.”
We took I-80 past Eighth Street, curved right onto 434A, then north on Van Ness Avenue past Geary Boulevard.
“Geary,” I said. “That’s where you did that … that …”
“Off-off-Broadway Vagina Monologues play.”
“Yeah. That.”
She gave me a little smile. “What a memory.” Her voice had a nervous tremor in it.
We kept going, then she said, “Take the next left.”
We went west on Broadway, up into the hills. The houses got bigger, fancier, with marble and columns. Four blocks before we hit Divisadero, she said, “Slow down. Take a right at the next driveway.”
I swung right, stopped facing a wrought-iron gate. Lucy got a remote out of her purse and hit a button. The gate rolled back.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Just don’t jump to any conclusions. At all.”
“Right. No conclusions.”
I drove past the gate. It closed behind us. The house was three stories of timbers and granite with a blue-black slate tile roof, a million windows, a deep porch with steps and four Doric columns facing a turnaround. A five-car garage was off to one side with a yellow Hummer and a black Bentley parked outside.
“Rich girl,” I said.
“Don’t.” Her voice had a hint of gravel in it.
So I didn’t.
“Park here,” she said.
I did, and we got out. I looked up at the house. Okay, it wasn’t a house, though there was a vague resemblance. It was a mansion, and this was Pacific Heights.
A woman opened the front door, which was nine feet tall, and came out, wrapped Lucy up in a hug. More women hugging while I stood around. Story of my life.
Nope. My turn. First the hug, then names.
“I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Mr. Angel. I’m Lucy’s mother, Val. Valerie, but no one calls me that.”
“Mort. Mortimer, but only my mother calls me that because she screwed up on my birth certificate and won’t admit it.”
Val laughed. Musically. Same voice I’d heard on the phone when Lucy called her to have her verify Lucy’s age. Val was, according to Lucy, going on fifty-four—a fact I thought I should keep to myself—but, as advertised, she looked thirty-five. She was Lucy’s height—five-five, and about a hundred twenty-five pounds. Short dark brown hair, no sign of gray.
“My, you’re tall,” Val said, hooking an arm through mine.
“Makes it easier to watch parades, ma’am.”
“Ma’am.” She gently punched my shoulder. “If you don’t call me Val, I will call you Mortimer.”
Women are always punching me. I don’t get it.
“Val it is, then,” I said.
Lucy took my other arm and the two of them escorted me into the house. Couldn’t have broken free if I’d wanted to. Into a glossy marble foyer, up a half flight of stairs into a living room the size of a soccer stadium. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a stunning view of the bay, the Golden Gate, Angel Island—a fine name for an island, by the way—Sausalito, the bay north, part of the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, sailboats on the bay.
“Can I get you something to drink, Mort?” Val asked. “Water, beer, wine, something with a bit more kick to it?”
“Pete’s Wicked Ale, if you’ve got it.”
She gave me an amused moue. “Ale. Is that—what you said—light or dark?”
“Sort of a medium dark.”
She and Lucy headed off to a kitchen somewhere else in the hemisphere while I stood at a window taking in the view. It wasn’t merely stunning. It was staggering. I wondered what the house was worth. Thirty mil would be a ballpark figure. Off the foyer I’d seen an elevator. An elevator. At the moment I figured I was on the mezzanine. First time I’d been in an eight-figure shack. I couldn’t pay the interest on the property taxes on a place like this.
Val and Lucy returned. Val handed me a darkish beer in a chilled glass. She and Lucy had white wines. Lucy rarely drank alcohol, but this was clearly an exception, possibly because she hadn’t taken the Prozac I’d offered earlier. This was what she’d meant by abnormal. Elevators in houses—not normal, check.
I took a sip. “This is … really great. What is it?”
“Tutankhamen Ale. From the U.K.”
“So it’s been aged, what? Three thousand years?”
Val smiled. “Somewhat less than that, I imagine.”
Later I discovered it ran seventy-five dollars a bottle. Good as it was, I wasn’t going to order up a case.
* * *
The day turned into pleasant chatter. And a tour of the house since Val offered. Lucy’s bedroom was on the third floor. It faced north, with a view of the Golden Gate, Angel Island, and beyond. Given the size of the mansion, it wasn’t a huge room, but it had a walk-in closet roomy enough for a poker table with seating for eight.
Lucy didn’t say much. She stared out a window as I took in the teak furniture and the queen-size four-poster, also teak. And a glance into a private bathroom with a shower stall and a bright red Jacuzzi, gold plumbing fixtures that gleamed.
The tour only disclosed three bedrooms, so I figured four or five of them had been omitted. The library was impressive with its four thousand volumes, a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction. One room held a $30,000 pool table.
Later her father showed up. Perfectly normal guy in jeans and a blue work shirt. No ascot, no maroon silk housecoat. He didn’t twirl a moustache, didn’t affect a British accent. Five-ten, hundred sixty-five pounds, still had all his hair, neatly trimmed, dark brown with gray at the temples. Edward Landry, but call him Ed. So, Ed and Val, just your typical neighborhood folksy folks. Not the least bit strange.
Another fifteen or twenty minutes of small talk, then Ed, with a bourbon and water in hand, took me down in the elevator to a wine cellar. The womenfolk stayed topside. Nothing was said so I figured they communicate telepathically.
That might be what Lucy meant by not entirely normal.
“Thought we might want to talk privately,” Ed said as we exited the elevator into a cool stone dungeon.
Uh-oh. This is when dad asks the purported beau what his intentions are.
“Don’t worry,” Ed said. “I have no intention of asking you about your intentions regarding Lucy.”
Excellent work, Mort. Wrong again, so I was still in my comfort zone—except for Ed’s obvious telepathic ability.
“That’d be too 1920s,” he added. “But the gals don’t have to hear everything we say. That’s a two-way street. They’re probably talking about us. Well, about you.”
“I’m used to it.”
“I bet. You got the whole world talking about you last year. And this summer when you found that rapper guy. I don’t know why you haven’t made the cover of People magazine yet. Latest thing is that IRS guy.”
“Ronald Soranden. Government-sanctioned criminal.”
He chuckled. “That sounds about right.”
“Full disclosure: His skull was dumped into Lucy’s car. In case that didn’t make the news.”
His drink was almost to his lips. He lowered it. “It didn’t. At least this is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Someone slashed the top of her Mustang and dropped it onto the front seat, driver’s side.”
“Well, hell. Just his skull, is that right?”
“Just the headbone. Cleaned out by harvester ants, but you shouldn’t repeat that. I think they’re keeping it from the public.”
“Man, you do get into some weird shinola.”
“That’s been my modus operandi ever since I started in PI work. I can’t explain it. It’s not like I go looking for it. More like it comes looking for me. I think it’s punishment for working for the IRS for sixteen years, until I discovered I had a soul. I’m hoping I’ve about paid off the debt and it’ll taper off soon.”
He ran fingers through his hair, then looked around. “Okay, enough of that. We’re down here. Got a decent selection of wine too. If you see anything you like, it’s yours.”
The wine cellar was smaller than I’d anticipated. Maybe a hundred fifty bottles. Wine isn’t my thing, but I tried to look interested. It also had beer, much of it exotic. And there was a big gun safe in a corner. A conversation piece.
Gumshoe Rock Page 19