by Rhys Ford
I guess I wasn’t much different from the people who came looking for that dream they would never fulfill, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to keep trying. The Lady of the Angels was worth it, and sometimes you find a dream you didn’t dare to imagine. Like falling in love with a Korean man named Kim Jae-Min.
Who was probably going to kill me once I dragged myself home and he saw the condition of my face.
“It isn’t too bad, right?” I studied the constellation of butterfly bandages across my temple, using the metal napkin dispenser I’d plucked from the middle of our table. “It looks worse than it is. Bet you once I peel these off, you’d hardly notice.”
“You just keep telling yourself that, babe.” Our young waitress, a long-legged redhead in a retro pink ’50s uniform she’d paired with black fishnets, tapped her pencil against an order pad. “Not like I would toss you out of bed for eating crackers, but you look like I would have to spend a lot of time kissing those boo-boos before we got down to business.”
“See? This is why I don’t like doing jobs with you,” Bobby growled at me from across the table, then plucked the napkin dispenser out of my hand. “It’s like you go out of your way to get us killed. And”—he peered at the waitress’s name tag—“Laura, I’ll have a catfish po’boy, a side of onion rings, and a red velvet donut. Water’s fine to drink. And since we’re talking, I’ll let you in on the fact that he’s married to another guy and possibly the biggest piece of trouble I’ve ever met. Not somebody you want in your life.”
“Hey, if I was into hot daddies, I’d have hit on you,” Laura snapped back. Patting my shoulder, she bumped me with her hip and gave me a smile. “I hope the guy you’re married to isn’t him, because you deserve somebody who treats you better. What’ll you have?”
“No, I’m married to somebody a lot prettier and nicer. I’d show you a picture, but the asshole I brought with me would probably kill me with a spoon.” I took another quick glance at the lunch menu. “I’ll do the Reuben, also with onion rings, but with a piece of Oaxacan chocolate bread pudding for dessert. And to drink, an iced tea with sugar. Please.”
She walked away with a snap to her hips, and Bobby plucked a few napkins from the dispenser he’d taken away from me. Waiting until Laura returned with my tea, he leaned over and said, “Tell me you’re not going to chase after this thing with the Brinkerhoffs. Let O’Byrne handle it.”
“Can’t do it,” I replied, plucking the lemon out of my tea and sliding it into his water. “There’s too many questions that don’t have easy answers, and I owe Adele more than just one 9-1-1 call to the cops to tell them I found her.”
“You don’t even know them,” he pointed out. “It’s not like you guys were friends. They’re just an old case.”
“I got the feeling O’Byrne was asking me to dig into it.” I had to raise my voice to be heard above the din of a group of women laughing at a nearby table. The diner was popular, both for eating and filming any scenes that needed an authentic-looking retro space. It was the kind of spot where coffee cost a nickel and the donuts were bigger than my cat—a slice of old Los Angeles tucked in between more modern storefronts. “She told me to talk to Montoya’s boyfriend. I don’t know what that’s about. She said he wasn’t one for talking to the cops, but he’s hooked up with one.”
Detective Dante Montoya was someone I’d met through Bobby at the boxing gym where both of us spent an inordinate amount of time beating the shit out of each other. It was a good way to keep fit, and Bobby always had some kind of trick to show me, something safer to do with gloves on and guaranteed to help me end a fight. Unless of course he was the one whaling on me. Then he would pull a rabbit out of his hat and I would end up kissing the canvas.
Montoya and I had gone a few rounds ourselves. He was good for a solid workout, but we never made plans to spar, only hooking up when we ran into each other down at JoJo’s. And since it was always good to change up partners, he was always up for a few hits. We were pretty evenly matched, except he didn’t fight as dirty as Bobby did. But then nobody fought as dirty as Bobby did.
“You sure it was Stevens who called you about the job?” Bobby asked. “Did you meet up with the guy?”
“Yeah I met up with him. Down at his shop in Hollywood. I grabbed a windup metal Godzilla for Jae when I was there.” I murmured a quick thank-you to Laura and inhaled the rich scent of hot corned beef and sauerkraut as she dropped off our plates. The onion rings were crisp, crackling hot, and steaming, with a side of jalapeno aioli. I was going to hurt. “Seemed like a nice enough guy. Kinda wound up tight but okay.”
“Montoya told you what he used to do for a living?” Bobby returned the favor of lemon in his water by sliding his aioli over to my side of the table. “Before he opened up that store?”
“Stevens told me most of his business comes from dealing with high-end collectibles,” I said, passing the ketchup over to Bobby before he asked for it. “Said the security thing was something he dabbled in once in a while. So I’m guessing maybe he worked for a company like Mike’s. Seemed to know a lot about alarms and perimeters.”
“Sometimes, Princess, you are just too fucking precious for words,” he growled back at me, grinning evilly. “Rook Stevens was Montoya’s white whale. He didn’t work for any security firm. He was a fucking cat burglar. One of the best in the business, and never once did those silver bracelets cops put on him ever lead him to a jail term. So, still think it’s a coincidence the old lady was found behind the house he asked you to check out? Somebody knew about those diamonds she had on her, but the bigger question isn’t how they got there but why they didn’t take them off of her after they killed her. I’m going to go out on a limb and say O’Byrne thinks Stevens has fallen back into his old way of life and Montoya’s none the wiser, so she’s going to use you to sniff him out. He used you to find out if Mrs. Brinkerhoff was still lying on that lawn, and O’Byrne is using you to find out if he was the one who put her there.”
Five
“WANT ME to come with you?” Bobby asked from the relative safety of a palm tree’s shade. “I mean, I can if you want.”
It was a magnanimous offer, especially since Ichi’s tattoo shop, Hizoku Ink, was only a few doors down from Rook Stevens’s memorabilia store. I either hadn’t remembered that tiny little fact or it just hadn’t sunk in, because I’d been to Hizoku enough times to nearly call it a second office. I’d actually been in Potter’s Field a few times before but hadn’t connected it to Montoya’s lover. That also could have been me lacking the particulars instead of being obtuse.
Either way, we were close enough to Ichi to make Bobby fret.
It was kind of adorable to see my once-lothario best friend wrapped up tight around a wedding ring and marriage vows. Less cute was that he was doing unspeakable things to my baby brother, but Ichi could take care of himself and probably gave as good as he got. It wasn’t that I was squeamish about what they were doing. I didn’t want to dwell on Mike and Maddy having sex either, despite having clear evidence they’d done it at least once in the freakishly gorgeous baby girl they had a few years ago. Lisa Rei McGinnis was going to be a heartbreaker once she realized she’d won the genetic lottery, and I was doing everything I could to keep my niece off the straight-and-narrow path. Mike didn’t stand a chance. Between me buying a motorized kid-scale Ferrari for her to tool around in and Ichi applying temporary tattoos to her arms and shoulders whenever she wanted to change things up, Mad Dog Junior was going to be a kick-ass woman in a leather jacket and glittery combat boots.
Or at least that’s what we were all hoping. So far her favorite things were dinosaurs, muscle cars, fairies, and books. And we were doing everything in our power to encourage her to keep pushing boundaries and take no prisoners.
Mike really didn’t stand a chance.
Neither did Rook Stevens if he had anything to do with Adele’s murder. Cop boyfriend notwithstanding, if he crossed into my life and brought death with him, there
were going to be consequences. I didn’t care how much Montoya loved him.
“Just tell Ichi I’ll be by later to say hey. Jae might’ve already called him to see if you guys were coming for dinner. There was some furious fish chopping this morning when I left, so either we’re going to be overfeeding the cat, or we’re going to be feeding the two of you.” I glanced down toward Potter’s Field, where there appeared to be a small line forming outside the door. “I might be a while. Place looks like it’s busy. Stevens might not be able to break away.”
“If I don’t hear from you in an hour, I’ll send somebody to get you, Princess,” Bobby drawled. “Just make sure you’re in the right tower.”
“Is that a gaming joke?” I cocked my head at him.
“Yes it is. You know you’re getting old when you aren’t up with current games and music, Cole.” He shook his head, tsking at me with a few clicks of his tongue.
“Some of us aren’t so desperate to avoid aging that we marry somebody twenty years younger than us,” I stabbed at him with teasing, sharp words, knowing I could score a hit.
“Just remember that someone is your brother,” Bobby shot back.
“Yeah, and it’s something I try to bleach out of my mind every single night after I’m done brushing my teeth.” I gave him a light shove toward Ichi’s shop. “Get going, old man. Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.”
“That’s a shitload of funny coming out of you, dude,” Bobby said, giving me a punch back on my shoulder. It hurt. And not just because I was still a little bit tender from my pinball run through the garden and then my tuck and roll off the ledge of the Brinkerhoffs’ porch into the cacti patch. Bobby was a muscular, solid man who kept fit and trim by torturing me. And since torturing me was one of his favorite hobbies, he was extremely fit and trim. “One hour. Then I’m coming to get you.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I asked, walking a few steps backward and flinging my arms out in mild protest at Bobby’s derisive snort. “It’s pretty much a glorified toyshop. Not like anybody’s going to drive by and shoot the place up.”
THERE WAS an air of excitement around Potter’s Field as I approached, a buzzing energy more in line with a movie premier than a place someone stopped by to grab an action figure or lunch box. This part of Hollywood had its own feel, far different from the street-hawker, carnival-like atmosphere found farther down, by the Chinese Theatre and the Roosevelt. There were still sporadic iconic funky-colored stars studding the sidewalk, but it was a grittier, more authentic Hollywood on this end of the boulevard.
We were far from the out-and-proud of West Hollywood and a good couple of miles from the packaged glitter of the Oscars and people dressed as superheroes charging for a photo. Big name-brand stores didn’t drift down this way, leaving the sun-battered buildings to a hardier, more desperate crowd. There were spots of gentrification and sleek storefronts like Ichi’s tattoo shop and Stevens’s memorabilia store, but for the most part, it was a landscape of psychics, smoke shops, and cheap clothing. There was a Denny’s a few blocks up, open twenty-four hours, and a refuge for runaways and prostitutes. I’d spent many a dollar at that Denny’s, both as a cop and as a private investigator, plying witnesses with cheap coffee and stacks of fruit-covered pancakes.
The bones of old Hollywood existed, though, elegant structures studded with sleek lines and copper inlays now a blue-green from years of weathering. Potter’s Field took up the first level of one of these buildings, stretching out to the height of nearly four floors. But from what I could see, it was only two stories. In any other neighborhood, the rent would’ve been exorbitant and outright buying the building practically unheard of, but in this part of Hollywood, it was almost within reach, and from what I understood, Rook Stevens’s reach was pretty long.
Now I was questioning how he got the money and what he was doing to get more.
I jostled past the line coming out of the front door, much to the angry muttering of the people standing not so patiently in the brisk breeze. Whispering a few apologies and reassuring a woman holding a stack of books that I wasn’t there to cut into the line, I made it in. A purple-haired, broadly smiling woman sat at a table a few feet past the entrance, a display of novels set up next to her. A harried-looking young man operated a cash register just inside the front door, ringing up customers after they plucked a book or two from the selection in front of them. From the sound of the woman’s thick accent, she hailed from a part of Ireland where there was a bit of sea nearby and rolls of vibrantly green countryside. I couldn’t understand a lot of what she was saying, but she seemed excited to see everyone, signing whatever they put in front of her and chattering up a storm.
Potter’s Field was a haven for all things geek and magical. I had to give Stevens credit for the layout of the place—a combination of museum, theme park ride, and gift shop. It was hard to focus on one section of the store, mostly because the eye was drawn practically everywhere. There was an enormous, elaborate soft sculpture of a creature I think I recognized from a movie dominating the far end of the sale space, but other things caught my attention as well, including the massive spaceships hanging from the rafters. They glittered with sparkling lights and meticulous paint jobs, the spotlights above their graceful forms casting shadows down on the floor below. With the ceiling painted black, the ships stood out, occasionally bleating out a sound effect or flashing a concentrated beam of light across the far wall.
I hadn’t noticed all of this before. I’d been focused more on getting in and out, or perhaps Stevens had ramped up the floor design since I’d been there. There was a whiff of paint in the air, so it was not outside of reason to think they’d remodeled. It was now a little bit of chaos and a lot more flash than it was before, but the crowd seemed to love it, wandering around through the displays and asking the black-shirted staff a million questions about everything they found.
Nobody stopped me as I wandered through the sales area and toward the employees-only section of the store. There was what looked like a pretty-well-stocked employee lounge to the right and a long hallway leading toward a fireproof steel door set into the back wall. I hazarded a guess the hallway led to storage, mostly because the closed door directly to my left had a sign that said Office on it. I knocked, then opened it when I heard a gruff voice tell me to come in.
The office was fairly large, a broad rectangular space with a seating area near the door that took up two-thirds of the room. A sturdy wooden desk that would’ve been at home in any governor’s office was set back away from the entrance, positioned with its short end against the wall so whoever sat behind it was facing the door. Long stretches of narrow windows set near the ceiling provided a bit of illumination, but mostly the room was lit up by a constellation of recessed lighting set into a drop ceiling covered by punched-tin tiles. Decorated in a mishmash of Art Deco, retro toys, and video games, the wall separating the office from the main store was dominated by an enormous television, its dormant screen reflecting the man sitting on the couch across of it.
I’d pinged Rook Stevens as someone who preferred to stay behind the scenes, a puppet master of sorts who loved to put on a good show but didn’t like anyone to see his face. He was the ringmaster and the Wizard of Oz wrapped up as a strong-featured, pretty young man with mismatched eyes and a wary gaze. I gave Montoya credit for building a relationship with this man, because he struck me as someone who didn’t like entanglements… or least not romantic ones. But that also could be because I hadn’t earned the right to sit in his inner circle. Jae had been this wary, opening up only after fits and starts of trust-building events.
“I was wondering when you were going to come by,” Stevens said, not looking up from the comic book he was reading. “The coffee pot’s fresh. Grab some if you want.”
I didn’t really want any coffee, but it seemed prudent to pour myself a cup as I figured out how to deal with Stevens’s insouciance. If he’d planned to set me up to discover Adele, then I wa
s going to have to come at him carefully. I only had Bobby’s word on Stevens’s past, but Bobby was as reliable as a sunrise. There were undercurrents in Stevens I had to negotiate, fast-moving rapid waters hiding boulders I could get hung up on, and I wondered if I’d come to a battle of wits totally unprepared and not armed to the teeth.
“Cream’s in the fridge if you want it.” He nodded with his chin toward the squat steel box the coffee maker sat on. “Then you can tell me about what happened the other night and why you look like somebody took a potato masher to your face. O’Byrne came by to shake me down, but I didn’t have anything to tell her other than what I told you—it was just a security job and I wanted basic recon. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
The coffee was strong, a bracing punch of dark roast powerful enough to make me want to check my nose to see if it was bleeding from the impact. I added a little bit of cream in the hopes of scaling back its pungent hit, but it swallowed the milky swirls as if it were a black hole eating one of those starships hanging from the store’s ceiling. I reconciled myself to not being able to sleep later on that night and sat down in one of the armchairs next to the couch.
“So you didn’t know Adele Brinkerhoff? Or why she died holding a handful of diamonds?” I watched Stevens carefully, but there was nary a flinch. There would be no poker games in our future, because his face betrayed nothing, to the point where I wasn’t even sure he knew who I was.