The Rita Farmer Mystery series Box Set

by Elizabeth Sims

  “Don’t even think it,” he said, although they looked too stoned to pull anything.

  “Were the guys,” Rowe asked, “that beat up the kid different from the guys that drove up shooting?”

  “All I know,” said the bartender, “is they weren’t from here.”

  “Where were they from?”

  “All I know is if there was something to be known, I would know it.”

  “Here meaning where?”

  “This street. The Go Down Boys.”

  Rowe hung out for a couple more minutes, then thanked them and left.

  A block or so down, he stopped in a doorway to unwrap a stick of Doublemint and think a minute. This was not Kip Cubitt’s neighborhood, either: the boy lived with his grandmother down in South Central next to the mission. A gust of wind picked up a torn newspaper and skittered it along until a weed growing from a crack caught it.

  He heard sudden, purposeful footfalls. He stepped from the doorway.

  From the direction opposite where the bar was, two people came up to him and stopped. Seeing that one was a woman, Rowe might have relaxed except for the looks on their faces.

  The guy said, “You’re not wanted ’round here, you know that?” He had been working on a crop of dreadlocks for quite a few years, it looked like; they flung around his face like stiff pasta. He was tall and excited.

  “What’s it to you?” said Rowe, holding the man’s eyes with the central part of his gaze while his peripheral vision kept track of the man’s hands. Quietly, he dropped the pack of gum. He held his hands low and ready at his sides.

  “Quit asking stuff!” cried the woman.

  Rowe glanced at her—she was a meaty white girl with dull eyes overlaid by hectic anger.

  The man shoved him. “Go on, now.” As Rowe regained his balance, the woman threw an overhand punch, which, awkward as it was, connected with his cheekbone.

  Rowe dropped to a squat, momentarily baffling his attackers, then came up with a stiff-arm for each of them, intending to drive a gap between them through which he could escape.

  He connected well, and the man spun easily, but the woman’s body weight gave her some serious inertia; she barely swayed. She whaled him again, this time putting some leg-drive into a sidearm punch, and he felt the force of the blow in his ribcage.

  The man was back in his face, but not punching. “Go on, now!” he screamed, spittle flying. “Go!”

  The woman dropped her hands in preparation to kick, and Rowe seized her wrist and pulled her smoothly and forcefully, like you’d pull the starter cord of a lawnmower. She gained momentum, staggering in the direction Rowe wanted, toward the protruding brick corner of the doorway. She writhed away from the brick but collided with the metal door with a smart thunk.

  She collapsed, moaning, not badly hurt, and Rowe was glad because he would have been reluctant to kick out one of her knee joints or smash her face, her being a woman. He was old-fashioned that way.

  As most fights do, all this had taken just ten seconds or so. Rowe spent an instant considering whether to hurt the man or just get out of there. A discussion at this point didn’t seem likely.

  Rowe sidestepped the tall man and dashed away.

  The hard soles of his shoes sounded like gunshots on the pavement.

  He felt exhilarated.

  He had made a mistake, but not a serious one; he was unhurt except for a sore cheek. He could have gotten inside the dreadlocked man and neutralized him with one or two blows to the body, in spite of the man’s greater reach. Rowe ran into very few men who could outfight him. Most times they underestimated him.

  But the fellow on the street had not actually thrown a punch, so he didn’t warrant a flattening. Besides, experience told Rowe it might be useful to have been seen running from the neighborhood.

  And beyond all that, it was worth a sore cheek to know that the boy Kip Cubitt was of great importance to someone.

  That evening he put on his usual loungewear of shorts and T-shirt, this one a green Adidas he’d found in a bargain bin at the REI on Santa Monica. He slipped on his comfortable cherry-red flip-flops.

  Sighing with hunger, he tore up and washed a head of romaine, dressed it with oil and salt and pepper, and cooked a large hamburger in a pan with a sliced onion. He ate at his kitchen table, listening to a Count Basie CD, then he cleaned up the dishes and went to the living room, where he usually had one or two whiteboards going. He made notes on a board with a green marker:

  Beating intentional

  Drive-by maybe mistake?

  Kip en route?

  Attackers from?

  Local gang (Go Down Boys) not significant

  Bartender unleashed Dick and Jane?

  Next he settled down at his computer and shifted his mind back to dogs.

  An avalanche of beagle information poured at him from the Internet: he waded through beagle-for-sale ads, beagle stud services, and he looked up beagle winners at dog shows. He learned that beagles came in two sizes, thirteen-inch and fifteen-inch, meaning their height at the shoulder. Ernest and Rondo, he found, were both fifteen-inchers.

  Nicholas Polen, the Canadian breeder Markovich thought had abducted Ernest, did indeed have a Montreal address. While his most successful stud, Rondo, was a multiple champion, the other sons of bitches Polen kept seemed to be subpar. As a breeder, Polen had been a one-hit wonder, with Rondo.

  He searched for other areas of income for Polen and found none, not that that meant there were none. He searched property records in the international databases he paid hundreds of dollars per month for the right to access.

  He looked at a picture of the man on the home page of his stud service Web site. Polen, smiling slightly, was helping Rondo pose, one hand cupped beneath the dog’s throat, the fingers of the other lightly supporting the tail. Polen looked out proudly over Rondo’s back. In spite of his silver hair and perfectly pressed tweed jacket, he looked like a round-headed fourth-grader doing show-and-tell with the family dog.

  And yet—Rowe discerned a glint of something in the man’s eye. Was it steel, or slickness? And, closer—was that a scar on his jaw? An unmistakable furrow ran impressively from his right ear to his chin.

  Another photo showed Rondo at play, facing off against a large antique pull-toy beagle.

  “Heartwarming,” muttered Rowe. He picked up the telephone and reached a friend who taught veterinary medicine up at UC Davis.

  “Susan,” he said, “if somebody were trying to fence a hot beagle—pedigreed dog—how would they do it?”

  “A hot…dog?”

  “Yes, inevitable joke.”

  “Sell a stolen purebred?”

  “Yeah. If somebody wanted top dollar for it.”

  “Well, I’m sure you know purebred dogs have papers. You couldn’t sell a dog like that to an honest person without the certificate proving the pedigree. I suppose you could forge something, but you’d have to expect the rightful owner to report the theft. Word could get around fast, what with the Internet. Of course, a mature dog that’s already been in shows is going to be recognizable in photographs from its markings.”

  “Yeah?” Rowe curled the phone cord around his finger.

  “An experienced person could tell.” Susan’s voice was straightforward with an edge of Okie, from her roots around Salinas. A hammering-down on the Rs. “Breeders these days get their dogs microchipped or tattooed. The AKC has guidelines. There’s DNA tests too, especially if it’s a stud that’s been used multiple times.”

  “The owner mentioned that. How do you get a microchip in, and where would it be?”

  “You inject it subcutaneously with a large-bore hypodermic needle, at the shoulder, it leaves no mark. Then a clinic or a shelter with a scanner can read it. The larger breeders, they have scanners too, to keep their dogs straight.”

  “Who decides what goes on the chip?”

  “Oh, the chips are numbered, and all the owner does, once the vet implants the chip, is register th
e name of the dog with that number to the chip company. You send in a form. The chip company keeps track.”

  “I see. Can a chip be removed?”

  “Oh, yes. Small matter to do that.”

  “What about those puppy mills?”

  “Ugh. The Romanian orphanages of the pet world. An outstanding dog’d be wasted at one of those. Is the dog in question male or female?”

  “Male.”

  “An unscrupulous breeder could use the dog as a stud in place of whatever stud or studs they have papers for—if it’s a better dog, of course. If he’s superdog, then the pups would be likely to have excellent characteristics, provided the bitch is good. Then the pups would bring a good price, and you could do a spay/neuter agreement with the buyer, thus negating their ever needing a DNA test.

  “The owner made that same speculation.”

  “You could probably get away with slightly inferior bitches, if the male’s blood is so good. That might give you some leverage as a breeder.”

  “Yeah, I see. How’s Larry?”

  “Oh, he’s great. Fat and sassy. You seeing anybody?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, it’s going to be your turn someday, George, you know that?”

  Rowe thanked his friend, hung up, and gazed at the street from his window. His apartment overlooked a chicken shack and a billboard with an ad for a new movie about a nun who becomes a porn star, then gets into politics. He could also see the rear of a strip plaza where immigrant businesses took root and stayed: a Japanese teriyaki restaurant next to a Vietnamese nail salon next to a Honduran check-cashing place. Trees, lush eucalyptus and undulant palms, tossed a wreath of greenery over the neighborhood. Rowe liked unpretentious neighborhoods, and this was one.

  Rowe loved all of California, and although his favorite city was San Francisco, he loved Los Angeles deeply. He loved how it strove to be all things to all people. And it damn near was.

  In Los Angeles you can meet every kind of person, and every single one of them is working on a dream. Shop teacher, taco slinger, shoeshine boy, film student. The thing is, L.A. can deliver.

  Even if one day you realize your main dream can’t come true—say you’re an actor and you wake up fifty and fat, well then you work up a magic act and do parties. If you lose your job selling cars, you walk into a hotel and learn that business from the bottom. If you have no green card you wash dishes for cash and save until you find another angle.

  The city gave you suffocating smog one day and kelpy ocean wind the next. It gave you drug-addled crazies, Brahms trios, Chinese weddings with those true-red dresses, the Pacific Coast Highway, Marilyn’s crypt, rumba, bomba, soul, jazz, heart-stopping enchiladas, the sight of yachts leaving Del Mar basin in a freshening breeze. Tijuana just yonder, the Mojave just yonder, Yosemite just yonder, San Francisco a little farther yonder.

  To release the residual tension of his day, Rowe went into the sound-curtained alcove occupied by his drum kit, and settled in to practice.

  His snare drum wasn’t overly crisp, he had loosened the snares so they buzzed a little longer, to make an almost imperceptibly softer attack and finish. He moved his sticks around the kit, playing jazz patterns between snare, bass, tom, and cymbals. He experimented with some new transitions he’d thought of.

  He hummed “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” accompanying himself on the drums, and thought optimistically of Rita.

  Chapter 8 – Off to Adventure

  Daniel, my big happy actor friend, came by early on Saturday to pick up Petey. He and Gina drank orange juice while I got my boy ready for a ride in Daniel’s silver Porsche and a day in the San Gabriels.

  Had Daniel been straight, Gina would have been all over him. As it was, she quizzed him about his feelings for Petey in a veiled way. “So what do you do with Petey all day?”

  “Us guys do masculine stuff together,” he answered. “We like to go up to the woods and work up a sweat, generate some real BO.” He smiled his stunning white smile.

  Daniel was preparing for a role in a micro-budget film, where he was going to be an auto mechanic stuck in a mountain town who gets mistaken for a serial killer by the father of one of the real serial killer’s victims. The grief-crazed dad chases the mechanic all over the high desert before the cops stop him, and it turns out his daughter isn’t dead after all, and in the end she and the mechanic get married.

  Since Daniel was going to do his own stunts, as a good B-movie leading man would, he needed to train.

  And since Petey relished climbing and hiking with Daniel, today would be a perfect day. They loved each other, and Daniel was a lot closer to a masculine ideal than Petey’s own dad.

  “But why take a little boy along?” Gina asked. “Why not join a climbing club or something?”

  “I do climb with grown-ups,” Daniel said, “but here’s the funny thing. Grown-ups look at a rock or a tree as an obstacle. Petey sees it as a possibility. He hasn’t learned to second-guess yet. I show him how to be safe, he shows me how to react to the rock like a lizard. Gina, it’s a perfect association.”

  The menfolk took off, Petey launching himself down the front steps, braking his descent by the friction of his hands on the iron banister, as Daniel had taught him.

  My ex-husband had been a star athlete in high school, but he possessed the imagination of a termite, and by this point in his life, all the spontaneity seemed to have been drained out of him by his accounting job at a restaurant chain.

  On weekends when he had Petey, he’d usually do things like wash his car, visit his bimboesque girlfriend (who, granted, had a pool and a dog), or shop for new cargo shorts for himself. He used to do fun stuff with the boy, but he seemed to be plunging toward his dotage at thirty-two.

  “How come you even care where they’re gonna be?” challenged Gina, as I carefully stowed the paper on which Daniel had mapped their day. “I thought you trusted Daniel implicitly.”

  “My God, Gina, I do, he’s my best friend. But as a mother, I don’t care who’s taking my son out of my sight, I’ve got to know the details.”

  She looked hurt. “Aren’t I your best friend?”

  “You’re beyond that. And because of our ineradicable blood bond, you’re coming with me to serve lunch to the needy at the ABC Mission today.”

  Her eyes widened in alarm. “I have cramps. I’ve already called in sick to—”

  “I have some Midol in the glove compartment. Come on.”

  Chapter 9 – Rita and Gina Sniff Around

  I watched the line of street people breathe deeper as they approached the soup pot and its vegetable beef comfort fumes. My instructions were to dip one ladleful from the bottom and one from the top per bowl.

  “They get anxious if they see the first one come from the top,” Amaryllis explained. “We call the diners sir and ma’am in the food line.”

  Gina got the job of wiping tables and bringing out more hot biscuits to the serving line. She hustled pretty well, once she got into it.

  Amaryllis darted everywhere, checking the food, greeting diners, answering questions from staff. Lunch was an event.

  The clientele were a motley bunch, as you’d expect. With some of them, I found my feelings torn between pity and revulsion. Neither emotion felt appropriate.

  South Central Los Angeles is a huge swath of city, thousands of small houses flung down for working people of one color or another from the beginning. City Hall decided that we’re supposed to call it South Los Angeles, to try to sidestep the Crip-Blood connotations, but except for the obligingly PC media, everybody still calls it South Central.

  “Man, oh man,” was Gina’s only comment as I drove us in past corner after corner full of watchful drug dealers—so young!—in their sports-logoed clothes, and hookers seeking shade under disintegrating awnings covering urine-stained doorways.

  All the major gang wars happen here, and you’ll see murals to slain teens airbrushed on garage doors and minivans.

  Underl
ying it all are the working people, making a hopeful go of it. Barred windows next to pots of petunias.

  Specifically, the ABC Mission was located just off Compton Avenue, in the former Pueblo Junior High School. The school got so run-down that it would cost more to fix than it was worth, so Amaryllis had raised the money to buy it from the city.

  Piece by piece, she set up shelters for men and women, a separate space for the single moms and their kids, a free store, a food bank, and a dress-for-success closet. The large classrooms were useful for all this.

  When Gina and I had arrived, Amaryllis met us and told me that Kip had regained consciousness. “He’s talking, and the doctors say there’s reason to hope. The swelling on his spinal cord is going down.”

  “Thank God,” I said. Gina nodded solemnly. We’re about the same size, but she got our dad’s high cheekbones and whorly chestnut hair, while I got the blond-and-blue combo via Gramma Gladys, on our mother’s side.

  “Was he able to tell the police anything?” I asked.

  Amaryllis looked at me. “He won’t talk to them.”

  “What?”

  “Believe that. He will not say a word to any police individual.”

  “Well, did he say anything to you?”

  She shook her head.

  A lanky brown man, smiling widely, came by and said without breaking his stride, “Luncheon must occur, praise Him.”

  “Let’s get to it,” said Amaryllis.

  How to describe the army of the needy that crowded into the huge cafeteria? They all were alike in that they had failed—if only for today, if only for one hungry hour—to look after themselves. And different in every other way.

  The diners ate at the long cafeteria tables, the sound of eating and a little talking muted under the urgency of getting food down.

  Many had lugged in a bundle or four. This was allowed at the staff’s discretion. Relatively few diners were dressed in tatters; most of the men wore plain cotton shirts, T-shirts, blue jeans, and the women dressed variously in pants or sweats or giveaway dresses.