His back molars ground together.
“You can pay for installation, Ruby.”
“Fine,” she said, as if buying a new air conditioner and having it installed on his dime was doing him a big favor. “I will.”
“Fine,” he said. “Is the phone number on the voice mail?”
There was a silence.
“Phone number?”
“For Uri, Ruby. Did you give me any way to contact him?” He paused, waiting through another beat of silence. “On the voicemail? The one you said you left this morning?”
“Oh!”
Dags practically saw the light switch flip on.
“Yeah! It’s all on there.” She started rustling through paper again. “I can look for the piece of paper I wrote it on, if you want. I think it was a matchbox, actually⏤”
“No. I’ll find it.”
Before she could argue with him again, he hung up.
He really should fire her.
She was pretty damned close to worthless, for what he paid her.
He knew he wouldn’t, though, and not only for the reasons she’d listed off.
In her own way, Ruby was reliable. He could trust her.
Even if she was shit as an administrative assistant.
After a pause, he hit through the code for his voicemail.
He didn’t have high hopes, but she might have remembered more of what Uri actually said immediately after the fact, especially if Uri really did stop by in person. Ruby’s thought processes weren’t exactly linear, even on a good day, but sometimes her scattershot method of conveying information managed to impart a fair amount, if only by accident.
His voicemail came up.
He clicked through a few saved messages from realtors he’d been looking at to deal with the house situation, then found the message from that morning and let it play.
“Heya, Dags… there’s this guy here with me. Uri. He says you’re buds from back in the day? He wants your help to find some chick you both know. Jade…” Her voice faded as she turned her head, probably talking to Uri. “Jade Alvarez? He says you were all friends, lived together in Venice? Anyway, she’s missing. Some night club on Sunset. The pool one. He hasn’t been able to find her. There were some sketch things that happened, too…”
Dags felt his irritation begin to spike, making his head throb again.
“…Anyway, I’m going to tell him to go, because it’s Saturday and I figure you’re not coming in. But can you call him? He doesn’t want to wait until Monday. He’s thinking he might have to call the cops soon… there’s that twenty-four-hour thing, then he’s got to report it, right? He’s worried maybe some people took her. There was a creep there who said something to her on the dance floor. Or maybe on the roof. Anyway, here’s his number…”
Dags walked over to his kitchen.
He dug a ball-point pen out the junk drawer under his espresso maker, then replayed the message and wrote the digits she recited on his hand when he couldn’t find any paper.
He flipped on the espresso maker, and dialed Uri’s number. Balancing the phone on his shoulder, he started filling the portafilter up with finely-ground espresso beans and tamping them down while he waited for Uri to pick up.
“Hello?” A familiar voice rose on the line. “Who is it?”
Dags hesitated, thrown by the other’s voice, in spite of himself. “Jourdain. It’s me, Uri. Dags. I just got your message.”
There was a silence.
Then the familiar voice got louder, holding a thread of amazement.
“Dags?” he said. “Christ. Is that really you? I was beginning to think that crazy chick you had working at your office was some kind of front⏤”
“It’s me,” Dags said. “And yeah, she really works for me. I usually let her do the initial screening for jobs.” Pausing, he added, “What happened? All I got was something about a night club? About Jade being missing?”
“Yeah.”
There was a silence, and Dags sat through it, fighting puzzlement.
“Uri⏤” he began.
“Can we meet up somewhere?” the other broke in. “A coffee shop? Something like that?”
Dags only hesitated for a minute.
“Sure,” he said. “Where are you?”
“Venice.”
Dags grimaced, glancing at Steve McQueen, who’d woken up from his post-walk nap and was watching him now, ears perked forward, from where he sat curled up in his dog bed by the couch.
Looks like we’re going to the beach after all, pal, he thought grimly.
Not exactly the way Dags had envisioned, though.
“Okay,” he said to Uri, dumping the espresso beans back into the plastic container of frozen grounds. “Give me a place. I can be there in an hour.”
Chapter 6
Hollywood Jack
He met Uri at a taco joint they used to go to on the boardwalk.
Just being down there brought back memories of the last time he’d been down here with Uri, only that time, Jade had been with them, too.
It was strange to think that Jade and Uri stayed together, through all the time that passed since that last camping trip out in Death Valley.
Dags took a seat at a cement bench ringing a cement table.
He let Steve McQueen sniff around under the table, taking in all the interesting smells and tastes within the circumference of his leash before he settled down to lie at Dags’ feet, his black ears pricked forward as he watched people queue up to buy tacos, sniffing the air as they passed by with their trays and bags of food. Dags saw the dog watching people on the boardwalk as well, looking on in interest as they rollerbladed, walked, skateboarded, jogged, and rode by on bicycles along the beachfront path.
Apart from watching his dog people-watch, Dags mostly gazed out at the beach, waiting for Uri to show.
Like the old days, Uri was late.
Unlike the old days, not by much.
After they exchanged a hug and mutual expressions of how long it had been, the Russian ex-pat surfer dream-walker slid into the cement booth across from Dags, smiling as he looked at him. He was still looking Dags over with a faint surprise in his expression, like he was trying to process the changes he saw in him.
A second later, Uri jumped, alarmed, when his foot accidentally nudged Steve McQueen under the bench.
“Whoa! Sorry, man… didn’t see you there,” he said to the dog.
Steve McQueen seemed to accept this. He went back to watching people buy tacos.
“Hey, you want anything?” Uri said to Dags. “You were always a fish taco guy, right?”
“Not right now,” Dags said, still looking over his friend. “Tell me about Jade first.”
A pained look crossed Uri’s face, almost a wince.
Uri looked different too, Dags noticed, but not overly different.
Ten years definitely might have done a lot worse to him.
He’d lost the goatee he had through the last two years of high school. He’d gained maybe fifteen pounds in weight, but he wore it well, and looked pretty lean overall. He still had the long, sun-bleached blond hair Dags remembered, the same mournful-looking brown eyes, the same colorful tattoos of Christian saints and esoteric weapons, as well as the black lines and brush-strokes that spelled out “JADE” in Mandarin across his throat.
He’d gained a few lines around his eyes, probably from the sun as much as age.
He’d filled out in his chest and abdomen.
He also looked worried.
That wasn’t the biggest difference, though.
The biggest difference was that Dags could see his friend’s aura now.
Green and orange, patterned with splatters of yellow, Uri’s aura had a kind of swimming, vortex-like, spacey quality to it, at least on the surface. A layer below that, Dags could see the worry vibrating there, a dense anxiety that blew past however-much pot his friend must have smoked before he got here, probably to calm himself down.
That w
orry was intense enough, it felt almost physical.
The emotion vibrated his aura, leaking out to his body once he’d settled his weight on the cement bench, still looking at Dags with as much curiosity as Dags was him.
“You got taller, man… and big. Hella big.” Uri pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his breast pocket, putting it to his lips and lighting it with a silver Zippo that had a pot leaf embossed on the front. Clicking it shut, he squinted at Dags.
“You’re not on ‘roids or anything, are you?”
Dags grunted, shaking his head. “No.”
“Then what?” The Russian accent still colored Uri’s words, just like Dags remembered. Uri moved to this country when he was ten or eleven, but he never quite shed it, maybe in part because his parents only spoke Russian at home, and he was surrounded by his dad’s Russian family, friends, and business associates.
“What the hell have you been doing, man? Where have you been?”
“Around,” Dags said, holding up his hands briefly. “You went by my office. You saw the new gig.”
Uri nodded in a way that bobbed his whole upper body up and down.
“Yeah. Okay. I can dig that. You had to go all Rambo to play P.I. for the stars. So you’re a gym rat now, huh? Doing martial arts? That kind of thing?”
“Something like that.”
Uri blinked, watching his face.
After a few seconds passed, he snorted a laugh.
“Same old Dags, though,” he mused, squinting at him and waving away smoke. “Even with you all ‘roided out, getting you to talk is like pulling teeth. Jade used to say you were the loudest silent person she’d ever met. Like all your feeling was like a neon sign all over your face. It’s just the information about why that’s usually lacking.”
He smiled sideways, exhaling more smoke.
“She used to make up stories about what was going on in that big brain of yours, you know. Used to make her crazy curious. She said she tried everything to get you to talk… like, everything, man.”
The smile on Uri’s face faded, just before he winced.
From his expression, he’d just remembered she wasn’t waiting for him at home.
His hands and fingers wound together on top of the cement table, which was decorated with small, colored square tiles that made up a picture of a curling wave. After fidgeting with the tiles for a few seconds, he reached for the breast pocket of the oversized bowling shirt a second time, fishing inside with his fingers.
The shirt’s top three buttons were undone, the open collar revealing a deep tan and a winding, green and black snake tattoo. The snake wound around the head of one Christian saint or another, some Russian Orthodox thing Dags didn’t recognize.
That time, Uri pulled a pair of mirrored sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames out of the pocket and shoved them over his eyes.
“So what happened, Uri?” Dags said. “What happened to Jade? Are you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Uri said, exhaling.
His feet and knees continued to fidget, bouncing under the cement table.
“You know something.”
Uri nodded, again bobbing his whole body up and down.
“Yeah, okay,” he said. “We were at The Dolphin. You know, that new place on Sunset? The one with the roof pool and the movie theater? You can float on inner tubes, watch screenings of Jaws while drinking vodka-tonics. Dance salsa on the lower floors. That kind of thing.”
“Yeah,” Dags said. “I get it.”
He’d never heard of the place.
It didn’t matter. Dags didn’t pay attention to things like that.
“So tell me what happened that night,” he said.
Uri threw up his hands, visibly frustrated.
“I don’t know, man,” he said, his accent growing stronger. “She was on the dance floor, you know? Dancing. I was really high, but I saw her dancing with this guy. I started thinking I might have to go over there… he was following her around, you know, bugging her. Jade always gets these weirdos and wolves. Usually she doesn’t need my help⏤”
“What did he look like?” Dags said.
Uri shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
Dags frowned. “What do you mean you don’t know? You saw him, right? What did he look like? Tall? Short? Fat? Thin? Muscular? What color hair? What is curly? Straight⏤?”
“Okay, okay.” Uri frowned, chewing on the cuticle of a fingernail as he stared down at the tile mosaic. “I don’t know. Tall, I guess. Blond. Straight hair. Not skinny, but not super muscle guy like you. He was good-looking. Handsome, you know. He looked like a West L.A. dickhead. Danced like a dick. Dressed like a dick…”
Dags didn’t bother to ask what that meant.
“Did you recognize him?” he said. “Did he look familiar to you at all?”
Uri squinted at him from behind the sunglasses, lips pursed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean did you recognize him,” Dags said. “From anything, Uri. Television. Movies. Around the neighborhood. From other clubs⏤”
“Oh.” Uri shook his head again. “No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure. I mean, I don’t remember thinking I’d seen him before. I just thought, ‘that guy looks like a dick.’” Chewing on the same cuticle, Uri shrugged. “That whole West L.A. thing, it’s not my scene, man. Jade just wanted to see a movie, you know? Float on the pool. Get hammered, look up at the stars.”
Dags nodded, fighting not to clench his jaw.
Uri used to be his best friend.
Had he always been like this?
Granted, that was almost ten years ago, and Dags had been high a lot back then.
Needless to say, that was before The Change, but Dags hadn’t realized just how wide that gap had gotten.
“Was she having problems with anyone?” Dags said. “Was anything else going on?”
Uri shook his head, dropping his hand down to the table, frowning.
“No, man. Things were cool. We were talking about moving to New Mexico. Getting one of those big stucco places, like a farm.” He nudged Dags’ arm. “Like your people, you know? Goats. Some chickens. Maybe even have a baby or something⏤”
Dags grimaced, but didn’t comment.
“⏤Some guy told me it’s a thing right now,” Uri said, looking at him. “Like, Jade wasn’t the only one.”
“A thing?” Dags said, trying to keep up. “The only one what?”
“The only chick that disappeared.” Uri went back to worrying the fingernail with his teeth. “I went back there, asking about her, and the bartender tells me there’s been others. That’s when I figured I should call you.”
“Others?” Dags was frowning for real now.
When Uri nodded, still chewing on his finger, Dags had to restrain himself from shaking the other man.
“How many others?”
“I don’t know.” Uri shrugged his shoulder, dropping his hand back to the table. “But, like, I’m really worried, man. A few of those chicks turned up dead. Like… dead. They’re calling him ‘Hollywood Jack.’”
At Dags’ blank look, Uri explained,
“You know. Like Jack the Ripper. They’re saying he cuts them up or something, the women he takes. Like that English fuck in the old days.”
“Then the police are on this?” Dags said, frowning. “And you called me? Why didn’t you call Kara?”
“Kara?” Uri looked at him blankly.
“Kara Mossman,” Dags said. “From high school. She’s a homicide detective now.”
“Kara? That freaky chick we used to fuck with in art class?”
Dags frowned a little, then pushed the other’s words aside.
“Sure. Yeah. I guess,” he said.
“She’s a cop now? Seriously?”
“Homicide, yeah. I can’t believe you didn’t know that. Did you talk to any police?”
“Police, no.” Uri shrugged, taking a drag of th
e cigarette and knocking ash off the end onto the ground. “I didn’t know about Kara. I thought I had to wait. You know. Until she’s gone like two days or whatever. That’s what they always say⏤“
Dags was already shaking his head, frowning.
“That’s not always true,” he said. “Not when there’s an ongoing murder case. Not when her disappearance might be connected. They’d want to know that right away. You need to call Kara, Uri. Call L.A.P.D. and ask for her. Ask for her specifically.”
Uri frowned, tilting his head back to stare at Dags through the sunglasses.
“Doesn’t she fucking hate us?” he said after a beat. “We’re talking the same Kara, right? The bitch with the buck teeth? The same one Jade stole her clothes that one time out of the gym locker room? And then she had to come out, naked, covered in wet toilet paper?”
Uri chuckled at the memory.
“You mean that Kara, right? You remember we took all her clay from the pottery locker? And threw it on the roof? She was screaming at us, saying how she was going to tell the principal?” Uri chuckled again, exhaling smoke. “But she never did, remember? ‘Cause you threatened her? Said you’d tell Trevor she wanted to fuck him?”
Dags frowned. He hadn’t remembered that.
He hadn’t remembered any of that.
He did now, though.
For a long moment, he stared down at the cement table, his mind blank.
“Why the fuck did we do that?” he said, still frowning.
“Why? You serious? She was a total bitch, man.” Uri leaned over the table, his cigarette perched between two fingers. “You don’t remember? She was always in our business, poking her nose in where it didn’t belong. She ratted us out for smoking weed in the art room. And she was always just super weird. Always yelling at us, telling people what to do. She was like in chess club or debate or some shit, too⏤”
Dags stared at the other man. “So we tormented her because she was smart? And weird? We were those guys?”
Uri frowned, staring at him through the mirrored shades. “Those guys. What is this, ‘those guys’ bullshit? What is the matter with you, man? You forgetting I got a month of detention from that bitch? The principal called your dad and he beat the fuck out of you. He almost broke your arm. And that bitch tried to get me expelled for dealing. She maybe would have, but my dad got his lawyer in there.”
Bad Angel Page 4
