Sunset Express

by Robert Crais

  I took Pike’s Jeep, pushed back down the hill and made my way to LAX, arriving at the gate twenty-eight minutes early. I took a seat across from an older woman with brittle white hair and pleasant eyes. I nodded hello and she nodded back. She said, “I’ll bet she’s very pretty.”

  “Who?”

  “The one you’re waiting for. You should see the smile on your face.” Know-it-all.

  The gate grew crowded and, with the growing crowd, I began to feel anxious and goofy. Then the plane was down and my heart was hammering and it was hard to breath. I said, “Snap out of it, dummy. Try to get a grip.”

  The older woman laughed, and a man holding a two-year-old moved away.

  I saw Lucy first, emerging from the jetway behind three elderly gentlemen, and I wanted to yell, “Hey, Luce!” and jump up and down.

  Lucy Chenier is five feet five, with amber green eyes and auburn hair rich with golden highlights from all the time she spends in the sun. She was wearing black shorts and a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled and white Reebok tennis shoes, and she was carrying a gray canvas shoulder bag that probably weighed nine thousand pounds and her Gucci briefcase. When she saw me she tried to wave but her hands were full with the bags. Ben yelled, “Hey, there’s Elvis!” and then I shouldered past two Marines and Lucy was hugging me and I was hugging her back, and then she stepped away and said, “Oh, your poor eye!”

  “You look so good, Luce. You don’t know.”

  We gave each other a long kiss, and then I hugged Ben, too. Ben Chenier had grown maybe four inches in the three months since I’d last seen him. “You’re taller.”

  He beamed. “Four six and a quarter. I’m getting close to five feet.”

  “Wow.”

  I took the shoulder bag and we moved with the flow of arrivals down to baggage claim, Lucy and I holding hands and Ben ranging ahead of us, burning off eight-year-old-boy energy. Lucy’s hand felt dry and warm and natural in mine, and as we moved along the white-tiled corridors they told me about their flight (uneventful) and how Ben was spending his summer (a week at Camp Avondale with his Cub Scout pack) and about Lucy’s business in Long Beach (amicably renegotiating a six-year-old divorce settlement involving complex corporate holdings). As we talked there was a growing feeling that these were not just two people with whom I would spend time, but two people I was allowing into my life. It was a thought that made me smile, and Lucy said, “What?”

  “Just thinking how glad I am that you guys are here.”

  She squeezed my hand.

  When their luggage arrived we loaded it into the Jeep and followed LaTijera out of the airport northeast up through the city. It was rush hour, and the going was slow, but going slow didn’t seem to matter. Ben said, “We’re going to your house?”

  “That’s right. I live in the hills above West Hollywood.”

  “Where are we gonna sleep?”

  Lucy and I traded a smile. “I’ve got a guest room. There’s a bed for your mom, and a camper’s cot for you.”

  “What’s your house like?”

  Lucy said, “You’ll see when we get there, Ben.”

  I smiled at him in the rearview. “It’s perched on the side of a mountain and it’s surrounded by trees. A friend said that it reminds her of a tree house.”

  Ben said, “Cool.”

  Lucy raised an eyebrow and looked at me. “What friend?”

  I said, “That was years ago.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  We made great time through the Slauson Pass, then climbed north through the Fairfax District past CBS and finally up Laurel Canyon and into the mountains, and then we were home. The summer sun was still high in the west as we turned into the carport and got out, and Lucy said, “Oh, this is just wonderful!” You could smell the eucalyptus and the pine and, high above us, the two red-tailed hawks who lived in the canyon floated on rising thermals. I said, “You guys hungry?”

  Ben said, “Yeah!”

  Lucy said, “Starving, but I want to take a bath first.”

  I showed them in through the kitchen and led them past the entry and across the living room and, as we walked, I watched Lucy’s eyes flick over the kitchen counters and the refrigerator with its Spider-Man magnets and the bar built into the dining room wall and the stone hearth in the living room and the bookcases and pictures; trying to take in as much of my life in those few seconds as she could. She caught me watching her and gave me a smile of approval. “I like.”

  I showed them their room and bath, then brought them out onto the deck. Ben said, “Oh, wow,” and raced around the handrail, looking down. It’s about a twenty-foot drop.

  Lucy said, “Elvis, it’s beautiful.”

  “This canyon merges with Nichols Canyon, which opens out into the basin. The little bit of city you see is part of Hollywood. Tomorrow morning we’ll take the road below us down to the Budget Rent-a-Car.”

  She turned back to the house and lowered her voice. “And where does the master sleep?”

  I grinned and pulled her close. “The stairs off the living room lead to the master’s quarters.”

  She pushed away, then leaned against the rail and crossed her arms. It was a pretty good pose. “Perhaps a bit later I’ll get a chance to inspect the premises.”

  I shrugged, but even pretending to be disinterested was somehow impossible. My voice came out hoarse and broken. “If you’re good, perhaps I’ll let you.”

  She let a smile curl out from under the world’s longest eyelashes and lowered her voice still more and let the southern accent come thick. “Oh, Studly, Ah intend to be very, very bad.”

  The air seemed to spark with a kind of electric heat and then Ben raced back from the side of the house. “Elvis, can I go down the hill?”

  “Up to your mom, pal.”

  Lucy looked over the rail. “Is it safe?”

  “Sure. It’s a gentle slope. The people who live over there have a couple of boys, and they play all along the ridges.”

  Lucy didn’t look convinced, but you could tell she was going to give in. “Well, okay, but stay close to the house.”

  Ben ran around the side of the house again, and this time we could hear him crashing down through the dried grass and into the trees. Lucy looked at me and I looked back, but now she was giving me serious. “So. Are you going to tell me about the eye, or do I have to keep wondering?”

  “A police officer named Angela Rossi popped me with a sap.”

  Lucy sighed and shook her head. “Other women date doctors or businessmen. I have to fall for someone who gets into street fights.”

  “It wasn’t much of a fight. She suckered me.” I told her about what Green had hired me to do, and how I had done it, and how I had come to get the eye.

  Lucy listened, interested more in the parts about Jonathan Green, and frowning when I told her how Rossi had eye-faked me. “She caught you off guard. You underestimated her because she was a woman.”

  “If I said that it would be taking something away from her. I didn’t underestimate her; she was just good enough to sucker me with an eye-fake.”

  Lucy gave me one of her gentle smiles, then touched the mouse. “You’re such a sweetie.”

  I nodded.

  She came close and went up on her toes and kissed it. “I need to make some calls about tomorrow, and I want to take that bath. May I use your phone?”

  “Sure.” I brushed at her hair, then stroked her upper arms. “You don’t have to ask, okay? Whatever you want to do while you’re here, just do it. Ben, too.”

  She went up on her toes and kissed me again. “Keep an eye on Ben?”

  “The good eye or the bad eye?”

  “Funny.”

  While Lucy was making her calls I fired the grill, then split the ducks and rubbed them with lemon juice and garlic and pepper. Lucy phoned two attorneys to arrange her next day’s meeting, and then she called Jodi Taylor. Jodi was filming her series, Songbird, and had invited Ben to spend the day with
her on the set. When Lucy was off the phone and in the bath I checked on Ben and, when the coals were right, put the four duck halves on the grill and covered them. I was back in the kitchen working on tarragon rice and salad when the cat door clacked and the cat walked in. He froze in the center of the kitchen floor and growled.

  I said, “Knock that off.”

  He moved through the kitchen, stopping every couple of steps, his cat nose working and the growl soft in his chest. I said, “We’re going to have guests for a few days, and if you bite or scratch either one of them it will go hard for you.”

  His eyes narrowed and he looked at me. I said, “I mean it.”

  He sprinted back through his door. There are some things you just can’t talk to him about.

  I checked on Ben again, then finished with the salad and set the table and put on the new k. d. lang. Lucy reappeared in fresh shorts and wet, slicked-back hair, wrapping her arms around me from behind and sharing her warmth. She said, “Everything is just perfect.”

  “Not yet,” I said. “But soon.”

  We called in Ben and ate, and little by little we moved through the evening, talking about and planning our coming days, Lucy and I gently touching as we talked, each touch a way of sharing something larger than a simple tactile experience, and after a while even the excitement of the adventure couldn’t keep Ben going and Lucy finally whispered, “He’s sleeping.”

  “Need help getting him to bed?”

  “No. I’ll get him on his feet and he’ll walk.”

  When their door was closed I shut all the lights save one, then went upstairs and took off my clothes. The house was still, and I thought that I could smell her the way, I supposed, the cat had. But maybe that was my imagination.

  I lay in the dark for what seemed forever, and then I heard the door below open and the sound of her on the stairs, and I thought how very lucky I was that she had come, and that I was the one whom she had come to see.

  10

  The sun was bright and hot on the sheets, and I woke smelling coffee and hearing Bewitched on the television, Elizabeth Montgomery saying, “But Darren is a wonderful man, Mother,” and Agnes Moorehead saying, “That’s the problem, dear. He’s a man, and you deserve so much more.”

  When I went downstairs, Lucy and Ben were up and dressed, Ben on the couch watching television, and Lucy at the dining room table, sipping coffee. She was wearing a pale yellow pants suit and her Gucci briefcase was open, with papers spread on the table beside her. Preparing for business. I said, “Hey. There are people in my house.”

  Lucy smiled. “We tried to be quiet.”

  “You were. I didn’t hear a thing.” She held out her hand, fingers spread, and I laced my fingers through hers.

  She said, “Mm.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows, then made a shifty look back toward the stairs. “Mm-mm.”

  Lucy took back her hand. “No time, my dear. Jodi’s going to pick up Ben on her way in to the studio, then you have to take me to the Budget office. She should be here soon.”

  “Great.” We were grinning at each other with great loopy grins that probably looked silly. “Did you sleep all right?”

  Lucy managed a straight face. “Very well, thank you. And yourself?”

  I pretended to stifle a yawn. “A little restless. I feel drained this morning.”

  Lucy raised her eyebrows. “Imagine that. Perhaps you need more rest.”

  Ben looked at us from the couch, confused. “You don’t look tired to me.”

  Lucy and I grinned, and Ben looked even more confused. “What did I say?”

  Lucy said, “I got directions to my meeting, so all we need to do is pick up the car. You shower and dress, and I’ll make breakfast. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  I did and she did, and we were finishing coffee and toasted banana bread and scrambled eggs when Jodi Taylor’s black-on-black Beemer tooled up and stopped across the drive. I pushed open the kitchen door and gave her a kiss as she entered. “What, no limo for the star?”

  Jodi Taylor tugged at my shirt and said, “I’ll buy a stretch if you’ll come for a ride, handsome.” Then she winked at Lucy and said, “Oops, sorry. I see he’s already taken.”

  I gave her the eyebrows. “Taken, yes, but perhaps available for rent.”

  Lucy said, “In that case she should buy a hearse. Better to lay out the body.”

  Jodi laughed. “Grr-owl. These southern belles are very territorial.”

  “Possessive,” Lucy said. “The word is possessive.”

  Lucy and Jodi hugged, and Ben ran in from the living room. Like Lucy, Jodi Taylor was from Louisiana, though, unlike Lucy, you couldn’t hear it in her voice. She was maybe an inch taller than Lucy, with hazel eyes and dusky red hair and a kind of natural beauty that made her accessible and real to thirty million people every week. Supermarket beauty, they called it. The kind and quality of beauty that let you believe that you might bump into her in the market, buying Pampers or Diet Coke. Songbird had been renewed for a second full season, and Jodi Taylor had just begun production on the new episodes. She was happy and confident in returning to work, and was at ease with herself in a way that she hadn’t been three months ago. Lucy said, “Jodi, you look wonderful.”

  Jodi smiled shyly. “Thanks to you two.”

  I had seen Jodi from time to time in the three months since I’d helped her, but Lucy hadn’t, and they chatted and worked out the details of Ben’s day while I cleared the table, loaded the dishwasher, then went upstairs to gather together my file of tipsters. I considered bringing along a can of bug repellent for the day’s assignment, but decided against it. Too hard to force the can into my holster.

  When I went back downstairs, Jodi and Lucy were standing together, grinning. Jodi said, “You’re working for Jonathan Green? My, my.” Impressed.

  I spread my hands. “He’s just another client, ladies.” Mr. Modest.

  Lucy put her hands on her hips. “No, he’s not. He’s Jonathan Green.”

  I spread my hands again. They’re carrying on like this, and I’m battling fleas and talking to people who think they’ve got chips in their gums.

  Lucy made her voice low and breathy. “He positively dominates a court room. And his presence is so commanding.”

  Jodi Taylor slinked over to me and toyed with my collar. “Could you arrange a personal introduction?”

  Lucy said, “Would he autograph my law school diploma? Would he do that for lil’ ol’ me?”

  Jodi purred, “I’ve got something else he could autograph.”

  Girl humor.

  Jodi and Ben finally left for the studio, and then I brought Lucy down to the Budget office, working our way along the back canyon road in silence. Lucy was staring out of the car, and I thought that she might be watching the alien scenery and the strange mountain houses, but she wasn’t. She said, “What I said about possessive. I was joking.” Her voice was soft, and when she said it she didn’t look at me.

  “Sure.”

  Her hands were in her lap and her briefcase was on the floor beneath her legs. She said, “Elvis?”

  “Hm?”

  Another pause. Longer. “Do you see anyone else?”

  I looked at her, but she still wasn’t looking at me. I went back to the road.

  Lucy said, “I mean, it’s none of my business. We’ve never talked about other people.”

  I nodded. I looked at her again, but she still was focused outside. “I went out twice in the month after I came back from Louisiana. Once with a woman I’d seen several times before, and once with a waitress I met in the Valley, and both times went poorly.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t sound disappointed.

  “I was with them, but I was thinking of you. Then you and I started talking about going to Cancun. I haven’t been out with anyone since then. I don’t want to go out with anyone else.” I was looking more at her than the road, which isn’t smart in the hills.

  Lucy Chenier looked at me,
then nodded once and turned back to the window.

  I said, “Have you been seeing anyone?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  I thought about it and what it meant. “Good.”

  Without looking at me, she put out her hand. I took it. We drove like that the rest of the way to the Budget office, where I dropped her off and began another exciting day in the employ of the Big Green Defense Machine.

  11

  After I dropped Lucy off I stopped at a diner on Hollywood Boulevard and made more calls. Of the remaining names on my list, two were in El Monte, one in San Marino, and one was in Pasadena, all of which were on the eastern rim of the Los Angeles sprawl.

  I called a Mr. James Lester first. A woman answered, sounding young and whiny, and told me that he was sleeping. She said that he didn’t have to go in until noon, so he always slept late. I told her that I would be in their area later, and how about I call back then. She said, “Mister, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do.” Nothing like starting off your work day with a bang.

  No one was home on my next call, and then I phoned Ms. Mary Mason of San Marino. A woman with a low, breathy voice answered on the third ring. She identified herself as Mistress Maggie Mason and told me that Mary was her sister. When I told her why I was calling she said that Mary would be available shortly and gave me directions to their home. One for three.

  Mary Mason lived on Winston Drive in a stately well-kept home set back from the street. It was an older place, built of heavy stone and stucco. I rang the bell three times, knocked twice, and was just getting ready to leave when the door opened and a tall, statuesque woman in a black leather teddy, net stockings, and six-inch platform shoes stepped out. A twined cobra was tattooed on her right thigh. She said, “May I help you?” She had long black hair pulled back tight against her head.