by Robert Crais
I was telling Lucy how rotten my plants looked when the outer door opened and three children stepped into my office. I cupped the receiver and called, “Out here.”
The oldest was a girl with long dark hair and pale skin and little oval glasses. I made her for fifteen, but she might have been older. A younger boy trailed in behind her, pulling a much smaller girl. The boy was wearing oversized baggy shorts and Air Nike sneakers. He looked sullen. The younger girl was wearing an X-Files T-shirt. I said, “I’m being invaded.”
Lucy said, “Tracy just looked in. I have to go.”
The older girl came to the French doors. “Are you Mr. Cole?”
I held up a finger, and the girl nodded. “Luce, don’t worry about how long it takes. If you run late, it’s okay.”
“You’re such a doll.”
“I know.”
“Meetcha outside the building at six.”
Lucy made kissy sounds and I made kissy sounds back. The girl pretended not to hear, but the boy muttered something to the younger girl. She giggled. I have never thought of myself as the kissy-sound type of person, but since I’ve known Lucy I’ve been doing and saying all manner of silly things. That’s love for you.
When I turned off the phone, the older girl was frowning at my plants. “When they’re yellow it means they get too much sun.”
Everyone’s an expert.
“Maybe you should consider cactus. They’re hard to kill.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
The girl followed me back into my office. The younger girl was sitting on the couch, but the boy was inspecting the photographs and the little figurines of Jiminy Cricket that I keep on my desk. He squinted at everything with disdain, and he carried himself with a kind of round-shouldered skulk. I wanted to tell him to stand up straight. I said, “What’s up, guys? How can I help you?” Maybe they were selling magazine subscriptions.
The older girl said, “Are you Elvis Cole, the private investigator?”
“Yes, I am.” The boy snuck a glance at the Dan Wesson, then eyed the Pinocchio clock that hangs on the wall above the file cabinet. The clock has eyes that move from side to side as it tocks and is a helluva thing to watch.
She said, “Your ad in the Yellow Pages said you find missing people.”
“That’s right. I’m having a special this week. I’ll find two missing people for the price of one.” Maybe she was writing a class report: A Day in the Life of the World’s Greatest Detective.
She stared at me. Blank.
“I’m kidding. That’s what we in the trade call private-eye humor.”
“Oh.”
The boy coughed once, but he wasn’t really coughing. He was saying “Asshole” and masking it with the cough. The younger girl giggled again.
I looked at him hard. “How’s that?”
The boy went sullen and floated back to my desk. He looked like he wanted to steal something. I said, “Come away from there.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I want you on this side of the desk.”
The older girl said, “Charles.” Warning him. I guess he was like this a lot.
“Jeez.” He skulked back to the file cabinet, and snuck another glance at the Dan Wesson. “What kind of gun is that?”
“It’s a Dan Wesson thirty-eight-caliber revolver.”
“How many guys you kill?”
“I’m thinking about adding another notch right now.”
The older girl said, “Charles, please.” She looked back at me. “Mr. Cole, my name is Teresa Haines. This is my brother, Charles, and our sister, Winona. Our father has been missing for eleven days, and we’d like you to find him.”
I stared at her. I thought it might be a joke, but she didn’t look as if she was joking. I looked at the boy, and then at the younger girl, but they didn’t appear to be joking either. The boy was watching me from the corner of his eye, and there was a kind of expectancy under the attitude. Winona was all big saucer eyes and unabashed hope. No, they weren’t kidding. I went behind my desk, then thought better of it and came around to sit in one of the leather director’s chairs opposite the couch. Mr. Informal. Mr. Unthreatening. “How old are you, Ms. Haines?”
“I’m fifteen, but I’ll be sixteen in two months. Charles is twelve, and Winona is nine. Our father travels often, so we’re used to being on our own, but he’s never been gone this long before, and we’re concerned.”
Charles made the coughing sound again, and this time he said, “Trick.” Only this time he wasn’t talking about me.
I nodded. “What does your father do?”
“He’s in the printing business.”
“Unh-hunh. And where’s your mother?”
“She died five and a half years ago in an automobile accident.”
Charles said, “A friggin’ drunk driver.” He was scowling at the picture of Lucy Chenier on my file cabinet, and he didn’t bother to look over at me when he said it. He drifted from Lucy back to the desk, and now he was sniffing around the Mickey Mouse phone.
I said, “So your father’s been gone for eleven days, he hasn’t called, and you don’t know when he’s coming back.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you know where he went?”
Charles smirked. “If we knew that, he wouldn’t be missing, would he?”
I looked at him, but this time I didn’t say anything. “Tell me, Ms. Haines. How did you happen to choose me?”
“You worked on the Teddy Martin murder.” Theodore Martin was a rich man who had murdered his wife. I was hired by his defense attorneys to work on his behalf, but it hadn’t gone quite the way Teddy had hoped. I’d been on local television and in the Times because of it. “I looked up the newspapers in the library and read about you, and then I found your ad in the Yellow Pages.”
“Resourceful.” My friend Patty Bell was a licensed social worker with the county. I was thinking that I could call her.
Teri Haines took a plain legal envelope from her back pocket and showed it to me. “I wrote down his birth date and a description and some things like that.” She put it on the coffee table between us. “Will you find him for us?”
I looked at the envelope, but did not touch it. It was two-fifteen on a weekday afternoon, but these kids weren’t in school. Maybe I would call a lieutenant I know with the LAPD Juvenile Division. Maybe he would know what to do.
Teresa Haines leaned toward me and suddenly looked thirty years old. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that we’re just kids, but we have the money to pay you.” She pulled a cheap red wallet from her front pocket, then fanned a deck of twenties and fifties and hundreds that was thick enough to stop a 9mm Parabel-lum. There had to be two thousand dollars. Maybe three. “You see? All you have to do is name your price.”
Charles said, “Jeezis Christ, Teri, don’t tell’m that! He’ll clean us out!” Charles had moved from the Mickey phone and now he was fingering the Jiminys again. Maybe I could handcuff him to the couch.
Teri was looking at me. “Well?”
“Where’d you get the money?”
Her right eye flickered, but she did not look away. “Daddy leaves it for us. It’s what we live on.”
Teresa Haines’s hair hung loosely below her shoulders and appeared clean and well kept. Her face was heart-shaped, and a couple of pimples had sprouted on her chin, but she didn’t seem self-conscious about them. She appeared well nourished and in good health, as did her brother and sister. Maybe she was making all of this up. Maybe the whole thing was their idea of a joke. I said, “Have you called the police?”
“Oh no.” She said it quickly.
“If my father was missing, I would.”
She shook her head.
“It’s what they do, and they won’t charge you. I usually get around two grand.”
Charles yelled, “Ripoff!” A small framed picture fell when he said it, and knocked over three Jiminy figurines. He scuttled toward th
e door. “I didn’t do anything. Jeezis.”
Teresa straightened herself. “We don’t want to involve the police, Mr. Cole.” You could tell she was struggling to be calm. You could see that it was an effort.
“If your father has been gone for eleven days and you haven’t heard from him, you should call the police. They’ll help you. You don’t have to be afraid of them.”
She shook her head. “The police will call Children’s Services, and they’ll take us away.”
I tried to look reassuring. “They’ll just make sure that you guys are safe, that’s all. I may have to call them myself.” I spread my hands and smiled, Mr. Nothing-to-Be-Afraid-of-Here, only Teri Haines didn’t buy it. Her eyes cooled, growing flinty and hard and shallow with fear.
Teresa Haines slowly stood. Winona stood with her. “Your ad said confidential.” Like an accusation.
Charles said, “He’s not gonna do frig.” Like they’d hadthis discussion before they came, and now Charles had been proven right.
“Look, you guys are children. You shouldn’t be by yourselves.” Saying it made me sound like an adult, but sounding that way made me feel small.
Teresa Haines put the money back in the wallet and the wallet back in her pocket. She put the envelope in her pocket, too. “I’m sorry we bothered you.”
I said, “C’mon, Teresa. It’s the right way to play it.”
Charles coughed, “Eat me.”
There was a flurry of fast steps, and then Teresa and Charles and Winona were gone. They didn’t bother to close the door.
I looked at my desk. One of the little Jiminys was gone, too.
I listened to Cindy’s radio, drifting in from the balcony. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were singing “Music Is My Aeroplane.” I pressed my lips together and let my breath sigh from the comers of my mouth.
“Well, moron, are you just going to let them walk out of here?” Maybe I said it, or maybe it was Pinocchio.
I pulled on a jacket to cover the Dan Wesson, ran down four flights to the lobby, then out to the street in time to see them pull away from the curb in a metallic green Saturn. The legal driving age in the state of California is sixteen, but Teresa was driving. It didn’t surprise me.
I ran back through the lobby and down to the parking level and drove hard up out of the building, trying to spot their car. A guy in a six-wheel truck that said LEON’S FISH almost broadsided me as I swung out onto Santa Monica Boulevard, and sat on his horn.
I was so focused on trying to spot the Saturn that I didn’t yet see the man who was following me, but I would before long.
CHAPTER 2
Teresa Raines’s Saturn turned south past the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station, then east onto Mel-rose. I didn’t careen through oncoming traffic to cut her off, and I didn’t shoot out her tires. Teri Haines was driving just fine, and I wasn’t sure what to do if I stopped them. Hold them at gunpoint for the police?
Fairfax High School was just letting out, and the sidewalks were dotted with boys toting book bags and skateboards, and girls flashing navel rings. Most of the kids were about Teri’s age, some younger, some older, only these kids were in school and she wasn’t. Charles leaned out of the passenger-side window and flipped off a knot of kids standing at the bus stop. Three of the kids gave back the finger, and somebody threw what appeared to be a Coke can which hit the Saturn’s rear wheel.
Teri cruised along Melrose past hypermodern clothing outlets and comic-book shops and tour groups from Asia until she turned south onto a narrow residential street. Modest stucco houses lined the street, and the curbs were jammed with parked cars. Some of the cars probably went with the houses, but most belonged to people who’d come to shop on Melrose. I stopped at the corner and watched. The Saturn crept halfway down the next block, then turned into the drive of a yellow bungalow with an orange tile roof and a single royal palm in the yard. The three Haines children climbed out of the car and disappeared into the bungalow. Retreatingto familiar territory after an unsuccessful meeting with the detective.
I cruised past their house, found a parking space on the next block, and walked back. Screams weren’t coming from within, no music was blaring, and no smoke was rising from either windows or roof. Charles had probably passed out.
I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house next door and thought about things. When I was following them I had known exactly what I would do: I would locate their residence, then call one of my friends at Children’s Services or the LAPD, and that would be that. Only the house and the yard, like the car and the children, appeared well maintained, and now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe these kids were fine, and all calling the cops would get me was a house full of frightened children. Still, all I could see was the outside of the house. Inside, there might be rats. Inside, there might be squalor and vermin. Only one way to find out. When in doubt, snoop.
I slipped past the Saturn and walked up the drive and climbed atop their gas meter to peek into the kitchen. I couldn’t see the kids, but the kitchen was neat and orderly and clean. No rats, no flies, no towers of unwashed dishes. I moved to the next set of windows, chinned myself on the sill, and peered through a little dining room to the living room. It occurred to me that Charles might see me peeking in the window and bean me with a brick, but these are the chances you take when you’re a world-class private eye. Life is risk. The TV was on, and Charles and Winona were watching Aeon Flux. No one was pushing, no one was shoving. Like the kitchen, the living room was neat and orderly and in good repair. Eleven days without an adult, and everything looked fine.
I dropped back to the drive, then went to my car. I watched the house and tried to look unthreatening so that nervous neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. A black guy in a gray LeBaron cruised past. I smiled and nodded, but he looked away. Maybe I wasn’t unthreatening enough.
Two hours and ten minutes later I started the car and left to pick up Lucy Chenier. I wasn’t sure that I was doing the right thing by leaving them alone, but I wasn’t sure it would be best to have them scooped up by a herd of social workers and put into a foster home either. Of course, they might be safer in such a home, but they didn’t look particularly endangered where they were. Maybe I should stop advertising in the Yellow Pages.
The KROK studio and corporate offices are on Olympic Boulevard, just west of Doheny Drive along the southern edge of Beverly Hills. It’s a large, modern building of steel and glass in an area of chain grocery stores and expensive high-rise apartments and upscale health clubs. Twentieth Century-Fox isn’t far away, and neither is Century City.
Olympic was jammed with rush-hour traffic, and the valet parking attendants at the health club across the street from KROK were running double time to keep up with the incoming flux of agents and lawyers and studio execs anxious to pump iron and shoot hoops after a hard day telling the truth. Four guys in Versace suits were standing together outside the health club, staring toward KROK, only they weren’t staring at the building; they were staring at Lucy Chenier. Lucille Chenier is five inches over five feet, with light auburn hair and green eyes and the rich, healthy tan of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. She had attended Louisiana State University on a tennis scholarship, and she still played regularly and was serious about it. You could see it in the way she carried herself, and in the way her muscle’s worked beneath her skin. I pulled to the curb and felt myself smile as she climbed into my car. “Did you take the job?”
“Not yet, but they made a very interesting offer.” Her green eyes were amazing. Absolutely without bottom.
“How interesting?”
She smiled wider.
“That’s pretty interesting.”
She leaned across the shifter and kissed me, and I kissed her back. “Did you make a reservation at Border Grill?”
“I did.”
“Fantastic!” She settled back in the seat. “We can eat, then I’ll pack, and then we’ll have the rest of the evening to sip champagne and do whatever.”
&nb
sp; I smiled at her, and felt an enormous warmth grow between us. “Whatever.”
Lucy told me the particulars of her interview as we drove toward Santa Monica, and then I told her about Teresa Haines. I told her about Charles and Winona, and how I had followed them back to their home, and as I told it, a vertical line grew between Lucy’s eyebrows in a kind of frown. She said, “They’ve been alone for eleven days?”
“Yep.”
“With no adult supervision?”
“That’s right.” The line grew deeper.
“And you looked through the windows?”
“Everything seemed fine.”
Lucy was squirming so hard that I thought she was going to pop out of the seat. She shook her head and held up her hands and said, “Seeming fine isn’t enough. We’d better turn around.”
I said, “Hunh?”
“Turn around. We’re going into that house and make sure.”
I turned. Maternal hormones are awesome to behold.
Twenty minutes later, we left Melrose and once more cruised their house. Everything appeared in order and unchanged, and the Saturn was still in the drive. At least they weren’t out joyriding. “They’re fine.” The professional detective makes his pronouncement.
“Stop.”
We parked in the drive behind the Saturn, went to the front door, and rang the bell. Charles threw open the door without checking, and when he saw us his eyes bulged and he tried to slam the door. “Run! They’ve come to take us away!”
I pushed open the door and stepped inside, Lucy behind me. He was a game kid, grunting and huffing against the door as he slid across the floor. I said, “Relax, Charles. No one is going to take you away.”
Teresa Haines said, “Stop it, Charles.” She said it once, sharply, and he stopped.
Teresa and Winona were in the living room. The TV was off, so they probably hadn’t been watching it. Winona was standing behind Teresa, and Teresa looked calm and in absolute control of her environment. She wasn’t looking at me,- she was looking at Lucy. I said, “I wanted to make sure you guys were okay.”
Charles said, “I tol’ ya we shouldn’t’a said anything! They’re gonna put us in a home!”
