The sun was bright but not directly overhead. It was mid-afternoon by now, I guessed, but I didn’t wear a watch, and the taxi didn’t have a clock.
“How much further?” I asked the driver, just as he made a sharp right turn. We passed a bail bonds place, and for one of the first times in Orange County outside of a parking lot, I saw people on the street. Mexicans, mostly. A couple of girls who might have been hookers, fanning themselves, laughing, and pointing at something I couldn’t see down an alley.
“Here we are,” the driver said. He pulled up in front of the Sunny Jim without pulling in. “Lots of places to go around here.” He pointed up the street. “There is a nice place,” he said. “Have a sandwich and a cerveza, and nobody bother you there. You are a girl,” he said, looking worriedly in the rear view. I like people who state the obvious. Bless.
The fare was twenty-five bucks, and I gave him two of the twenties from the plastic wallet. Share the wealth and all that. Noblesse oblige.
“Gracias,” the driver said, when I indicated that I didn’t need change. “But, lady,” he said. “You sure you want me to leave you here? You meeting somebody? Your man?”
“Don’t you worry, Jorge,” I said, reading his name off his cabbie license. “I’m meeting my sister.”
* * *
I stood in front of the motel where my sister had died. Other than police tape over the door to one room, the Sunny Jim looked to be business as usual. I stopped at the office entrance for a second, considering taking a room, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. First, I wanted to take in some of the local color.
If Ginger had died here, maybe she had hung out around here. I had drugs in my purse, and money to rent a room. I badly wanted to be high, to erase everything and watch sitcom reruns and drift away.
But here I was, and this was more important.
I walked in the direction Jorge had indicated. An old Mexican man stood on the street, cowboy hat shading his eyes as he gazed into the distance at something I couldn’t see. My head was pounding again now. The doctor at the E.R. had given me nothing stronger than two Tylenol, which hadn’t even dulled the pain. I was used to stronger painkillers. I passed another bail bondsman. A pawn shop. Then, Lucky’s Bar and Grill. I was glad it wasn’t a Grille. I didn’t like Grilles, but I was quite fond of Grills. I was pretty sure that this wasn’t the place that Jorge had been pointing to, but either way, somebody in this place was getting my business. Closest bar to Sunny Jim’s, as far as I could tell, and I looked enough like Ginger – particularly the Ginger who had apparently been trying to look like me, according to the fake driver’s licence – that my presence might provoke some reaction. Either way, I could use a drink.
I wished I had thought to stick my sunglasses in my purse. I’d grown unaccustomed to daylight. I like my face covered. Note to self: buy shades.
Lucky’s was the kind of place that didn’t have windows. I understood places like this. A lot of women would be nervous, walking into a strange dive bar, in a strange, down-and-out neighborhood. But this? This is what I was made for.
It took me a few seconds to adjust to the dark interior after the harsh sunlight outside. I paused in the entrance, for effect. I knew I looked okay, and patted myself on the back, metaphorically, for wearing what I had. Any worse, and I could have been mistaken for a whore. Any classier, and I would have been a target, a rich gringa who’d gotten lost on her way to Laguna Beach. As it was, in my little black sleeveless top and skirt, I could be anything. It was all up to me.
I was on. Showtime.
Once my eyes adjusted, I saw that there were half a dozen people at the bar, one woman among them. The bartender was Caucasian, and big. Mean-looking biker-type. Two of the guys at the bar were white, two, from what I could see, were Mexican, one black, and the woman? I couldn’t see her well enough yet.
But well enough to know it wasn’t Ginger.
I made my way to the bar, confidently but not like I owned the place. The bartender looked at me.
“Jack and seven, please,” I said, pulling a twenty out of my purse. I put it on the bar and lit up a cigarette. Nobody else seemed to be paying much attention to the smoking bylaws here, so who was I to argue? I wasn’t a full-time smoker despite the crack addiction, but put me on a barstool and I’m Joe Camel.
The bartender slid an ashtray my way. Good start. If he’d pegged me as a cop, he would’ve told me that there was no smoking in his establishment.
My drink was weak, but it would do. I stirred it with the straw once or twice, then chugged it back in one. Let it sit for a minute.
“Let’s do that again,” I said, pushing the twenty a little further across the bar. He hadn’t taken it yet. He made me another. I rested my forehead on my fingers like I had had a long day, or a headache, which I did. This, I had to approach with caution.
The two white guys were stealing glances at me, then talking quietly to each other. Nobody else had spoken a word since I came in, but I didn’t have the feeling that it was because of me. There probably wasn’t an overabundance of witty banter flying back and forth here. Maybe the happy hour crowd provided more amusement, but somehow I doubted it.
“Miss,” one of the white guys said after about ten minutes of all of us staring at the same football game. “Miss?”
“Sorry?” I said, as though he was disturbing me from a deep reverie. In fact, this was what I had been waiting for.
“Can my friend and I buy you a drink?”
I looked at them. Both about my age, early thirties-ish. Blue-collar, if they had any collar at all, which I doubted. They seemed respectful. They weren’t assuming I was a pro, just maybe hoping one of them would get laid.
“That’s nice of you guys,” I said, smiling earnestly. “But I’m not sure I’m the company you’re looking for.” This way, I thought, I could weed out the potential johns. “You know how it is.”
“Troubles,” the other guy said, nodding into his beer.
“Troubles,” I agreed. You don’t know the half of it, brother. We all sat silently for a couple of minutes. Good. Nobody was going to hassle me here. Within fifteen minutes, I was part of the woodwork. If I stayed on this stool long enough, I’d be a regular.
I sighed heavily, as if regretting my anti-social behavior, and ordered another drink. “And a round for those guys,” I said to the bartender. “Thanks, guys. Thanks for not pushing me.” I let a tear roll down my cheek. I was officially an expert at the crying thing now. I rooted around in my bag for a tissue, and one of them lit my cigarette for me, as though I was his sister.
That was it. We were friends now. Ten minutes later, I was shooting pool with Dom and Dave. I figured I’d give it a bit. If Ginger had been in here, I thought these guys would maybe have mentioned something to me about our similar appearance, if the photo on the fake driver’s licence was anything to go by. And even if they didn’t know her, they must know the ’hood.
But as a stranger in a dive bar – which are almost always populated by regulars, no matter where in the world you go – you don’t start getting nosy right away. Not good for one’s health.
For someone who has spent as much time in bars as I have, it’s amazing that I don’t have better pool skills. I was a pretty good baseball pitcher in high school, and more than a good volleyball player. I had fantasies about being a female MMA fighter, if I could ever get past the crack thing and rebuild some muscle.
But pool? Forget it. For whatever reason, I could barely break the balls. As it were.
Dom and Dave forgave me, though. They were old school. Women were mothers, sisters, girlfriends, or whores. I was none of those, but once I was out of the whore category, as far as they were concerned, I could have been any of the other three. The others at the bar barely glanced over at us. Good.
The boys each beat me handily, of course. “I know when I’m outclassed,” I said, pulling up a chair and putting my feet on another, watching them play. Dom went into the bathroom every ten mi
nutes or so, returning a bit more animated each time. Ah. A kindred spirit.
Cocaine. Where there was coke, crack couldn’t be far behind. And maybe, just maybe, Ginger had scored in here, in her – what? Quest to become more like her twin? Ease her own pain, despite anything Fred had said to me in jail? Suddenly, watching Dom bouncing back from the men’s room in his Vans, doing some kind of pseudo-thug walk, I felt as though I needed to know that nearly as much as I needed to find who killed her. Why had Ginger come to places like this? Why was she wearing fake eyelashes, for God’s sake? I had never once even seen her in mascara.
Dave, however, didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength. He wasn’t going to the bathroom with his buddy, and he wasn’t talking a mile a minute either. I wondered if he knew about his friend’s habit. Far be it from me to break it to him. I bided my time. At one point I excused myself and went to the ladies’, which surprised me by being much cleaner than I had anticipated, and did a couple of quick bumps of coke off the back of my hand.
I had to stay sharp, after all.
Then on impulse, I locked myself back in the stall, took all the money out of the plastic wallet, quickly separated it into denominations, and put it into my own wallet.
Finally, they finished a game when Dave sunk the eight ball and went to the bar to order another round for us, then waved that he was going to the can.
“Dom,” I said. “Cut a girl a break?”
“Sure,” he said. “Can I do for you, Big D?” They had taken to calling me this, because even at 5’10”, I was taller than both of them.
“Got a little bump for me?” I didn’t need it, of course, but Dom didn’t need to know that. And there’s nothing like sharing narcotics to bond people. I figured if I could get Dom away from Dave, smoked or snorted a bit with him, he might know something about Ginger. Anything. At least he would have heard gossip, right? A woman being killed days ago in the motel practically next door? And if she was into any kind of drug scene around here, he could be useful.
Dom sat up straighter and looked at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He glanced around the bar nervously.
“I’m not a cop,” I whispered, smiling into his eyes. “I’m just a girl with some troubles, and you know I’m not from around here.” I stopped smiling. “Look. For all I know, you could be a cop. But I’m telling you straight here, Dom – I prefer the rock, it’s been a few days, my sister is dead and I need it.” My nails were making crescent moon shapes in my palms. Dom wiped his palm across his mouth.
“Dead?” He patted my knee and shook his head. It’s hard to look sad, though, on cocaine. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll see what I can do to hook you up. But not around Dave. He’s pretty straight, and I just got out of a program,” he explained. He looked closer at me. “You got cash?”
“Some,” I said. I was wary. He seemed like a good enough guy, but the cash in the plastic wallet might just disappear if I advertised it. And I hadn’t even had a chance to count it yet.
“Where you staying?”
“The Sunny Jim,” I replied, without hesitating. “I mean, I will be.”
He looked more closely at me. “You don’t seem like a Sunny Jim kinda girl,” he said.
I shrugged. “The Four Seasons is full,” I said. He laughed.
“Here comes Dave,” he said. “Be cool.”
“Cool is my middle name,” I said, grinning, happy happy happy. Oh, happy day. Dom giggled and all of a sudden I trusted him again.
Let Darren and the millions of police look for Matty and Luke their way. I was going to find them my way. Even if it was at the end of a crack pipe. This is where it started for Ginger, and the Sunny Jim was where it ended.
And once I settled into the motel room, with or without Dom, I would call Darren. I knew it was cruel to make him worry any more than he was already. But he could focus on the boys, and I could focus on Ginger. Besides, it was all the same. Whoever killed Ginger either took the boys or had something to do with it. The law of averages didn’t allow for that kind of coincidence.
Dave came back with our drinks, and the three of us sat shooting the shit for about ten minutes. I was sitting on pins and needles, willing Dom to get up and go to the payphone to call his guy.
“What time is it?” I asked Dave. I still didn’t know, and bars like this tended not to put clocks behind the bars. Too much of a reminder to the clientele that they were getting loaded when they were supposed to be eating dinner with the ball and chain. Dave looked at his watch.
“Almost five. Shit. Shit. I’ve gotta bust a move, guys,” he said. “I’m late for work.”
Work? He was more than half in the bag. I hoped he wasn’t a bus driver.
“Where at?” I said, adopting their grammar. That’s me, a barstool chameleon.
“Pawn shop, two doors down,” he said. “Hey. Come see me later.”
“Cool. I will,” I said. I got up and gave him a sisterly hug. “Thanks for distracting me from myself, Dave. You’re good people.” People who hang around in bars like this make friends easily. Sometimes it’s actually real. This is how I met Gene, and he was about as close as it got.
Gene. Where the fuck was he? As soon as I got a room, I would try calling him again.
“How much you want,” Dom asked as soon as Dave had walked out. Good. No messing around.
“A ball?” I said. An eightball. Three and a half grams. In Toronto, it went for anywhere from two hundred to two hundred and fifty bucks. But I knew it varied wildly, depending on supply and demand and where you were. “How much?”
“Two hundred,” he answered decisively. “But, Big D. You gonna share with a brutha?” I laughed. I was happy. I was going to smoke crack. And I was going to find something out about my sister, and where the boys were. A package deal. The only way to fly.
“You betcha,” I answered. Even if I didn’t want to try to milk Dom for info, I wasn’t a huge fan of smoking alone. “How long’s it gonna take? For your guy to get here?”
“She’s already here,” Dom said. “You got the two hundred? All I got left is about half a gram of powder, but I’ll throw that into the mix. Got no cash left, only ten for gas.”
“I feel you, my brother,” I said. I did, too. If it wasn’t for the windfall courtesy of my sister, I’d be in the same boat. Thank you, Ginger, I thought. You always did come through for me. I had my purse on my lap under the table. I counted out ten twenties by feel under the table, folded them up in my fist and pretended to hold Dom’s hand so I could pass the money to him. Dom nodded, got up and sauntered into the men’s room. He would have to count the cash before he talked to the dealer.
Who was obviously the only woman at the bar, if she was already here. She was so good, she hadn’t so much as glanced our way the whole time, as far as I could tell. From what I could see, it looked like she was nursing a cola, or maybe it had booze in it. She was a Latina of some variety. From the glimpses of her profile, she wasn’t young, and wasn’t old either. Dressed respectably enough, in decent jeans, new-looking sandals, and a modest white shirt.
Dom came out of the bathroom and slid onto the stool next to her, leaned over as though to kiss her cheek, and then I could see him whisper to her as he dropped what was obviously the money into her purse, which was sitting on her lap. Dom nodded in my direction, which pissed me off. What if she was an undercover cop after all? I had to trust him, though.
I’d done these deals in public before when D-Man was out of stock, but this was new territory, and I liked being the observer. Without turning around, the woman fished around in her purse as though looking for a tissue. It was fascinating to watch. She was undoubtedly counting the twenties, and at the same time grabbing the eightball. Dealers who work out of bars tend to do that – they only carry certain pre-packaged amounts, so if you want half a ball, for example, you’re out of luck. She pretended to blow her nose delicately on a tissue, then placed the tissue on the bar and asked the bartend
er for another drink. While his back was turned to reach into the fridge behind him, Dom grabbed the Kleenex and put it in his pocket.
Done. Simple.
I was finishing my drink when Dom came back to the table.
“We’re on?” I said.
“We are right the fuck on,” Dom answered. “Let’s go and have us a party, Big D.”
“I like how you think, Dom,” I replied as we walked out of the bar. I turned and waved goodbye to the bartender as I left, and he waved back knowingly. He either knew about the deal and kept his eyes shut to it – and got a cut, which was most likely – or he was innocent of the whole thing and thought Dom was going to get lucky.
The woman was looking at the TV behind the bar, and didn’t glance in my direction once. That I could see. But I had no doubt that she had me memorized, sized up and classified. If she was worried about me, she would have been out of there by now.
Or I would have been on the bathroom floor with a knife in me.
Dom wanted to drive to the Sunny Jim, but I told him no.
“You’re a bit drunk there, sweetie-pie,” I said. “I don’t ride with no drunks. You feel me?”
“That’s cool,” he said, putting his keys back into his pocket. “Everybody’s got their quirks. It’s only a couple of blocks down,” he said.
“You have a pipe?” I asked, stopping. Shit. Making one would require a visit to a convenience store and ten or fifteen extra minutes, and in the excitement back at the house I didn’t think to grab my own.
“Do I have a pipe, she wants to know,” Dom said to the sky. “Girl. What kind of man do you think I am? Of course I’ve got a motherfucking pipe.”
I laughed. Oh joy. And I found it amusing that the closer he got to smoking crack, the blacker this white boy was sounding.
Ah. America.
I had a flash of Ginger, and Darren, and even Detective Miller as we approached the motel office. Ginger was dead. I had a weird burst of pre-crack elation – Darren couldn’t reach me, I didn’t have a cell phone. For all I knew, the police had found the boys by now. I had met a new friend, and he had an eightball and a pipe in his pocket. I would get high, and I would get information. At some point I would call Darren because I knew he’d be worrying, but I wasn’t going to tell him where I was. Even if I found what I was looking for. Especially if I found what I was looking for. It was possible Dom had some kind of idea of who had killed Ginger. It was possible I would find out who killed my sister, who took my nephews. But first I would get high.
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