by Robert Crais
The Asian guy glanced at me in the mirror. The Eskimo said, “Shut up,” then settled back and closed his eyes. I nodded and did what I was told.
We went east on Santa Monica, then north on Highland to pick up the Hollywood Freeway north, passing Universal Studios with its ominous black tower and skyscraper hotels and array of sound stages so numerous it looked like a breeding ground for airplane hangars. In the San Fernando valley we looped onto the Ventura Freeway and rolled west for a long time. The big Cadillac was whisper quiet. The Eskimo was to my left, slouched down on his spine, eyes still closed. Maybe sleeping, maybe faking it and waiting for me to make my move. A lot like seal hunting, I guessed. The driver never looked back, never moved, just drove. Manolo shifted every once in a while, a lump in the front seat ahead of me. Quiet. I whistled the opening bars to The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The Eskimo said, “Shut up.”
Yassuh.
We passed Woodland Hills and Reseda and Thousand Oaks. Pretty soon we left the west valley and were moving toward Camarillo. Manolo coughed twice, groaned, then sat up. He rubbed at his face, then shrugged his shoulders and rolled his head from side to side. He twisted around and looked at me. There wasn’t any threat in his look; it was more like he’d discovered a new species of rhododendron.
The sprawl and clutter of the valley gave way to hilly pasture land, green from the winter rains. There was the occasional scrub oak and the occasional dirt road and Jersey and Hereford cattle spotted on the steeper slopes. In summer, the same hills would be brown and dead and would look like desert. A few minutes past Camarillo we left the freeway. There was nothing around but a Union 76 station and an old two-lane state road running to the northwest and what was maybe a grain elevator from the forties. I said, “If you guys are lost we should ask.”
The Eskimo said nothing. Maybe I was wearing him down.
We went northwest. Ten minutes later we turned through an arched metal gate that said Cachon Ranches and followed a well-maintained composition road about a mile up into the hills until we came to what I guessed was the ranch. A maze of steel pipe corrals, one wooden main office, and three corrugated metal buildings. A heavy-duty livestock truck was backing up to the corrals as sweaty men in worn jeans and work shirts and broken fiber cowboy hats waited to receive it. Another limo was parked by the wooden office and there were three or four dusty pickups by the largest metal building. We pulled up beside the pickups and got out. The Eskimo said, “Come on.” Manolo fell out of the front seat. No one rushed to help him.
Domingo Garcia Duran stood at one of the smaller corrals, his back to us. He was standing next to a fat man. Duran was about five-ten, slim and strong-looking with narrow hips and wide shoulders and black hair shot through with silver. He was wearing tan Gucci loafers and dark slacks and a cream-colored pullover shirt that showed his build. He stood erect, much like Ricardo Montalban. He looked wealthy, also like Ricardo Montalban. Maybe if I said, “Boss! Boss! De plane! De plane!” he’d think I was funny. He and the fat man were watching a black cow walk in slow circles about the corral. Every once in a while the fat man said something and pointed at the cow and Duran would nod. Duran was holding a slender sword in his left hand. About three feet long, with a bent tip. Ixnay on the Villechaise.
The Eskimo said something to them and the fat guy went away. The black cow was short and squat and nervous. She saw us, lowered her head, then twitched and jumped away to resume her walk. No resemblance to Elsie. Duran looked at me and said, “We will talk. I will ask you questions, you will answer. I will give you instructions, you will act on them. First, do you know who I am?”
“Karl Malden.”
Something hit me hard in the left shoulder blade. I grunted and bent over but didn’t fall. The Eskimo stared at me.
Duran said, “He will hit you as many times as I wish. There are others who will hit you, also. After they are done, still others will put your body there,” he pointed the sword into the hills “so that it will never be found. Do you understand these things?”
“Do I get penalized for questions?”
The hard thing hit me again and this time I went over, my left arm dead from my shoulder blade out. He should have hit me in the head. In the head, he would’ve broken his hand and knocked some sense into me. Somebody lifted me and held me up before Duran. Life as a puppetoon. I said, “Do you have Ellen Lang or Perry Lang or know of their whereabouts?”
I tensed for the next shot but it didn’t come. Duran looked at me like he was looking at a retard. He said, “A man named Morton Lang came to my home. I did not know this man, yet I welcomed him and allowed him in as a guest. He repays my hospitality by stealing from my home two kilograms of cocaine. Very special cocaine. Not easy to get. Medical quality, you see, the cocaine they study in laboratories and hospitals. Now I’m told you have it.”
I looked at Duran. I looked at the Eskimo. I looked back at Duran. He looked at the cow. “She’s beautiful, no?”
“Somebody told you I had your cocaine?”
“Come. I show you something.”
The Eskimo shoved me after Duran toward the bigger corral. The truck had backed to the loading ramp and killed its engine. The ranch hands were swarming around the rear gate, pulling chains and metal latchbars. Duran said, “Do you know toreo?”
“No.” Toreo. Next it would be Thai cuisine or decorative macramé. A guy like Duran, you’ve got to let him run his course. Especially if you don’t want to get hit a lot.
“To the shame of the United States. It’s an art of great passion and beauty.”
“Yeah, all that red.”
He shouted something to one of the men working at the truck, then turned back to me. “Much of what happens between the man and the toro grows out of jurisdicción. To cite the toro, to make him charge, you must place yourself in his jurisdicción. You invade his place. You offer yourself to his horn.” He looked at the sword, then touched it to my chest. The point curved down. If he shoved it in, the blade would follow the curve to my heart. “The most courageous matador, he offers his balls.”
I looked at the Eskimo, who was staring off across the yard, probably watching for narwhals. My back hurt, but feeling had returned to my arm. Maybe I could take him. Maybe I could do something to his eyes, then put him down on the ground to neutralize his size and go to work on his throat and groin. Sure. I looked back at Duran. “You mean the whole idea is that the bull is coming for your balls.”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “Dumb.” I think the Eskimo smiled, but I wouldn’t swear to it.
The ranch hands slammed open the truck’s gate. A brown and gray steer looked out, then trotted slowly down the ramp and into the pen. He didn’t look like much. Then, almost as if in slow motion, a heavy black bull not quite the size of Godzilla came down the ramp to stand beside the steer. He stood very still, feet squarely placed, head up, looking first at the ranch hands, then at us. A Russell sculpture. It was impossible to imagine a chest and shoulders more powerfully formed. His horns came up and out then curved back in. They were very sharp. Duran nodded. “See how he carries his head, see the way he looks about. This is pundonor. Great pride, a very great jealousy of his jurisdicción. He accepts the duty of protecting what is his.”
Maybe Duran was thinking about adopting him. I said, “Why the steer?”
“Cabestros. To calm the bull for the journey. The herd instinct, you see? They are friends.” He looked at me again. “Would you offer yourself to such an animal?”
“Maybe with a rocket launcher.”
“Imagine standing before his charge, watching him come, waiting for him.” Duran smiled, maybe remembering. “We will breed them, the bull and the cow. The young one will inherit the looks of the father, the courage of the mother. She is very brave. She killed a man in the Pampas.”
I said, “I don’t have your cocaine. I don’t know anything about your cocaine.”
“I am told you do.”
&nbs
p; “You were told wrong. I was hired to find Morton Lang. He’s been found. I don’t guess you guys know anything about that. Now I’m looking for his wife and his little boy. I think you’ve got them.”
He touched me with the sword again. I wondered if I could take it away from him before the Eskimo nailed me. I said, “Maybe Morton Lang didn’t steal your cocaine. Maybe somebody else did.”
“No.”
“Maybe Nanuk here took it.”
“No.”
“Look, if Mort had taken the dope and now I had it, wouldn’t I be trying to sell it back to you?”
Duran touched a button on my shirt with the point of the sword. He pressed. The button split. “Return my property. Perhaps then you’ll find the woman and the boy.”
The ranch hands began to chatter. When I looked, the bull had lifted his snout and begun to trot around the pen. The hands scurried to open a gate on the far side, but Duran snapped an order and they stopped. The bull made a coughing sound and lowered his head. There was drool streaming out of his mouth. The steer, eyes wide and rolling, edged away.
Duran said, “He smells the female.”
The bull charged the steer. When they hit, it sounded like a mortar round, whump. The bull caught him in the gut by the hindquarters, then lifted and twisted, ripping forward into the ribs. You could hear them pop like green wood. The steer brayed and went down. The bull stayed with him, lowering the thick neck and hooking his horns two lefts and a right like a boxer throwing combinations, once almost lifting the steer off the ground. Then Duran nodded and the hands threw open the far gate, shouting and waving their hats. The bull backed away from the steer. His horns glistened red. He pawed the ground then ran through the gate. The steer flopped around for a while, then managed to gain its feet. When it did, most of its intestine fell out onto the ground. It wobbled and staggered but stayed up. Some friend.
Duran looked at me, then vaulted the fence. I was dismissed. The Eskimo led me back to the limo and opened the door. A full-service thug. Kato was still behind the wheel. The Eskimo said, “He’ll take you where you tell him.”
“What if I tell him the police?”
“He’ll take you there.”
“That easy.”
The Eskimo shrugged. “Play it the way you want. Mr. Duran was lunching at the Marina today. He can prove that. If you consider what has happened and what could, he won’t have to. You will do as he tells you.”
“I don’t have the dope.”
He looked at me.
I said, “The woman and the boy, they’d better be all right.”
Something like a grin touched the Eskimo’s lips. He said, “Nanuk,” then turned and walked back toward the corrals.
I got into the car. The last thing I saw was Domingo Garcia Duran approach the steer and drive the sword to its hilt down through the steer’s shoulders at the base of its neck. The steer dropped, the ranch hands cheered, and I shut the door.
19
When I got back to my building I went to the deli to pick up the corned beef sandwich. They’d saved it and weren’t happy about it. I wasn’t so happy about it myself. I snapped at the blonde behind the register to prove I was still tough, then brought the sandwich and three bottles of Heineken up to my office. I was so tough I forgot I didn’t have an opener and had to ride all the way back down to the deli to buy one of theirs. Buck sixty-five for a piece of tin.
I let myself into the office and locked the outer door. There were two messages on my machine: the first from an auto parts store letting me know that the genuine 1966 Chevrolet Corvette shifter skirt I’d ordered four months ago was finally in, the second from Lou Poitras, returning my call. I reset the machine, opened the balcony doors for air, sat down behind the desk, opened the first Heineken, and drank most of it.
The smart move would be to call the cops. That’s what I’d advised Ellen Lang. More often than not, the cops crack the case, the cops get their man, the kidnapped come back alive when the cops are involved. The Feds will supply you with statistics that bear this out. Lots of neat black lettering on clean white sheets that don’t have much at all to do with some dead-eyed psychopathic sonofabitch saying that if the police come in a little kid and a woman get dead. Well, no, Your Honor, he didn’t actually say it, but he strongly hinted that that would be the case.…
I finished the rest of the Heineken, dropped the bottle into the trash, opened another, and unwrapped the sandwich. It was cold and the bread was stale. My back hurt where the Eskimo had hit me and my hand hurt from hitting Kimberly Marsh’s boyfriend and the thick-necked Mexican. I ate some of the sandwich and drank more of the beer and thought about all this.
I couldn’t see Morton Lang ripping two keys of cocaine off Domingo Garcia Duran. Trying to set up a deal and blowing it, that’s one thing. But to shove two plastic packs of dope in your jockeys right in the man’s house and walk out, unh-unh. That took cojones. There was Garrett Rice, but he didn’t strike me as being particularly well-endowed either. Maybe someone else. Anyone else. The Eskimo, the guys in the Nova, Manolo, the fat guy at the ranch. Maybe the rich Italian Kimberly Marsh had mentioned. I drank more beer and ate more sandwich. What did I know? Maybe Mort had swiped it and Ellen knew about it and that’s why she hadn’t wanted the cops involved. Maybe she’d known all along and right now the dope was buried in a coffee can under the swing set in her back yard. I killed the second Heiny and opened the last one.
No chance. Maybe Mort had ripped off the dope but there was no way Ellen had known about it. Mort, I hadn’t met, hadn’t touched, hadn’t sat with. Ellen, we’d breathed the same air. If Mort had ripped off the Crown jewels of London, Ellen hadn’t known it. She’d been enduring, going through the necessary chore of shopping for groceries to feed her kids, probably wondering why life had turned so unfair since leaving Kansas when a man or men approached to show her just how unfair life could get. They would take her somewhere and ask her about the dope and maybe hurt her. And she would cry and maybe be angry but mostly be scared. After a while, when the fear wasn’t so new and her head began to work, she’d think of me. Mr. White Knight. Dragons slain. Maidens rescued. She’d say, “Mr. Cole has it,” because that would take the heat off her and maybe bring me into it and I could help. Maybe.
I finished the sandwich and the third Heineken and put the wax paper in the waste basket and the empty bottle beside the other two. Okay, Ellen, I’m your guy. Shield shined and charger shod. I got up and fished around in the little cooler by the file cabinet and found a Miller High Life. The Champagne of Bottled Beers. Domingo Garcia Duran has a couple of thugs deliver me and lays it out like he’s talking to a dog who can’t repeat it or report it or use the information in any way. Not that I had anything to repeat or report. I could tie Mort to Duran’s little party through Kimberly Marsh and Garrett Rice, but Duran had admitted that much and would probably be willing to admit it again. He hadn’t admitted offing Mort or holding Ellen and the boy. All I had for evidence was a phone call from Mort to Kimberly where Mort said he was in trouble with someone named Dom. Big deal. Still, I could run to the cops and let them worry about digging up the evidence. Maybe Duran didn’t care. Maybe he was so connected he could take the heat and shut off or divert an investigation. Maybe if he couldn’t, his friend Rudy Gambino could. Rudy Gambino. Christ. I had seen Rudy Gambino once in Houston before I became an op. He was being led through the lobby of the Whitworth Hotel, surrounded by a swarm of attorneys and state marshals, on his way to face charges of statutory rape, rape, mayhem, assault, and sodomy against a twelve-year-old girl. Quite a guy, that Rudy. The charges were later dropped.
I finished the Miller and put it with the other empties. Saturday during a Dodgers game the pile would look respectable. Midweek during a case made me look like a drunkard. I dialed Lou Poitras. “You ever hear of a guy, Domingo Garcia Duran?”
“Runs a bodywork shop on Alvarado.”
“Different Duran. This guy used to fight bulls. Now he’s ri
ch, has investments, friends, like that.”
“This got anything to do with Lang?”
I ignored him. “This guy, he’s seen around with Rudy Gambino and those guys. Think you could ask around, see what kind of weight he could handle?”
“You mean like, can he get a ticket fixed? Like that?”
“Like that.”
“You didn’t answer me, Hound Dog.”
“No, it doesn’t have anything to do with Lang.”
There was a pause. “Okay,” he said, and hung up. I frowned at the phone. Galahad lying to Percival. It made me feel small.
I brought my typewriter from its little stand in the corner over to the desk and typed up a complete report from the time Ellen Lang hired me three days ago until Kato brought me back to the building. When I finished, it was four single-spaced pages long. I corrected the typos, numbered, dated, and signed each page, then brought them to the insurance office across the hall. The secretary there lets me use their copy machine whenever the boss’ door is closed. It was closed. I made two copies and tried not to breathe in the secretary’s face. I took the copies back to my office, signed and dated each sheet again and wrote in longhand that there should be no erasures or deletions from any page. The original and one copy went into my office file. The other I sealed in an envelope, stamped, and addressed it to my home. Then I went down, put the letter in the drop outside the bank, and went back into the deli. I bought a bottle of aspirin and a large black coffee to go. I chewed four of the aspirin while the blonde watched, then took the steps, two at a time, all the way up. For every sin, there must be penance.
Back in the office I ate two more aspirin, sipped the coffee, and thought about what I might do. Ellen and the boy would be safe as long as Duran thought he could trade them for the dope, only I had no dope to trade. Maybe I could break into his manse at three in the morning, ram a gun in his mouth, and demand their release. Unh-huh. Maybe I could kite some bad checks, score a hundred grand worth of dope, and pull the trade that way. Unh-huh. The problem was that once Duran had the dope, Ellen and Perry had to disappear. Wouldn’t matter how connected he was, he couldn’t buck eyewitness testimony. And that meant Elvis had to disappear, too. I watched Pinocchio’s eyes move back and forth. Portrait of the investigator: young man in search of a plan.
