by Robert Crais
I went into the dining area to get placemats out of the buffet. When I looked at Ellen again she had picked up the gun. She held it like that, then brought it close and smelled it. I stood up. “There’re placemats and napkins,” I said.
She set the places even though I offered.
She put the eggs in the pan and turned on the toaster oven and put out butter and strawberry jam and salt and pepper, and then she told me to sit. She nursed the omelette, then eased it onto a serving plate, added a sprig of mint leaf as garnish, and brought it to the counter. A lovely presentation. She brought out cups and poured the coffee and asked me if I took cream and sugar. I said no. She said she hoped I would like it. I said it smelled wonderful. She asked if there was anything else I might want. I said no, this would be fine. She said it would be no trouble if there were. I said if I thought of something, I’d ask for it. I wanted to cry.
We didn’t speak as we ate. She took one spoon of eggs and one side of a muffin. She ate that, then took some more. She ended up eating more eggs than me and half of the muffins. That was okay. I was happy with the scotch.
When she was finished she took a breath and let out a sigh like her body was trying to rid itself of ten years’ accumulated poison.
I said, “A couple of friends of mine are on their way over. Joe Pike, who owns the agency with me, and a guy named Lou Poitras. Poitras is a sergeant with the LAPD. He’s also a friend. We’re going to have to talk to him and tell him what we know. Do you have any objection to that?”
She sipped some of the coffee and put down the cup. Her voice came out softly. “If I had let the police search the house when you wanted, would Mort still be alive?” Steam from the coffee crept around her hand like delicate vines. I watched the way the overhead light worked the planes of her face. She had a nice face when she didn’t slump.
“No,” I said. “Mort was already dead. There wasn’t anything in the house that could’ve told us where he was.”
She nodded. I drank more of the scotch. She drank more of the coffee. That’s what we did until Poitras arrived.
22
Poitras said, “Okay, let’s have it.”
I told him everything from following the beach boy to Kimberly Marsh all the way up to what had just happened in Beachwood. He didn’t laugh when I told him about Duran and the bull. He just chewed his lower lip and listened. Ellen Lang listened closely, too, as if she were taking notes on her own life. I kept my version of what Kimberly had said about Mort and the party at Duran’s as brief as possible without leaving anything out. When I finished, Poitras went into the kitchen and used the phone.
I patted Ellen’s arm. “You okay?”
She gave a little shrug. I drained the rest of the scotch, went to the cabinet for some more. Out of Glenlivet. Damn. I cracked a bottle of Chivas that a cheap client had given me as a present and brought it back to the couch. I drank some. Hell, it wasn’t much different from the Glenlivet after all.
Ellen went into the dining area and came back with a coaster and a napkin. She put the coaster on the coffee table in front of me and the napkin on the arm of the couch by my hand. “There,” she said.
Poitras came back and asked for her side of it. When he saw the Chivas bottle he gave me a look. I gave him a look back.
Ellen spoke slowly, in short, declarative sentences, describing how two men had approached her in the Ralph’s parking lot, forced her into the backseat of their car, and taped a sack over her head. One of them was the tattooed man. They drove around for a while, Mexican music playing and one of them occasionally patting her rump, until they arrived at the Beachwood house. They told her that Mort had stolen cocaine from them and that they had killed him and would kill her, too, if she didn’t tell them where Mort had hidden the dope. They wouldn’t believe her when she told them she didn’t know what they were talking about. They put a gun to her head and snapped the trigger and touched her breasts and between her legs and threatened to rape her, though they hadn’t. One of them, the fat one, brought in Perry and slapped the boy repeatedly while the other asked her about the drugs. She screamed for them to leave Perry alone, but they wouldn’t, and that was when she told them that Mort had hidden the cocaine but that now I had it. After that, another man came and they took the boy away and hadn’t brought him back.
I watched her tell it and sipped at the Chivas and felt bad. Once when she mentioned Perry her voice broke. Other than that, she was fine. I decided she’d started out a pretty tough lady, back there in Kansas. So tough she took life-with-Mort on the chin for so long that it finally changed her into what Janet Simon had dragged into my office three days ago. I wondered if she could heal back to the person she had been. Could anyone, ever?
When she finished, Poitras ticked his fingers on his belt buckle and frowned at me. “Can you talk or are you incoherent?”
I sampled more of the scotch. Chivas ain’t so bad no matter what they say. Probably just elitists, anyway.
Poitras excused himself to Ellen, then got up, and we went over to the kitchen. I brought my drink. He poured himself a cup of coffee and stared at me for a while. “You think Lang took the dope?”
I said, “I think Mort’s lousy for it. I see him for the patsy. It’s either inside or it’s Garrett Rice or it’s both. I’m thinking Duran’s guys would be smarter than to try to screw the old man, so that puts it on Rice.”
Poitras nodded. “We been trying to find him.”
“Aha.” My voice was loud.
Poitras looked at me. He didn’t like what he saw a whole lot. “We talked with your friend Kimberly Marsh. Her boyfriend looked like he’d had a little trouble.”
“Clumsy, that guy.” It was getting tough to stand up straight, but I was doing okay.
Poitras said, “You think she had anything to do with it?”
“She’d go for it,” I said. “Only she had no way to get away with it. Party like that, she’d be dressed sexy, showing as much skin as she could, no big pockets, no big purse, no way to hide four and a half pounds of dust.”
He tapped his belt some more. “So now Duran has the boy.”
I took more of the scotch and looked across the dining area out the glass doors. A police helicopter was pulling a tight orbit somewhere over Hollywood, its big spot tracking something on the ground.
Poitras said, “You asked me how much weight Duran could carry, remember? That was when I asked you if this had anything to do with Morton Lang, and you lied?”
I looked at him. He was angry. He was also out of focus.
“We’ve got files since 1964 connecting Duran to the Rudy Gambino family, operating out of Phoenix and Los Angeles,” he said. “He’s what the feds call a clean associate. Duran won’t set up a dope deal or muscle into a business, but he invests through a guy like Gambino. The feds have been trying to bust Duran for years, only they can’t because he keeps himself clean. They’ve got him placed as an investor with dope up from Colombia, with hotel kickbacks in Phoenix and Tucson. He owns a couple of banks in Mexico City and he’s on the board of a bank in New Orleans. Gambino launders his Gulf Coast pornography take through Duran’s New Orleans bank and gives Duran a cut. It goes on like that. This give you some idea what kind of weight he can handle?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Poitras walked away from me, back into the living room. “Mrs. Lang, who was the man who came and took your son?”
She said, “I don’t think they called him by name. He spoke to the other men in Spanish, then he told Perry they were leaving. He said that in English with a different accent. It wasn’t Spanish.”
“That would be the Eskimo,” I said.
Poitras said to her, “Did you see anyone who might’ve been Domingo Duran, or did any of the men in the house refer to him?”
She looked at me with a little bit of the fear back in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“He isn’t liking it. He’s coming in late in the game and we’ve got bad cards.�
��
“You got no cards at all.” Poitras looked big and grim and ominous, like the Michelin Man with a bad headache. He said, “You should’ve put me in on this as soon as you suspected, Elvis.”
Ellen Lang said, “What’re you talking about? What’s wrong?” The first bright tinge of panic.
I said, “What’s wrong is that Duran can beat what we have. He’s kept himself away from it except for me and he can beat my story easy enough if people in the right place are willing to say the wrong thing. They will be. My statement gives the cops probable cause to go in to Duran’s, but Duran won’t have Perry in his home. He’ll deny everything, and all we’ve done is jeopardize Perry with nothing but a guy named Sanchez to show for it.” It came out harder than I liked, but I was angry with Poitras and too drunk to handle it.
Lou said, “That’s about it.”
Ellen Lang got white and the corner of her mouth with the red mark began to tremble. I put my hand over hers and squeezed. Her jaw clenched and the trembling stopped. “I’m all right,” she said.
The phone rang and Poitras went back into the kitchen for it. I poured some of the Chivas into Ellen’s coffee cup and put it in her hand. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. “Trust me. It’ll work out.” I gave her my everything-under-control smile. She didn’t look convinced. Maybe it’s tough for a drunk to look convincing. I saw the Eskimo put a size 18 hand on the boy’s shoulder. I saw them walk out to the long black limo. I saw the limo disappearing into the high desert hills. I saw Domingo Duran, jabbing his sword toward the hills, saying Then other men will come, and put your body there, where you will not be found.
I spilled another inch of Chivas into my glass, then went into the kitchen so Ellen Lang couldn’t see me drink it. Poitras was talking in that low mumble cops use that only other cops can hear and understand. After a while he hung up and said, “Okay. You left two in the house, like you thought. Fat guy in the hall and another one in the living room. The house is listed to a man named Louis Foley. The neighbors up there say Foley moved to Seattle two months ago and that the house has been up for sale. Your guys probably just pulled up the sign and cracked the lock box.”
“That’s great. They’ll promote you to Lieutenant along with Baishe for this kinda work.”
He looked at me. “You’re pushing it, Hound Dog.”
“And you’re acting like an asshole with that woman in there. She’s been through hell and all you got to say is a lot of bullshit about how I didn’t call you in and how we got nothing. Negative bullshit that she doesn’t need to deal with. She’s missing a child, Poitras. She’s lost her husband.”
I was very close to him. His big face was calm. He said, “Take a step back, Elvis.”
It was quiet in the kitchen with just his breathing and my breathing and the hum of the electric clock over the sink. The cat door clacked and the cat walked in. Staring at Poitras, I couldn’t see him but I heard him growl, low and deep in his chest at finding a stranger in the kitchen. I heard the snick-snick of claws on the floor, then the crunch of hard food.
Poitras said softly, “You’re drunk, man.”
I nodded.
He said, “You found the lady and you went in and the boy wasn’t there. You pulled the trigger. I know you, I know it’s because you had to. You wouldn’t have played it that way if you’d had a choice. But there weren’t any choices. It was lousy that the kid wasn’t there. You didn’t lose the kid. He just wasn’t there to be had.”
I felt my eyes grow hot. I took more of the Chivas.
He made his voice quieter. “You always get in too deep, don’t you? Always get too close to the client. Fall a little bit in love.”
“Go to hell.”
Poitras took the glass out of my hands and emptied it in the sink. He went out into the living room, bent over Ellen Lang, and spoke in that cop mumble. After a while she nodded and gave him a tiny smile. The cat walked over and sat by my feet. Snick-snick-snick. He stared up at me and purred. Sometimes a little love can be important.
Poitras came back and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded. “Even drunk you make a point.”
I put on a fresh pot of coffee while Poitras made more phone calls, most local but at least one up to Sacramento. Between the calls we went through it again, and this time Poitras took notes. When the coffee was ready I poured fresh cups and brought one out to Ellen Lang. She had fallen asleep with the old cup in her hand. I went up to the loft, turned down the bed, then went back down. Ellen woke when I touched her arm, then followed me up and climbed into the bed still wearing the robe and the socks. She curled into a ball on her side, knees up, hands together under her chin. Fetal position, only with her eyes open. Large, liquid Bambi eyes. Something stirred in the empty part of my stomach, the part the scotch didn’t fill.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Don’t be,” I said. “I never fail.”
She looked at me and then she fell back to sleep.
I went downstairs and found Pike standing in the entry. Poitras was in the dining area, the coiled phone cord stretched taut from his coming out of the kitchen to see who had walked in. Poitras’ gun was in his right hand hanging loose at his side. He stared at Pike a couple seconds, then went back into the kitchen to get off the phone.
Pike said, “You okay?” He was wearing a cammie Marine Corps field jacket.
“Good. You want something to eat or drink?”
Pike shook his head as Poitras came back out of the kitchen. The cat stuck his head out, saw Pike, made a wide arc around Poitras, and padded over to rub against Pike’s legs. “Well, well. The big time cop,” Pike said.
Poitras’ face was empty the way a trafiic cop’s face is empty when he’s listening to you try to talk your way out of a ticket. “You ever wanna work out, bo. You know where the gym is.”
Pike’s mouth twitched.
Poitras’ shoulders flexed, filling most of the dining area with his bulk.
“Here’s to good friends,” I said. “Lemme see if I’ve got some Löwenbräu.” Mr. Levity.
Pike’s mouth twitched again, his dark glasses never moving away from Poitras. “You got the woman here?”
I said yes.
“You going to stay in all night?”
I said yes again. Poitras kept his eyes on Pike. Motionless. Two tomcats squaring off across a property line.
“You need me, I’ll be around.” Pike reached back to the door, looked at Poitras before he opened it. “We don’t see each other enough anymore, Lou.”
“Drop dead, Pike.”
Pike’s mouth twitched and he left, holding the door long enough for the cat to follow. The tension level dropped around three hundred points.
“I’ll have to have you two guys over for lunch sometime,” I said. “Or maybe a dinner party.”
Poitras flexed his jaw, put .50-caliber eyes on me. “You tell me the next time that sonofabitch is going to be around.”
“Sure, Lou.”
Poitras went into the kitchen, made another phone call, then came back into the living room carrying a cup of coffee. His face was smooth and calm, as if Pike had never been. “There might be a way to work this Duran thing.”
“Unh-huh.”
“You willing to stay in it?”
I said, “Duran’s expecting me to produce the dope. Maybe I can. Maybe I can put the dope and Duran and the boy together. If I can do that, we own him. If I can do that without tipping him to what’s going on, we can get the boy back.”
Poitras sipped more of the coffee. “Sometimes you think like a pretty good cop.”
“We all have our weak moments.”
Poitras nodded. “You think Duran wants the dope that bad?”
“I don’t think he cares about the dope at all. He’s pissed that someone would steal from him in his own home. He’s got a highly developed sense of territory.”
Poitras smiled
crookedly. “Macho.”
I nodded.
Poitras said, “Yeah, me and you are thinking along the same lines. Maybe I can help you with the dope. I’ll see. I’ll have to run it up the line and get it okayed.”
“Up the line through Baishe?”
“You don’t make it to lieutenant without something on the ball, Hound Dog. Even Baishe.”
“My confidence is bolstered.”
“That’s all we care about down at the PD, keepin’ you confident.” He folded up his note pad, slipped it in his back pocket, and headed toward the door. “Come around first thing tomorrow and we’ll work this thing out. If anything happens between now and then, let me know. When things start to break it’ll be tricky. You’ll have to play it our way.”
“Can’t we do it professionally instead?”
Poitras grinned hard and without humor. He said, “You know something, Hound Dog? It sounded to me like Duran maybe thought you and he had an understanding. Now you break out the woman and kill a couple of his soldiers. He’s probably gonna be pissed. He might even come after you.”
“There’s Pike.”
Poitras’ face went dead. He opened the door and stepped out. “You got lousy taste in partners.”
“Who else would put up with me?”
I stood in the door until Poitras drove away. Off to the left I heard the cat growl, and Joe Pike answer, “Good cat.”
23
I showered and shaved, then went through the house dousing the extra lights that I had turned on for Ellen Lang. The house was quiet, warm in the gold light from the lamp beside the couch, and comfortable. There were books on the shelves that I liked to read and reread, and prints and originals on the walls that I liked to look at. Like the office, I was proud of it. Like the office, it was the result of a process and the process was ongoing. The house lived, as did the person within it. Upstairs, Ellen Lang shifted under the covers.
I got six aspirin from the powder room, ate them, then got my sleeping bag from the entry closet, spread it on the couch, and stretched out. My head rocked from side to side, floating on the scotch, and started to spin. I sat up.
