by Robert Crais
It was too late for the final sports recap. Too late for Ted Koppel. Maybe I could luck into a rerun of Howard Hawks’ The Thing with Ken Tobey. When I was a boy, Ken Tobey kept the monsters away. He battled things from other worlds and creatures from the bottom of the sea and prehistoric beasts and he always won. Ken Tobey fought the monsters and kept us safe. He always won. That was the trick. Any jerk can get his ass creamed.
The cat came in a little while later, jumped onto the couch next to me, stepped into my lap, and began to purr. His fur was chill from having been out. I petted him. And petting him, fell asleep.
I dreamed I was in a hot dusty arena and Domingo Duran, replete with Suit of Lights, was advancing toward me, little sword before him and cape extended. The crowd was cheering, and beautiful women threw roses. I figured I was supposed to be the bull, but when I looked down I saw my regular arms and my regular feet. Where the hell was the bull? Just then, Duran’s cape flew up and a dark, satanic bull charged me. Not just any bull. This one wore mukluks and sealskin boots. When I dream, you don’t have to hop the Concorde to Vienna to figure it out. Just as the bull was about to horn me with something looking suspiciously like a harpoon, I felt myself spinning out of the arena, spinning up and up until I was awake in my still-dark house.
Ellen Lang stood at the glass doors, her back to me, arms at her sides, staring down into Hollywood. Beside me the cat shifted, out of it. Some watchcat.
I listened to the house, listened to my breath. She never moved. After a while I said, quietly so as not to startle her, “We’ll find him.”
She turned. Her face was shadowed. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You didn’t.”
She made a little sound in her throat and came over to the big chair by the couch. She didn’t sit. I had fallen asleep on top of the sleeping bag and was cold but didn’t want to move. I could see her face now, blue in the moonlight.
She looked out at Hollywood, then down at me. She said, “They wouldn’t believe me. I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about but they just kept asking. Then they brought in Perry. They kept saying I knew and I had to tell them, and they kept slapping him and feeling me and saying that they would rape me in front of Perry, and that I had better tell them. I thought of you. I told them I thought you had it.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
“I’m ashamed of myself. It wasn’t right.”
I lifted the cat, sat up, then put the cat back down beside me.
She said, “Would you like coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
“If you’re hungry, I could make something.”
I shook my head. “If I want anything, I’ll get it. But thank you.”
She nodded and curled up in the big chair across from me, her feet tucked under her.
I said, “Would you like me to turn on a light?”
“If it’s what you want.”
I left the light off.
After a while the cat stood up, stretched, turned in a circle, and lay back down. He said, roawmph. Ellen said, “I didn’t know you had a cat.”
“I don’t. He lives here because I’m easy to sucker for beer and food. Don’t try to pet him. He’s mean and he bites.”
She smiled, her teeth blue in the reflected moonlight.
“Besides that, he’s dirty and he carries germs.”
Her smile widened for an instant, then faded.
We sat some more. Outside, another police helicopter flew very low up the canyon and over the house. When I was little we lived near an air base and I was terrified that the airplanes and helicopters would scare away Santa Claus. Years later, in Vietnam, I grew to like the sound. It meant someone was coming to save me.
Ellen Lang said quietly, “I don’t know if there’s any money. I don’t know if I can feed the children. I don’t know if I can pay for the house or the school or any of those things.”
“I’ll check the insurance for you. If worse comes to worst, you can sell the house. You would sell Mort’s car, anyway. The kids can go to public schools. You’ll adapt. You’ll do all right and so will the kids.”
She sat very still. “I’ve never been alone before.”
“I know.” The helicopter looped back and disappeared toward the reservoir. I wondered if Joe Pike was watching it. “You’ve got the children. There’s me. When it’s over doesn’t mean you never see me again.”
She nodded.
“I’m a full-service op. I provide follow-up service and yearly maintenance just like Mr. Goodwrench.”
She nodded again.
“Just like the Shell Answer Man.”
She didn’t respond. This stuff would kill’m in the Comedy Store. Maybe she only laughed at cat jokes. I looked at the cat. He offered little inspiration.
“There’s even Janet.”
“Who reinforces my lousy self-image?”
“Keep you humble.”
She said, “You’re sweet, trying to cheer me up like this. Thank you.”
We sat. Ellen stared out the window. I stared at Ellen. Her hair was dry and brushed out and offset her small narrow face nicely. The pale light softened her features and I could see the girl back in Kansas, a nice girl who’d be great to bring to a football game on a cold night, who’d sit close to you and jump up when the home team scored and who’d feel good to hug. After a very long time, she said softly, “It must be beautiful, living up here.”
“It is.”
“Are there coyotes?”
“Yes. They like the hills above the reservoir.”
She looked at the cat. “I heard they take cats. I had a friend in Nichols Canyon who lost two that way.”
I touched the cat’s head between his ears. It was broad and flat and lumpy with scars. A good cat head.
She shifted in the chair. She was sitting on her feet, and when she moved she was careful to keep the robe over her knees. She said, “Tell me, how can you live with someone for so long and know so little about them?”
“You can know only what someone shows you.”
“But I lived with Mort for fourteen years. I knew Garrett Rice for five years. I was married to Mort for eight years before I even knew there were other women. Now I find out about drugs. I never knew there were drugs.” Her lips barely moved, matching the stillness of the rest of her. “He said it was me. He said I was killing him. He said he would lie in bed some nights, hoping I would die and thinking of ways to hurt me.”
“It wasn’t you.”
“Then how could Mort be that person, and how could I not know? His wife. What does that say about me?” A whisper.
“It says you trusted a man who didn’t deserve your trust. It says you gave of yourself completely because you loved him. It comments on Mort’s quality, not yours.”
“I’ve been so wrong about things. Everything’s been such a lie. I’m thirty-nine years old and I feel like I’ve thrown my life away.”
“Look at me,” I said.
She looked.
“When you marry someone, and put your trust in them, you have a right to expect that they will be there for you. The marriage doesn’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be perfect. By virtue of the commitment, your partner is supposed to be there. Without having to look around, you have to know they’re there. When you looked, Mort wasn’t there. Mort hadn’t been there for a long time. It doesn’t matter about his problems. He failed to live up to you. Mort lived the lie. Not you. Mort threw it away. Not you.”
Her head moved. “That sounds so harsh.”
“I’m feeling a little harsh toward Mort right now.” I took short breaths, feeling the booze still there. The big room had grown warmer.
We sat like that for several minutes. I was slouched on the sofa with my abdominal muscles forming neat rows leading up to my ribs. My legs were extended, my feet on the coffee table. I looked blue.
“I don�
�t mean to whine,” she said.
“You hurt. It’s okay.”
She brought her feet out from under her with a soft rustle, and sat forward. I heard her draw a deep breath and sigh it out. She said, “You’re a very nice man.”
“Unh-hunh.”
She said, “What happened”—she leaned forward out of the chair and touched my stomach—“here?”
When she touched me the muscles in my stomach and pelvic girdle and thighs bunched. Her finger was very warm, almost hot. I said, “I got into a fight with a man in Texas City, Texas. He cut me with a piece of glass.”
She moved her finger about an inch along the scar. I stood up, pulling her to me. She held on tight and whispered something into my chest that I did not hear.
I carried her upstairs and made love to her. She called me Mort. Afterward I held her, but it was a long time before she slept. And when she slept it was fitful and without rest.
24
The morning sky was a rich orange when I left the bed. Ellen was up, wearing the socks and the big terry robe. She had the washing machine going, doing two towels and the clothes she had been in since Ralph’s, and had started breakfast by the time I was showered and dressed.
“I called Janet,” she said.
“What a way to start your day.”
“I asked her to tell the girls that I was in San Francisco and that I’d have to be there a few days. Do you think that’s all right?”
“It’s smart if you don’t go home.”
She nodded.
“You could stay here.”
She nodded again.
“That okay with Janet?”
The young pretty part of her momentarily surfaced. “I’ll call her and ask.” Definite progress.
The cat door clacked and the cat came in, his fur misted with dew. He saw Ellen, went to her ankle, sniffed, and started to growl.
I said, “Get away from there.”
The cat sprinted back through his door. Clack-clack.
There was a knock, then Joe Pike walked in. He was misted with dew, also. “Couple of black-and-whites cruised you just before sunup. Other than that, nada.”
I introduced him to Ellen.
She said, “You’re the one in the pictures.” There were pictures up in the bedroom of me and Pike after billfish off Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Baha.
“I’m the only one in the pictures,” he said. Enigmatically. Then he left.
“He’s like that,” I said.
“Mr. Pike is your partner?”
“Unh-hunh.”
“He was out there all night?”
“All night.”
“Why?”
“To watch over us, why else?”
Joe came back with an Eastern Airlines flight bag and a brown leather rifle case and without the field jacket. He put the rifle case in the entry closet, took a Colt .357 Python in a clip-on holster from the flight bag, and put it on his hip. He took two boxes of .357 Softnose out of the bag, then rezipped it and put it in the closet next to the rifle. The boxes of extra ammo he brought to the coffee table by Ellen Lang. She watched every move the way a canary watches a cat, her eyes going from his tattoos to the gun at his waist—it was the big Python, with the 6-inch combat barrel—to the polished sunglasses. Pike was in uniform: faded Levis’, blue Nikes, white sweat socks, steel Rolex, sleeveless sweat shirt. When he had everything where he wanted it, he looked at her again. “I’m sorry to hear of your trouble,” he said.
She tried out a small, faltering smile. “Would you like something to eat?”
“It’s nice of you to offer. No. Not right now.”
He stood close, dwarfing her with his size and his energy and his capacity for violence. He did it without thinking about it. He could do it to almost anyone I knew, even men much taller and much heavier. Anyone except Lou Poitras.
Pike went into the kitchen. Ellen watched him, large-eyed and uneasy. “You’ll be fine,” I said. “The Amal militia couldn’t touch you with him here.”
She kept her eyes on Pike. Joe was standing in the kitchen, staring at a closed cabinet, unmoving. It was easy to imagine him standing all night like that.
“I’m going to swing by your house before I go to the cops,” I said. “Can I bring back some clothes for you?”
“Yes. If you would. And my toothbrush. It’s the green one.”
“Would you like to come with me?”
She glanced at the floor. “I don’t want to go back there right now.”
The drive to Encino was easy. This early, traffic down the valley side of Laurel Canyon was light and the freeway west seemed empty. I parked in Ellen’s drive and let myself in the front door. There is no quiet the way a house is quiet when its family is gone.
I found an empty Ralph’s bag in the kitchen and brought it back to the master bath. I packed her green toothbrush in it, along with a bottle of Almay roll-on that was probably hers, and a Personal Touch shaver. I opened the counter drawers and stared into them a while, wondering what she might want. I took out three little white Georgette Klinger face cream jars, two lip gloss tubes, a marbled plastic box of Clinique blush, a Clinique eye liner pencil, and two silver tins of Clinique eye shadow, and put them in the bag. You never can tell. Out in the bedroom, I selected panties, bras, a pair of white New Balance running shoes, three light tops, two pairs of cotton pants, and one pair of Jordache jeans. Mort’s insurance policy was in the same box where I had found his banking papers. He had purchased a $200,000 policy three years before but had borrowed against past premiums. Its current value was written down to $40,000. Not a lot, but she wasn’t broke. She’d have to plan. I put the policy back in the box and went through the room for Mort’s .32. Nothing. I went through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. Nothing. I went through the kids’ rooms. Zip.
At twenty minutes after eight I parked beside the North Hollywood station house and went up to the detectives’ squad room. Poitras was standing by a desk, talking to Griggs in a low voice. Griggs was sipping coffee from a mug that said #1 DADDY and nodding. When Poitras saw me he said something else to Griggs, then jerked his head back toward his office. He didn’t look happy. “Come on,” he said.
“Top of the morning to you, too, Louis.”
A thin blond man sat in the hard chair in Poitras’ office. He wore brown slacks and brand-new tan Bally loafers with little tassels and a brown coarse-knit jacket with patches on the elbows. He had a dark beige shirt and a yellow tie with little white camels. Silk. He glowed the way skinny guys glow then they get up early and play three sets at the club. I made him for Stanford Law. Poitras dropped into his chair behind the desk and said, “This is O’Bannon.” When Poitras looked at O’Bannon his flat face hardened and his eyes ticked. “From Special Operations.”
O’Bannon didn’t offer to shake my hand. He said, “From the California Attorney General’s office, attached to Spec Op.”
Spec Op. Stanford Law, all right. “You say that to girls when you try to pick’m up?” I said.
O’Bannon smiled the way a fish smiles when it’s been on ice all day. “No, only to smart guys who’ve been tagged for two bodies up in Beachwood Canyon. You want to push it?”
They make’m tough up at Stanford.
“I thought not. Tell me about your encounter with Duran.”
I started at the beginning, when Ellen Lang and Janet Simon came to my office. O’Bannon stopped me. “Poitras filled me in on the background. Just tell me about your contact with Domingo Duran.”
I started again. I told him how the Eskimo and Manolo picked me up in my office and brought me out to the bull ranch, and I told him what happened out there. Listening to myself describe Duran and reconstruct the dialogue and sequence of events, I came out sounding pretty good. It’s easy to sound good. All you do is leave in the parts where you act tough and forget the parts where you get shoved around. At one point we got up and went out into the squad room where they have a big map of L.A. and the
surrounding counties so I could ballpark the ranch. O’Bannon wrote down everything I said. He reminded me of Jimmy Olsen, only nastier.
When I finished, O’Bannon stared at me like I was the biggest disappointment of his life. “That it?”
“I could make up more if you want.”
“Did the Lang woman have any direct contact with Duran?”
“The Lang woman’s name is Ellen, or Ms. Lang.”
O’Bannon gave me you’re-wasting-my-time eyes. I get those a lot.
“No, no direct contact.”
He folded his note pad and put it in his inside jacket pocket, unconcerned that it might ruin the line. Daring, he was. Gotta be daring for Spec Op. He said, “All right. We may need to talk to her later.”
I looked at Lou. “Later?”
O’Bannon nodded. “There a problem with that?”
“I figured maybe we could do a little better than later. You know, with her son missing and all.”
O’Bannon pulled a brown briefcase from beside the hard chair. “There’s no ‘we.’ This is a Spec Op case now. You’re out. We’re handling the investigation.”
Poitras’ jaw worked and he picked at something invisible on his desk. He said, carefully, “Somebody downtown decided Special Operations was better suited to cover Duran.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
His voice came out ugly. “What the hell does it sound like, Elvis? You took an IQ reducer since last night? We’re out. You’re out. That’s the end of it.”
I said, “O’Bannon, there’s a nine-year-old kid out there. You don’t need a goddamned investigation. I’m handing you the scam and the setup and the bust.”
O’Bannon took a manila file folder off the end of Poitras’ desk, put it in his briefcase, snapped the brass latches. It was a Gucci case. He hefted it, then turned and looked at me the way prosecutors look at jurors when they’re showing off. “Spec Op will handle it, Cole. You’re out. You’re not to approach Duran, nor to proceed with this in any way. He’s off limits. You go near him, I’ll yank your license for violating the Private Investigators Act of California. You got that?”
