by Avery Duff
Turning back for their unit, he noticed a Styrofoam cup on the deck. He picked it up. It brimmed with cigarette butts. He pulled one out, read its brand label in the moonlight.
Larks? he wondered. Somebody still makes Larks?
Then he noticed two burned-out butts on the deck itself. Each one stood straight up like a soldier. He wondered how long they’d been standing up that way, blocked from the breeze. Wondered, too, whether what he’d heard was true. Straight up: that’s how convicts let cigarettes burn out in prison.
Whoever had been on the deck could still be inside Unit 3, he decided, and well after midnight, he texted the owner about what he’d seen. After that, he slipped into bed with Alison and lay there without touching her.
Doubt had crept into his thinking, no point denying it. He was concerned about . . . his problem was . . . he didn’t quite know what. No point in worrying Alison, too, he decided, reaching for her.
“Hey,” he said.
Her back was to him, her eyes already open. “Hey,” she said.
“I was thinking,” he said, “once our checks clear, why don’t we get out of LA for a while?”
“Get out?” she asked. “We’re still moving in?”
“When’s the last time you left town?”
“Forever ago.”
They were both quiet for a minute.
“Like, with a camper?” she asked, turning toward him.
“Or a Winnebago.”
“You’re a bigger hick than I am,” she said.
“Mexico? Cabo?” he asked.
“Not in a Winnie,” she said. “We’d wind up in an open grave.”
“How about cross-country?” he asked. “We could see the Washington Monument, Statue of Liberty?”
She said, “Or go straight up Highway 1, all the way to Canada. There’s that highway all the way across. Maybe?”
“Canada? Canada, eh?”
“They have great travel books at the bookstore. We could check it out tomorrow, if you promise you’ll never do that accent again.”
“Eh?” he asked.
“Stop it,” she said, moving on top of him.
He said it once more. But once he was inside her, he decided to drop the accent and do whatever she wanted to do.
CHAPTER 33
Standing on the street outside Tito’s Tacos in Culver City, Stanley expected Jack to pick him up any minute. Still waiting, he thought about what had happened with lawyer man the night before.
From Unit 3’s roof deck, he watched the lawyer picking up his bike. Something must have dawned on the guy, and by the time he stopped down below him, Stanley knew it was time to split. He was cool with that; he’d gamed it since day one. There were only two ways in—the beach and Speedway. Somebody came at him from the beach, he’d hit the unit stairs down to Speedway. Coming at him from Speedway? He’d hit the slider out to the beach.
So last night was simple. By the time the lawyer was on his front deck, he had already made the living room from the roof. Ten seconds later, he slipped down the stairs to Speedway. After that, he was vapor. What he left behind was only the homeless-man crap he wanted to be found.
And here came Jack, cruising up Washington in some bullshit rental. Stanley got in, and as they started driving down Sepulveda, Jack asked, “Grunion running, Stanley?”
“Like crazy, Jackie Boy,” he said, handing over six amyl nitrite caps.
Right after that, he let Jack know his cover had probably been blown the night before.
All Jack said about that development was: “Let’s see if it matters.”
They drove around a few hours, Stanley reading aloud all his written surveillance reports, with Jack occasionally listening to actual recorded conversations. Even pulling over and watching videos of the pair when it suited him. It impressed Stanley, how Jack’s expression never showed if he saw or heard anything that interested him.
It wasn’t too long after the lovebirds started talking about RVing to Canada or Mexico or wherever that Jack told him, “Think we’re good. Here’s what you’re going to do next.”
Jack told him exactly where to set up his new safe-deposit box and exactly how he wanted Stanley to handle the key. Then they went into how much time Stanley would need inside Unit 1 alone, and when he would need it.
Stanley told Jack, “Better you get them out of the place for at least an hour, guaranteed,” but he believed fifteen minutes inside, tops, would do the trick.
“I’ll make it work. Day after tomorrow. It’s set for then,” Jack told him.
After fifteen, twenty more minutes nailing down the details, they rolled up to Tito’s again. When he started to get out, Jack told Stanley to leave behind his written reports and his computer.
“After you get out, go inside Tito’s. Then turn around and wave at me.”
“You got it, Jackie.”
As he headed toward Tito’s, Stanley knew what was up. Jack didn’t want him to grab the rental’s plate numbers or see the rental agency on the tag holder. Always keeping their one-on-one’s difficult for Stanley to verify.
So he knew what he would see when he turned around to wave: Jack was gone. That didn’t matter. He ordered a beef-and-bean burrito with cheese and thought about the twenty-grand cash payday headed his way. Knowing that was going to happen, he planned on two AA meetings every single day for six months after he scored the money.
“Who knows, maybe three a day,” he said to himself, then asked the counter man for a twelve-dollar Tito’s ball cap and extra tomatillo on that burrito.
CHAPTER 34
“I’m buying,” Robert said.
“Hell, yeah, you’re buying,” Erik told him.
They were grabbing a cup of coffee at Groundworks not far from the Venice police substation. Robert was bringing his buddy up to speed, and Erik was writing up a police report.
“And you talked to those workmen on the other roof?” Erik asked.
“Yeah, this morning. They saw my guy over on Unit 3, smoking, wearing a painter’s cap.”
Robert told him what else the workmen said: that the guy was good-size, tall, Anglo, and tanned. “Middle-aged and he smokes Larks,” Robert added.
“They still sell those?”
“Must,” Robert said, and told him, “I did a walk-through of Unit 3 with the owner. We found an old sleeping bag, canned food with the labels ripped off, empty bottles of cheap wine, and chips.”
Erik said, “Sure, we get squatters at the beach all the time.”
“Even on the Peninsula?”
“Not like up in Venice, but they cruise the Peninsula on bicycles, checking out mailboxes, stale flyers, parked cars staying parked, interior light patterns. Hey, free rent, ocean view, no five-0 riffraff hassling ’em. What’s not to like?”
Robert saw the logic: his building was a primo squatter candidate.
“Guy takes a middle unit, too, not the far-end unit, so you gotta walk in front of it to see inside. Lot of ’em are ex-cons and they’re not stupid. Dumb,” he said, “not stupid.”
He finished writing the report, and Robert signed it.
“I’ll file this, but I still don’t get it. Other than the building, is there a connection between you and Lark Boy?”
“Lark Man,” Robert corrected. “A guy I know, I’m pretty sure he hates me.”
“Help me out here. Who hates you enough for what?” Erik asked.
It was the right question, but Robert couldn’t answer it. He paid for their coffee, acutely aware of his nondisclosure agreement with Philip and the firm. To tell him about Jack, Robert would need to discuss the settlement agreement with Erik—a nonparty. That would put Robert in clear violation and jeopardize both his and his client’s payday.
“Guess you’re right,” Robert said. “It’s probably nothing.”
From out of nowhere, Erik said, “Jack Pierce.”
That floored Robert. He didn’t breathe a word until Erik asked, “Fanelli and Pierce. You used to work for
Pierce, right?”
“Right,” he said and left it at that.
“Get along?” Erik asked.
Robert decided not to touch that one.
“You told me a guy you know, you’re pretty sure he hates you. And you sure as hell left your firm in a hurry, so I’m running Pierce’s name by you, that’s all.”
“You know him?” Robert asked.
“I put in five years downtown before I made it to Westside, so let’s just say Pierce was known.”
Erik told him a story about a cop he heard about back then. A straight shooter who rolled out of Los Feliz. He got papered to testify against one of Jack’s money-laundering clients but held up solid under Jack’s cross. The client went down off the cop’s testimony, and Jack’s loss played big in the Times. After that, seemed like the cop’s life went haywire. Wife started seeing somebody, the cop thought, and every time he turned around, criminals were filing paper on him.
“Complaints?”
“Excessive force, abusive language, till one day his brothers in blue showed up with a warrant off a corroborated anonymous tip, found a bag of blow in his garage. A big one. No prints, though, and the union fought it. Cop swore it was planted, but he wound up losing his wife and was lucky to grab his pension.”
“What happened to him?”
“Dunno, wandered off like old lions do. What I’m sayin’, there was a lot of inside baseball about Pierce being the one who made it happen.”
“All this time, why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Why do that? You were killin’ it at work, man, and never mentioned the guy’s name once all those years. Why rock your boat?”
Robert tried coming to grips with this new story. Remembered that Philip warned him about crossing Jack. That Jack’s reactions could be wildly disproportionate to the offense.
Then Erik pointed out: “And all that cop did back then? He was under oath, telling the truth on the stand. Just a cop doing his job . . .”
Robert left the coffee shop without telling Erik about meeting Reyes right before that. And without mentioning Reyes’s take on those two Lark butts standing upright on Unit 3’s deck.
Reyes told him, “Guy’s a convict, carnal.”
So, he offered Reyes $500 to ID the smoker. “Maybe he bought Larks somewhere at the beach, or near here, or something,” Robert said.
“Seguro, es posible,” Reyes said, then Robert offered five hundred more for a decent photo of Lark Man.
“Thousand’s great,” Reyes said. “That’ll pay for my new head shots.”
Turned out, Reyes was up for a speaking part in Street Cred 6.
Robert fist-bumped Reyes and told him, “Break a leg.”
By the time Robert found Alison at the bookstore, she was at a table in back with stacks of travel books around her: Northern California, the coastlines of Oregon and Washington, Canadian Rockies, the Statue of Liberty, Lincoln Memorial.
Once he joined her, she showed him the Winnebago website on her iPad: The Brave. “That model’s got our name on it,” she said.
“Sleeps four,” he noticed. “We could start a band, go on tour.”
She elbowed him, but it was definitely baller. He still liked the thought: getting out of LA like they discussed last night.
As she showed him The Brave’s compact yet spacious bathroom, his eyes drifted to the scar on her calf. Other parts of his conversation with Reyes intruded on him. He had looked at Reyes’s ink and asked him, “Did you ever change your mind, have one of ’em removed?”
“Sí,” Reyes told him. He pulled up his shirt and revealed a blank spot. “Era mi favorito.”
His tat of the Blessed Virgin Mary on a Harley had been his favorite. His grandmother made him burn it off.
Robert had checked the light scarring on Reyes’s stomach. Its texture looked the same as the scar on Alison’s calf.
“¿El láser?” Robert asked.
“Sí, chico.”
Depending on the ink and the colors, Reyes told him, it took about six weeks to heal.
“Six weeks?” Robert wondered. Tattoo Girl was at Saddle Peak Lodge months ago.
“So, how’s your new crib, y tu novia?” Reyes asked him.
His new girlfriend? Robert didn’t answer Reyes’s question, and here in the bookstore, Alison asked him, “What do you think?” He was a little lost in space, wrapped up in his own questions, and she must have picked up on it.
“I mean, about crossing Canada. Do you think we could put the Winnie on a train if we got bored or tired of driving?”
“Looks beautiful up there,” he said. “You think any more about going through Vegas, seeing Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Graceland?”
“I saw the Grand Canyon twice, Graceland a bunch. I’m a Florida girl, remember?”
They talked over the trip, going back and forth on the route, and he was relaxing even more into the road-trip idea. Until he stood up, looked out the row of big front windows, and there they were: Jack Pierce and Chase Fitzpatrick, taking a table at the Sidewalk Cafe. Directly outside the bookstore door. Each wore shorts, and each one set a racket bag beside their two-top.
“You know,” Alison was telling him, “if we went north, we could stop in San Francisco. Maybe see your farm on the way? That would be cool, huh?”
“We could do that,” he said absently, staring at the two men.
She stood up. “Maybe it’s too soon for that, but if . . .”
He was nodding, still ignoring her.
“Look, if you’re embarrassed about my meeting them, just say so.”
That got his attention. “Embarrassed, what? The farm? You kidding me? Sure. They might be out of town, let me check.”
Once they’d paid for a few travel books, he said, “Look, Jack and Chase are eating lunch outside.”
She looked over and saw the two men. “Those two assholes?”
“No matter what they say, keep going. See you back at the car, okay?
“Back at—What about you?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It depends.”
“On what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll tell you after.”
They walked out of the store into the narrow walkway between the store’s entrance and the restaurant. Alison went first. Ignoring the two men, she made it to the boardwalk and kept going.
Robert stopped at their table, and told Jack, “I want a private word with you.”
Before Jack could answer, Chase said, “Hey, Worth, saw your client walk by. Is she really a tiger in the sack?”
Robert leaned down, like he was going to whisper to Chase. Instead, he gave Chase a quick love tap, short and hard into his nose.
“Fuck!” Chase screamed.
He jumped up, rocked the table, spilled their water, and leaned forward. Too late. Blood was already dripping onto his white V-neck.
“You pisswad!” he screamed.
“Ice it down,” Jack said. “My old colleague needs a word with me.”
Jack watched Chase rush away. For some reason, it looked like Jack got a kick out of Chase shedding blood.
“Stay away from me, all right? I mean it,” he told Jack.
“Stay away from you? Since when is that a problem, Worth? We always ran in different social circles.”
He leaned closer to Jack. Close enough to whisper: “We both know what the fuck I’m talking about.”
“I don’t have a clue what you mean, Worth. You were always two steps ahead of me. Isn’t it enough I don’t have a job? That my marriage is on its last legs? What more could you possibly take from me?”
“Nothing. And if I get more than nothing back from you, we have a problem.”
“We can do nothing, I guess, or—do you remember Judge Rosen?”
Sure, he remembered her: at the Santa Monica courthouse, sitting on the bench with Jack.
Jack told him, “I tried introducing you, but you had bigger fish to fry that day. Tell you what. Why don’t you dro
p by her courtroom tomorrow, first thing. Nine a.m. sharp?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Check Rosen’s website. I’m on her docket—the only item on her docket—and you’re so far behind me now, that I—oh, wait, almost forgot—a very good friend of yours will be there, too. Bet anything you’ll be glad you came.”
A very good friend? Jack was rocking him, big-time, and he tried to hide it.
“One last time,” Robert said. “Stay away from me, or I swear to God, I’ll—”
“You’ll do what? Say it, Worth. You’ll kill me? Kill me, Worth? Popping Chase is one thing, but I’d be careful who hears you making threats like that against me.”
“Stay the fuck away from me! Hear that?”
He looked up. Everyone nearby was staring at him. He’d been going at Jack louder than he thought.
“Stay away from you? Don’t you mean stay away from us?” Jack asked. “Let me see how this works for you. I promise I’ll never venture down onto the Marina Peninsula again. And you have my word on that.”
Us? Marina Peninsula? Only one way Jack knew that: from the guy in Unit 3.
“You heard right, Worth. Exactly what are you prepared to do about it?”
That was the last thing Jack said to Robert that day. But it was enough. Five seconds later, once Robert made it onto the crowded boardwalk, he hated Jack Pierce enough to kill him.
CHAPTER 35
“That insane prick. You knew he’d be there, didn’t you?” Chase asked Jack.
“Cool down. How the devil would I know that?”
They were walking up the boardwalk, a half mile from where they’d almost eaten lunch. Chase held a wet towel against his swollen nose.
“If I sued him for assault and battery,” Chase said, “I’d pick up a quick fifty grand, easy.”
“Why? You had it coming. You insulted his girl and he popped you. Somebody talked that way about Meridian, what would you do?”
