The Detective & The Pipe Girl: A Mystery

by Michael Craven

  It’s not that easy to get rid of a gun. It’s not. But beyond that, the human condition often gets in the way. People get an assignment and they sit on it. That’s what White Streak had done. He’d gotten an assignment and he’d sat on it.

  I put on a leather glove, got a Ziploc bag out of my pocket. I housed the gun, shut the bag, replaced the pot, shut the oven, and walked out the front door.

  36

  I called the LAPD—Detective Mike Ott. He of the perfect head of hair and the incredibly dry skin. It was late. He might not be on duty tonight. He might be home asleep in bed. Or maybe he’d just answer. Like he did.

  “Ott,” he said.

  That’s probably why he became a cop, because he knew it would be cool to answer his phone like that: Ott.

  “Ott, it’s John Darvelle, remember me?”

  “Unfortunately. What do you want?”

  “I think I have something that will interest you.”

  “What is it?”

  “You going in tomorrow?”

  “Yes, Darvelle, what is it?”

  “I’ll meet you at the station at eight a.m.”

  “Darvelle, it’s four a.m., what is it?”

  “I’ll see you in four hours at the station.”

  I hung up, drove to Mar Vista, and went to bed. Three hours later I woke up, exhausted.

  I showered, got dressed, got in the Cobalt, and headed downtown. Depressing, stifling, move-out-of-the city traffic. I would normally never travel at this hour. This was an exception. This was important.

  I made one quick stop at a drugstore, then got back on the road, back in the mess. Finally, finally I made it to the LAPD station downtown. I was on time. Right on time. In the elevator, then on the detectives’ floor, then in front of Detective Mike Ott’s desk.

  “All right, Darvelle, what do you got?”

  “I have something I think will really help you.”

  “WHAT IS IT?”

  Out of my bag I produced the item I had purchased at the drugstore: a massive bottle of Lubriderm skin lotion.

  “This is really good lotion for your skin. It can really help with some of that dryness. Sure, this one massive jug isn’t enough for you, but it’s a start. If you buy seventeen or eighteen more bottles this size you might have a nice base.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. I was sure he was going to come at me. Another cop I knew, a large black man named Anthony Demarus, walked over and began to rub Mike Ott’s shoulders. “You want me to punch him for you, Ott? I’ve always wanted to. I mean always. For years. Literally years. As my superior please just tell me to do it.”

  Ott didn’t answer him.

  I said, “Hey, Anthony. How’re you doing?”

  “I’m doing all right, Darvelle. I’m doing all right.”

  We shook hands and he split.

  Ott looked at me. “I know you didn’t come all the way down here just to do your little lotion gag. Actually, you might have. But quit fucking around. What do you got, Darvelle?”

  I told him the things I’d discovered. The PG symbol, everything about Neese, Jimmy Yates, Danny Baker, Jenny Bickford, the other dead girl Allison Tarber. And, of course, the gun.

  I pulled it out of the same bag I’d gotten the lotion out of and put it on his desk.

  It sat there still sheathed in a bag of its own. The Ziploc I’d stuck it in.

  I said, “That’s the gun that Neese’s boys held in my face. If that matches with the bullet that killed Suzanne Neal I think we’re in business and I think we can put Neese in jail for murder.”

  I told him how I obtained the gun. Entering White Streak’s pad with probable cause, seeing as prior to that point that very same gun had been a couple centimeters away from my face, a couple centimeters away from turning my head into a rather large bowl of linguini marinara. Yes, I might have to switch some of the timing around to make it play in court, but I was comfortable with that.

  Ott sat there, not saying anything for probably a full minute. I wasn’t sure what he was thinking about; his countenance gave me nothing. Then he looked at me with his cracked, dry skin and said, “Yeah. Let’s look into that gun.”

  I said, dead serious. “I want to be there when you grab Neese. You owe me that.”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  I left and went back home. I tried to take a nap but couldn’t sleep. Three hours later my phone rang. The gun matched the bullet. The gun was the gun that killed Suzanne Neal. Ott told me the plan. Grab Neese the next morning, very early. Provided Ott and his boys determined he was in fact home. The morning was a good time to do this stuff because it was often a surprise, and it was just a less violent time of day. People didn’t have time to let the day get on, let their anger rise up. Ott told me he’d call me tonight, at some point, to let me know if it was a go. If so, I’d meet Ott and two other cars at a determined location and then drive to a waiting spot outside Neese’s house at 5 a.m. tomorrow. I said fine.

  At 9 p.m. that night Ott called me. He said Neese had come home and it didn’t appear that he was leaving.

  It was on.

  “See you very early tomorrow, Darvelle. Don’t be late.”

  I said, “I’m never late.”

  And I hung up.

  Now before I tell you what happened outside Neese’s house the next morning, I have to tell you what happened that night. It won’t take too long. And you might be surprised. I know I was.

  I was antsy, restless, waiting around for the thing that mattered the next morning. So I hopped in the Cobalt and headed out to a bar. I didn’t know where I was going, I was just driving semi-frantically, to somewhere, somewhere that I could enjoy an adult beverage instead of pacing around my house, looking at my beautiful Ping-Pong table.

  I went to Venice—to Hama Sushi. Not too fancy, not too trendy, just a local spot right on the Venice Circle. Half of the restaurant, the actual sushi bar, was inside, the other half, the bar bar, was outside underneath a vaulted tent. So you were still technically inside, but the outside portion had a patio feel. And was just a little cooler temperature-wise than the inside, the beach breezes sneaking in through the tent.

  I hit the outside bar and ordered a Bud Light. See what I’m saying? Yeah, they have Kirin and Sapporo and other Japanese beers, which I actually enjoy when eating sushi, but they also have Bud Light so a guy can properly chill out.

  Anyway, I got a Bud Light and I poured it into the small, cold glass they provided me with. That’s another thing establishments that get it do. They provide you with a small, cold glass to drink your beer from. Not a large, heavy, warm glass right out of the dishwasher. A small, cold one. Try it. Very, very good.

  So, I poured the beer into the glass and took a nice pull. Man, it was good, really, really hitting the spot. Instantly calming me down a bit.

  And then, I was just sitting there doing the sit-at-a bar-and-stare-straight-forward thing, when two hands came from behind my head and covered my eyes.

  “Guess who?” I heard a voice, an incredible voice, say.

  37

  I had very little clue who was standing behind me covering my eyes. I knew it was a woman and I knew her hands were cool, but not cold, and that the touch of them was what I needed. She was playing the classic guess-who game but the energy I felt from her touch was affectionate.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Can I have a hint?”

  “Nope.”

  I grabbed her wrists and pulled them off of my eyes. I then twisted out of my seat, letting go of her hands on the way to standing. I stood now in front of her, no longer physically connected to her, but wishing I was.

  It was the nurse who took care of me the night I’d stumbled into the hospital. The woman I’d asked to play Ping-Pong, the Mexican Angel. Nancy. Nancy Alvarez.

  “Well, hello,” I said.

  “Your cuts look a little better.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How’d you get them again?”

  I honestly couldn’t re
member. “Can I hold your hands again?”

  She smiled and gestured to a woman standing with her, “John, this is my friend Stacy.”

  Blond, attractive. But nothing like Nancy. Nancy was a vision.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She smiled. Nodded.

  Nancy said, “Well, we’re out of here.”

  I said, “Nancy, would you like to stay for a bit and have a drink?”

  Nancy said, “You’re lucky. Stacy drove.”

  And then she looked at Stacy and said, “You cool with that?”

  Stacy looked at me, then at Nancy. “Sure, Nance, he looks okay.”

  And then Stacy gave me a friendly wink and disappeared out the door. And Nancy sat down next to me.

  We talked. Nancy told me about her job, her life. And I told her about my job, my life. As much as I felt I could share anyway. And then she asked me a question I didn’t see coming.

  She said, “Why’d you get divorced?”

  I looked at her. She was one of those people you trusted after two seconds. She was looking right into my eyes. Jesus. Into my soul. But without judgment. No, it was something else. Compassion? No, it wasn’t that either. It was interest. Real interest in another person.

  “She cheated on me.”

  She held me with her eyes and said, “That’s happened to me before.” And then: “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “How long? I bet it’s not that long. What, you work all the time getting obsessed with your cases and banging up your head falling down supposed cliffs so she goes and meets a guy at work or something that’s willing to sit and listen to her talk about her marital problems and then one thing leads to another?”

  I laughed. “Not exactly. All right, I’ll make it quick. Or sort of quick. We met at a party. And we hit it off right away. We spent every day for the next couple weeks together. And then we made a pretty interesting decision. We decided that marriage in many ways is just luck of the draw. We both had some friends in good marriages and some friends in bad marriages, and there was really no rhyme or reason to any of it. We thought: Yeah, you can overthink it and move in together and meet each other’s families and go through the completely unproven steps to try and make sure, or you can just do it. We just did it. Four weeks after we met we went to Vegas, got married, had a crazy couple days, then came back here and moved in together.”

  Nancy, still looking at me, scooted her chair closer to mine. “And then what happened?”

  I took a breath. “Well, then after a few months, it began to feel a little strange. Like . . .”

  “What the hell have we done?”

  I laughed. “Yeah. Like what the hell have we done. Which may or may not be what everyone feels like regardless of the circumstances. I have no idea. I just know that’s how we felt. Now, let me tell you, there was still some magic between us. There was still something there. But it was off. It was strange. Like we were two strangers living in a house. And it definitely felt at times like we had made a serious, serious mistake. And then she went to a wedding. Without me. I was on a case. I didn’t, wouldn’t, leave in the middle of it. And, well, she got drunk and slept with an old college boyfriend.”

  And again, without missing a beat, Nancy said, “Then what happened?”

  “She came home from the wedding. And when she walked in the door, I happened to be home. And I looked at her. And she was wearing it all over her face. And I said, ‘What happened?’ And she told me.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “Nothing. I just listened. Because she had more to say than just that. She said that, ironically, the whole thing had made her sure that I was the one for her. She said sleeping with this other dude made our whole life suddenly make total sense. And she said she loved me.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “And did you still love her?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “So what did you say when you finally said something?”

  “I said I’m filing for divorce tomorrow, but you need to get out even quicker than that. You need to get out tonight.”

  Nancy laughed. “Tell me why you did that. I think you did the right thing, but tell me why, exactly why, you did that. You said yourself your situation was weird. And you still loved her. So why not give her a second chance?”

  I looked at Nancy. She was beautiful. And I said, “Because I would have never been able to live with myself.”

  She nodded and thought for a long time. “You know what I think?”

  “What?” I said.

  “I think when you did that you put the right kind of energy into the universe.”

  I nodded. I like it when people talk about the universe. I sometimes talk about the universe.

  She then said, “You know what else I think?”

  “What?”

  “I think we should get some sake.”

  I laughed. “I think you’re right.”

  Nancy ordered a large hot sake and we drank it down fast. We got off the subject of my divorce and we got onto a much better subject—the subject of us having a good time. Nancy ordered a large Sapporo and poured it into two glasses. She then ordered another large sake, poured out two shots of it into small porcelain cups, then dropped one cup in each beer. The little porcelain cups of sake sank to the bottom of the beers, the sake somehow still sitting in the cups even though the cups themselves were in even bigger cups of beer. Ah, the sake bomb, a thing of magic.

  “Chug that,” Nancy said.

  Was I worried about being hungover early the next morning at Neese’s? Well, yeah. But, listen, man, you got to pick your spots in life. And this was one of them.

  I threw back the bomb, the beer going down first, then the little cup of sake going down last.

  It was one of the best things I’d ever tasted and it gave me an instant, slightly hallucinatory buzz.

  I said, “Hey, want to go play some Ping-Pong?”

  “Do you want to lose?”

  “Babe. Babe. Babe,” I said. “I rarely, very rarely, lose at Ping-Pong.”

  And then we were at my house. Hitting some balls. I put on some Pavement, Terror Twilight. A beautiful record.

  “What is this crap?” she said.

  I laughed as hard as I’d laughed in a long time.

  “Give it a chance, you’ll like it.”

  We kept hitting Ping-Pong balls. Nancy was pretty okay. She could hit it back. She was more attitude than anything. Which I loved. We played a couple games. I’d keep it close, then take her in the end. After I’d win, she’d narrow her eyes at me and say, “Let’s play again.”

  “We can play all night, you’re never going to beat me.”

  “What if I come over and hit you with this paddle right on both of your cuts and then when the blood is all in your eyes, I’ll make you play me. And beat you.”

  Man, I thought. I really might be in love.

  I said, “Unfortunately for you I’d still win.”

  We went upstairs into my bedroom. The light from the sky came in through the windows and the glass sliding doors. It gave the room a dim glow. Nancy was more beautiful than I’d realized. And then: Our clothes were on the floor, and we were on the bed. I looked at her face, at her intense but soft eyes. At the totality of her beautiful, curvy body.

  And we crashed into each other.

  Ladies and gentleman, this is what I needed. I hadn’t let myself realize the stress and the pressure I was feeling. And now, a release. A release that let it all go. It was a total connection. To her, but also to a feeling, a feeling that came from somewhere else, the heavens, the cosmos.

  And then we lay there in each other’s arms. And that’s when she did something that strengthened even more my belief in the universe. She did something that would help me later in this very story.

  She began to trace along my body with t
he nail of her index finger. She put her finger right in the center of my stomach and said, “If you get shot here the bullet will go all the way through you and out the back of you.”

  Yes, she was an E.R. nurse. She’d seen it.

  And then she traced upward and her fingernail stopped just below my ribs, on my solar plexus. “And if you get shot here the bullet will also rip right through you and explode out your back.”

  And then she moved her fingernail up to my chest and stopped it right on my heart. “But if you get shot here, right in the heart, the bullet will sometimes stay there. Because the heart is strong. Very, very strong. And it can grab something. Even something as powerful as a bullet. And hold it.”

  I looked at her. At her beautiful face. At her beautiful skin pressed up against mine. At her fingernail still pressing on my heart.

  She said, “I know a P.I. isn’t all that you are. You are more than that, I can tell. But you are a P.I.-type. A loner.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not asking you to fall in love with me. But don’t ever forget me.”

  I thought: That would be impossible.

  38

  The next morning, at 5 a.m. sharp, there were three cars outside of Richard Neese’s house. Down the street a bit but with a line on his heinous Pipe Girl gate. Ott and his partner, Wall, were in an unmarked. Two other cops named Shant and Barker were behind them in another unmarked. And I was in my Mountain Gray Cobalt. Third in line.

  The reality was Neese would almost certainly go peacefully. He’d play it cool. He’d let Ott cuff him and take him downtown and he’d have a wry smile plastered on his face the whole time. He wouldn’t say a word. He’d just roll along until he got the chance to call his lawyer. That was everybody’s best guess anyway. But I wanted to be there when Ott threw out some of the stuff we knew to be true, because that’s what would sting Neese, even if he didn’t show it. The Pipe Girl story. The gun that killed Suzanne Neal. The fact that the gun was in White Streak’s possession and that I’d personally seen the same gun right in my face.