Blues in the Night

by Dick Lochte

  The woman stared at him with mild curiosity.

  He checked the address on the business card.

  ‘Lookin’ for the little ho-ers?’ she asked, not unkindly.

  ‘Shoot On Site Photography,’ Mace said.

  ‘Yeah. Like I said. Aroun’ back. One flight up. Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do.’

  At the rear of the apartment house, Mace found a wooden stairwell so old it had turned gray. It led up to a closed screen and wooden door combination above which a flickering bulb provided only very dim light.

  If his climb up the squeaking, wobbling stairwell alerted anyone in the apartment, there was no outward sign. Someone was home. He heard sounds. A cough. A throat being cleared.

  He applied his knuckles to the wooden frame of the screen door.

  No response.

  It was unlocked. The door past it was flimsy and paint-cracked. He used the side of his fist to hammer against it, shaking it mightily. This resulted in the sound of bare feet padding toward him.

  The door opened as far as a brass chain allowed. A teenage girl peered out. Her round face had the potential for pretty, once it lost the baby fat and the chalky make-up. And the assortment of metal items piercing the flesh of her ears and nose, including, Mace noted, both a tiny mezuzah and a silver pork chop. She was wrapped in a ratty pink bathrobe.

  ‘Yea-uh?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m looking for Symon.’

  ‘Got no Symon. No Siegfried. No Seinfeld. We ain’t got no esses, Esse.’

  Mace tried to look past the girl, where a shaft of light caused shadows to dance around the darkened room. ‘Tell Symon it’s the guy with fifty bucks for him,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t you listen, handsome? No Symon here.’ She slammed the door.

  There was muffled conversation in the room. Mace was about to knock again, when the door opened. This time the female behind the chain was taller, bigger boned, and about a decade past the teen years. Blonde, sunburned. No hardware dangling from her face. Had that post-starlet look of disillusioned, fading beauty. She was wearing bikini panties and a push-up bra, smiling placidly, as if greeting a stranger at the door in her underwear were her thing.

  She gave Mace a head-to-toe appraisal and said, ‘You look like fun. I vote we let you in.’

  She shut the door long enough to slip the chain, then opened it all the way. He stepped into a small, sparsely furnished room. A video projector rested on a footstool casting silent, moving images on a wall to the right. In the ambient light, Mace observed a rescue-mission brown couch, three chairs, two of them matching the couch, the third a yellow beanbag, the kind he hadn’t seen since he was a kid.

  The girl with the embedded face jewelry was drifting toward a couple lounging on colorful pillows on the bare wooden floor, watching the wall. The prone girl had brown hair worn long over a flimsy caftan. She drank from a Coke can and passed the can to the boy beside her, a muscular teen who looked like he belonged on a surfer poster, except for the tattoo of Botticelli’s Venus on his cut, hairless chest. He was wearing ragged denim cut-offs, unbuttoned and unzipped as if he’d put them on and forgotten to finish the process.

  ‘Our pierced princess is named Liz,’ the undressed blonde said. ‘Short for lizard. I’m B.J. Short for . . . well, maybe you’ll find out. That’s Pippa on the floor and Keith, a.k.a Beaver, as in “Leave it to . . .” They’re in luuuv. And don’t care who’s watching.’

  The tattooed Beaver glanced at Mace and lifted his chin an inch. Pippa was too entranced by the movie on the wall to pause for even that minimal a welcome. Her vapid face showed a brief annoyance as Liz stepped over her legs, blocked the projected image for a beat and plopped down beside Beaver.

  Liz’s bathrobe opened exposing a plump, naked body that was about as appealing to Mace as an open wound. Not that she cared. Staring at the wall movie, she casually began to caress the boy’s bare chest. She seemed to be stroking the Venus tattoo.

  ‘Where’s Symon?’ Mace asked the blonde.

  ‘He doesn’t live here, honey,’ she said. ‘Just uses this place for . . . business transactions.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘Not here. Not now.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Like I’d know?’ B.J. said. ‘He pays me to do things. I’m not his wrap. He’s too old and too ugly.’

  She moved closer, pressing against him. ‘Relax, honey. Lose some of that tension.’

  She lowered a graceful hand.

  He grabbed her wrist before it reached his groin. ‘What the hell is this?’ he said.

  ‘Let go,’ B.J. whined, dropping the seduction act. ‘You’re hurting me.’

  Mace released her wrist. She swung at him with her other hand, but he stepped away from it.

  The swing carried her against the open door and she made a yelp and sent a few curses into the air. Then she settled down a little and began to rub her wrist. ‘Jesus, you almost broke it,’ she said. ‘What the fuck, asshole?’

  He hadn’t meant to be that rough, but she’d surprised him. He wasn’t about to apologize.

  ‘Out of the way, Jack,’ Beaver yelled.

  Mace realized he was blocking the projected images. He stepped out of the bright light and, for the first time, noticed the images on the wall. A hardcore threesome; two guys and a gal.

  What the hell was he doing there?

  He headed for the door, but B.J. blocked his way. ‘I . . . look, I’m sorry. I was just fucking with you. Your name’s Mason, right?’

  He glared at her.

  ‘Gotta be. Simon said you looked like the guy plays the lead on Mad Men. Hang on a sec’. He left something for you.’

  B.J. crossed the room and disappeared down a hall.

  The three people on the floor were now fondling each other, seemingly enraptured by the erotic images on the wall.

  B.J. crossed through the stream of light carrying a Manila envelope. She handed it to Mace.

  He took it and started to go.

  ‘Hold on,’ B.J. said, all business now. ‘Fifty bucks.’

  Mace fumbled out his wallet, peeled off two twenties and a ten and made his exit.

  ‘If you do get lonely, you know where to find me,’ B.J. said, before she closed the door.

  He was halfway to the Florian before he realized the blonde had used his name. He hadn’t mentioned it to Symon.

  EIGHTEEN

  Mace was surprised that Paulie had actually done something right; the leased Camry was parked where it belonged in the Florian lot. He drove past it and put Wylie’s vehicle into its allocated space.

  With a white bag in hand and the envelope with Angela Lowell’s photos under his arm, he walked to her yellow Mustang. Its hood was cool to the touch. The tracking device was still attached to the rear of the license plate. He next went to the Camry, got in and pressed the button. It started right up.

  Everything was as it should be. Would wonders never cease?

  He got out of the car with bag and envelope and locked the Camry, then headed to the stairwell and up to the apartment.

  The room was in darkness. In the moonglow, he saw Wylie, slumped over the table near the window. Asleep. He smelled of booze.

  Across the way, a light was on in Angela Lowell’s bedroom.

  Mace switched on their ceiling light. He stood near the table watching Wylie wake up by degrees. First came the frown. Then a clearing of the throat. Squinting, followed by a full scowl.

  Wylie sat up, yawned and said, finally, ‘Shit. I was asleep.’

  You live asleep, Mace thought but refrained from saying it. Instead, he put the bag on the table in front of Wylie. ‘Dinner,’ he said.

  Wylie removed the bag’s contents, three quarter-pounder cheeseburgers and a waxed cardboard drink container. He pointed at the drink. ‘I hope that’s a Coke. I fuckin’ hate Pepsi.’

  ‘Milkshake.’

  ‘No shit? For me? That’s fuckin’ def, Mace. I love ’shakes.’r />
  Mace sat across from him. He slid the photos out of the envelope and spread them on the table. He reached over them, grabbed one of the three burgers, unwrapped it and begin eating it while studying the eight-by-ten glossies of Angela Lowell getting into her car and driving away from the Florian lot.

  ‘Where’d you get those?’ Wylie asked.

  ‘Guy with a camera.’

  ‘Duh. I didn’t think they came with the burgers. What guy?’

  ‘You been asleep long?’ Mace asked.

  Wylie had been sucking the viscous drink through a straw. The question threw him and he swallowed too fast. He squinted his eyes and groaned. ‘Brain freeze,’ he said, pushing the heel of his hand against his forehead. ‘Man, that was intense. How long was I . . . ? Half-hour, tops. Look, I been sittin’ in this fuckin’ room all fuckin’—’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Mace said. ‘It was a question, not a criticism.’

  ‘Oh. About thirty minutes. Nothin’ was going on over there. No cops. Nothin’.’ Wylie went back to his shake. He sucked, grinned. ‘Micky D makes a badass fucking ’shake, dude. Truth.’

  Mace stacked the photos, put them back in the envelope and looked out of the window at the light in the Lowell apartment. He wondered why the cops hadn’t visited her. He supposed they could have without Wylie noticing.

  He assumed that the media was busily parsing details on the murders. There was a TV resting on top of a chest of drawers, but they hadn’t turned it on yet and he didn’t want to establish a precedence that could wind up with Wylie watching Sponge Bob Squarepants while Angela Lowell went into the wind. For a minute, he considered asking Wylie to light up his laptop. But only for a minute. He could wait for the morning paper to tell him what he needed to know, assuming the paper still had crime reporters.

  He shrugged, picked up what was left of his burger and polished it off. He stood, yawned. ‘OK with you I turn the light off and get some sleep?’ he said. ‘She’s probably in for the night.’

  ‘Crash,’ Wylie said. ‘I’m awake now. Good for a couple hours at least. I, ah, appreciate the ’shake and the QPs.’

  Mace turned out the overhead. He walked across the dark room to his bed, sat down and began to undress. He watched Wylie put his music earplugs in place, take a suck of milkshake and peel the wrapper from the second burger. He wondered just how much Wylie knew about the limo chauffeur. He also wondered if he’d have to seriously hurt the kid to find out.

  Ah, well, he’d worry about that tomorrow.

  NINETEEN

  The Killer Cafe was located a block west of the Coffee Empourium on Sunset. In the days when Mace had been a local resident its name had been The Edible Egg and its fame had been the result of a twenty-four-hour breakfast menu. The pale off-white interior still resembled the Egg’s, Mace saw, as he moved past the morning diners.

  The main change was the choice of framed photographs that adorned the Killer Café’s walls. The Egg’s publicity shots of celebrities enjoying the most important meal of the day had been replaced by stark black and white photos of famous murderers of recent vintage: David Berkowiz, the Son of Sam; Ted Bundy; John Wayne Gacy; Dennis Rader, the serial strangler known as BTK; Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as The Green River Killer.

  Several were tagged by Day-Glo yellow stickers marked ‘Local Slayers’. Mace recognized the now-infamous record producer Phil Spector. The Menendez Brothers. Juan Corona. Richard Ramierez, the Night Stalker. Sirhan Sirhan. Charles Manson, of course. And, yes, the ever-popular O.J. Simpson, though, as his sticker noted, ‘he beat the law.’ At least on the big one.

  These sinister visages, many of them grinning as if they believed that sooner or later they’d be back walking the streets, did not seem to affect the appetites of the morning diners any more than the cholesterol count of the industrial-sized omelets they were consuming. Nor did the current hot topic of conversation: the media-tagged ‘Point Dume bloodbath’.

  Mace moved past the carbo-pounders to a side exit leading to an outdoor patio behind the main building. It had once been the Egg’s busiest spot, but the bravery that allowed The Killer Cafe’s patrons to ignore the mug shots of murderers evidently did not extend to a more mundane threat like skin cancer. Most of the tables were unoccupied, even those under the protective cover of faded red umbrellas.

  Only one patron seemed to be not only tolerating the rays of the late-morning sun but embracing them. Honest Abe sat next to an umbrella-less table on which rested a half-full cup of black coffee, a neatly folded napkin and a plate, fork and knife, smeared with the remains of egg yolk. He was dressed in khaki cut-offs and a vivid red and orange colored Hawaiian shirt. He was leaning back in his chair, wearing little plastic eye protectors with an aluminum sun reflector tucked under his chin.

  Mace pulled back a chair from the table and sat.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Abe asked, responding to the scrape of the chair. ‘Sylvia?’

  ‘Morning, Abe,’ Mace said.

  Startled, Abe jerked upright, the reflector sliding down on to his lap. He removed the eye protectors and squinted at Mace. He seemed discomforted.

  ‘Uh, Mace . . .’

  ‘They told me at your place where to find you. I’m surprised. I thought you liked it cold.’

  ‘I do. It’s just kinda hard to get a tan in the cold. And they still do a bang-up breakfast here.’

  ‘You ought to be more careful. Somebody could have walked right up and –’ Mace made a gun with his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at Abe – ‘Bingo! You’d be playing Lincoln for real.’

  ‘That’d be carrying an impersonation a mite too far,’ Abe said with a nervous giggle. ‘Why would anybody—’

  ‘You told Paulie Lacotta I’d been in to see you.’

  Abe seemed surprised and maybe even relieved. Momentarily. He lowered his eyes in a show of embarrassment. ‘I . . . kinda had to, Mace. I got my debts, you know. I’m sorry. It wasn’t personal. You understand that, right?’

  Mace didn’t bother to reply. He took a folded glossy photo of Angela from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up in front of Abe.

  ‘Tell me about her,’ he said.

  ‘Why are you—’

  ‘Look at the goddamned picture, Abe.’

  Abe gave the photo a quick scan and said, ‘Never seen the lady before.’

  Mace rose suddenly, his chair tipping over behind him. He grabbed the front of Abe’s hula shirt and dragged him up from his chair. Then, aware of the silence, the sudden stillness in the air, he looked around the patio and saw that the few diners were staring at him. He was getting a lot of that lately. He managed to contain his anger enough to let go of the shirt.

  Abe fell back on to his chair, blinking nervously.

  Mace folded the glossy and slid it into his pocket. Then he leaned in on the lanky man, grabbing the armrests of Abe’s chair. ‘You tell me what you know about this woman, or I beat the crap out of you right here in front of these citizens.’

  Abe licked his lips. He wasn’t anxious to call Mace’s bluff. ‘It’s the dame you mentioned before, Angela Lowell,’ he said. ‘She’s come into my place once or twice.’

  ‘With . . . ?’ Mace asked. He moved back out of Abe’s personal space.

  ‘Lacotta,’ Abe said. ‘Didn’t look like anything hot and heavy. You know Lacotta. His taste runs to, ah, earth mamas with big tatas. You must remember that from the old days?’

  Mace did. But tastes changed.

  He righted his chair and sat down again. ‘Who else does she hang with, Abe?’

  ‘You’re tapping the wrong source,’ Abe said, as if he meant it. ‘Power on my computer, you will not even find the lady’s name. I’ve seen her. I remember her because it’s my business to remember pretty women. But that’s it.’

  Mace gave him the hard eye.

  ‘Swear to God. Either she’s what we used to call a square, a straight, or she’s got the discretion thing down cold.’

  ‘No connection t
o Tiny Daniels?’

  ‘Jeeze, Mace,’ Abe lowered his voice, looking around the sun deck to see if anyone had an ear out. ‘You don’t want to be dropping that name today above a whisper.’

  ‘Why not? Everybody else in town is talking about the murders. We’ll get to them in a minute.’ Mace noted Abe’s wince. ‘Right now, I want you to tell me about Angela Lowell and Tiny.’

  ‘Tiny was never into the ladies, figuratively or literally,’ Abe said in a rough whisper. ‘But he liked to be seen with pretty woman. I suppose I may have spotted a picture of them in Los Angeles magazine or one of those Beverly Hills back-pat journals, at a gallery opening or charity soirée. Tiny played that part, you know. Businessman contributor to good causes and culture. He was a big art collector. The paper this morning said there might have been twenty million dollars’ worth of paint hanging on the walls of the murder house.’

  Mace frowned, struck by a thought he should have had earlier. ‘Who gets it?’ he asked.

  ‘Say again?’

  ‘Who gets the art? All of Tiny’s estate?’

  ‘The paper didn’t say,’ Abe replied. ‘Not me, surely. You’re thinking Angela?’

  ‘No,’ Mace said, but he wasn’t sure that was the truth. ‘What’ve you heard about the murders?’

  ‘Not even rumors. Still too soon. By afternoon, everybody will have a theory. Even Charlie Manson will offer his thoughts.’

  ‘Are you familiar with an old-school Brit named Thomas who carries a gun and knows how to use it.’

  Abe’s face showed nothing. ‘Not on my playlist. Is he the one –’ Abe lowered his voice until Mace could barely hear him – ‘took out Tiny and the others?’

  ‘How would I know that?’ Mace asked, annoyed.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Abe said. ‘I didn’t realize we’d changed the subject.’

  ‘I had a run-in with Thomas and his brother Timmie, a big boy who looks like Elvis and acts and talks like he’s in kindergarten. They were in a mustard-colored limo with a black driver named Sweets.’

  Abe grinned. ‘Not exactly sneaking around, are they? I can say without equivocation I have neither seen nor heard of such apparitions. What sort of run-in did you have?’