by Dick Lochte
‘Did you happen to mention to Tiny how you’d be transferring the formula?’ Mace asked.
‘Do I look like I’m simple?’ Corrigan said.
‘You have him killed?’
‘Not me, brother. I don’t kill US citizens. Even ex-cons.’ He grinned. ‘Speaking of ex-cons, what about you, Mason?’
‘I didn’t kill him,’ Mace said.
‘I guess we’re just a couple of guys who didn’t kill a fat man,’ Corrigan said. ‘Too bad, because I figure whoever killed him has the coin. And if you don’t have the coin, then what the fuck are you doing here?’
‘If I’d come to sell a coin engraved with a nearly priceless formula to the host I don’t think I’d have had to crash the party,’ Mace said.
‘Then why are you here?’
Mace wondered if he might have given Corrigan too much credit for corruption. Maybe he wasn’t a master criminal, just another hustler trying to hold a deal together. That’s why he was huddling with Monte and Enrico Acosta. To lay the ground rules for a business arrangement that was missing a key part.
‘I asked you a question, champ,’ Corrigan said.
‘I came to see a lady,’ Mace said. Half-truths were always better than lies.
‘Don’t yank my chain, Mason.’
‘Some women are worth risking your life for,’ Mace said.
‘Uh, I did see him cozying with the Lowell broad, Cap,’ Drier said.
Corrigan frowned. He stared at Mace, thinking it over. Then he leaned in closer and said, ‘I kinda go for that ice-queen type myself. But, she just fingered you.’
‘Little lover’s spat. A misunderstanding,’ Mace said.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ Corrigan said, ‘don’t tell me we’ve wasted all this time and tension just because you’ve got a woodie for Jerry’s piece of ass.’
Mace swung at his head. The stocky man was faster than he’d suspected and the blow only brushed an ear. But Mace’s other fist connected with Corrigan’s gut, sending him back into Drier.
Drier was a pro. He sidestepped, keeping his gun on Mace while his boss hit the carpet with a thud. ‘God Dammit,’ Corrigan yelled, wheezing and gasping for breath.
‘Sorry, Cap,’ Drier said, his hand steady.
Mace, breathing hard, pretended to be having a difficult time getting himself under control. ‘You don’t talk about her like that,’ he said to Corrigan.
‘Awww shit,’ Corrigan said, grunting as he pushed himself off the floor. ‘I’m too fucking old for this kind of crap. Getting drawn into some asshole’s dream of romance.’
‘What do you want me to do with him, Cap?’ Drier asked.
‘Christ, I don’t care. Feed him to Monte’s dogs.’
Drier gave him a patient look and kept his gun trained on Mace.
‘Let him go,’ Corrigan said. ‘A low-rent Lochinvar. I got no use for him.’
Drier returned his gun to its holster, but he wasn’t happy about it.
Mace didn’t wait for Corrigan to change his mind. He headed toward the door.
It opened before he got there.
Jerry Monte entered, followed by two security guards and the muscled Rufe, looking angry as a tiger in his striped pajamas. ‘You finished with Mason?’ Monte said to Corrigan.
‘Had your ear to the door, Jerry?’ Corrigan asked. When Monte replied with only a bored look, he added, ‘He’s all yours. We’re out of here.’
Monte said to the security guards, ‘Will you escort Mr Corrigan and Mr Drier to their car?’
Corrigan frowned and seemed about to respond. Instead, he shook his head and left the room, hand pressed against his abdomen where Mace had punched him. Drier paused at the door and, grinning, asked Monte, ‘Sure you and tiger man can handle him?’
‘We’ll chance it,’ Monte replied.
As soon as the guards led the two men out of earshot, he added, ‘Fucking losers.’
He turned his attention to Mace. ‘So what do I do with you, Mason?’
Mace assumed that Monte had overheard the reason he’d given for crashing the party and that he now was dealing with a jealous lover. ‘Wish me well?’ he said.
Monte smiled. ‘I’m inclined to go the opposite. Unless you change my mind.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Where are you carrying your valuables?’ the pop star asked.
Puzzled, Mace raised the right pajama pants leg, exposing the bulge under his sock.
‘See what he’s got for us, Rufe.’
The black man bent down and removed Mace’s wallet and the device that started the Camry. He handed them to Monte, who opened the wallet and ran a finger around its various compartments. He handed the two items back to Mace.
‘I didn’t really expect you to be carrying the coin,’ Monte said. ‘How much do you want for it?’
‘Like I told Corrigan, I don’t have it.’
‘He believed you, like the asshole he is,’ Monte said. ‘You either have the coin or you know where it is.’
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Because you’re here, dude.’
‘You know why I’m here,’ Mace said.
Monte smiled. ‘I heard what you told the gray man. Angie’s top-drawer material, but, if that’s what rocks your boat, you’d be better off hopping the wall at Hefner’s. So stop fucking around. Name your price.’
‘I don’t have the coin. I don’t give a shit about the coin.’
Monte moved closer until he was barely a foot away from Mace. He stared into his eyes, as if he were looking for something that puzzled him. Finally, he stepped back and began to sing. ‘Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?’
Mace understood the questions did not require answers, even Karaoke-style. He also understood that the man who sang them was clearly shy a few keys on his piano. He looked at Rufe, who was staring at the floor, trying to keep what he was thinking off his face.
‘The melody work for you?’ Monte asked. ‘The words are brilliant, of course, but I’m not sure about the melody.’
‘I’d have to hear more,’ Mace said.
Monte’s face broke into a wide smile. ‘Straight talk. You listening, Rufe? That’s what I’ve been telling you. When I ask for an opinion, that’s what I want. Not a kiss on the ass.’
Rufe nodded, then glared at Mace.
‘You leveling about not having the coin, Mason? It’s worth a lot to me. I might even be willing to add a certain beautiful blonde to the deal, if that’s what it takes.’
Most of Mace’s anger at Corrigan’s demeaning of Angela had been manufactured, but this was different. He felt the fury building inside him and knew it could erupt into something beyond his control. Before that happened, he said, ‘It’s impossible to make a deal for something I don’t own.’
‘OK. You say you don’t have the coin, I’ve gotta believe you, because you strike me as a guy traveling the straight-talk express. So, here’s some straight talk from me to you. For a reasonably smart guy, Mason, you evidently don’t know the first thing about bitches. Put ’em up on a pedestal, they’ll piss on you every time. They don’t want you to do stuff for ’em, they want you to do stuff to ’em. That’s a lesson in love from the new King of Pop.’
‘Thanks for the lesson,’ Mace said. ‘I’d better be going.’
‘We’re not quite finished,’ Monte said.
Mace stared at him.
‘You busted up an employee of mine at the drug store. You crashed my party and you tried to make time with my main bitch. I’m not gonna let you just stroll out of here. Now I’m going back to my party and Rufe’s gonna let loose on you a little. Nothing hardcore. A broken jaw tops. You hear me, Rufe?’
Rufe nodded.
‘Just to clarify,’ Mace said, ‘you don’t want Rufe to kill me, right?’
‘Not this time,’ Monte said with a chuckle and made his exit.
When the door closed, Rufe smiled and took a step toward Mace. He had t
he advantage of two inches and maybe forty pounds. And, judging by the way he moved, he’d spent some time in a ring.
He was expecting Mace to do something. At the very least to assume a fighting position. Mace merely stood there, staring at the bigger man.
‘Take a good look at me, Rufe,’ Mace said. ‘What do you see?’
‘A guy gonna get his jawbone broke.’
‘Maybe. But that won’t be the end of it.’
Rufe paused. ‘What you sayin’?’
‘Your boss wants me alive.’
‘So?’ Rufe was frowning, confused now.
‘You take the first swing and it’ll come down to this: you kill me or I kill you. Either way you lose.’
‘Fuck you. You messing with me.’
‘Look at me, Rufe. Do I strike you as a guy who gives a shit whether he lives or dies? Lay a hand on me and I will kill you unless you kill me first.’
‘Bullshit. Ah’m gonna break yo’ jaw, then toss you out.’
‘Either kill me or I kill you.’
Rufe stared at him, a big man looking foolish in his tiger pajamas. But not foolish enough to doubt what Mace had just said.
‘You a crazy muthafucka. That fo’ sure.’
‘Kill me or I kill you.’
‘Go on, get the fuck out of here, then,’ he said. ‘And don’t let Mr Monte see you go.’
Mace was willing to let him have the last word.
THIRTY-FOUR
Familiar now with the ways of the castle, Mace used the tunnel to return to the lagoon area in search of his clothes. The party was winding down, but it wasn’t over. In the cabana, he found a naked couple sleeping on the cushions that were hiding his pants and shirt. He rolled them off on to the grass carpet and ignored their angry exit while he exchanged the powder-blue nightwear for his original outfit.
Walking to the castle at a leisurely pace, he observed maybe fifty stragglers in various stages of inebriation. Some were wired and angry, some lost in that near-unconscious state of chemical bliss. He was searching for Angela, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find her.
In the castle, the sleepwalking band had departed to dreamland or points west, but the main rooms were still well populated by night owls using up the remains of Monte’s hospitality. At that time of morning, it consisted of booze and platters of brownies and other pastries that rested on tables beside silver pots of hot black coffee, demitasse cups and trays of manually rolled cigarettes, rainbow-colored ecstasy pills and larger, pure white OxyContin pellets.
Some guests necked, some fondled, some used straws on lines of cocaine that were being quickly added to and replaced by a razor blade in the expert hand of a bored, pale young woman in an old-fashioned maid’s outfit who occasionally applied a little-finger’s worth to her own gums. Some of the faces were celebrated enough for Mace to recognize, though he would have been hard-pressed to come up with names.
The face he was looking for was not there.
Simon Symon entered the room, camera poised. When his eyes met Mace’s he lost his smile and scurried away. Running to Monte, of course. Mace took that as the final reason for him to depart.
Just before he made it to the front door, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find his host standing at his side.
‘How fucking rude, Mason,’ Monte said, ‘leaving without saying goodbye.’
Symon was hovering nearby with several security guards. Mace didn’t care anymore. Nor did he care about Monte. He was experiencing an odd, totally unfamiliar sensation and was rather amazed to realize what it was. He felt invincible.
‘You throw a pretty good party,’ he said to Monte. ‘For a supernerd dickhead.’
Before the new king of pop could reply, Mace turned and walked to the front door. He opened it and left.
No one tried to stop him. He’d have been surprised if they had.
THIRTY-FIVE
He walked past the security gate and headed down Cabrillo Canyon Road without thinking much about how he was going to get to his rental, parked near the Honeymoon Drugs. He could jack one of the guests’ cars. Or he could walk. Hell, the way he felt, maybe he’d fly. He wondered if there was such a thing as a second-hand cocaine high.
When he saw the yellow Mustang double parked down the road he was not at all surprised. It seemed inevitable Angela would be there, waiting for him.
‘You certainly took your time leaving,’ she said when he slid on to the bucket seat beside her. She was about to say something else, but he didn’t give her the chance, just drew her to him and kissed her. Made as much contact between their bodies as the car’s gearshift would allow.
He was on an unbeatable lucky streak.
At any other time, he might think about heading for Vegas. At the moment, his feeling of elation was pushing him in another direction.
Angela made a moaning sound when he stopped the kiss. He was as erect as a stallion and the moan almost pushed him over the edge.
‘God,’ she said. ‘My God.’
‘Drive us away from here,’ he said and she started up the engine and did just that.
‘My apartment?’ she asked.
He was not so far gone that he forgot the men in the van he’d seen heading into the Florian. He didn’t want to be the subject of a hidden audio or video transmission. ‘Make it a hotel, the bigger the better.’
She maneuvered the Mustang around a Parkette who was returning a shiny Ferrari to a departing guest. ‘Why not a nice little intimate motel?’ she said.
‘The clerks in those places are too nosey.’
‘Don’t let paranoia blow the mood,’ she said. ‘I vote for intimate.’
She headed the car west to the ocean. At the Coast Highway, she turned north, then abruptly pulled over to the side of the road. ‘I want the top down,’ she said. ‘You mind?’
He helped her unhook the frame.
There was hardly any traffic as they sped down the highway, waves breaking and rolling into the sand on their left. Feeling the cool wind in his hair, Mace leaned back against the headrest and watched the lights of a plane that seemed to be dodging stars as it headed for LAX. ‘We always had convert–ibles,’ he said. ‘My dad loved ’em, no matter how impractical they were.’
‘Where was that?’
‘On a planet far, far away,’ he said.
When Angela turned into their destination, he was dismayed. Wally’s Surf’s Up Motel was exactly the kind of establishment he wanted to avoid, a collection of small, funky-looking ramshackle cabins circling a royal blue, neon detailed manager’s shack.
‘This place is an institution,’ Angela said eagerly, oblivious to his reaction.
‘Come here often?’ he asked.
‘Not since I was in my teens,’ she said. ‘Wally’s used to be the hangout for weekend surfer dudes, which my first boyfriend was, no big surprise. It was the kind of place where you could do anything you wanted as long as it didn’t close down the beach.’
‘Maybe it’s changed.’
‘Oh, I hope not,’ she said. ‘I’ve driven by a hundred times or more since those days and it’s always looked the same.’
He assumed some of those drive-bys had been on her way to and from Tiny Daniels’ beach house which was only five or six miles away. He said, ‘Sit here while I wake the manager.’
‘Get cabin seven if you can,’ she said.
The yawning man who unlocked the office door in answer to the night bell had the wrinkled face of a seventy year old and the body of a forty year old. He was wearing striped boxer shorts and a rumpled flannel shirt, unbuttoned, the better to display a deep-tanned, reasonably flat stomach and a washboard chest decorated with several strands of long white hair. More there than could be found on his sun-spotted scalp.
Mace followed him into a small office space decorated with surfboard wall hangings and framed photos of healthy-looking young men and women engaged in the sport. A deep-sea mask and fins rested on the floor near a clerk’s counte
r housing an ancient cash register.
The motel manager mumbled something.
‘Say what?’ Mace asked.
The manager didn’t reply. Instead, he moved past a raised panel attached to the clerk’s counter. He lowered the panel and continued on into a room directly behind the counter space. He reappeared a moment later and said, clearly, ‘Had to put in my choppers.’
He did a show and tell, displaying a set of teeth that were all impossibly white save for one in front bearing the stars and stripes of the American flag. ‘Ever read Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test?’ he asked. ‘No? Too bad. Brilliant piece of reportage that sums up the whole fucking sixties. Anyway, Kesey, the writer Ken Kesey, meets up with this guy operating a gas pump who has an American-flag tooth. I read that and told myself, “I got to get one of those.”’
‘Looks like your dentist did a good job,’ Mace said. ‘We—’
‘Dentist? Hell. I did this myself. Years ago. Epoxy. No problema. You need a cabin, right?’
‘Right,’ Mace said.
The transaction didn’t take much longer. The old guy was the owner as well as the motel manager, a second generation Wally. He was happy for the business, he told Mace. Surf was up at the Wedge at Newport Beach, which meant they literally had their choice of cabins. Number seven? No problema.
It was a bare bones cabin facing the ocean, smelling of disinfectant, brine and, thanks to a garden just below the window, night-blooming jasmine. Angela took a deep breath and threw her arms around Mace. ‘You got my cabin and it’s exactly the same, down to the jasmine perfume I remembered.’
‘Glad you’re happy,’ he said and led her to the bed.
‘They call jasmine the queen of the night,’ she said as she helped him unsnap her shiny halter.
‘Not with you around,’ he said and kissed her.
There were any number of reasons why making love to her was a terrible idea, but none of them mattered.
