The guy thought about it, said, “Steel Investigations.” He thought that was pretty funny, laughed, “Tell old Ben that Pat Nolan sent you.”
I went through an unmarked door next to the strip joint, walked up some stairs. The door at the top of the stairs said STEEL INVESTIGATIONS, listed the names Ben Steel and Jerry Harper. I went ahead and opened the door. A fat guy in his mid-forties was stuffed into the chair nearest the window of a one-room office. His feet were propped on the corner of the desk. His feet were huge. One size bigger, he’d have to lace up a pair of suitcases. A brass plate said his name was Ben Steel. His head was tilted way back over the edge of his chair, his eyes were closed, and he was snoring.
I cleared my throat.
The man snorted, shook his head around, said, “You can leave it on the desk here. You’ll find twelve bucks on the file cabinet.”
I said, “What?”
He cocked open the eye nearest me, sniffed around like he was missing something, said, “What’s the matter, you so new at this you leave it down in the truck?”
“Leave what?”
He said, “My mistake, thought you were somebody else.”
It took a moment to gather momentum, but with concerted shoving and pulling he hauled his bulk into an upright position. He rubbed at his jowls, smacked his lips, forced his eyes to focus long enough to take me in.
“And what may I do for you, young lady?”
“Pat Nolan said I should come see you.”
His eyebrows collided for a worried moment. He said, “Those big agencies, they don’t always got time for the small project, always looking to make the big buck, but me, I have a more intimate operation, no job too big or small. That’s what you got, something small, like looking for a lost cat?”
“Not a cat at all, a job is what I’m looking for.”
He hoisted his legs back onto the corner of the desk, said, “Shoulda known. That Nolan is a son-of-a-bitch.”
I said, “I’m a hard worker and easy to get along with and I learn fast and take direction well and I really want this job.”
He held his hand up, said, “You got the needle on my bullshit detector pinned to the red.”
I protested it was true, I really did want this job, no bullshit about it.
“Got any experience, any special skills?”
That threw me a moment because I didn’t know what he meant.
“You mean, can I do karate, shoot a gun, that sort of thing?”
He yawned, closed his eyes, said, “Interview’s over. Sorry, but I ain’t hiring.”
“I know cameras and film stocks better’n almost anybody, I can take a picture of anything at any distance, I could be sitting in a car across the street from your house and get a picture of the mold at the back of your refrigerator.”
He opened his eyes, asked, “You got your own equipment?”
I set my camera bag on his desk and zipped it open, listed the stuff I had with me, which wasn’t much, just the Nikon, three fixed lenses, a 50-150 zoom, flash equipment, and assorted filters, batteries, cleaning stuff, and film stocks. Ben’s jowls lifted an inch and a half from their nest on his chest. He peered a moment inside my bag, said, “Get me a cup of coffee, would ya?”
Someone knocked on the door, came into the office behind me. Gawky young kid, carrying a pizza in one of those warming bags. Ben said, “You can leave it on the desk here. You’ll find twelve bucks on the file cabinet.”
The kid dropped off the pizza, picked up the cash like he knew his way around. I found a Mr. Coffee in the corner. The stuff in the pot had boiled down to liquid tar. I poured it into a stained brown cup with bold print that read “World’s Greatest Lover.” Ben fished a nonfiltered Lucky out of the pack from his shirt front, lit it with a silver Zippo from his pants pocket, stared at me for half a minute.
“Why you interested in this kind of work?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but he waved his cigarette to stop me. “I know, I know, the excitement, the danger, the romance. Well, bullshit. It’s about as exciting as watching dust settle on a windowsill, nobody’s tried to hit me in twenty years, and I’m afraid to remember the last time I got laid without paying for it.”
He watched the smoke curl off the end of his cigarette, sucked on the butt and blew a gray gust toward the ceiling. “I used to be in shape, but all I do is sit around on my butt, and all my butt does is keep getting fatter, on account of I need the padding, you see?”
Ben lifted the coffee cup, grabbed one of the dozen rolls on his stomach and shook it. “All the fat on my butt, it gets lonely, so my belly, it says, ’Hey, can’t have a poor fat lonely butt, that ain’t right,’ and grows enough fat to match my butt.”
I lied, told him, “You don’t look that far out of shape.”
“You remember that guy did nothing but eat in his room until one day he had to go outside to see his doctor, couldn’t fit through the door he was so big? That’s me in five years, guaranteed. You want an exciting job, this ain’t it. You want a fat butt, this is the job for you.”
I said, “Sign me up, the fatter the better, just please give me a job.”
Ben drained the coffee from his cup, dropped the ash from his cigarette into the grounds, thought out loud. “Maybe I can find something, maybe I can’t. You know anything about surveillance work?”
I said, “That’s where you watch things, right?”
He looked at me like maybe I was kidding him. When he realized I wasn’t, he sighed, “You’re right, that’s where you watch things. Drop by day after tomorrow, about nine, I’ll know better if I can use you.”
He opened the box, gave the pizza a sniff.
I said, “I have a question.”
“Ask.”
“Say you have this key, you found it like on the street or something, and you need to find out what the key goes to, how would you do it?”
“Ordinary key, or is it numbered?”
“Ordinary key.”
“If it was a client situation, first thing I’d do is get the key fingerprinted to try and trace the original owner, then I’d take it down to the lab and get a microscopic analysis of the metal filings to see what kind of door it fit, then I’d have posters put up all over town showing the key and asking if anybody recognized it, and then I’d draw up a bill for a couple thousand dollars and present it to the client saying, ‘God just wasn’t with us this time.’”
“What if it wasn’t a client situation?”
“Throw the key in the trash.”
“But what if you die if you don’t find out?”
Ben said, “Then you die.”
10
Billy b was sitting on the floor in front of a blank canvas when I got in. He looked beat. Two paintings stood slashed to ribbons by his workbench. Cigar butts piled out of the ashtray. I walked up to him. The air was thick with paint and cigar smoke. He didn’t see me standing there. I thought he was just concentrated, but then I noticed it was a kind of glazed look he had.
I said, “Hey.”
He didn’t answer. He stared at the canvas. His eyes were bloodshot. I went over to the slashed canvases. The paint on one was still wet. I glanced back at Billy b. He watched me like he couldn’t figure what I was doing there.
I said, “You miss me?”
Dumb thing to say.
“Were you gone or something?”
“Yeah, I was gone.”
“How long?”
“Just a day.”
“Didn’t notice.”
“I’ll pin a note to your forehead next time.”
I went to the refrigerator for a couple beers, sat down next to him. His skin had an unhealthy gray look. The air in the studio wasn’t too good. He was the kind of guy got naturally obsessive about things, I guess he hadn’t moved much from his work since I left. I popped the cap for him, told him to drink up. He emptied half the beer down his throat, went back to staring at the canvas. Then he threw the bottle. The bottle struck the can
vas and broke against the brick wall behind.
“Problems?” I asked.
“Who really gives a shit about Kim Basinger, Mickey Rourke, Sharon Stone? They’re old. The whole fucking subject is old. Warhol was painting Elvis thirty years ago.”
Cass carried a bag and video camera into the studio, sat next to me and Billy b. She held the video camera in her lap, turned it on, put the viewfinder to her eye.
I said, “What’s wrong with him?”
“He thinks he’s washed up.”
“I thought you had a gallery, already sold your paintings.”
Billy b looked at me like I didn’t get it. “Doesn’t matter. Being written about, getting collected by museums, that matters.”
Cass said, “L.A. County Museum of Art passed on his paintings this morning.”
“I’m a has-been that never was,” Billy b said.
Cass turned the camera on me, said, “You didn’t come home last night.”
“Didn’t think anybody noticed.”
“Where were you?”
“Out driving.”
“Going somewhere specific?”
“The desert. That’s what I do sometimes, get in my car and drive.”
“I thought you were trying to escape.”
“Escape? From what?”
Cass reached into her bag, tossed me yesterday’s L.A. Times. My high school graduation picture was on the front page. She asked, “Could you explain the resemblance between you and the person in this picture?”
“Funny you should say. Looks like me, doesn’t she?”
Billy b grabbed the newspaper, looked at it.
He said, “Not really. Maybe around the mouth a little.”
“We get that from Granny Faye. All the kids got her mouth.”
The lens made a grinding noise as it zoomed in, tightening the frame around my face.
Cass said, “You want us to believe this is your sister?”
“Cousin, on my mom’s side. Weird girl. Straight as an arrow her whole life, then one day she just snaps.”
Billy b said, “The eyes too, they look like you.”
The lens dropped away from my face. I took a deep breath, thought maybe I’d got away with it.
Cass asked, “Why is the hair on your arms blond?”
“Lots of people have lighter hair on their arms.”
Billy b stared at the photo, then me.
“You’re saying Nina is this girl in the photo?”
Cass panned the camera to Billy b.
“You slept with her. What color is her pubic hair?”
He said, “No way. No way do I believe it.”
“She’s as blond as you are, isn’t she?”
I got up, walked away. Cass yelled at me to wait. I didn’t. I walked into my room, collected my things. I didn’t have much, just the black case. What the hell was I going to do with that?
Cass stood at the door, asked, “How did you feel when you heard you’d killed a man?”
I stared at the camera, horrified she’d ask such a thing, said, “Just give me an hour before you call the police, is all I ask.”
“Who said anything about calling the police?”
“Aren’t you going to?”
“I’d rather make films than talk to cops.”
“But you’ll go to jail. Harboring a fugitive, something like that.”
“Freedom of the press. It’s a free speech issue.”
I walked back into the studio. Billy b still stared at the news photo. I said, “It was an accident and don’t ask me how because I don’t know yet, but I was the one carried that bomb into the airport.”
He said, “You’re a terrorist. I’m fucking a fucking terrorist.”
“I’m leaving right now.”
“I could go to jail because you were here.”
“I didn’t want to involve you like this.”
“You realize, they find you here, it’s front page news. I won’t be able to go out for a cup of coffee without people pointing, knowing who I am. Every reporter in town will be knocking on my door, taking pictures, wanting interviews.”
Cass said, “A love affair between a young kitsch painter and one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, sounds like a great story to me, even Interview magazine would want to talk to you.”
“I could paint for a hundred years, never get another break like this.”
“You’d be famous.”
“More famous than Jeff Koons. More famous than anybody.”
I said, “I just have to get my case, then I’m gone, nobody will ever know I was here.”
Billy b said, “You don’t get it. I don’t want you to leave.”
“You don’t?”
“I want you to stay here, sleep with me every night until you get caught.”
“But what if I don’t get caught?”
“That’s just a risk I’ll have to take,” he said.
Next morning, Billy b said we had some business to do, drove the mini-truck across town to a block looked pretty much like the urban-industrial wasteland where we started. Street-stripped cars rusted in the sun. Bright scrawls of graffiti every place it was flat. We got out of the truck and pushed into a storefront that looked as broken down as the rest of the street. A chipped front desk stretched in front of a door leading somewhere out back. Billy b leaned on a buzzer. A young Chicano bustled up to the desk, led us through the back door into a warehouse-sized print shop I had no idea was there. Billy b said this was the shop did most of his printing work when he did posters and lithographs.
A guy waited for us in an office at the back. Billy b introduced him as Bob, the owner of the shop, a guy who looked just like his name, pretty much the same left to right as right to left. He and Billy b talked shop a few minutes, left me wondering why I was there, when Billy b said, “A friend of mine needs a new set of papers. Driver’s license, social security number.”
Bob said, “Your friend want something to cash checks and show bartenders, or does she need something that can stand up to vetting?”
“A cop runs her license, it should come up clean.”
“I have to buy the identity for that. Totally legit paper doesn’t come cheap.”
“What’s your out-of-pocket?”
“About five K.”
I squeaked, “No way I have that kind of money.”
Billy b said, “Tell you what. Stop by my studio in a couple of weeks and pick out something you like.”
Bob looked embarrassed, I thought it was because one of Billy b’s paintings wasn’t worth the money. But the reverse was true. Bob thought the paintings were worth more than the papers, it wasn’t a fair deal to Billy b. But Billy b insisted, said half the time his dealer didn’t pay him, so it wasn’t such a bad deal after all. I was stunned, asked myself what his generosity was all about. Sure, he could always hide paintings he wanted to save, show Bob only second-rate work, but still it was the most generous thing anybody had ever done for me outside of my mother giving me birth, and even that I think of as a mixed gift.
Bob said, “May as well get started. This your friend?”
“Someone looks exactly like her,” Billy b said.
Bob pulled a camera from his desk drawer, positioned me against a neutral blue background, triggered the flash. With new identification, maybe I could get away with it, maybe I could escape. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about getting arrested by the bartender next time I ordered a beer.
I asked, “Can I get a passport too?”
Billy b said, “What do you need a passport for?”
“Why do you think?”
Bob said, “This new paper should be so clean you can go to the post office and get your passport just like a regular citizen.”
Billy b looked worried hearing that, like maybe he was reconsidering things, didn’t want to set things up only to have me disappear on him. He said, “But it takes time to get a passport, doesn’t it?”
“About a month.”
“That should be fine,” Billy b said.
Out in the truck, I said, “I need to get something straight. Do you want me to get arrested or not?”
“What gave you the idea I wanted you to get arrested?”
“Last night, when you said it.”
“I didn’t mean right away. I meant later. It’s bound to happen, isn’t it?”
“If I stay in the country, sure it is.”
“If you don’t want me to help you out, just say so.”
I didn’t know if he was helping me out or setting me up, but I didn’t say that. I said, “It’s an awful lot of money, and I’m not going to be able to repay you, maybe ever.”
“If I thought about the money, I wouldn’t give anything away. I like you. I give paintings to people I like. But you don’t need a painting as much as a new identity, so I gave your painting to Bob, you understand?”
I said, “What do you mean, you like me?”
“Just that. You’re smart, sexy, and dangerous. Great combination in a woman.”
“And I’ll make you famous.”
He said, “That in particular is what makes you irresistible.”
11
I opened the door to Steel Investigations the next morning to a guy in his late twenties, all lean six feet of him dressed in denim, booted in Tony Lama lizard skin. He leaned against a file cabinet, gave me a sultry look. I looked back. He said, “It’s a little early for Halloween, you must be that girl Ben was talking about.”
I immediately hated him and at the same time wanted to kiss him. His mouth was beautiful, the lips almost feminine in red fullness. He had a long face with a strong jaw and dark, hunting eyes. It was an Elvis kind of face, a face cruel and sensual and vulnerable in a single glance.
I asked him where was Ben.
He said, “Ben likes to sleep, so I expect he’s in bed.”
“You mind if I wait until he shows?”
“Yeah, I mind. I’m supposed to get you trained today. Name’s Jerry Harper.”
“You mean I’ve got a job?”
“Temp surveillance gig. Pays you six bucks an hour under the table, keep your own time sheet. Don’t cheat me so much I gotta catch you.”
Shooting Elvis Page 8
