by Michael Lion
“Good.”
“But you’re still in some shit, smart guy. You know what I got sitting in the tank?”
I lit a smoke as the bartender drifted by with a fresh beer. “Yeah, an Asian with green eyes looks like he could play ball with Magic. He was one of my problems. He’s not anymore.”
“I know. We got him locked up nice and tight. So why don’t you come on down and visit for a while.”
“I’m not coming in, Caz. I’m fucking scared to death and so far that’s the good news. So just accept it.”
“Why not?” I heard her ease her bulk into a chair that squeaked for mercy.
“Jesus Christ, Caz, are you blind? You see the tatts on that guy?”
She was quiet.
“That’s what I thought. The fucking—”
“Guy is Triad, I know, I know.”
“So you can understand why I’m a little jittery. I got something that everybody seems to want, and the deal is that I don’t know exactly what it is. So I think maybe I’m going to find out, see if I’m holding as big a hand as everybody seems to think. And until that time, you won’t hear from me unless I want to be heard from.”
She gave it one last try. “Ahh, just come in, Bird. I know you’re scared, but this is me. I can protect you here. Jesus Christ, we’ll put you in jail if you want. It’s the safest place in the world.”
“Dream on. The safest place in the world for me right now is exactly where I’m sitting. I’m pissed and I’m tired and I’m scared, and I’m not coming out for anybody until I think it’s safe, I don’t care if the fucking Pope wants me, OK? So the answer to your eventual question is yes, I know who waxed that guy in the alley. And no, I’m not going to tell you who. If you want me, find me. Other than that, I think I’ve stepped beyond your ability to help me.”
“I thought you’d trust me.”
I crushed out the smoke and went, “I don’t trust anybody. C’mon, Caz. You know as well as I do what these people are about. A police station is as public a place as any, and if I surface now, I’ve got a real big hunch I’m six kinds of dead man. So no thanks. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay in the part of the game where I understand the rules. I appreciate the effort, honey, but I’ll check in after this all blows away. Bye.”
I hung up on her silence at the other end. I finished the beer, lit another cigarette, paid the tab, and called a taxi. Maybe Tanya just went back to ground zero.
I waited for the cab in the corner. When it pulled up outside I gave the bartender a fin and told him to go outside shaking his head like the fare had taken off, but tell the guy to pull around back. He looked at me sideways, pocketed the bill and walked outside. I slid out through the kitchen.
The car pulled around into the alley and I got in. The cabbie was a little tiny guy with hair in his ears who looked about as weak as a rolled steel bar. He pushed a porkpie hat back on his head and said, “What’s the deal, bud? Girl trouble?”
I wadded up a twenty and threw it over the front seat. “Hyatt Regency,” I said flatly. “Do you drive or talk?”
“Drive,” he said, and did.
It had started to mist slightly, not really raining, but there was a chill in the early evening air. I cracked a window to let the cigarette smoke drift out and nestled as far into the back seat as you can nestle in a cab. I cocked my head back and let the mild bouncing of the chassis work on my stiff neck. I tried to catch a little nap and had almost succeeded when we pulled into the Hyatt’s turnaround.
The lobby was clear but I rode up to the twenty-second floor and then walked down five flights to our room on the seventeenth. I went in slowly, for no reason. Tanya wasn’t there and hadn’t been. I dropped all my clothes in a pile outside the bathroom door, cracked the hot water knob and filled the tub, got in and closed my eyes. The steam cleared my sinuses and the water finished the job on my neck that the cab seat had started. I just let the water run and drain through the safety hole beneath the plug toggle.
I had achieved fully relaxed and was working on unconscious when I heard the key scratch in the lock. Tanya’s voice said tentatively, “Bird?” There was a mild lilt to it, like she was giving sweetness a trial go.
I didn’t say anything. I heard the door to the bathroom open and then she was over the tub with her arm around my head.
“Hey, Jesus,” I sputtered, “I’m naked here!”
She let go and said, “Relax. There’s nothing on you I haven’t seen somewhere else. A lot.” Then she glanced away long enough to say, “I’m glad you’re OK.” It looked like it took a lot out of her to say it.
I said, “Thanks. I’m glad you’re OK, too.”
She stood up slowly and cocked an eyebrow at me. I said, “Well, as long as we’ve been formally introduced, pull up a chair.” I motioned to the toilet. She propped herself there and pulled her knees up next to her chin, pulling the sundress over her them so that she looked like a little flowered bell. “What happened?”
“I should be asking you the same thing. What the fuck is Jay doing with these guys? They show up and look around like they’re going to kill somebody, so I did what you said.” She reached into a pocket and pulled out some smokes. Her hands were shaking.
“Fuck,” I said quietly, “that’s who it was. Ballesteros.”
“You saw him?”
“Yeah. Getting into a car outside. I was too far away to tell who it was.”
“Well, it was him. What’s he doing here?”
I thought about it for a long, silent minute, and then said, “He must be working for Cynthia. He must be a recruiter.” I started coughing. “Anybody follow you?” I asked after I’d recovered.
She had finally managed to get out two cigarettes and light them. She stretched across and handed me one, and said, “I don’t think so. I just split and rode around for a while, drove around some pretty lonely roads up in the hills. No one could’ve trailed me around up there. Did you find out anything?”
“Yeah. A lot of stuff, actually, but I’m not done figuring out what it means. Let me simmer awhile.” I noticed that her gaze was fixated on a spot in the tile about four inches over my head. “You’ve been thinking about her, too, huh?”
She shrugged. “Of course.”
“Any ideas?”
She got up and went in the bedroom. I could hear her fishing around inside something. She came back with the scrap of paper that had Li’s note on it. “This has been bugging the hell out of me.”
I looked at it even though I didn’t have to. Show the locket to Bird.
“What is it you’re supposed to know?” she said, trying not to demand.
“I swear to God, Tanya, I don’t know. The only thing she ever told me about her parents was that they owned the Islander Cafe over on Wilshire, but they lived somewhere else and the place was run by relatives. I’ve never seen or heard anything to disbelieve that.” The steam from the bath was making it hard to keep the cigarette lit, so I wetted the end and threw it into a dainty rose trashcan that had little seashells marching around its rim. “Besides, I don’t think that’s the angle we should be concentrating on.”
She did the same thing with her cigarette, then said, “You know, every time this mess leads to something that involves you, Bird, you deflect it. That fucking bothers me.”
I stared at her, hard, daring her to say it. She took the dare.
“I don’t very much like the idea of being cooped up in this place—nice as it is—with the guy everybody’s shooting at. For Christ’s sake, you had Li’s body under your bed. I’m in the line of fire by association. So, if you’re not going to answer some serious questions, at least come up with some new ones, and quit falling back on this ‘I don’t know’ bullshit.”
We were quiet. She had said her piece, and I honestly hoped she felt better. I put my head back and acted like I was considering all sorts of important things. I took the calm approach.
“I know that your preferred method of dealing with me is no
t to believe anything I say, and that’s cool. That way you’re safe. But I think the last couple of days should’ve shown you that I’m about as confused as you are. It might look like I know what’s going on, but believe me, I don’t. I’ve just been involved longer. I already told you how this thing started, but I admit I haven’t told you everything. And I probably won’t, so just deal with it. You and I are people with alliances we respect and won’t ever compromise. And I like that about you.” I stood up and grabbed a towel. Tanya watched me until I got uncomfortable.
I threw on some clothes from the bags and walked out on the little shelf they called a balcony. She followed me out, and we stood there trying futilely to size each other up.
I turned around and leaned against the little railing they have to keep people from pitching off into the night after a few tonics. “All right. Here’s what I think,” I said with sudden finality. “Those bad boys stuffed Li under my bed for two reasons. Mainly, I think it was a message to me, telling me to lay off. I was onto them, a lot more than I realized I was, and I kept feeding everything I knew to the cops because I didn’t want any part of it, and didn’t know any better. The possibility that whoever these guys are have a plant in the police department is something that’s been chewing at me for a while. Seems like every time I tell something to Caz, I meet up with goons somewhere. But that’s neither here nor there.”
I took a deep breath. “The second reason they put her there was to show me they were done fucking around. A single bullet to the head. No more cover up. No more making it look like something it wasn’t. They’d tried to handle the problem quickly and quietly, which didn’t work, and now it was time to up the ante, and sacrifice cleanliness for speed.”
“What problem?” she asked, lighting a fresh cigarette. Her tone insinuated that I knew and was hiding it.
“That’s just it. They’re looking for something. I don’t know what. That thug in the alley wanted the locket, but I can’t imagine what for. Li’s note seems to suggest that I should know, and I feel like I’ve let her down. I feel guilty that I can’t figure it out.”
Tanya pushed her chin into her palm and said, “Maybe it was something she knew, not something she had.”
“Like what? I mean, the girl was wearing a symbol around her neck that means a little more than your average charm. She could’ve been privy to just about anything.”
Tanya played with the hem of her dress and watched the floor. Then she said, “Whatever it is, it has to be something worth killing a lot of people for. And it has to be so far out that we can’t see it. I mean, we knew her.”
I nodded. “Or thought we did.”
“We know that she knew somebody was after her, way before you did. The letter proves that. Did she know exactly who was after her? Did she know they were out to kill her? Or was it an accident?”
I shook my head violently. “No way. What you described and what’s been happening to us isn’t because of any accident.”
“That’s not what I mean. What I’m saying is, what if they killed her because she made them? Like maybe they only wanted a little information, and she told them to fuck off?”
I stared between my bare feet and let terrible thoughts into my head, images of Li’s beauty smeared with blood. “She must have thought she was safe at my place. I wish she could’ve been. Goddamnit, if I’d only realized sooner.” I put my palm on my forehead. “How could I not have seen it? How long had they been tailing me? Since Thursday?” I glanced at Tanya, trying not to look pathetic. She was busy looking puzzled. “Sorry, I’m talking to myself.”
“Well, maybe if—” she started to say.
“Wait a minute,” I said, partly to myself. “Following me? What if they were following her?” My eyes were looking very far away, into the past.
Tanya tapped in. “Yeah. Yeah! What if Li knew what was going on way before you were involved?” She was quiet for a second and then said something under her breath that I didn’t catch.
“What?”
She looked at me blankly. “I said, ‘Or before she got you involved.’”
My heart sank as I considered it. I couldn’t force myself to accept the implications of Li betraying me like that. People were dead, for chrissakes. I shook my head. “No way. She would’ve run. Fast. A long way away. She might’ve known something was up, but I’m convinced she loved her sister. If she thought that her sister’s life was in danger from this shit, she wouldn’t have stuck around. She would’ve split to take the heat off of any family. But she didn’t.”
“I know. But think about it, Bird. If she knew her sister was going to get fucked up and couldn’t tell anybody why, then she would’ve needed a patsy, somebody who would do what she asked without asking why.” Tanya started biting her thumbnail very carefully, working around the edge with a little nibbling action. “She knew you liked her, and she cashed in on that, as painful as it sounds. Except that, by that time, it was too late. It was already snowballing. She couldn’t get out of its way. And neither could you.”
The urge to call Tanya every vile thing I could think of welled up inside me—it was the only time I’ve felt I could physically beat a woman. My mind fought desperately to keep from accepting what she was saying. But it made too much sense. That sweet, beautiful thing, that woman I had vested with innocence in a depraved world and who haunted my dreams, had pushed me into a nightmare.
I must have been wearing my thoughts on my face. Tanya was frozen, focused on my eyes. I looked past her to the city beyond. The view was sweet and distant. From way off the ground the city looks like a bustling little social center, where everybody has something important to do and is either doing it or is on their way to doing it. The sun was a minor, burnt-orange slash on the horizon over Santa Monica. Car headlights were beginning to glow on the freeways, and office fluorescents were becoming apparent in the dwindling light. In a few minutes the city would be a dazzling chandelier, a source of light in a peacefully dark world, and you would have to remind yourself that the streets were clogged with desperate, unimportant people searching for a way out.
When my eyes again met Tanya’s, they were clear and serious. She didn’t blink while I talked. “I don’t believe that. I won’t believe it. The assholes who killed her are on a trail, and they haven’t found what they’re looking for. If they had, that trail would’ve ended in my apartment. It didn’t. And now we have to find it before any of them. If we do, some major damage will get done.” I turned around and gazed out at the Los Angeles skyline.
“If we don’t, you and I are both dead.”
Chapter 15
“You’re not going.”
I was foraging through the Melrose bags thrown on the bed, picking out what I figured would be low-profile clothes in Hawaii. It was anybody’s guess, so I went minimalist, hoping that Honolulu would be like any other industrial city, just hotter. A bunch of jeans, black and blue, some t-shirts, no sweaters, sweatshirts, or anything else with the word ‘sweat’ in it. Two pairs of hip-hop-baggy shorts, two new pairs of high-top Cons, one black, one red. I would take the old white pair I had on and wear them on the plane. I threw the whole pile into an ancient Army surplus duffel without folding anything, pulled the drawstring, put a hotel-issue toothbrush and other necessities in a little side pocket, tied it all up and sat down on it. “Got a cigarette?”
“No. What do you mean, I’m not going? What am I supposed to do, just keep running and hope that whatever the fuck you’re doing over there doesn’t get me killed over here?”
“First, yes you do have a smoke, so give me one.” She glared and then threw the pack at me. I went to catch it but it glanced away and white sticks sprayed all over the bedspread. I chose one and lit up. “Second, I need you here. A lot of shit’s going to go down from the instant I land at HNL, and if anything goes wrong, I’ll need someone I can contact who isn’t in the middle of the fight.”
“I am in the middle of the fight! That big goon that your cop buddy’s
interrogating right now is going to narc on me for killing his fat friend. Christ, you’re not the only one who’s being chased by both sides, Bird.” She chewed nervously at her fingernails. Her right thumb was beginning to bleed.
“Look. I’ll pay for a week in advance. You don’t even have to leave this room.” I got up suddenly and started pacing from the end of the bed into the bathroom and back. “In fact, I don’t want you to. If this wild thing is going to fly, we have to work as a team. I guess the other option is...” I drifted off.
“What?” she said over the top of her thumb.
“Forget it. You’re not going.”
“Fuck you, Bird! I came with you this far and let me tell you, it hasn’t been fun. You put me in harm’s way, you asshole, and—”
“And now I’m going to get you out of it!” I interrupted. “Jesus, Tanya, look what you’re in!” I pulled the photo of the tombstone out and tossed it on the bed next to Li’s scribbled note. “Maybe, OK, maybe you could fly to Hawaii and find Parenti. You find him, where he’s going, what he’s doing up to his eyeballs in this thing, and why he’s running. Know how to do that?”
“No, but you do. And I’ll be with you.”
“No you won’t. It’ll take everything I’ve got just to keep me alive. You think the Triads are strong here? Try an Asian culture. I don’t want to worry about you.”
“You won’t have to. I can take care of myself.” She was getting less sure of herself.
“Look, I know you’re a big girl and all that. But this isn’t knocking on doors and having people invite you in for tea. People will be trying to screw you along from square-fucking-one, trying to get their own little piece of the action. I’m sorry, but everything about you is a liability. As soon as you start glomming around—an attractive white girl in a city that’s a center of international business—the locals will peg you for a greenie and you’ll say the wrong thing to the wrong somebody, and that will get us killed.” I lit another pill from the butt of the last one. “So, you want to have all the fun? Sorry. I need you here. And I need your support.”
