by Jon Talton
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Life insurance.” I smiled.
He raised his shirt so I could see the butt of a semiautomatic pistol in his waistband. Then he advanced toward me, one step, two…
I thrust my hand forward suddenly, open and straight-fingered into the middle of his windpipe. The small eyes burst wide, the cap and Bluetooth flew off, and he was gasping. Both his hands clutched his throat in what we had been taught in first-aid classes was the “universal choking symbol.” Done properly, this was a useful move for incapacitating someone. Done wrong, it would kill him, which was why it had been discontinued by police agencies.
My next move, one second later, was to remove the Python from its shoulder holster and level it at his face.
“See, you never know when you might need life insurance.”
He staggered back. From his open mouth came the sound of an ailing carburetor. His eyes showed the most primal emotions: surprise, pain, and the sense that he was suffocating. It was a testimony to his size and strength that he was still standing. That made me uneasy.
“Move back, asshole.”
He did. When I was all the way inside, I kicked the door closed but made sure I was still facing him.
“Who are you?” This from a skinny, pale kid with bushy red hair, sitting on a sofa. He was probably the only person in O.B. without a tan. He was in pain, clutching his face. Seeing his hands occupied, I ignored him.
“Can you talk now?” I said this to the black man.
“Iiiihhhhhhhhhh.”
I asked him whether he was right- or left-handed. He opened his mouth and showed a gold incisor. He finally managed, “Left.”
“So use your left hand and pull out that gun very slowly and hand it to me.” I knew he was lying about which hand he favored, or at least I took that chance. After I had possession of the Glock, I shoved him back onto the sofa next to the white kid. Gravity did most of the work. Large human objects are easier to push around when they can barely breathe.
“Should’a known you was a motherfucking cop.” His voice was a shadow of its former booming self.
“I’m not a cop.” I kept the .357 magnum leveled at his chest. The barrel was only four inches of thick ribbed steel, but the business end might as well have been the size of eternity.
“Now wait a motherfucking minute.” He held out two big hands, palms facing me and tried to make himself smaller on the sofa, no easy task. His expression changed. He wasn’t worrying about his throat any longer. “Motherfuck! I’ve heard about you. Big guy with a big motherfucking gun….”
I held up my hand. He stopped talking.
“Did you ever consider that repeating the same profanity over and over deprives it of any ability to shock? You might consider trying out a word such as ‘mountebank’ or ‘scoundrel.’”
He lowered his hands and took a deep breath. “Look, man, I got no problem with Edward, man. I’m completely good with him. Why you think I’m here right now? This is between me and this skinny pale-ass mother…” He stopped. “Scoundrel.”
I said, “Who is Tim Lewis?”
“He is.” The black guy quickly pointed to the red-haired kid next to him.
“Then it’s time for you to leave.”
“What about my Glock?”
“Get another one.”
He stood without protest, picked up his cap, and hurried out the door, quietly closing it. I locked it, expecting him to at least be muttering indignation and threats as he departed, but nothing. I heard heavy steps thudding along the concrete, down the stairs, and then they faded. The gate to the street clanged shut.
I waited a few seconds and holstered the Python. “Who is he?”
“I think my nose is broken!” His voice sounded like a teary fourteen-year-old.
“So who broke it?”
“You don’t know? He knows you.” His eyes were curious. “He calls himself AFP.”
My mind did a sort: FDR, JFK, LBJ. I asked again.
Through his hands came a nasal response. “America’s Finest Pimp.”
Get it: San Diego called itself America’s Finest City. I didn’t smile. I leaned against the outer wall and stealthily looked out the drawn curtain. The courtyard was deserted. Nobody was at the pool that dominated the space. Beyond the fence, nobody was on the sidewalk.
From my pocket I produced the photo and held it out. “Do you know her?”
“That’s Scarlett.”
I worked hard to conceal my surprise. “Who?”
“Scarlett. My girlfriend.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Mason. Scarlett Mason. Do you know where she is?”
I nodded, put the picture away, and asked him what problem he had with America’s Finest Pimp.
“I’m really hurting, dude!”
I checked him out in more detail. He might have had the kind of face teenage girls consider cute, at least before his nose had been broken, but to me it looked like a comic-book face, a cross between Archie and Jimmy Olsen. His face was so thin, a vein running up his forehead was prominent.
His body looked rangy and underweight beneath a gray T-shirt, droopy Lakers shorts, and teal flip-flops. A flaming tattoo wrapped itself up his left calf. His fingers, long and slender, were oozing bright red blood from where America’s Finest Pimp had hit him, and now it was dripping onto his shirt. I walked to the kitchen, grabbed a dishtowel, and tossed it to him.
“Where is Scarlett? Please…” His tone was plaintive enough to be believable. I was about to tell him to get some ice on his nose so we could talk.
The next thing I heard sounded like a cat, until it didn’t. My right hand was on the way back to my holster. “Who else is here?”
“The baby.”
8
I grabbed him by the arm and pushed him ahead of me into the bedroom. Once I would hide behind books. Now I was using a human shield. Beside a box spring and mattress on the floor was a yellow hand-me-down crib. After ordering him to stand against the far wall so I could watch him, I approached it.
Sure enough, inside was a baby, incredibly tiny, with a tuft of brown hair and a very soiled diaper.
When I looked back at Lewis, he was kneeling, his head pointed down. “I don’t feel good…”
“How long has this baby needed changing?”
“I don’t know. AFP was here for couple of hours, waiting for Scarlett, telling me he’d kill me if I didn’t give him the money she owed him…” He was sobbing. The vein up his forehead expanded. “I think I have a concussion. I’m dizzy. Can you change him please? I didn’t mean to leave him back here alone.”
I filed the money part away and let him alone. He was useless. I looked around for supplies. All I saw was a television, along with a video-game box and a cell phone sitting atop a plastic crate that doubled as a bedside table. Opening the closet, I found a shelf with a box of Pampers, wipes, and baby powder.
Back at crib-side, I felt pretty useless myself. As a young deputy, I had delivered a couple of babies in the backs of squad cars. Otherwise, I had spent a lifetime staying as far away from them as possible. At least until a year ago, I figured that would always be the case. But as I beheld this tiny, helpless creature, I was nearly overcome by a hurricane of feelings and instincts. The bracing stench coming from the diaper brought me back to reality. It wasn’t as bad as a dead body left for a week inside a house during high summer in Phoenix.
I pulled out a clean diaper and slid it under the baby, who was squirming with more energy and squalling like a siren. Maybe I was painting myself into a very messy corner, but it was worth a try. Then I set the wipes on the mattress and gingerly undid one tab. The stench grew worse. Thankfully, the window was open and a faint sea breeze was coming in. So far, so good: I pulled the other tab, folded it in on itself, and lowered the fron
t of the soiled diaper. Immediately a little fountain of urine shot all over my tie and shirt.
It was a boy.
Pleased with himself, he kicked and flung his arms. Back to it, I used wipes to clean off his front, between his legs, and under his scrotum, wadding them up and putting them on the soiled diaper. Feeling pretty good about myself now, I folded the diaper in on itself to provide a clean surface, lifted his legs, and cleaned off his backside. That took another four wipes. Then I slid out the bad diaper, rolled it up, and, voila, he was safe and sanitary on the new one. I hooked the tabs and lifted him into my arms, which did nothing to stop his wiggling and crying.
“Better?” I smiled. The big baby head stopped crying for a moment, then started squealing again as if I were torturing him with hot pokers.
Instantly, the silent-but-deadly cloud of odor hit me. The new diaper was heavy again and I felt something oozing out onto my hands.
“Well, hell.”
I know a few things: the socio-economic issues of the Progressive Era, the revisionist arguments regarding the causes of World War I, how to prepare a class syllabus. I have some skills, including reloading the Python under pressure, properly tying a necktie with a dimple in the center, and effectively swinging a hammer. I know how to make a dry martini and make love to a woman. Here, I was over my head.
Muttering a lesson in profane oaths for the young master’s linguistic instruction, I carried him into the bathroom and deposited him in the sink. The din of his crying was magnified by a power of ten.
So much for my clever first attempt, filled with hubris and baby-shit.
It took another fifteen minutes, a facecloth protectively placed over his dangerous little penis, much clumsiness on my part, and two diapers, but the baby was finally clean, powdered, and back in his crib. I put a rattle in his hand and shook it. He looked at me with a surprisingly grown-up expression, dropped the rattle, and conked out. After what we’d both been through, it seemed like a good idea to me, too.
I wished that Lindsey’s face would stop flashing across my vision.
After I washed up and cleaned my tie, I retrieved Tim Lewis, who had slumped against the bedroom wall, silently watching my learning curve.
“Get up. We need to talk.”
“Have you been crying, dude?”
“No.”
“Thanks for the help.”
I said nothing.
A few minutes later, he was back on the sofa and I was sitting across from him on a dining chair.
He stared at me over an icepack that I had improvised for his traumatized nose. A nasty black left eye was also materializing. He started shaking.
“Are you going to kill me?”
That’s me: the diaper-changing, first-aid-giving hit man. I said, “I will kill you if you abuse that baby.”
“I take good care of him! I love him! AFP wouldn’t let me go back and change him. Since Grace left...”
He blinked and I knew he was hoping I hadn’t noticed his slip.
I said, “So who was this Scarlett?”
He cursed at himself. “That was Grace’s business name. Her brand.”
I pulled out the photo again, turned it toward him, and tapped my finger on the pretty face.
“Her name is Grace Hunter,” he said.
“Is that her baby?”
“It’s our baby.” Somewhere under the icepack, I heard a long sigh. “This has gone so wrong.”
“What, that you’re living with a prostitute?” I was careful to keep Grace in the present tense.
“She’s not a prostitute.” His face flushed with anger.
“Then what do you call it when a woman works for a pimp?”
I waited and he told it. It wasn’t easy telling.
They had started dating as freshmen at San Diego State. He was studying theater and she was a business major. She had wanted to be in theater, too, but her father demanded that she declare a more practical major. Specifically, business. If she wanted money, he said, she could start her own business the same way he had done. Grace moved in with Tim. They were poor and not happy, working part-time at restaurants, already facing big student loans. They broke up. It was a big campus, so he didn’t see her often. He dated some other girls but kept wishing he could get back with Grace.
Three years later, he saw her at Comic Con, the huge comic-book gathering at the convention center downtown. But she wasn’t dressed like a nerd. She was in a tight but very expensive-looking mini-dress and on the arm of a guy in a suit who was old enough to be her father. He later learned that the man was a producer in Hollywood. She smiled and waved at Tim, and a week later she emailed him to get together.
Tim learned how much had changed in the time they had been apart.
Grace Hunter’s entrepreneurial inspiration had come soon after their breakup. One night she went out and got drunk. An older man hit on her, she went back to his hotel room with him, and spent the night. When she woke up, he was gone but on the bedside table was a thousand dollars cash. Whatever weeks or hours of moral wrestling she did with herself, she realized that San Diego was full of male tourists and businessmen, almost all of them dreaming of a night with a California girl. And they would pay quite well.
She drew up a formal business plan on her laptop: her market was affluent, older married men, the startup costs consisted of the right clothes—bikini for the strand, nice dress or suit for a hotel—and her competitive advantage was that she didn’t look like a call girl. The tax exposure was zero. Her brand was Scarlett.
For more than two years, she succeeded brilliantly. The men were usually nice, often terribly lonely, some wanted only to talk, and all were willing to use protection. Not one beat her up or even made her feel creepy. Once a month, she had herself tested for STDs and was always clean. That checkup report would ensure top dollar. She gathered regular clients and her discretion gained referrals. Thanks to her patrons, she stayed at the best hotels and resorts in the area. A few times, men paid her to be with them on more lavish adventures.
“Did she do kink?” I interrupted. “Bondage?”
“No,” he said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all.”
I wondered how much he really knew her, but shut up and let him continue.
The money she earned was awesome. The Great Recession didn’t hurt her profits. This sure beat taking on more student debt. She set up small accounts at banks around town, depositing cash as if it were her tips as a waitress. Over time, she consolidated them into a smaller number of bigger accounts. She took out loans from her father and paid them back, telling him that she had a job helping a woman stage condos and houses for sale. Her father’s checks were clean to deposit. It was a crude way to launder money, but it was good enough.
The only thing Grace Hunter hadn’t assessed for her business plan was the competition. And one night she was kidnapped, beaten, and raped by America’s Finest Pimp. He told her that he ran the hotel girls in America’s Finest City. He would control her liaisons and take seventy percent of her gross earnings. If she held out on him, he promised, he would beat her to death and take her body out on his boat, feeding her remains to the sharks. For the next three months, she lived in constant fear.
Then she saw Tim again.
He took off the icepack and shook his head. “We thought we’d be safe in O.B. She had money saved. Then she got pregnant and the baby came along. We were happy. She just got a job at Qualcomm and I was going to be a stay-at-home dad when I graduated. I guess she decided to leave me. But I can’t understand how she could leave our baby.”
Lindsey’s face again, whose eyes were such a deep blue that in certain light and certain mood they appeared violet. I thought about the new life I had held in my hands, minutes after gripping the potential death of the Colt Python in the same hands. It was a corny thought, to be sure. But Lindsey’s voice
burned like acid on my face: You did this!
Focus, Mapstone. “Why didn’t AFP get her addicted? That’s the usual M.O. for a pimp.”
“She convinced him she’d be worth more clean. She was good at convincing people. AFP sees himself as a businessman. She paid him straight, every week, until she disappeared and came to be with me.”
“Did it bother you that she’d fucked all those men?”
I phrased it as crudely as I could and he stared at the carpet. He was a natural suspect. Jealousy was always a prime motive, wronged spouses and boyfriends always prime suspects.
“All those men, their dicks inside her.” I spoke tawdry fluently. “It would sure bother me. It would bother me to find that my wife had been fucking even one man other than me.”
Trust me. Only every second, splinters under my skin. But the splinters didn’t want to make me kill her.
I said, “I know you’re a nice guy, Tim. But didn’t it get to you? Did you ever think about killing her when you thought about all those men…”
“No!” His face flushed apple-red.
I took my time, studying his expression and body language, and letting the silence work for me, having watched Peralta interrogate many suspects.
Finally, Tim drew up his wiry frame. “That was in the past. She regretted it. I loved her. I’d rather die than hurt her.”
I believed him. He didn’t have murder in him.
“Did she ever talk about a man named Larry Zisman? He used to be a pro football player. Owned a condo downtown.”
“Was that one of her clients?”
I didn’t answer.
“The name doesn’t sound familiar,” he said. “And she didn’t talk about those men. I didn’t want to know and she didn’t tell me.”
“So you guys lived alone here. What about friends?”
“We’d say hi to neighbors. It’s that kind of place. Grace stayed in touch with Addison…”
