by Robert Crais
“You’ll do well with Baishe,” I said.
“Up yours.”
Janet Simon came back and handed Poitras the note pad. “This is all I can think of.”
There were nine places listed, some under headings. Hair: Lolly’s on Ventura at Balboa. Food: Gelson’s at Ventura amp; Hayvenhurst, Ralph’s on Ventura (Encino). Fashion Square, Sherman Oaks. Saks, Woodland Hills. Books: Scene of the Crime in Sherman Oaks. Like that.
I would’ve thought her writing would be strong and measured and connected, only it wasn’t. She wrote in a small, uneven hand in lines that curved up. She wrote the way I thought Ellen Lang would write, only Ellen Lang didn’t write that way. Ellen wrote the way I had thought Janet Simon would write.
Griggs took the pad into the kitchen to make another phone call. When he came out again he had a fresh cup of coffee and another plate of the biscuits.
Poitras asked Janet to run through it from her point of view, from the last time she’d seen Ellen Lang. He watched her as she did, with that flat, impassive face of his that says maybe the sun comes up tomorrow, maybe not, maybe he’ll hit the Pick Six at Santa Anita for two mil, maybe not. Janet’s hand was resting on the arm of the sofa by me. I patted it. She pulled away. Ah, romance.
Poitras said, “You and Mrs. Lang seem to be pretty close.”
Janet nodded. “She’s my best friend.”
“So if she’s gonna tell anybody anything, it’s going to be you.”
“I guess. Yes. It would be me.”
“A guy doesn’t get it in the chest for no reason.”
I sat forward. “Hey.”
Poitras’ eyes shifted to me. There was a little bit of a smile there, but maybe not. “I’m just asking her to think back and think hard.”
“I know what you’re asking her and I don’t like the way you were asking it.”
Janet Simon snapped, “I don’t need you to defend me,” then went eye-to-eye with Poitras. “What is it you mean, Sergeant?”
Poitras said, “It doesn’t have to be right now, but I’d just like you to see if you can remember anything Mrs. Lang or Mr. Lang might’ve said, that’s all. Okay?”
Janet said, “Of course,” but she was a little stiff when she said it.
The phone rang. Janet got up and went into the kitchen to answer it. Griggs grinned at me. “She’s a fine looking woman,” he said.
“There’s something between your teeth.”
He tried to laugh it off but when he looked away I could tell he was sucking at his teeth.
Janet came out a moment later and looked at Poitras. “It’s for you.”
He went into the kitchen, stayed about a minute, then came out. Same frying-pan blank face. “They found her car,” he said to me. “You wanna come?”
I nodded.
Janet stood very still, then said, “I’d better pack for the girls. They can sleep at my place until she’s back.” She went out of the living room and down the hall without looking at us. Griggs stayed at the house while I rode over with Poitras.
Ellen Lang’s light green Subaru wagon KLX774 was under a streetlamp at Ralph’s supermarket on Ventura in Encino, the third place on Janet Simon’s list. Ralph’s had closed at eight-thirty, so the lot was empty except for the Subaru, a radio car, and a sun-faded Galaxy 500 belonging to the night watchman, an old geez who stood out on the tarmac talking cop-shop with the uniforms. We pulled up to them and got out, Poitras flashing his shield, making sure the watchman saw it.
Poitras said, “You got any idea how long it’s been here?”
The old man jerked his head once, to the side. His white hair looked purple in the streetlight. So did my jacket and so did Poitras’ white Hathaway shirt. Twenty feet above us the lamp buzzed like an angry firefly. “It’s been here since before I come on,” he said.
“Okay. You got the manager’s number?”
The old guy jerked his head toward the store. “It’s inside.”
“Get it. Call him and have him come out here. I wanna talk to his bag boys and stock clerks and anyone else who might’ve been out here.”
The old guy looked scared he was getting cut out of the action. “What’s up, Sarge?”
“Go call.”
The old man frowned but nodded his head and gimped away. Walter Brennan. Out on Ventura, traffic had slowed to a crawl, drivers looking our way to see what was going on. I walked over to the car. Four bags of groceries were lined up on the back deck behind the rear seat. She’d done her shopping, then come back, and was probably approached while she loaded the bags. “Okay to try the door?”
Poitras said yeah. One of the uniforms drifted over and stood behind me. Young guy, muscled arms, Tom Selleck moustache. I pulled on the rear door handle and it lifted. The tailgate swung out and me and the uniform stepped back.
“Bad milk,” Poitras said. He walked over, dug through the bags. Wilted lettuce. Wrinkled strawberries. A burst tomato. It gets hot in a sealed car on a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles. Hot enough to kill someone. Poitras finally came out with an opened pint of skim milk, like she’d had a little, just a sip while she was shopping, then sealed it up again to bring it home. I said, “Probably been here since early afternoon. Could’ve been here since I was with you.”
Poitras grunted. He opened the drivers side door and stuck his head in. When he leaned against the little car, it settled on its springs. Then he dropped down into a push-up position on the ground. He got up, went to the tail end of the car, and dropped down again. This time he reached under the car and came out with a pair of white and lavender glasses. The left temple was broken.
“Ellen Lang’s,” I said.
Poitras nodded and watched the cars go by on Ventura. He set the glasses on the Subarus hood, leaned against the fender, and stared at me, eyes empty. The streetlamp was suddenly much louder. “Old Mort,” Poitras said slowly, “he was into something all right.”
13
Later, Poitras had one of the uniforms drive me back to Ellen Lang’s for my car. Janet Simon was sitting on the ottoman when I walked in, the little blue ashtray beside her full and the living room cloudy with smoke. I didn’t make any cracks. She said, “Well?”
“Looks like someone grabbed her.”
She nodded as if it were unimportant and stood up. There were two small suitcases by the entry, one light blue, the other tan. She said, “I’d better get the girls.”
“Are you sorry it happened between us?”
She went ashen around her lips as if she were very angry. Maybe she was. As if in opening herself she had violated a promise she held very dear. Maybe she had. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”
I nodded. “Want some help with the girls?”
“No.”
“Maybe some company, when you tell them?”
“No. I’m sorry, but no. Do you see?” She was a pale, creamy coffee color beneath her tan, her lips and nostrils and temples touched with blue. She wasn’t making eye contact. She was at a place like Ellen Lang, where putting your eyes to someone else’s cost too much, only Janet Simon wasn’t used to it.
“Sure,” I said. “You’ve got my number.”
She nodded, once, looking down at her cigarette.
I left.
I stopped at a Westward Ho market to pick up two six-packs of Falstaff, the best cheap beer around, and went home and put George Thorogood on loud and drank beer with the cat and thought about things. Ellen Lang and Janet Simon. They weren’t so very different. Maybe Janet Simon had been Ellen Lang. Maybe Ellen Lang would one day be Janet Simon. If she were still alive. I drank more beer, and cranked the speakers up to distortion when George got to Bad to the Bone. I listen to that song, I always feel tough. I drank more beer. At some point very late that night I became a flying monkey, one of thousands chasing Morton Lang toward the Emerald City.
The next morning I hurt, but it was manageable. The cat was on the floor beside me, belly up. “Have something ready when I get back, okay?” He
ignored me. I stripped down to my shorts, went out onto the deck, and went from the twelve sun salutes to the tae kwan do. I took air in deep, using my stomach muscles, saturating my blood with oxygen until my ears rang. I pushed hard, spinning through low space to mid space to high space, using the big muscles in my back and chest and legs the way I’d been taught, working to burn out the Bad Things and finding a proof of it in the pain singing in my muscles.
After I shaved and showered and dressed I made soft-boiled eggs and raisin muffins and sliced bananas. While I ate them I made four sandwiches, brewed a pot of coffee, and poured it into the big thermos. I took out a six-pack of RC 100, two Budweisers, and a jar of jalapeno-stuffed olives. I put all that in a double-strength paper bag on top of a couple books by Elmore Leonard, Hombre and Valdez Is Coming. I took my clip-on holster out of the closet, put the Dan Wesson in it, and selected a jacket to go with my khaki Meronas. By eight-twenty I was staking out Kimberly Marsh’s apartment. I was cranky. If the fat guy brought his dog out today, maybe I’d shoot it. They’d probably arrest John Cassavetes, and wouldn’t Gena Rowlands be surprised.
There were still letters in Kimberly Marsh’s mail drop and still bulk-rate flyers in the big open bin. I walked back past the banana trees to number 4 and let myself in. The rest of the petals had fallen from the dead daisies. A guy named Sid had left a message on the machine saying they’d met at Marion’s and how much he’d like to get together with her because his planets were rising in the lower quadrant and if she was a happening babe she’d give him a buzz. I let myself out, closed the door, and locked it. The walkway continued past number 4, turning right to pass a laundry room, then down one flight of stairs to the underground parking. I went down and found one other stair at the opposite side of the garage that opened out into the complex. That was it. Anybody wanted to get to number 4 they’d have to go past me through the entry, or down the parking drive, also past me. All I had to do was stay awake and I had the place covered.
I walked back to the Corvette, pulled the top up, and climbed into the passenger side. I was armed, supplied, and ready for siege. I could hang in as long as it took. Even until lunch.
Seven minutes later the dark blue Nova with the bad rust spot on its left rear fender rolled past and pulled to the curb about six cars ahead of me. Same two Chicano guys. Curiouser and curiouser. The driver got out and trotted across the street to disappear behind the banana trees. He was back there a long time. Maybe Pygmies got him. Just when I got my hopes up he came back, still scowling, still trying to look like Charles Bronson, still not making it. It’s tough to look like Charles Bronson when you got no chin. He walked into the street in front of an elderly lady driving a big bronze Mercury. She had to stop. He scowled at her. Tough, all right. I heard his car door slam, then a minute later faint Mexican music. These guys were good.
A couple minutes before nine, two cars eased up out of the garage, a little metallic-brown Toyota Celica and a green LTD. About nine-fifteen a beige Volvo sedan turned in. Kimberly Marsh wasn’t driving and probably wasn’t hiding in the trunk. At ten-fourteen the fat guy came out with his little dog. I held my fire so as not to tip the guys in the Nova. The little dog didn’t have any better luck than last time. At ten fifty-five the mail was delivered. Kimberly Marsh got a couple more letters. At six minutes before noon the Nova cracked open again and a different guy walked back past me on the sidewalk, heading toward Barrington. This one was taller, with a relaxed face and prominent Adam’s apple. This one, maybe you could talk to. I scrunched down onto the floor, no easy feat in a ’66 Corvette, and counted to forty before I looked up. Thirty-five minutes later he came back, whistling and carrying a white paper bag with grease stains at the bottom. Tacos or burritos, one. I ate a salami sandwich, followed it with a turkey, and drank a warm Budweiser. Bud holds up better warm than any other beer. Great for that tailgate party when you’re on stakeout.
At ten minutes after three, a dirty red Porsche 914 double-parked in front of the Piedmont Arms and a good-looking kid the size of a tree got out and went to the mailboxes. Kimberly Marsh’s mailbox, in particular. Then I had him. The beach picture in Kimberly Marsh’s dresser drawer. Six-three. Two-fifteen. Brown-almost-blond hair and toothpaste-commercial features. I lifted myself up in the seat and tried to see the guys in the Nova. They didn’t seem to be paying any attention, the driver talking and gesturing and the passenger nodding his head and the Mexican music going with a lot of trumpet. The big kid cleaned out the box, dug through the bin, then went back to his car. Sonofabitch, stay with the Nova or follow the kid? The Mexican driver was still explaining something with his hands. The passenger fired the wadded-up white paper bag into the shrubs around the apartments. They turned up the music. Marimbas. I went with the kid.
He cruised back toward Barrington, then left on San Vicente to Wilshire and the San Diego Freeway, north. I stayed three or four cars back up through the Sepulveda Pass into the valley and onto the Ventura Freeway, east. He took the Woodman exit and headed to Burbank Boulevard where he pulled into an auto parts store, running in like he was in a hurry. I swung the Corvette into the Shell station across the street and stopped by the pay phone. I kept one eye on the parts store, fed money into the phone, and called Joe Pike.
A man’s voice said, “Gun shop.”
“Joe Pike, please.”
Five seconds. Ten, tops. “Pike.”
“It’s warming up. You feel like work?”
I could tell Pike covered the mouthpiece. When he took his hand away the background at his shop was quiet. “What do you want me to do?”
“There’re two Mexicans sitting in a dark blue Chevy Nova at 412 Gorham, just above San Vicente in Brentwood. Bad rust spot on the left rear fender behind the wheel well. I want to know where they go.”
“You want me to clean and dress them after?”
“Just the address.” With Pike you had to be careful. You never knew when he meant it.
I followed my man back down Woodman to the freeway again, up and east until the Universal City exit, then down to the boulevard and climbed almost at once into the hills above Universal Studios. The streets there are old and narrow, built back when hill streets were poured cement and curbed for cars with high, skinny wheels. The houses are pink and yellow and gray and white, stucco and wood, old Spanish and new Ultramodern, little places jammed together on tiny lots, some bare, some shaded with old, gnarled trees and knotted vines. The 914 pulled into a small wood and stone contemporary on the mountain side of the street. I continued past around the curve, then reversed in someone’s drive and parked at the curb.
I took the. 38 out of the glove box and clipped it onto my waistband over my wallet. I got out and pulled on the jacket, then dug around under the seat until I found a roll of nickels. I slipped the nickel roll in my right pocket and walked back to the house.
The 914 was ticking in a little carport dug into the side of the mountain. The flat-roofed house sat on top of the garage and spilled to the right, nestling in an ivy bed as did so many houses in Los Angeles. There was a big plate glass window to the right of the door and a dormer window a little beyond that. The landscaping was uneven and shabby. Dead vines twined with live; lonely Saint Augustine runners purchased in bare spots along the unmaintained slope, outlining just as lonely sprigs of ice plant and cactus. Everything looked dusty: the 914, the carport, the brick steps leading up to the house, the house, the plants, the bugs crawling on the plants. Classy.
I crept up the steps to the door and listened. Murmurs, maybe, but impossible to tell if it was people or TV. I left the stoop and went to the right, creeping along on all fours under the big window and hoping the local rent-a-cops didn’t pick now to cruise by. I raised my head and looked. Living room. Big and empty and open all the way through to the back of the house. There was a kitchen in the back on the left and a freestanding fireplace just to the right of the big window. A shabby couch covered with something that looked like a bedspread stood next to the
kind of bookshelves college kids make out of boards and cinder blocks. No books; just a stereo and some records and a big aquarium with green sides and too many plants and green around the water line. In the back, off the kitchen, there was a round dining table with spindly legs and two chairs. Newspaper sections were spread across the table, pinned there by a glass, a quarter filled with something I couldn’t identify. I was staring at the glass when Kimberly Marsh walked out of the kitchen and into the living room without a stitch of clothes. When she saw me she said, “Hey!” so loud I could hear her through the glass.
I waved at her and smiled. Then the front door opened and the Son of Kong appeared.
14
Up close, he was shorter than I had guessed, but his thighs and calves were thicker than in the picture and there was maybe a little more muscle across his chest. He’d changed clothes. His shirt was off, and he was wearing a pair of red gym shorts, so old and faded I couldn’t make out the name of the school. He was barefoot. There was a four-inch crescent-shaped scar on the front of his left shoulder and two long ugly zipper scars bracketing his left knee. The girl appeared in the doorway behind him, holding a sheet around herself. There were stains on the sheet. I said, “Hi, Kimberly. My name’s Elvis Cole. I want to talk to you about Morton Lang.”
She said, “Larry.”
Larry flicked his fingers back toward the house without taking his eyes off me. “Go pack. I’ll take care of this.” Larry’s voice had a whiny quality, as if he were a rich kid from a small town who’d been Mister Everything in school and was spoiled by it.
I ignored him. “I’m a private investigator, Kimberly. Morton Lang is dead.”
“Dead,” she said.
I nodded. If she was ready to collapse with grief, it didn’t show. “Yeah. We need to talk about it.”
Larry gestured to the house again. “Go on, Kimmie.” Kimmie. Okay, Jody. Let’s go, Buffy. He sort of nodded to himself, making a big deal out of sizing me up. “I got this guy by forty pounds. He’s mine.”
