One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries)

by Walpow, Nathan

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got to see a friend in the hospital.” Not for another hour or two, but I needed time to digest.

  She opened her purse, took out a Bic and a wrinkled credit card receipt, wrote on the back. “Here’s my number. Call me when you’re ready. Don’t make it too long, okay? And if that asshole Mott answers the phone, don’t leave a message with him. I’ll never get it.”

  “You expect him back?”

  “I never know what to expect with him.”

  She dropped the slip of paper on the coffee table, shut her purse, headed for the door. I followed to let her out. She suddenly turned, pressed against me, tried to kiss me. No. Did kiss me. I pressed back. I may have kissed back. The feel of a different woman after three years confused the hell out of me.

  Good thing my mind’s had a lifetime of experience in getting in the way of what my body wants to do. It was just taken by surprise. Once it figured out that what was going on was a really bad idea, I pushed away. As soon as I did she stepped back. She looked into my eyes and put on a smile dipped in regret. “I just had to be sure,” she said. Then she opened the door and slipped out. I closed the door behind her and stood there until I heard the microbus fire up and drive away.

  I put on Buffalo Springfield and lay on my back on the couch. A spider on the ceiling caught my attention. Near the corner, one of those long-legged ones like Woz had watched outside. Everyone calls them daddy long-legses, but some nitwit at the cactus club told me they’re really something else. I could never figure out why they chose to build their ill-formed webs up there, where there wasn’t anything to eat.

  I went to the kitchen and got a glass. Pulled a chair into the corner, stood on it, and scooped the spider in. I took it outside and dumped it off the patio, under the bushes. It skittered away and was lost to sight.

  Next door, little Suzy was playing daredevil with the squirrel again. I sat down on one of the wicker chairs and watched her. The sun played peekaboo behind the evergreen across the street. Suzy’s mom called her inside for dinner. I kept watching the squirrel until it ran up the big ficus in front of the Clement house.

  I went inside and picked up the charge slip with Deanna’s phone number. She’d written her name too. It was still Knox. That was what I was looking for. I looked up Alberta Burns’s phone number and dialed it.

  Burns was a homicide detective. She’d been Hector Casillas’s partner before he got bumped upstairs to Robbery-Homicide. I got to know her when my friend Brenda got herself killed. Then Burns helped me out the second time I got mixed up with murder. We’d gotten friendly and went out for coffee now and then.

  I got her on her cell. “Burns.”

  “Hi, Burns.”

  “Portugal? That you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How you doing?”

  “Okay. You?”

  “Not so good.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I got shot.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Oakwood.”

  “No, I meant—”

  “I knew what you meant. My leg.”

  “You okay? I mean, any lasting damage?”

  “They say I’ll be good as new after a while.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Meanwhile, I get to sit home and watch the soaps.”

  “So what happened?”

  “A gangbanger on a roof.”

  “Wow. They catch him?”

  “My partner took him down.”

  “Killed him, you mean?”

  “Uh-huh. He was fourteen.”

  “God.”

  “Yeah. God. So what’s up with you? Been playing detective lately?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have.”

  “And you haven’t called me for information? I’m hurt.”

  “I am now.”

  “It’ll cost you.”

  “How much?”

  “Bagels at that place in the Marina.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Whatever you have on three people.”

  “Three? That might be worth dinner.”

  “I can handle that too.”

  “Let me grab a pencil. Okay, go ahead.”

  “First one’s name’s Robbie Wozniak. He goes by Woz.”

  “Anything more to go on?”

  “Date of birth, somewhere near mine, which would put it around ’52.”

  “That’ll help. Next?”

  “Deanna Knox. At some point also known as Dee.”

  “DOB?”

  “Let’s see. She’s fifty-two. So ’50 or so.”

  “The last one?”

  “Toby Bonner. He’s probably a year older than me.”

  “Got it.”

  “You might have a file on him.”

  “Why?”

  “He was, or is, a musician. A three-hit wonder back in the sixties.”

  “I work for LAPD, not ASCAP.”

  “He disappeared sometime around 1980.”

  “You suspect foul play?”

  “I don’t know what I suspect.”

  “This may be worth dinner at a real restaurant. The cloth-napkin type.”

  “You’re a hard woman, Burns.”

  “Got to be in my line of work. Okay. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “In the meantime, don’t get yourself killed.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “At least until I collect on my dinner. Good-bye, Portugal.”

  “Bye, Burns,” I said.

  Amazing Journey

  I didn’t want to go see Squig again. I thought I’d get to the hospital around eight-thirty. Visiting hours couldn’t go much beyond that. In the meantime I had time to kill. I sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I stopped at Animal Planet. It reminded me of Marlin Perkins and how he was always sending Jim to wrestle the anaconda while Marlin stayed safe on the bank with W.K. the chimp. That was a nature show. Not this Crocodile Hunter shit.

  You’re turning into your father.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d had the thought. Nor the second nor the third nor the hundredth. That pining for the stuff of one’s youth. Next thing you knew I’d be missing Tricky Dick.

  At six I switched to the Channel 6 news. There weren’t any high-speed chases, so they led off with the Middle East. There were two more suicide bombings. Arafat’s headquarters under attack by the Israelis. Recriminations all around.

  They gave that three or four minutes and moved onto the usual assortment of dumb local stories. They had an update on the murder-suicide in Hollywood. The husband had whacked the wife with an ax, cut off his own hand, and bled to death. There was a shot of an irregular circle of dried blood on a carpet. It could have been from the house where it had happened and it could have been stock footage. One bloody carpet looks pretty much like the next.

  More local tragedies, a preview of the sports, a story about a kid who got his head stuck between the bars of a fence. They showed his mother, extolling the virtues of the firefighters who got him out, equating what they’d done with September 11 heroics. The graphic showed her name and, beneath it, MOTHER, like that was the sum total of her existence.

  A commercial came on, and I went to pee. I was doing it a lot lately. My doctor had fingered my prostate and drawn blood for a PSA test and assured me everything was normal. That as men grew older their urinary systems grew weirder. “A natural consequence of aging,” she told me, like that would make me feel better.

  After the last drop dribbled out I washed my hands and went in the bedroom. I plugged in, strummed a few chords, did a little picking. The D string was out of tune. I fiddled with it until I realized it didn’t want to get fixed. Sometimes it’s like that. It’s flat, you move it up, it gets sharp. You move it back down, you go too far. You try to hone in on the right note and it just won’t happen. I wondered what Toby Bonner —if he happened
to be alive—did in a situation like that.

  I put the guitar away, eyed the Epiphone, remembered the broken string, went out to the backyard. Into the greenhouse and right back out. I needed to be doing something but I didn’t know what it was.

  “Hey!”

  It was Theta, one of the spaced oddities next door. She had a lot of red hair and a Southern accent and a laugh like a doped-up hyena. She was standing on something and watching me over the fence. She’d do this “Hey!” thing every once in a while, scaring the crap out of me more often than not. Twice she caught me naked, drying off after a shower. After the second time I introduced myself. I always like women who’ve seen my penis to know my name.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Been meaning to tell you. You rock.”

  “Huh? Oh, you mean the guitar.”

  “Of course I mean the guitar. It’s hot. Makes me want to boogie.”

  “It’s not too loud?”

  She gave me a you-dumbshit look worthy of Woz. “Rock and roll’s supposed to be loud. Besides, with the racket we make over here, you think I’d have the balls to complain?”

  “I guess not. And thanks. For what you said.”

  “Bring your gear over sometime. We’ll break out the theremin.”

  “Sometime.”

  “Right on,” she said, and dropped from sight like Punxsutawney Phil on a sunny February 2.

  The parking attendant at Beverly Center gave me the eye. She knew I wasn’t going shopping.

  Paranoia strikes deep.

  I retraced my steps from earlier in the day. This time I shared the elevator with a man with a goiter. I tried not looking at it. Ever try not staring at a goiter?

  The door to Squig’s room was partway shut. I knocked. A voice told me to come in. It didn’t sound like Squig’s.

  It wasn’t. There was a fat guy in the bed. He had an overgrown goatee, deepset eyes, and tiny ears. “You the proctologist?” he said.

  Squig’s been abducted, I thought. Whoever shot him came and got him and that left the room open for this ass patient.

  Into your life it will creep.

  I looked at the number on the door. I was one room short of where I needed to be. “Sorry. Wrong room.”

  “You sure you’re not the proctologist?”

  “I’m sure. But I’ve seen my share of assholes.”

  His laugh echoed down the corridor as I walked away. Glad to brighten his day, I moved down a door and knocked. This time the voice was familiar. It was Woz’s. I walked in. “Hi, guys, Chloe.”

  “Five letters,” Squig said, “Was Dahomey, whatever that is. Starts with a B.”

  “Benin,” I said.

  “Spell it.”

  I did.

  “It fits. How do you know shit like that?”

  “I have a plant from there.”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  I turned to Woz. “What’s happening?”

  “Nothing much. You?”

  “The same.”

  Squig was consumed with his puzzle. Chloe was consumed with Squig. Woz went to the door and head-gestured. “Come on out.” In the corridor he said, “That shit this afternoon. I shouldn’t’ve done that.”

  I waved a dismissive hand. “Water over the dam.”

  He held out a meaty one. “Bygones be bygones?”

  I put mine in his. Got it pretty much crushed. We went back in and watched Squig work on his crossword. Woz surprised me by coming up with a couple of answers. Chloe said maybe four words.

  After a while I went out and called Gina. She’d just gotten in and was trying to get rid of her mother. I told her I’d be over after I finished at the hospital. We exchanged love-yous and I went back to the room.

  A teenage volunteer came in at nine and told us visiting hours were over. Woz and I said good-bye and started out. The volunteer said to Chloe, “You too, ma’am.” Chloe gave her a Woz-quality glare. The volunteer fled in terror.

  Woz was parked at Beverly Center too. We walked over together and went to our cars. I paid up, left the garage, and headed north on La Cienega. A little past Beverly, Woz pulled even on my left. We exchanged waves like a couple of suburban dads leaving their kids’ soccer game. He moved ahead and made the right onto Melrose ahead of me. I lost sight of him.

  I wanted to get Gina some welcome-home flowers at Moe’s, so I stayed on Melrose to Crescent Heights and got in the left turn lane. There were several cars ahead of me, two of them already in the intersection, Woz’s Barracuda and a BMW. When the light turned red they finished the turn. The Mustang behind them went through too. It wasn’t legal, but it wasn’t unusual.

  Then another car went through, way after the light changed. A New Beetle, black or navy. He barely missed the first couple of cars starting south on the green.

  Once more, paranoia struck deep. I could hear Gina the night Squig was shot. A Volkswagen. A Beetle.

  And after that: New. Some dark color.

  There was still one car, a Kia, in front of me in the left turn lane. I pulled around to the left of it. This put me in the oncoming lane. There was a lineup of vehicles headed south. One of them was a big SUV. He was going a little slower than the guy in front of him. Slow enough that I thought I could make it across.

  I stomped on the gas. The SUV bore down on me. I barely made it through and hung a left. This put me in the northbound lane, which, I’d conveniently forgotten, also had cars in it. A guy driving a big sedan stomped on his brakes when I jerked in ahead of him. He leaned on the horn and probably called me a fucking asshole. That’s what I would have done.

  I drove way too fast up Crescent Heights. I ran another light at Santa Monica, saw the VW turn right on Fountain, and followed. A block later I spotted the Barracuda. The Beetle dropped in two cars behind it. I dropped in two cars behind the Beetle. One too many, as it turned out.

  We crossed Fairfax, crossed La Brea, approached Highland. Woz went through on the yellow. The Volkswagen ran another red. The guy in front of me stopped. I did too, an instant too late. My bumper kissed his.

  He was out of his crappy old Civic wagon and inspecting his bumper in about four seconds. Then he was yelling at me, a sweathog in an undershirt and shorts, questioning my driving ability and my lineage. The VW’s taillights receded on the other side of Highland.

  I leaned out the window. “Police. Undercover. Following a suspect. Get the fuck out of my way.”

  I lucked out. This guy wanted nothing to do with the cops. “Sorry, officer,” he said. He dived into the driver’s seat and squealed right onto Highland.

  A lot of good my impersonation did me. I still couldn’t get through the light until it changed. There were too many cars for a daredevil routine. This gave me a chance to think. I decided I was probably out of my mind. Whoever was in the VW wasn’t following Woz. There were thousands of dark New Beetles in L.A.

  The light took its sweet time. When it finally changed I sped across. I reached Vine without seeing a Beetle or a Barracuda. I turned right, pulled to the curb, dug under the seat for the Thomas Guide. It was hard to read under the street lights. My dome bulb was long gone and so was the flashlight that once lived under the seat. I went through half a dozen Lelands before I found a Leland Way that was supposedly in the vicinity. I searched the coordinates it was supposed to be at. I couldn’t find it. I threw the Thomas Guide aside and tried to choke the steering wheel. Squig had said he and Woz lived off something. What was it?

  For once, the hundreds of sixties song lyrics taking up valuable real estate in my head came in handy. Paul Revere and the Raiders, no less.

  Cherokee people … Cherokee tribe.

  I drove around the block and west on Fountain to Cherokee Avenue. Left or right? Right, probably, to the north. If it was south of Fountain, Woz would have taken Santa Monica. Assuming he was headed home, and that he wasn’t toking up in the car and taking the long way around to dig on the lights.

  I made the right and drove slowly north, through a ne
ighborhood that might have been nice once. I crossed De Longpre. The lights and traffic on Sunset rose up ahead.

  I almost missed it. A narrow street, off to the right, dead-ending at Cherokee. Leland Way. I made the turn. The VW was parked on the right side two houses down from Cherokee. I tried to look in, but it was too dark to see anything except someone moving around in there. If they lived on the block, they would have had plenty of time to go into their house while I was touring Hollywood.

  I kept my cool enough to maintain my speed. Woz’s Barracuda was parked halfway down the block. He wasn’t in it. I kept going and made a right at the next corner. Then another. And another. One more and I’d be driving past the VW again.

  I constructed a plan. A lousy one, but it was all I had.

  I made the last right turn.

  Let’s See Action

  Again I passed the VW, and continued down the block, past the rundown bungalows and the boxy pastel apartment buildings. Parking was tight, but I found a spot two behind the Barracuda, and got out of the truck.

  I stood there trying to guess which house was Squig’s and Woz’s. This was the extent of my plan. Figure out where they lived and warn Woz some guys might be following him around. Like I said, lousy.

  An elderly woman watched me from under a streetlight across the way. She resembled the one in the Valley after my visit to Tiny’s armory, draped in a muumuu, cell phone in hand. Maybe they were running a package deal. By a phone, get a muumuu free. Or the other way around.

  Then I heard the music. “Summertime Blues.” Not the Eddie Cochran original, nor the version on The Who Live at Leeds. It was the travesty by Blue Cheer.

  I tracked it to a house two up on the other side of the street. Once I got there the sound was earsplitting. Either the neighbors were used to it, they were deaf, or Woz kept them all well-stocked with ganja.

  I rang the bell. No answer. I knocked. I knocked again. Nothing.

  I went around the side of the house and found a window that was open a few inches. Inside, there were hundreds of records and tapes, a few CDs. The enormous Hendrix poster on the wall was coming loose at one corner. The lighting included a lava lamp, a blacklight, and a floor lamp with a Tiffany shade and a troll doll sitting on top. Woz sat on a venerable blue couch with his back to me, head moving to and fro sort of in time to the music. He looked like he was davening.