One of the female bartenders turned her head, spotted Deanna, grew a big smile. She marched over, leaned over the bar, gave Deanna a big kiss on the lips. “How you doing, girl?”
“I’m good. This is Joe.”
“Hey, Joe.”
“Hey,” I said. I was getting good at it.
“We got to go talk,” Deanna said. “About Toby Bonner.”
“Give me ten minutes. I got a break coming. ’Kay?”
“‘Kay.”
Pam went back to dishing out suds. Deanna pushed me toward the four-inch platform that served as a bandstand. There was a miniscule dance floor in front of it, jammed with people. There wasn’t room for them to do any more than squirm. Deanna took my hand and pulled me into the press. We wriggled along with everyone else. I butted asses with someone. It was Buck. He shouted, “Hey, Little Joe. How’s things back on the Ponderosa?” Then he leaned his head back and brayed like a donkey.
The song ended and the crowd hooted. The singer announced they were going to do one by Lynyrd Skynyrd and broke into “Free Bird.” Partway through Pam joined our dance crew. She was carrying a six-pack of Tecate. When the song was over she took Deanna’s hand and Deanna took mine yet again and we slipped back through the masses. We headed toward a door in the far wall. Somewhere along the line Hoss joined us. Pam unlocked the door, we went through, she closed it behind us.
We were outside. Down a couple of steps, past a rusted-out tireless pickup, into the woods. The path traveled downhill. The night under the new moon was dark as Osama’s heart. We kept going until the music diminished to a dull roar. Hoss tripped over a rock and fell flat on his face. He thought this was the funniest thing in the world.
A few more steps and we were in a tiny clearing. I heard crickets or frogs or some other peeping thing. My eyes had gotten used to the darkness, and I could make out a picnic table. We stumbled forward and got ourselves seated around it, Hoss and me on one side, the women on the other. Pam deposited the six-pack on the table, pulled out bottles, undid caps. We each took one and sampled it. Hoss belched. “‘Scuse me.”
“While I kiss the sky,” I said.
A lighter flared by Hoss’s face. He lit a joint and pulled in a roomful of air. Then the jay was in front of my nose.
This is how the whole thing started, I thought. A joint in my face. There were reasons I should’ve just passed it along. Probably a whole host of them.
I took the jay, took a hit, held my breath in as I gave it to Pam. The end of the joint glowed. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. They followed it as Pam gave it to Deanna and Deanna passed it back to Hoss. Someone giggled, maybe me. Somewhere in the dim recesses I remembered how much stronger twenty-first-century dope was than the stuff back in the sixties. I took another hit and kept the joint moving. When it got to Deanna again I said, “Okay, people. Spill.”
“It was a fucking miracle,” Pam said.
“A fucking miracle,” Hoss said.
“Tell us what happened,” Deanna said.
The joint materialized in front of my face. “I’ll pass,” I said. The old barn-door-and-stolen-horse thing.
“It was a Monday night,” Pam said. “You know how slow it is on Monday nights. This one was extra slow.”
“King Cobra was playing,” Hoss said.
“Who’re they?” I said.
“Local band. Mighty good.” Another belch. This time he didn’t bother to excuse himself. “They been playing around her for ten, fifteen years. Got a guy blows harp like—”
“Hoss,” Deanna said. “Shut up.”
Hoss shut up. Pam said, “So they play until twelve thirty, quarter to one. And a couple of them leave and the rest are sitting around having a beer, and there’s maybe a dozen people in the place, and all of a sudden there he is.”
“Toby Bonner,” I said.
“Well, yeah, Toby Bonner. Isn’t that who we’re talking about? “
“Uh-huh.”
“He comes in right through that door we just came out of.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“Well, I didn’t know who he was—I mean, I’d heard of him, but I wouldn’t’ve known what he looked like—but one of the guys from the band says, Holy shit, and I say Holy shit, what? and he says who it is up there. And I say, No fucking way, and he says, Yes fucking way, and then another guy says, No fucking way, and—”
I was going to have to introduce this chick to Squig. They could talk all night and not say a thing. “I get it. People didn’t believe it. What happened then?”
“The band guys who’re left, they’re just watching the stage like it’s Eric Clapton. Then he takes his guitar from the case, plugs into an amplifier the guys hadn’t got around to taking down yet, and he pulls over a mic, and then he starts playing. And everything stops.”
“It was like being in church, man,” Hoss said.
“How long did he play?” I said.
“How long, Pammy, about an hour?”
“About right,” Pam said.
“Anyone talk to him?” I said.
“A couple of the band guys tried to, when he was done. They were, like, in awe. But he just unconnected and went out the back again. A couple of us went out after him, but he was already on the move.”
“In what?”
“An old Triumph,” Hoss said.
“And no one knew he was coming?” Deanna said.
“Nope. Total surprise.”
Deanna and I plumbed these depths for all they were worth. When Pam said she had to get back, I got up to go too.
“Holy shitting mother of God,” Hoss said.
I sat back down.
“I just remembered something,” he said. “Don’t you remember, Pammie?”
“You tell me what I’m ought to remember,” she said, “I could tell you if I remember it.”
“That thing about the beach.”
“What beach?”
“In the song.”
“What song?”
“The one about the beach.”
“Hoss, sweetie?” Deanna said.
“Yeah?”
“It doesn’t matter if she remembers or not. Why don’t you tell us what you remember.”
“Right on. The beach. There was a song about a beach.”
“I must’ve been in the ladies’ room,” Pam said.
“What was the name of it again? Shit. Something with a P.”
“Playa?” I said.
“Hey! Right on the money.”
“It just means beach in Spanish.”
“Not just playa. It was playa de la something-or-other.”
“That’s a big help.”
“De la something with a P.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I got it! Playa de la Playa.”
“Beach of the beach? That’s just stupid.” As was calling a guy built like The Rock stupid.
“Something like that. Playa de la Paya. Playa de la Palala. Playa de la Pala! That’s it!”
“Beach of the shovel,” Deanna said. “Or shovel beach.”
“Sure as shit,” Hoss said, “that’s it, I swear on my mother’s grave.”
“Your mother’s still alive,” Pam said.
“My grandmother’s, then. Playa de la Pala. The whole song was about it, how he would go down there and there’d be the sun and the waves and music and shit. Pammie, you gotta remember that.”
“I told you, I was in the bathroom.”
“For a whole fucking song?”
“I couldn’t find a Tampax, okay?”
“Gang?” I said.
“What?” they both said.
“It doesn’t matter if Pam heard it or not. What matters is, does anyone know where this Playa de la Pala is?”
“Nope,” Pam said.
“Never heard of it,” Hoss said.
“Deanna?”
“Me, neither,” she said.
“Maybe he made it up,” I said. “Just a fake beac
h in a song.”
“I really got to get back,” Pam said.
We trooped up the path. Right outside the door Hoss said, “Shit. Whyn’t I think of this? Buck’ll know where it is. He knows all kinds of stuff like that.”
We went inside and tracked down Buck.
“Playa de la Pala?” he said. “Sure I know it. It’s a little south of where 33 hits 101. I’ll draw you a map.” He snatched a napkin from the bar and a pen from the bartender and drew a bunch of squiggles. He and Deanna and I went over it until we had every hieroglyphic down. Then we bade our friends a fond farewell and headed back to the coast.
What Are We Doing Here?
Last time I was in a microbus I was on the way home from a Cat Stevens concert, way back before he became a Muslim. Everyone, including the driver,was flying high on mescaline. He still drove better than Deanna was. She kept wandering over the center line, overcompensating, stirring up the shoulder. Funny how I’d never drive with someone who was drunk, but rationalized putting my life in the hands of someone high on pot. A remnant of the old days. Booze = bad. Pot = good.
“Buck knows a lot about the area,” I said.
“He ought to. He teaches history at the high school.”
“He what?”
“Yeah, and Hoss teaches science.”
“Science.”
“Uh-huh.”
“These are your biker friends?”
“You got a problem with that?”
“I guess I feel cheated. Here I thought I was buddying up to some dangerous characters, and all they were was a bunch of high school teachers.”
“You’ve got plenty of dangerous characters around already. You don’t need any more.”
“I suppose. How come you know Spanish?”
“I don’t.”
“You knew about pala.’“
“And not much more. When I had my sugar daddy I got tired of the gardener and me never understanding each other. So I learned as much Spanish as I had to, which included the words for shovel and trowel and hoe and crap like that.”
We reached the freeway, turned south, went a few miles, and exited toward the ocean. A couple of turns later we went over a small rise and the road ended at a T. Deanna stopped the bus. I caught my first whiff of sea air. I flicked on the flashlight I’d dug up behind the seat and consulted the napkin. “Left.”
She made the turn, and we motored along. The road got narrower as we meandered down toward the water. The ocean smell got stronger. After a mile or two the road petered out, ending in a parking area. Deanna drove in a circle, passing the headlights around the periphery of the lot. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence, eight or nine feet high. There was a gate with a big padlock. Beyond it a path led dimly downward.
She kept the engine running and the headlights pointing at the gate as we got out and inspected it. A sign was mounted halfway up. PLAYA DE LA PALA. CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. We could hear waves breaking, though how far away I couldn’t tell. There were ship lights straight out in the distance and off to their right what I guessed was an oil platform.
The sea air was starting to break up the marijuana haze. “Dee,” I said.
“Don’t call me that. I hate it.”
“Sorry.”
“What were you going to say?”
“This is dumb. Why don’t we come back in the daylight?”
“Because if he’s living here he’s sure to be here now. In the day he may be at the store or something.”
“What if he’s gone somewhere for another drop-in?”
“A little longer. What could it hurt to look?”
“We could fall of a cliff and break our necks.”
“We’ll be careful.”
“And here’s a thought. If by some insane chance Toby’s living on the beach wouldn’t someone have discovered him by now? This isn’t that isolated.”
“Who knows?”
“Besides, with the beach gated, how would he go back and forth?”
“He might know another way.”
“I suppose.”
“Or he could climb the fence.”
“That’s a possibility too.”
“Let’s try it.”
“Not a chance. You’re talking to mister uncoordinated here. Last time I climbed a fence I ended up with blood pouring out of my scalp.
“When was that?” Deanna said.
“When I was a kid. Some juvenile delinquents were chasing me.”
“Time to get over it.” She walked toward the van.
“What are you doing?”
“The electrical system in the bus. You leave it idling too long, it starts to discharge.”
“Another reason to come back in the daylight.”
She opened the door. The headlights blinked off. The smaller beam of the flashlight flicked on. Gravel scrunched as she came back.
“When was the last time you climbed a fence,” I said.
“I don’t remember. Come on, point that thing at the top.”
There was no stopping her. I aimed the beam at the upper part of the fence. She started up. “It’s not hard,” she said, moving through the light and swinging onto the other side. I tried to show the way with the flash. She reached the ground unscathed. “Give me the light.” I passed it through a gap under the gate. “Now you.”
I wasn’t going to let a mere girl show me up. I grabbed the fence, gave it a tug, tried to get one of my clumsy boots into one of the diamond-shaped openings. It lodged in place, more or less. I hoisted myself up, fought to find a hold for my other boot. I might have been clearing up mentally, but physically I was still zonked. Deanna led me higher with the flashlight. Finally I made it to the top. I threw one leg over, straddled the thing, eased myself over to the other side, made my way down.
“See,” she said. “You did fine. Let’s go.”
We inched downward, with Deanna and the flash in the lead and me following a couple of careful steps behind. The path was lined with dry vegetation on both sides. It wasn’t very steep, but the bottoms of my boots were long since worn slick.
I thought I heard another car somewhere up above. I grabbed Deanna’s arm, told her to hold still, listened. Nothing but the waves. I was clearly spooked. The effects of the dope were moving to another phase. Paranoia, striking deep.
I whispered for Deanna to go ahead. We crept forward and down. Suddenly there was sand under my boots. Deanna shot the beam around. The hill came right down to the water, marking one end of the beach. The other end could have been fifty yards away, or five miles. Too bad we hadn’t asked Buck.
“He’s not here,” I said. “It was just a song. Let’s go back.”
“We came this far. Might as well keep going.”
The beach was narrow, not more than fifteen yards, and Deanna swept the light back and forth at irregular intervals, turning up nothing but seaweed, driftwood, and a mannequin’s head. We slogged for fifteen or twenty minutes, until another hill met the sea. “The end,” I said.
“Was worth a shot.”
We turned around and started back. Somewhere along the way a bolt of reason came through. It said that we were insane to imagine Toby might be there, that Deanna was a loser who’d pissed away her life, that I was in danger of becoming one too. Toby was probably dead, and the person who’d been showing up at clubs was a clever impersonator. And if he was alive, we weren’t going to find him unless he wanted to be found. The best thing I could do now would be to go back to the bus, let Deanna drive me back to the city, and call Bonnie in the morning and say I’d failed miserably.
We reached the foot of the path and started up. Just as we spotted the fence, the flashlight went out. Deanna banged on it with her hand. There was one brief flicker, enough to get our hopes up. Then nothing. “No big deal,” she said. “We can climb it in the dark, can’t we?”
“I hope so. I don’t want to spend the night here.”
We covered the remaining distance by shuffling along, holding han
ds, with our free ones out in front of us. We made course corrections each time one of us hit the bushes. We were almost on top of the fence before we saw its outline, a darker shadow against a black sky. Deanna shoved the dead flash under the gate and scurried over as if it were broad daylight. A regular squirrel, that one.
I started up, managed to make my way to the top, took a deep breath, threw a leg over, then the other. I was about to start down when someone began shooting at me.
Magic Bus
There were two bullets at first. One zinged off the fence not far from my leg. Somewhere out in the wilderness I saw or imagined a flash. I heard another shot, and something ripped through my jacket, not necessarily in that order. I let go of the fence.
One leg crumpled under me when I hit. I fell, cracked an elbow, yelled in pain, cut it off. No noise, I thought. It would help them find me. Though if they came that close in that kind of blackness, they had to have high-tech equipment. They didn’t need me making a racket to know where I was.
The fourth gunshot snapped me out of it. I looked around for cover, a tough task in absolute darkness. I ran for where I guessed the microbus was, nearly smashing into it before I realized it was there. I felt along the sheet metal, trying to put the vehicle between the shooter and me. I found a wheel well and hunkered down by a tire.
Yet another shot echoed, this one a lot closer than the others. The guy had scampered down the hill, and he and his night vision would find me in a minute. Or he had a partner, one who’d been down where we were all along, waiting for the first one to flush us out. I felt around on the ground for a rock. It would be better than nothing if the guy came—
More gunfire, very near. I clawed at the wheel, trying to pull off a hubcap. I could throw it at the guy, like Oddjob in Goldfinger. Or use it as a very small shield.
“Joe!”
Deanna’s stage whisper came from close by. She was too near where the guy with the gun was. He’d see her and—
The next gunshot came from so close by that I could make out the shooter’s face in the flash. It was Deanna. “You okay?” she said.
“Uh-huh. Where’d you get the gun?”
“From under the seat.”
One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Page 19
