The last message was from Elaine, at nine a.m. A callback for AT&T Broadband. There’d been a screwup, and she hadn’t gotten the message when she was supposed to. I had to be in Hollywood at a quarter to twelve.
I called Elaine and assured her I’d make the audition. Then I tracked down Gina in her car. “Where the fuck have you been?” she said.
“I love when you talk dirty.”
“Get serious, Portugal. I’ve got to meet a moronic client in ten minutes and I’m stuck on the 405. I’m in no mood for frivolity.”
“I was involved in more gunplay.”
“God, no. You okay?”
“Uh-huh.” I gave her the Reader’s Digest version.
“You’re sure you’re all right?”
“More clothes ruined, but otherwise everything’s fine.”
“Come over tonight. I want to check you over, see you’re really okay.”
“Deal.”
I made myself presentable for my callback. I got there late, but I’d known the casting director a long time and she let it slide. This time around they had a real parrot. His name was Rollo. They told me he’d been a regular on a sitcom for the past six years. Rollo and I got along famously. Sometimes it’s like that. Instant rapport with the other actor.
Before I left they let me feed him a cracker. He thanked me, they thanked me, and I drove home again. I dragged myself into the bedroom and flopped on the bed. I fell asleep immediately. And lay there, unable to drop off. Too much running around inside my head. And a lot of noise from next door. Various shrieks of delight, lots of giddy laughter. Someone yelled, “Cool beans.” It reminded me of Aricela. Poor Aricela, lost in the cogs of bureaucracy. Or reunited with her parents, the ones she loved so much she refused to admit they existed. Eventually the mental gibberish calmed down and I felt blessed unconsciousness coming on. I heard Ronnie yell, “It’s all over my shorts,” and then I was asleep.
I was a homicide detective, working on a gang shooting at some generic beach. The essential clue was the DNA from whatever was all over Ronnie’s shorts. I went to interview her. I knew it was Ronnie, but it looked like Deanna. Then I was having sex with Ronnie/Deanna, but I knew it was all right because Gina was going through menopause.
The phone woke me. “Joe?”
“Mmph.”
“It’s Bonnie.”
“Hi, Bonnie.”
“Detective Kalenko called.”
That got me out of my stupor. “What’d he say?”
“He told me about what happened to you last night. You’re all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“He said the Ventura police have identified the man who was shooting at you.”
I read the news today, oh boy. “Anyone we know?”
“Someone I know,” she said. “Name’s Vinnie Mann. He was the bass player in Darren’s band.”
Slip Kid
I got some of the story from Bonnie, who got it from Darren. Some when I called Kalenko, and the rest, oddly enough, from a Terry Takamura report on Channel 6’s six o’clock news.
His name wasn’t really Mann. He was Vincent Manson. The manager of a band he was in well before Changing Its Spots insisted that Manson wasn’t a good name for a rock and roller and made him change it. This was well before Marilyn Manson happened.
He was the longhair in the group photo I’d seen, but according to Darren, who was still in touch with him now and then, he’d recently whacked off his mane and started shaving his head.
Unlike Darren, music wasn’t just a phase for him. He’d been in one band or another since junior high. One I’d even heard of, a group called Fuzzbox, who’d had a semi-hit single, an AC/DC knockoff called “In Bed with the Devil,” in ’91 or so. He was a fantastic bass player, according to Bonnie, a reasonable backing vocalist, a decent songwriter.
The other significant element in Vinnie Mann’s life was getting into trouble, at least up to 1997, when he knocked over a liquor store, got caught, and got thrown in jail. He had the good sense to choose as his partner in crime someone the cops were really interested in, and was able to plea-bargain his sentence down to two years in exchange for ratting on the guy. He’d kept his nose clean since he got out. Or so everyone thought.
Kalenko said they were checking into Mann’s recent movements. No one knew why he—and presumably the other man who’d escaped when they went over the side of the freeway—were going around hunting Platypuses.
I finally made the flower stop at Moe’s that I’d missed the night I followed Woz home. I got to Gina’s at six-thirty. She opened the door with a shit-eating grin on. “Are these for me?” I told her they were and the grin got wider and she said to go into the guest room. I asked what was going on, and she said to just go look. I walked down the hall and into the room. Lying on the bed, wearing a grin that eerily matched Gina’s, was Aricela.
“Hi, Joe,” she said.
“Hi, kiddo.” I sat on the edge of the bed. Gina followed me in and stood just inside the door. “How you doing?”
“Okay.” Aricela put down the magazine, sat up, and threw her arms around my neck. I wrapped her up in my own. We broke it at the same time. She sat lotus-style on the bed.
I looked over at Gina, then back to Aricela. “So how did this happen?”
“I got away from them.”
“How?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
Gina came over, sat on the other side of the bed. “She was waiting for me when I came home.”
“Was she, now?”
“So what could I do?”
“Not much choice.”
“Nope. And don’t worry, there’s plenty of dinner for all of us.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“What are you worried about?” Aricela said.
“Just some stuff that happened last night. Nothing, really. Read your magazine, kiddo. I’m going to help Gina in the kitchen.”
“‘Kay.”
On the way to the kitchen Gina said, “What’s this ‘kiddo’ stuff?”
“It just feels right, you know? Like calling you ‘babe.’ So what do you think about all this?”
“Thanks for the flowers, by the way. Very pretty. TJ’s?”
“Moe’s, and don’t change the subject. Nothing’s changed. She’s not a puppy.”
“Last time you said kitten.”
“We have to take her back.”
“Can we talk about this later?”
“What’s wrong with now?”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now. Later, when she goes to sleep, we’ll talk. For now, can’t we just enjoy ourselves?”
“I suppose.” I went to the stove, uncovered a pot, peered in. “This tortilla soup?”
“Uh-huh.” She came over, dipped in a spoon, took a taste. “Pretty good. Might need a little more seasoning.” She put down the spoon, joined her hands behind my neck, looked up at me. “How come you keep getting mixed up with people with guns?”
“Don’t know.”
“Do you think there are more of them out there?”
“In general, yes. There’s a limitless supply of people with guns. If you’re asking about this particular crew, I don’t know the answer.”
“It didn’t end last night.”
“I don’t know.”
“So how do we tell it’s over?”
“I don’t know, babe. I just don’t know.”
After dessert we watched Rush Hour on TV. Jackie Chan was as entertaining as usual. Chris Tucker gave me a headache. They kept running Make 7-Up Yours commercials. It unnerved me that there was a whole ad campaign based on the words up yours. Same way those Victoria’s Secret ads were unnerving. Not that I minded all those lush young bosoms. But it was unnatural having them splashed all over my TV.
I watched Aricela watch the movie. She was sitting on the floor, too close to the screen. She had her hair in a ponytail, tied with a pale yellow ribbon. It was gorgeous hair, shiny a
nd lustrous. I wondered what would happen if we took her back. Would she escape again? Would they do something awful to make sure she didn’t? Post some Nurse Ratched type outside her room or dorm or whatever they had so she didn’t make another run for it?
I turned to Gina. She’d been watching me watch Aricela watch TV. She had a somber smile on. She took my hand, sighed, and turned her attention back to the television.
At ten we watched the Channel 6 news. The way we figured it, none of the local stations was worth a hill of beans, so we might as well watch the worst of them all and get some outrage value out of it. Aricela had moved up to the sofa and sat between Gina and me, shoes off, feet drawn up in front of her.
They started with ten or twelve minutes on the Lakers’ latest playoff victory. Shaq and Kobe had scored thirty-five apiece. The opposing coach complained about the officiating. Someone said it was a seven-game series and it wasn’t over till it was over, and someone said they had great respect for the other team, and someone asked if it was okay to wave to his little girl at home, got permission, and wiggled his fingers at the camera.
Then they had Terry Takamura, repeating almost verbatim her Vinnie Mann report from six o’clock.
With the important stuff covered, they moved on to other matters. India and Pakistan were on the brink of nuclear war. Washington was strengthening the FBI’s powers to spy on us and no one was putting up a stink. Israeli soldiers had managed to stop the latest suicide bomber before anyone was killed. She was fourteen. I thought of the kid who’d put a hole in Alberta Burns’s leg. Kids were alike the world over.
More local news. The latest on the secession efforts by Hollywood and the Valley. Relations between African Americans and Korean Americans up and down Vermont Avenue were just fine. A cocker spaniel saved a man’s life by biting his ankle and keeping him from walking in front of car.
And another update on the big murder-suicide in Hollywood. The old couple, Cecil and Maria Richardson, were the parents of famous radical Elizabeth Baker, who, along with her husband Quentin, had been on the run from the police since ’69 for supposedly knocking over a bank. Over footage of the Richardsons’ tiny Craftsman house, the anchors speculated about whether the axings had anything to do with the Bakers’ underground activities. Then they showed the obligatory neighbor with the obligatory graphic saying NEIGHBOR, saying nothing meaningful. A shot of flowers in front of the house, required in all domestic tragedy stories. Wanted posters showing the grim faces of the Bakers.
I glanced down at Aricela. She looked up at me and burst into tears.
Gina and I both threw arms around her, both asked what was wrong. Aricela buried her head in Gina’s chest. “Abuela,” she said between sobs. “Abuelo.”
Gina, her face stricken, turned to me and mouthed a translation.
Grandmother. Grandfather.
Run Run Run
As delicately as we could, we got the story out. The important parts. The rest got filled in later.
Aricela had been telling the truth about her parents being dead. Her mother, Lorena Castillo, was the sister of Elizabeth Baker, the famous fugitive. Her father, Ralph Castillo, had worked at Home Depot. When Aricela was six, Lorena got cancer. She was dead within a year. A few months later Ralph left Aricela with his in-laws and jumped off the end of Santa Monica Pier. Aricela wasn’t supposed to know about this. She was told her father had gone back to Guatemala to take care of some family business. She found out the truth, but never told her grandparents.
The Richardsons battled constantly. Over big things and little things and nothing at all. Every once in a while Maria would throw something. On occasion Cecil would slap her around. Things were worse when one of them had been drinking. Far worse when both of them had. Those were the times when one or the other might give Aricela a whack or two.
They let her grow up more or less on her own. They fed her and made sure she had clothes to wear and that was about it. She spent a lot of time by herself and a fair amount with the people who lived in Las Palmas Park. When she was ten she got caught shoplifting a bag of pork rinds. After the cops brought her home her grandparents told her she was lucky. That the police were very bad people who would act like your friends when they really weren’t. That her Aunt Betsy and Uncle Quentin had been running from them their whole lives, and they hadn’t done anything wrong at all.
Then, one night about a week previous, things between Cecil and Maria got out of hand. It was after midnight, after Aricela had gone to bed. Both her grandparents had been drinking since early afternoon. The cursing and yelling woke her up, as it always did. She scrunched herself into the corner, like she always did, and waited for them to finish.
Then she heard screams. She was terribly scared, but she had to see what was going on. She put on her shoes and tiptoed to where she could peek into the living room. She saw her abuela lying bloody on the floor with an ax in her chest and her abuelo pointing a gun at his head. He didn’t see her. He pulled the trigger once, twice, cursed, threw the gun against the wall. He turned her way. She was sure he’d spotted her. She shrunk back. She wanted to go back to her room, but she was mesmerized by what she was seeing.
Cecil turned back to his wife’s body. He jerked the ax out of her chest, laid his arm across the table, and brought the ax down. He screamed, dropped the ax, and held his spurting wrist with his other hand. He wheeled around the room, howling in pain.
Then he spied Aricela.
He said her name, and at first she thought he was going to come after her, let the blood pulsing from his arm get all over her, or snatch up the ax again and use it on her. Instead his face got very sad. He sank to the floor and whimpered and moaned. After a while he didn’t make any sound at all.
Aricela walked very slowly into the living room. She looked at her grandparents, one dead and one either dead or very close, and at all the blood splattered everywhere, and she fled. She ran a block or two away and hid in a yard until dawn. Then she stole some clothes someone had forgotten to take in off the line. She spent the day wandering around, scared, hungry, not knowing what to do, sure of only one thing: that she couldn’t go to the authorities, because they would act like your friends when they really weren’t. She didn’t go see her friends in Las Palmas Park because just a couple of days before those same police had made them move somewhere else.
That night she fell in with a bunch of older kids. She didn’t know if they were runaways or what, and she didn’t care. She just knew that they gave her food and that they too didn’t want anything to do with the police. They lived in an old empty building and slept on dirty, smelly mattresses. She stayed with them a few days, until one night one of them, a big strong boy with long blond hair, snuck over to her bed and tried to touch her private parts. She told him to stop. He wouldn’t. Her friends in the park had told her what to do. She kicked him between the legs. While he was busy calling her names she escaped.
She spent another night and day alone and hungry. The next night she was walking down an alley and suddenly there was a man shooting at her and another man who was in the alley, and the other man picked her up and ran away from the alley and the man with the gun, and saved her.
I Was Just Being Friendly
Midnight. Aricela was asleep in the guest room. Gina and I had just gotten into bed. We turned out the lights and lay there and didn’t say anything. A car alarm went off outside, cycled through its repertoire of absurd noises, turned itself off. I heard another sound, a loud hum. “That the refrigerator?”
I felt her nod. “It’s been doing that on and off. Going to have to have someone look at it.” She pressed herself closer to me and said, “What a tough kid.”
“She’s been through so much,” I said, “and she seems to be in pretty good shape. I’m thinking after a while whatever defenses she’s put up are going to break down and she’ll become a basket case.”
“Post-traumatic stress syndrome.”
“Sort of, yeah,” I said. “So what do
we do?”
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be right away. The only living relatives we know about are God knows where. They may be dead too, for all we know.”
“Agreed. They’re not a factor. But answer this for me. Why haven’t we heard anything on the news about a missing child? The cops have been all over that house. Wouldn’t they have figured out there was a kid living there?”
“You think she’s lying?”
I thought it over. “I think what we’ve heard is pretty much what happened. There’s got to be some other reason why the cops aren’t letting on there was someone else living there. Maybe I should ask Burns if she can find anything out.”
“Maybe.”
The refrigerator stopped its groaning. “Maybe I’ll call her in the morning,” I said.
“Okay.”
“So should we go to sleep now or what?”
“I vote for ‘or what.’“
“You’re certainly horny lately.”
“It’s this midlife business. My biological clock ticking and all that.”
“Honey, your biological clock wound down years ago.”
She poked me in the ribs and rolled on top of me. “You have to keep quiet. We don’t want to wake the children.”
“No,” I said. “We certainly don’t want to do that.”
I woke in the middle of the night and heard sounds from the living room. I threw on a robe and found my way out there. The hall closet was open and the battery-powered light was on. Aricela was sitting on the floor in front of the closet. She’d found an old Solvang cookie tin full of photos and was browsing through them. I had a couple just like it at home that I was going to organize someday.
She acted like I’d caught her with her hand in the cookie jar, which in a way I had. “I’m just looking,” she said.
I nodded. “Don’t stay up too much longer.”
She said okay and returned to the photos. After a few minutes I heard her making her way back to the guest room. After a few more I was asleep.
One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries) Page 21
