One Last Hit (Joe Portugal Mysteries)

by Walpow, Nathan

  I told the Family Services people I wanted to talk to them. They eyed me, then each other. “What can we do for you?” said the woman.

  “In here,” I said, and led her to the bedroom. The man stayed behind, guarding against Aricela making a break for it, avoiding me lunging for his throat.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” I said.

  “It’s hard to tell. She’ll be in our custody until the investigation’s finished.”

  “Custody? What in hell for?”

  “Since there’s no family, we’ll keep her until we know what to do with her. It’s clear she acted to save you and Ms. Vela. Nevertheless, there are procedures.”

  “There always are. And when all that’s done?”

  “We’ll probably find a foster home for her.”

  “How will you do that?”

  “There are—”

  “Procedures, I know. Will we be able to see her?”

  She produced a business card. “Call me tomorrow. We’ll know more then. Right now we need to get Aricela out of here and settled in.”

  She walked out. I followed a few seconds later. Aricela broke from Gina and ran to me. I got on my knees and hugged her. “What’s gonna happen to me?” she said.

  “I’m not sure, kiddo.”

  “Can’t I stay here?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Can I come back here?”

  “I don’t know that either.”

  “Do you want me to?”

  I looked into Gina’s eyes. She came to us, put one hand on Aricela’s shoulder, the other on mine. “Of course we do,” she said.

  Aricela looked up at her, managed a smile, turned back to me. “How about you?”

  “Me too, kiddo.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Course I do.”

  “Cool beans.” She broke free and said to the two skinnies, “We can go now.”

  They ushered her out. She didn’t look back. The FBI guy decided there was no point in hanging around and followed. The door closed behind them.

  I went to the window and looked out on the street. Several figures, one smaller than the rest, appeared out of the building. I turned away. I didn’t need to see more.

  A quarter hour later we were alone. I went to Gina. She was staring at the wall, where Darren Chapman and his bad end had gotten acquainted. “I can’t be here,” she said.

  She went in the bedroom and gathered up some stuff, and we went down to my truck.

  Happy Jack

  We didn’t say much on the way to Culver City, and even less when we got to my place. We didn’t even brush our teeth, just stripped down, got into bed, and went to sleep. I woke up a little later and dug the fabric sample with the bullets out of my sock drawer. There were five of them. Aricela had interrupted me when I was emptying the gun, and I didn’t notice that one stayed put. I’d hadn’t had a reason to look at them since. We’d had a one-in-six chance when she pulled the trigger the one left was in the right place.

  I woke up alone in bed the next morning. I found Gina out in the Jungle, tending a glass of apple juice. I took the other wicker chair. After a while she said, “It wasn’t about the kid, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s about getting old.”

  “I know.”

  “The kid, she was just a handy outlet. As long as I had her to worry about, I was able to back-burner this, this …”

  “Existential dread?”

  “Yes. This existential dread I’ve been feeling.”

  “I know.”

  “Stop saying, ‘I know.’“

  “I know.”

  She smiled and slapped my forearm. “Asshole.”

  “Bitch.”

  The squirrel was back next door. He ran up the birch tree. A mockingbird dive-bombed him. He held his ground, chittering maniacally. The bird went off in search of something easier to scare.

  “Did you mean it?” I said. “About Aricela coming to live with us … you … whoever.”

  “I did at the moment.”

  “What about now?”

  “I don’t know. You?”

  “The same.”

  A car pulled up in front. An beat-up old sedan, a Monarch or Concord or something equally faceless. The engine dieseled when the driver turned it off, making sounds not unlike the squirrel’s. When it stopped he got out, nodded to us, and came up the walk.

  He was of average build, with nondescript looks and unremarkable clothing. He didn’t look like a cop, but he didn’t exactly look like a civilian. He stopped in front of us. “Mr. Portugal?”

  We looked each other over. Neither was very impressed, but neither was very unhappy either. “We don’t want any,” I said.

  He smiled, as if people mistook him for a salesman all the time. I didn’t think he was one. It was just the first thing that came out. “My name’s Jack Liffey,” he said.

  “You don’t look like a Mormon or a Jehovah’s Witness.”

  “Far from it.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I find lost children.”

  “You’re too late,” Gina said. “She’s not lost anymore.”

  “I know that, Ms. Vela.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “To bring you both a message.”

  “From who?” I said.

  “From Elizabeth and Quentin Baker.”

  “Aricela’s aunt and uncle.”

  He was happy not to have to explain who they were. “They hired me to find her.”

  “You have some interesting clients, Mr. Liffey.”

  “Always,” Jack Liffey said.

  “Are they off the lam?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No.”

  “Then how—”

  “I’ve known them for a very long time.”

  “Are you a dangerous radical too?”

  “A retired one.”

  “I see.” I caught myself smiling. Guess I liked the guy. “So what’s the message?”

  “They want to thank you. Both of you. For taking care of their niece after, well, you know what it was after.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “That’s it.”

  “Not much of a message.”

  “No,” Jack Liffey said, “But it’s the only one I’ve got. And now that I’ve passed it on, I’ll be going. Good to meet you both.” He shook our hands, said, “See you around,” and walked back to his car.

  Too Late the Hero

  Darren’s funeral was two days later. All the male Platypuses and our old ladies sat together near the back of the chapel at Forest Lawn. Squig and Woz had geeky ties on. Frampton looked just swell in a suit. I had one on too, my only one, the one I only wore to funerals and the occasional audition. I doubt I looked as good as Frampton did.

  We were all there for Bonnie’s sake. You do things for your bandmates that you don’t really want to do, even if you’re pretty sure they’re not going to be your bandmates for long.

  It was a nice enough ceremony, I guess, with a solemn minister and flowers and sappy music I’m sure Darren would have hated. The minister said some things about fate and faith and the mysteries of life. God looked down upon us all. Then we left, and they cleaned up the chapel to do it all again, amen.

  The second we hit the sidewalk Squig and Woz tore off their ties. Goldie reminded them we still had to go graveside for further festivities, and they clipped them back on. We piled into Frampton’s van, drove up to the burial spot, listened while a few more nice things were said. A distant cousin began to wail uncontrollably and had to be led away. That was about it as far as displays of emotion.

  Before we got back in the van Bonnie came over and asked us all back to her place. No one knew how to say no. We returned to the parking lot. Gina suggested the four guys all go together in the van. She would drive June in her car, and Goldie could take Chloe in the Barracuda. We guys all looked at each other and agreed. I think we knew it was going to
be our last chance to all be together.

  No one said much of anything for the first couple of minutes. I think we were all savoring the irony. A bunch of guys in a band driving around in a van. Like in all the how-they-became-rock-stars stories.

  “Fuck,” Woz said.

  I turned around in my captain’s chair. “You want to expand on that?”

  He jerked off his tie again and tossed it on the floor. “Fucking kid,” he said.

  I watched him. It made him uncomfortable. He looked away, back at me, then at Squig. He grabbed Squig’s tie and snatched it off too. I glanced at Frampton and saw that he wanted to know the same thing I did. “What’s your story, Woz?” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You used to be a troublemaker, but basically an okay kid. Somewhere along the line you became a psychotic thug. When?”

  He looked over at Squig, but there was no help from that quarter. He turned back to us. “Where do you think?”

  I’d been fairly sure all along. “Vietnam,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  “Want to tell us what happened?”

  “Guys died.”

  “I need more, Woz. I need—”

  “Joe?” It was Squig.

  “Uh-huh?”

  “He’s never even told me. He sure as shit isn’t going to tell you.”

  “You asked?”

  “About a thousand times. The prick won’t tell me anything. After a while, you get it that he’s not gonna. You just get it that he’s a prick, and either you hang out with him or you don’t.” He shrugged. “Being a prick isn’t any worse than being a dumbhead like me.”

  “You’re not—”

  “Course I am. And Frampton here, he sold out. He’s a fucking engineer, for shit’s sake. I mean, what’s that all about?”

  Frampton kept his eyes on the road.

  “And you, Joe,” Squig said. “You’re just waiting for something to turn your life into something. You’re gonna wait forever, brother, is what I suspect.”

  Everyone, me included, waited to see what I would say. I tried a few things on for size. They were all feeble. After a while everyone gave up waiting. Frampton flipped on the radio. K-Arrow was playing “Stairway to Heaven.” I stabbed a button. 95.5 lit up. KLOS. They had Zeppelin on too, the song about squeezing my lemon till the juice ran down my leg. We listened until it ended and a commercial for satellite TV came on. Frampton snapped off the radio, and we drove the rest of the way in our own individual funks.

  A woman I’d never seen before let us in at Bonnie’s. Eight or nine people were scattered about inside. The only one I knew was Detective Kalenko. He was over by a window, talking to a perfectly-coiffed man in a perfectly-cut charcoal suit. Kalenko spotted me and we nodded hellos. He returned his attention to the suit. Someone’s lawyer, I would have bet.

  Squig and Woz made for the bar, Frampton for the bathroom. The woman who let us in came back and said Bonnie wanted to see me. She led me through the entrance hall and the living room. We walked by the kitchen. A young woman who’d been on the cover of the Sunday Calendar a couple of weeks before was in there, pale, disheveled, leaning on the center island, gripping a huge green mug. She was, according to the Times, the next big singer-songwriter thing. We locked eyes. I wanted to say, run away, quick as you can. She’d wouldn’t have listened.

  A pair of French doors opened onto a big brick patio studded with potted plants. My guide opened the door and closed it behind me. The landscaping was as handsome as the palm garden in the front. More scheffleras, huge philodendrons with finger-thick air roots. About a million impatiens. My father would have been ecstatic.

  Bonnie was seated at a wooden table halfway across the impeccable lawn. She occupied one of four chairs, atop a green-and-white-striped cushion. A furled green umbrella poked up through a hole in the middle of the table. A pitcher and a couple of glasses sat on the table. There was a brown liquid in the pitcher and in one of the glasses.

  She saw me, stood, waited for me to come across the lawn. When I got to the table she stepped in to hug me. It was a good hug, an old friends hug. When we got untangled I held her at arms’ length. She was wearing a dark blue suit with a cameo pinned on, one of those ivory things, like my mother had, like Gina’s mother had, like every other mother I’d ever known had. A graduation present from mother school.

  We took our places. “Some iced tea?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s spiked.”

  “What with?”

  “Gin.”

  “Fill me up.”

  She picked up the pitcher, filled the empty glass, topped up her own. She pressed her finger onto a drop that had fallen onto the table and rubbed it into the wood. Then she held up her glass. “To … something,” she said.

  I took my glass and clinked it with hers. “To something.” We each had a slug, put our glasses down, sat there silently, picked them up, drank some more. It was a while before either of us said anything else.

  “Shit, Joe.”

  “That about sums things up.”

  “Why did he do this?” she said.

  “I suspect you know.”

  She eked out a frown, drained her drink, poured some more, looked at me. My glass was half full. Or half empty, the way I was feeling. I nodded and she topped it off. “One thing I don’t get,” she said. “If he was so pissed-off at me, why go after the band? Why not just kill me?”

  “Because then you’d have been dead, and you wouldn’t have suffered. One of us is whacked, you feel it’s your fault, and you carry it with you the rest of your life. Some people might consider that worse than themselves getting killed.”

  A jay was shrieking in a tree nearby. We both watched until it flew away over the house.

  “You still haven’t told me anything,” I said.

  She nodded. “Remember the two reasons I told you why his band wasn’t with Hysteria?”

  “They wanted to make it themselves, and they weren’t good enough anyway.”

  “Only one of them is true.”

  “The second.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’d you lie to me?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe I didn’t want you to think I was a shitty mother.”

  “So he did want you to record his band.”

  “Of course he did. This business, you have connections, you use them.”

  “And you told him …”

  “That I couldn’t. That I’d never signed anyone who I didn’t think had a good chance to make it, and I wasn’t going to start with him.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “How do you think?”

  “He was pissed.”

  “Very much so. But he got over it. Or so I thought. I mean, things were pretty miserable between us for a few months, but after a while it wore off. Just a few months ago he told me he realized I’d been right. That they weren’t that good. Have you listened to the CD?”

  “I don’t have a CD player.”

  “Everyone has a CD player.”

  “Not me.”

  The jay was back. It landed on the lawn a few feet away, gave us the eye, squawked and winged away.

  “It’s competent,” Bonnie said. “There are a few moments where they show some flash. But in general … after you’ve seen a couple of thousand bands, you know which might be something someday and which won’t ever. They wouldn’t have ever.”

  “Then why did he—”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it was all his idea. I think Vinnie was behind a lot of it. Then when Vinnie got killed … shit, I don’t know. I’m guessing at a lot of this.” She picked up her glass, put it down again. “Fact is, Joe, most of this is conjecture. I’m not really sure why he did it.” She took up the glass again, and this time downed a good portion of it. “Pretty sad, huh? When a mother can’t even figure out why her son wants to kill her friends.”

  “Is tha
t what we are? Friends?”

  She looked toward the house, like there was a cheat sheet printed on the stucco. Then back at me. “You think we’re more, you and me?”

  “You and me, and Squig and Woz and Frampton. I think we’re less.”

  “If we keep playing together—”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “But we could—”

  “Without Toby?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe we could get—” She saw my expression. “Who am I kidding? Even with Toby, it was a fantasy. And without him …” She stood, finished her drink, put the glass down a bit too hard. “I’ve got to go be sociable. You’ll make sure you see me before you leave, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will.”

  Another hug, more perfunctory than the first, and I watched her head for the house.

  “Bonnie.”

  She turned and waited.

  “Did you know?” I said.

  “Know what?”

  “That it was Darren.”

  She frowned, chewed her lip, shook her head. “Of course not.”

  “Should I believe you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You should.” She turned and went inside.

  Within seconds Papa Cass appeared from around the side of the house and lay down beside my chair. I got the feeling he’d waited until she was gone, that he didn’t want to be around her just then. I rubbed his ears and shared my worldview with him. He didn’t say much, merely giving me the bloodshot eye every so often to make sure I knew he was listening.

  But after a while he got bored with me and, as dogs will, twisted around to lick his nether regions. It made me think of what I’d told Woz a while back, of how I’d said I had as many cojones as anyone. Which wasn’t quite true. Poor old Papa Cass didn’t have any. I wondered if he missed them, or if there wasn’t room in his dim doggy memory for anything that far back.

  And then there was Toby. Who made the mistake, one day not long before we drove out into the desert, of telling me that he had only one testicle, the other being a casualty of a bicycling accident when he was seven. I teased him about it more than I should have, a stupid teenage defense mechanism. He may have been ten times the guitarist as I was, but at least I had both my balls.