The Four Last Things (Simeon Grist Mystery)

by Timothy Hallinan

  She took an apprehensive look at the sky. It might rain yet. “You know wha’ I mean,” she said. “Half-hour, fifty bucks. We can do it here.” She thumbed over her shoulder in the direction of the Sleepy Bear. Then she looked down and said, “No, Dulcita, no’ yet. Down.”

  “You can do it here,” I said. “Keep me out of it.” I leaned sideways to look out the window. A white toy poodle sat at her feet, looking up at her. It had a neat little red bow tied to its collar.

  “What's with her?”

  “She goes wi' me. They don’ mind. She's always real good.” The poodle sensed she was being talked about and wagged her tail wildly. ”Aren' you, sweetie?” the girl said. “Querida mia.” Then she looked back up at me. “Fifty bucks, no big deal. I promise you have a good time.”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “So why you parkin’ here?”

  “I'm out of gas,” I said. “Just waiting for the Auto Club.” I looked up at room 207 and suddenly thought about how much I disliked Ambrose Harker. I pulled a wad of his money out of my pocket. “How about I just give you the fifty?” I said.

  “For what?” She unsnapped her little white handbag and looked into it, as if the answer to how low she would go was inside, next to her face powder.

  “For going away. For hitting the next block.” I peeled off five tens and waved them at her. The little dog sat up on its rear legs, front paws in the air.

  “Honey,” she said, “you don’ want nothin’?”

  I passed the money to her. “Darling, we're both too pretty to die. Haven't you heard about AIDS?”

  She looked at the bills and then back up at me. “You for real? This is jus’ for me?”

  “This is for just taking care of yourself. Be careful, okay?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Gimme a hunred,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “So my man don’ hit me.”

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is tomorrow. I already did fi' hunred today. Si’ hunred is enough, Dulcita and me can go to bed.”

  I gave her another fifty. “Go to bed,” I said. “But if I see you on Sunset again today, I'll take the money back and call the cops. Got it?”

  “Don’ be funny. I been working since three a.m. All I wan’ is dreamlan’, you know?”

  The door to room 207 opened.

  “Lean inside the car,” I said.

  She did. “What do you want?” she asked a little apprehensively. Up close, I realized she was no more than eighteen or nineteen. A little gold crucifix dangled at her throat.

  “Your perfume,” I said.

  She looked alarmed. “You wan’ my perfume?”

  Needle-nose came down the stairs and walked past us on his way to the Corvette. If he registered Alice it didn't show, and he couldn't get much of a shot at me with Dulcita's mistress filling the driver's window.

  “I don't want your perfume,” I said, watching him in the rearview mirror. “I like it. I want to know what it is.”

  “You got some nose,” she said. “Is flea shampoo, for Dulcita. I washed her this mornin’ in the dark. Ho, perfume, says the guy. Like I say, you got some nose.” She laughed and suddenly looked a lot prettier.

  The Corvette caught and pulled out. Needle-nose didn't look back.

  “Well, it smells good on you,” I said.

  Her face was about a foot from mine. She did smell good. “You know,” she said, “you’ pretty cute.”

  “You're not exactly chopped liver yourself. Why don't you get a job?”

  “Don’ start with me, okay? I do the bes’ I can.”

  “Go home, then,” I said. “Go to bed, like you said.”

  “Ri' after I feed Dulcita. Listen, thanks. He be aroun’ pretty quick now, so I gotta be on the sidewalk. He see me yakkin’, he gets upset, you know? Like he starts to play with his knife, shinin’ up the blade and stuff. Thanks for the hunred.”

  She headed for the sidewalk, a little brown girl in a red dress on a gray day, with a white dog at her heels. She took up an alert stance at the curb and combed the oncoming traffic for her pimp. Dulcita sat at her feet and gave herself a professional-looking scratch behind the ear. A car honked twice.

  It was Sally Oldfield's Courtesy Cab, a different number this time but the same company. After a moment the door to 207 was thrown open and Sally hurried out and down the steps. She threw the driver a radiant smile and got in back. She sure in hell was happy about something. She'd been in the room thirty-eight minutes, same as yesterday.

  As the cab door closed, I saw a flash of red on the sidewalk. The Mexican girl had picked up Dulcita and tucked her under a slender brown arm, and now she was wading out into the traffic. Pulled into the curb across the street was a white Cadillac convertible with gold wire wheels and a spare mounted behind the trunk. Very fancy. The driver's window slid down and I saw a skinny, sharp-featured white guy with hair so blond he looked albino. He was, presumably, the hooker's man.

  Sally Oldfield's cab made a right onto Sunset and headed back toward Monument Records, where another five hours of listening to the radio awaited me. I hadn't brought a book. I sighed and snapped on my turn indicator.

  The Mexican girl was standing on the passenger side of the Cadillac. She was saying something, trying the door handle. It wouldn't open. She looked very unhappy.

  I let an opening in the traffic go by and watched the white car. The passenger window went down about eight inches and the man at the wheel stuck out his hand. The girl looked even more unhappy, shook her head, and tried the handle again. No go. It was locked.

  She slipped an arm over the top of the open window and tried to unlock the door inside. The driver hit the button, and the window went up and clamped onto her arm. He let the car roll forward at about five miles an hour.

  The girl stumbled on her high heels and fought her way to her feet again. She slipped off the curb and cracked her head on the roof of the car. Dulcita trotted anxiously along at her heels, barking.

  After half a block the driver of the Cadillac hit the brakes. The girl straightened up, crying, as he put the window down and extended a waiting hand. She rubbed the arm that had been caught in the window, then reached into her purse and handed him a wad of money. He rolled the window back up, put on a pair of mirrored shades, and took off into traffic.

  The girl stood at the curb, looking at nothing. She was still crying. Dulcita sat down at her feet.

  I'd really had enough surveillance for one day. Nothing was going to happen anyway; Sally Oldfield was back at Monument now and she'd stay there until quitting time, when I'd trail her home again. And if I was wrong, and something did happen, maybe Harker would fire me. Maybe I'd quit even if he didn't fire me. I could always start looking for Mrs. Yount's cat.

  The next thing I knew, I was two cars behind the white Cadillac, heading east on Sunset. The pimp made a right onto Cahuenga. So did I. Then we both made a left on Franklin and headed for the hills.

  The second girl was an emaciated blond in a thin blue dress who looked like she was freezing to death on the corner of Franklin and Highland. No argument this time, just more money passed in through the passenger's window. Then the blond boyo at the wheel slid on up Franklin and turned right on Outpost, into a residential area of tree-hung streets, big fenced yards, and lots of privacy.

  If he'd looked back he would have spotted me easily, but he was busy. He needed all this privacy in order to deliver a to-go order to his nose, and that plus the demands of navigating the curves kept him fully occupied.

  I reached over and popped open Alice's copious glove compartment. First I took out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses I'd found in a parking lot. They were mended over the bridge of the nose with white surgical adhesive. My ex-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, said they made me look like Jerry Lewis. I slipped them on, refocused through the distortion of the lenses, and then reached deep into the glove compartment to pull out a small flat-black automatic with a big, very black h
ole at the end of its barrel. I dropped it into the pocket of my windbreaker and waited for the right curve to come along.

  We hit it as we went back downhill. On either side of the street were high walls, protecting the folks behind them from exposure to all us drive-by riffraff. Pepper trees trailed their tendrils at car-top level, further reducing the visibility. As the white Caddy went into the curve I punched Alice's accelerator to the floor and rear-ended the pimp's car at about thirty miles an hour.

  The whore's man was a terrible driver. He did everything wrong, hitting the brakes and crimping the wheel in the opposite direction. The car skewed around, out of control, and the front-left wheel jumped the curb. One second later, the Cadillac was half in the road and half on the sidewalk, and I was already out and running toward it, pushing my voice up into an unthreatening music-hall tenor.

  “Oh, my golly, I'm so sorry, oh, Jesus, this is terrible, are you hurt? I don't know what happened, the car just seemed to jump, and all of a sudden there we were, colliding like that. . . .”

  The glasses had slipped partway down the bridge of my nose. I shoved them back up and kept coming. He'd opened the driver's door by now, and I saw the knife gleam in his hand.

  “You fuckin’ jackoff,” he said. “That's my fucking spare wire wheel back there.” He put the knife hand behind him and started to climb out.

  “Oh, I know it,” I said, “don't look, it's terrible, that's the trouble with gold automobiles; they're so soft.” He had one leg out now, still holding the knife behind him, and I reached out my left hand to help him.

  “But what's important,” I babbled, “is no loss of life and limb. Are your limbs all right?” He looked at my extended left hand as though he was going to spit on it, and I pulled my right from my jacket pocket and touched the gun to a spot midway between his eyes. “Say anything at all,” I said, “and I'll put a picture window in the back of your head. Now, take your right hand out from behind you very slowly, and it had better be empty.”

  He was cross-eyed looking at the gun. He licked his skinny little lips and started to say something. I poked him between the eyebrows with the gun barrel, hard, and he thought better of it. When the hand came up it came up open. There was nothing in it.

  “Good boy,” I said. “All it would take for me to kill you would be the wrong syllable. Since you don't know what the right syllable is, just don't say anything. Now, put your right hand on top of the steering wheel and keep it there until I tell you to move it.”

  He did as he was told. His eyes kept flicking from the gun to me and back again. A car went by without slowing, obeying the First Urban Commandment: Don't Get Involved.

  “Okay,” I said. “I want all the money, and I mean every last cent. Use your left hand, keep the right on the wheel, don't even twitch it. I saw where you put it, so just reach very, very carefully into your upper-left-hand pocket and pull it out.”

  His mouth knotted into a hard, ugly little line and the knuckles of the hand on the steering wheel were bone-white and bloodless, but he did as he was told, twisting his left hand awkwardly to reach the wad.

  “Big man,” I said. My throat felt like it was paved with gravel. “Big man who likes to turn the little girls out, put them on the street so you can drive your big white car and fill up your big white nose. Does it bother you that the little girls are going to die? Does anything bother you?”

  His lips parted. I prodded him with the gun again. His pale, mean little eyes watered. ”Ah-ah,” I said. “Careful. Now, hand me the money.”

  There was a lot of it. I wedged it down into the pocket of my windbreaker and then looked up and down the street. Nobody was coming. “Okay,” I said cheerfully, “close your eyes and open your mouth.”

  He was so surprised he forgot he wasn't supposed to say anything. “Huh?” he said.

  “You heard me. Didn't you ever play this when you were a little kid? Close your eyes and open your mouth.”

  He looked at me like I was deranged, but he did it. Uncontrollably, one eye flickered open and then shut again.

  “Now, now, no peeking. And come on, you can open your mouth wider than that.”

  His eyes were clamped shut and his mouth gaped open, revealing broken yellow teeth. He looked like a bottle-opener. “Now say ‘Aaaaahhh,’ ” I said.

  “Aaaaahhhhh,” he said.

  “That's the wrong syllable,” I said. I slammed him full in the face with the gun butt. Blood spurted from his nose and his eyes popped open, rolling crazily. “Nobody said life was fair,” I told him, cracking him dead-center in the forehead. He slapped both hands over his face and I shoved violently at his near shoulder, toppling him sideways onto the seat. He was making a high-pitched, wavering sound.

  “Big man,” I said, picking up the knife. “You stay right there and bleed on your upholstery. If I see your head above the back of the seat before I leave, I'll put a permanent dimple in it. Got it?”

  He kept keening, face in hands. The big man had wet himself.

  I closed the door and went to the back of the car. He kept the knife sharp for the little girls; it only took me about thirty seconds to slash both his rear tires. I left the Caddy sagging despondently, its tailpipe touching the asphalt, and pointed Alice downhill. Before I reached Franklin, I'd tossed the automatic and the knife into the glove compartment and snapped it shut. I drove very safely; the LAPD is touchy about guns and knives.

  She was where I'd left her, but now she was sitting on the curb. She had one arm around her knees and the other on Dulcita's head. When I stopped the car she didn't even look up.

  I got out and touched her shoulder. “Thirty-three hundred bucks,” I said. “Buy some perfume.” I held the money out to her.

  For a moment she didn't recognize me. I'd forgotten about the glasses. I took them off and put them into my jacket pocket, and her eyes traveled from my face to the money. Her face turned ashen.

  “You din't,” she said.

  “I sure did.”

  “Oh, my gosh. He always searches me when he picks me up. He'll kill me.”

  “He'll kill you a number of times. I also broke his face and slashed his tires. He's not going to be in a good mood.”

  “What am I s'posed to do?” There was an edge of panic in her voice, and she looked up and down the street as if she expected him to appear, tires squealing and knife in hand, to julienne us both right there on the sidewalk.

  “Here's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to take a cab to the bus station and buy a ticket for someplace nice, like San Antonio. He'll find you anyplace you go in L.A. Get a job in a dry cleaner's or something. Send some money to your mom. Say thirty novenas. Do anything you like, but get out of the Life and get out of here.”

  “Sure,” she said hopelessly, looking up at me. She hadn't reached out for the money.

  “Sugar,” I said, “he's got wet pants, a broken nose, and two flat tires, but he's going to show up sooner or later. If I were you, I'd be heading east in something fast when he does. Anyway, you need a little fresh air.”

  She reached up lifelessly and I put the money in her hand. As I did it I saw the scars, some of them old, some new and still scabbed, on the inside of her arm. The sun went behind a cloud. Now we both knew she wasn't going anyplace.

  I squatted down next to her. Dulcita gave me a tentative growl. “Okay,” I said. I was the oldest man in the world. “I left him on the street just west of Outpost, about five blocks above Franklin. Take the money back to him and be a hero. Tell him I'm a creep who saw him drag you down the street and decided to act like Superman. He'll be there for a while.”

  She fumbled with her purse and stuffed the money into it. “Leave me alone,” she said. “I'll get a cab.”

  “You can still go to San Antonio. I've known people who kicked dope. If they did it, you can.”

  “Cabron,” she said. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’ help me anymore.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I went to the car, feeling like a Do
n Quixote who had just learned that windmills bleed. As I opened the door, she called out something from behind me. I turned and looked at her inquiringly.

  “Has he got the knife?” she asked again.

  “Not if he only had one,” I said.

  “Tha's somethin’,” she said. “Now go away.”

  I went. In the rearview mirror I saw her standing at the curb, looking at the phone booth. The little dog with the bow on its collar stared up at her, wondering what came next. That dog sure loved her.

  Sally Oldfield surprised me for the next-to-last time that day at three-fifty-two. She came out of the entrance to Monument Records with a young woman, a dark-haired, chubby person in dieter's clothes: a too-tight short skirt and a bright pink blouse with enough ruffles on its front to decorate a Laura Ashley boutique. Sally slipped her arm unself-consciously around her friend's waist and the two of them headed down Gower to what had to be the friend's car. I jotted down the plate number as the two of them climbed in and I then followed them to a bridal shop on Sunset that was called, a little anxiously, I thought, I Do, I Do. One more “I Do” would have been a dead giveaway. Fifteen minutes later they came out. The chubby one was carrying a big white box with a satin bow on it. They were talking a mile a minute in the excited, intimate way that men never manage. The friend laid the box lovingly in the trunk and then they headed back to Monument. I parked in the no-parking zone and settled in for a long winter's nap.

  No matter how boring a stakeout is, you should never make assumptions. I'd made one, that she wouldn't come out until quitting time, and that she'd come out in her car when she did. It almost cost me the whole mile. It was quitting time but she was on foot. She was most of the way to Fountain before I realized who she was.

  Same as before: the white Corvette parked out of sight around the corner. The same delighted hop into the car, the same quick trip to the Sleepy Bear, the same tandem climb up the stairs, the man holding her hand this time. It started to sprinkle.

  The rain had begun in earnest when Needle-nose came out, right on schedule, thirty-three minutes after they went in. Four minutes later I turned on the windshield wipers and started looking for her cab.