January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  I killed the engine and settled in to wait. Like so many other roads above West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, if you didn’t know there were mansions all around, you’d never guess. Only one of the Montes’s neighbors had erected a wall along the road. All the others had planted landscaping that looked natural but was artfully positioned to conceal fences and state-of-the-art security systems. So from where I sat, mostly all I saw was vegetation, a couple of gates, and blue sky.

  After twenty minutes, a woman drove a white Honda Civic past me. I watched in the rearview mirror as she slowed and turned into a driveway on the other side of the street. She seemed to know the gate code. Somebody’s maid, probably.

  After about an hour, I decided to see how many bird species I could spot from where I sat. There were quails and doves and crows and smaller blackbirds. Also hummingbirds and one hawk gliding in a giant circle on the thermals rising from the hills. I saw several little brown birds, which I couldn’t distinguish from each other, so in fairness I could only count them as one species. Also some kind of a finch that looked like a sparrow, except it had a yellow breast.

  At eleven-thirty my cell phone rang.

  She said, “You still out there?”

  “You bet.”

  “I just had a thought. You know how Teru thinks the guys who attacked me were the same ones who tried to kill you? Maybe they were also the ones who did the home invasion. Maybe it was me they were after, not the congressman or Doña Elena. You know, I spend the night here sometimes. Maybe there was a mix-up. If you catch them trying to get to me again, you might be able to prove a connection with the home invasion and clear yourself.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “You already thought of this?”

  “Something like it crossed my mind.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad you’re getting something out of this too. Why don’t you go for lunch? I’d bring out some food, but Doña Elena might notice, and it’s probably not a good idea for her to know you’re hanging around out there.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Go ahead. I promise not to leave, and they’ve really beefed up the security in here. I’ll be okay.”

  “Lunch is for wimps.”

  “Isn’t that from a movie?”

  “Gordon Gekko. From last night, remember?”

  “I fell asleep, remember?”

  “How could I forget the deafening snores?”

  “Liar. Go eat something.”

  “You’ll stay put?”

  “I promise.”

  There were no restaurants along Benedict Canyon, or any other kind of business as far as I could tell, so I drove all the way back down to Sunset and parked at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I stood around staring at the big banana leaves on the wallpaper at the Fountain Coffee Room while they put together half a tuna sandwich and a cup of tomato soup to go. It cost twenty-eight fifty, plus ten bucks for the valet, but that included a bottle of water and a sprig of parsley, so for Beverly Hills, it was a bargain.

  I drove back up the canyon to Wallingford. When I had resumed my stakeout under the live oak tree, I called her and said, “You still in there?”

  “I am. You back out there?”

  “I am.”

  “So everything is fine.”

  “Don’t kid yourself.”

  During the afternoon, I spotted two new kinds of birds: a woodpecker and a couple of blue jays. Three vehicles drove by. A Bentley exactly like the one I was sitting in, a grocery delivery van, and a truck with a landscaping company name painted on the door. Not much traffic in the middle of the afternoon on Wallingford Drive.

  I placed a call on my cell phone. Simon answered after the second ring.

  I said, “Simon, my good man, I am a trained investigator. Although you have refused to admit your former association with Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service, based on how you handled yourself when Fidel Castro tried to run us down, not to mention certain other clues, I suspect you have some experience in providing security.”

  “Alas, as has been mentioned previously, one couldn’t say.”

  “This is not frivolous cuRíosity. I need help protecting Olivia Delarosa.”

  “It would be my pleasure to assist you.”

  “The opposition appears to be professional. I need to know you’re fully qualified.”

  There was a pause, and then, “I am qualified.”

  “All right,” I said. Then we discussed a strategy.

  At 5:05, Olivia drove her car out through the gates. She waved at me, then turned right, heading for Benedict Canyon Drive. I started the engine and rolled along behind her, all the way to Venice.

  She parked on the street and waved me into her driveway. It was nice for her to worry about me parking the Bentley on the street. We met at her gate, and she gave me her keys. After I had checked out the apartment, I let her in. She changed into a pair of cutoff blue-jean shorts and a loose T-shirt that had the words “Lella Lombardi Lives” printed on the front. Only a true racing fanatic would know about Lella Lombardi, the sole woman to ever score points in a Formula One race, especially since Lombardi had been dead for more than twenty years and hadn’t driven in a grand prix in nearly forty.

  Olivia said, “I usually go for a walk on the beach before dinner.”

  “Sounds good.”

  It was nearly sunset. The afternoon heat radiated up from the sidewalk. I stayed between Olivia and the street and kept my eyes moving constantly to observe a regular pattern around our parameter. The M11 was ready beneath the loose shirt tail at my hip.

  She said, “If they see you with me, they won’t try anything.”

  “Be fools if they did.”

  “But we need them to come forward. How else are we going to find my mother and clear you of those charges?”

  “I’m not letting you walk around out here alone.”

  “Of course not. But maybe if you followed from across the street, they wouldn’t notice.”

  “Olivia, these guys are very well trained. They could snatch you in five seconds, maximum. I might not be able to get to you until it’s too late.”

  She put her hand on my arm for a moment. “You’d get to me. Please, just go across the street and be inconspicuous.”

  “I’m not comfortable with that.”

  “It’s not your decision.”

  She was right. In the personal-security business, you tried to stay as close as the client would allow, but ultimately the safety level was up to the client.

  I crossed the street and fell back about fifty feet. Olivia traversed the neighborhood to South Venice Boulevard, and then followed that over the canal bridge and across Pacific Avenue and Speedway. At the beach walk, she went right toward the pavilion. I hung back as far as I dared.

  As always, all the Venice Beach stereotypes were on full display: kids with multicolored spiked hair, every form of piercing and tattoo imaginable, guys holding hands with each other, girls who looked like guys holding hands with each other, bodybuilders pumping iron on Muscle Beach, kids whipping past on skateboards, guys playing pickup games on the basketball courts, girls in next-to-nothing string bikinis playing volleyball, girls in next-to-nothing string bikinis gliding along on Rollerblades, and homeless people bundled up in everything they owned, as if it were ten degrees below freezing.

  Black clouds towered above the Pacific, stretched across the horizon like a massive wall and moving our way.

  I tried to figure out why a classy girl like Olivia would choose that kind of neighborhood. Then I remembered where she had grown up. There were a lot of similarities. Venice Beach was not what most people would consider upscale. Except for the blocks closest to the ocean, it had a blue-collar quality. Maybe Olivia felt comfortably at home there, as if she were back in Pico-Union, except with a beach and without the gang violence. Plus, of course it was only fifteen or twenty minutes from Beverly Hills, depending on the traffic, so that was convenient. And I had to admit, strange as they were, the people in
her neighborhood kept things interesting.

  Olivia turned inland at the pavilion, followed Windward past Pacific Avenue and the little roundabout, took Grand up to Dell, and then cut across the canals. Nothing suspicious happened whatsoever, but the looming clouds had reached the shore by the time we arrived back at her apartment. Darkness fell upon us suddenly.

  I paused at the gate outside her front courtyard. “You should get the remote lock fixed on this thing,” I said.

  She said, “I told the landlord that a month ago.”

  Inside her place, we sat around in her living room for a while, listening to the rising wind, reading magazines, and drinking a nice merlot. At about eight o’clock, she went into her kitchen to make dinner. Meanwhile, I walked around her apartment, checking locks on windows, closing drapes, and trying to memorize everything in case it was pitch-black the next time I was there.

  Dinner was a stir-fried beef lo mein, with egg drop soup. It was some of the best I’d ever had. As we sat down to eat, I said, “So, you’re also a chef. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  She smiled. “There’s not a lot of difference between cooking and working on a car or writing computer code. It’s all about learning how things fit together.”

  “You make it sound like there’s no art involved.”

  “Do I? It’s hard for me to tell the difference between art and craftsmanship, I guess.”

  “Doesn’t instinct come into it? Something indefinable, beyond just doing it by the numbers?”

  “You’re the artist, Malcolm. You tell me. All I know is I don’t have much trust in instincts. What if the things we believe are really only things we hope? How would we know unless they can be measured or tested or proven somehow?”

  My own vast emptiness came to mind, the random chaos that sometimes seemed to swirl around me, when even my most cherished memories betrayed me, unconnected ideas coming from all directions and trailing away again before I understood them, everything I tried to cling to vanishing through my fingers. I thought about trying to pass my broken fingers through a wall, while Haley ran screaming out into midair.

  I said, “You have to have to have some kind of solid ground to stand on. Something that isn’t open for debate. If that ever disappears, there’s nothing left but madness.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

  “But I also think if you go through life requiring that of everything, you’ll miss what’s most important.”

  “Like what?”

  “Friendship. Compassion. Forgiveness. Pretty much everything that has to do with relationships. How are you going to measure things like that? You can’t demand that they be proven or tested, because they start to disappear the minute you try to measure them or compare them to some standard.”

  She stared at me. “What does that mean?”

  I shrugged. “Life is hard to understand. Bigger than we are. Sometimes I think it was made that way on purpose. Sometimes I think it’s better to just assume the best. If you insist that everything has to make sense, that can make you crazy too.”

  “You’re talking about faith.”

  It seemed I had returned to what Bud Tanner had said to me. It seemed ironic that I was standing there saying something similar to her. But it also seemed true.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I guess I am.”

  “Well, I don’t have any faith.”

  “Everything you decide to believe based on incomplete evidence is a leap of faith, even if you’ve decided not to believe.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “To me it does,” I said, “because it has to.”

  After we had cleaned the dishes, she said she wanted me to sleep inside the apartment. I wanted to stop Medallion and the Other One before they could get inside, so I told her it was better if I kept watch from the street. I warned her not to answer the intercom at the front gate or a knock on her front door unless she knew for certain it was me outside.

  She said, “I won’t.”

  “This is very serious. No matter what they say, just don’t respond. Not to the intercom or through the door. Not even if they claim they’re the police. No matter who they say they are, just stay away from the door and call me. I’ll come fast. Just stay in here and wait.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good. Promise you’ll pretend you aren’t even here unless you hear my voice and nobody else’s.”

  “I promise.”

  I went out, backed the Bentley out of her driveway, and parked at the curb about one hundred feet down the street. It was drizzling a little. From time to time, I let the windshield wipers clear my line of sight to Olivia’s apartment. On the radio, they were issuing mudslide warnings in the mountains. Apparently it was raining hard up where Haley died. I tried hard not to think about it. Mostly I succeeded.

  At fifteen minutes after midnight, a small car rolled to a stop behind me and turned off its headlights. I saw two heads in silhouette, one behind the wheel and the other in the passenger seat. I pulled the M11 out of my holster, slipped the safety off, and held the gun in my lap. I waited for them to make a move.

  The passenger got out. He was carrying a duffel bag. He walked up to my side window and knelt down beside my car.

  I lowered the side window and said, “Simon.”

  He passed me the duffel bag. “My apologies for being late. There was an accident on the interstate.”

  “Who’s that with you? Teru?”

  “He guessed where I was going somehow. He insisted on driving.”

  “Well. He’s a good driver if you need one. Are you both armed?”

  “To the teeth. Would you care to brief me?”

  I told him I had already checked all the access points from inside the apartment. There were only two doors into the apartment—the one off the front courtyard, which led to the gate off the street, and another one that opened into the garage. There was only one way into the garage, which was through the overhead door that also faced the street. So he could watch both sets of doors from where he was parked. There was no alley. Her building was surrounded on three sides by other buildings, each of which had walls along the property lines. So to penetrate the perimeter, they would have to sneak past us or else gain access to a neighboring property, scale a wall, and break in through one of her rear or side windows, which I had secured earlier.

  I said, “Let’s trade phones.”

  Simon handed me his cell phone and I gave him mine. Olivia had my number on her landline’s speed dial, so she only had to push one button, and it would ring. I had my phone set up to do the same with Simon’s number, so he could ring me just as quickly. I figured less than three seconds would pass between Olivia’s pressing the button on her phone and Simon heading for her door. I would be less than thirty seconds behind him. A lot can happen in half a minute—I had seen dozens of men die in a fraction of the time—but it was the best we could do.

  I said, “If it’s possible to wait for me, do it. Otherwise, take action, and I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Very good.”

  “Don’t let Teru get in the middle of it.”

  “No.”

  He walked back to his car. I got out of the Bentley and looked back. They had come in Teru’s Porsche. I waved at him. He lifted a hand in response. I went into the building beside us, a bed-and-breakfast where I had reserved a room earlier that day.

  The elderly couple who ran the bed-and-breakfast had hidden a key for me under a rock in a planting bed. It opened their front door and my room upstairs in the back. I put the bag on a chair beside the bed, opened it, and withdrew my shaving kit, which I carried into the small bathroom. I stared at my face in the mirror while I brushed my teeth, trying to think of anything I might have missed. The cut on my forehead from the attack in the mountains was healing. The swelling at my jaw from the beating in Pico-Union was completely gone. My pupils and my irises were still the same color, so my eyes still looked like a pair of empty ho
les. I would never understand what Haley could have seen in them. Maybe what she had seen in them had gone with her.

  It felt wrong not to be downstairs watching over Olivia, but I knew it made more sense to take a break. I couldn’t watch her around the clock. If I tried, I’d lose my edge. Besides, based on Simon’s marksmanship the day Castro had tried to run us down outside El Nido, I had a feeling he was up to the challenge.

  I set the alarm timer on Simon’s phone and put it on the bedside table. I took my keys and wallet out of my pockets and put them next to the phone. I pulled the holster off my belt and set it on the table too. It’s hard to sleep with a holster jabbing into your side.

  It had been a long day. I checked the safety on M11 and I lay on top of the bedcovers, fully clothed, with my shoes on and my weapon in my hand.

  46

  The alarm went off four hours later. I rose, put the M11 in the holster, clipped the holster to my belt, splashed some water on my face at the bathroom sink, put my keys and wallet and Simon’s cell phone back in my pockets, picked up the duffel bag, and went downstairs.

  Outside the sun was still an hour away from rising, and the drizzle that often passes for rain in Los Angeles hadn’t abated. I spoke Simon’s name softly and paused near a streetlight where he could clearly see me. When I heard him say, “Approach,” I walked to the passenger-side window of the Porsche.

  “Anything to report?” I asked, kneeling down to Simon’s level by the window.

  He passed my phone out to me, and I gave him his. He said, “I believe Miss Soto is present and correct.”

  Beyond him sat Teru, still watching Olivia’s gate.

  “You’ll get some sleep later this morning, as we discussed?”

  “After Mr. Gold has gone to work. And I will return tonight at the same time, unless you contact me with different instructions.”

  “I’ll be here too,” said Teru.

  “Thanks for this, guys.”

  Teru said, “They hit Olivia. We can’t have that.”