H is for HOMICIDE

by Sue Grafton

  Just inside the door, I paid the five-dollar cover charge and had the back of my hand stamped in purple with a USD A designation of “choice.” The Meat Locker looked like it had been designed originally for industrial purposes and converted to commercial use without much concession to aesthetics. The room was cavernous and drab, with a concrete floor and metal beams showing high up in the shadowy reaches of the ceiling. A nineteen-foot bar ran along the wall to the right, packed three deep with guys whose faces looked like they belonged on the post office wall. The place smelled of beer and cigarette smoke, corn tortillas fried in lard, with an occasional whiff of dope wafting through the side door from the alleyway. All the houselights were blue. There was a live band, five guys who looked like junior high school thugs and sounded like they should still be practicing in someone’s garage. The music was a raunchy blend of thumping bass, pulsing synthesizers, relentlessly repeated chords, and lyrics that were vile if you managed to discern the words above the piercing electronic howls. The dance floor was a portable wooden pallet, maybe twenty feet on a side, jammed with bouncing bodies, faces lathered in sweat. This was where the C ��� singles came to hunt. There were no yuppies, no preppies, no slumming execs, no middle-class, white-bread college types. This was a hard-core pickup place for bikers and hamburger hookers, who’d screw anyone for a meal. Bar fights and knifings were taken as a matter of course, uniformed beat cops strolling through so often they were assumed to be customers. The noise level was intolerable, punctuated by an intermittent bam! and bursts of raucous laughter. The bar was famous for a drink called a “slammer”: tequila and 7-Up in an old-fashioned glass. When the drink was served, a cloth napkin was placed across the mouth of the glass, which was then slammed down on a wooden board the waitress carried. The blow forced the tequila and 7-Up together in a high-test infusion, which the patron was expected to toss down in one gulp. Usually the limit was two slammers per customer. After two, most women had to be helped, toes dragging, to the car. After three, men had the urge to break wooden chairs or bash a hand through glass.

  As I inched my way across the bar, I murmured, “Pardon me,”, “Excuse me,” and “Oops, sorry,” as I progressed, sensing an occasional anonymous hand on my ass. I found an unoccupied spot and claimed temporary ownership, leaning against the wall like everybody else. I ordered a beer from a passing barmaid who was decked out in an orange Day-Glo leotard that was cut straight up her crack in the rear. Her buns were hanging out like water-filled balloons. There was no place to sit, so I stood where I was, wedged in against a beam, while I surveyed the crowd.

  I spotted Bibianna on the dance floor, undulating with remarkable energy and grace to some grinding sex tune. Men’s eyes seemed to follow every shimmy, every bump. The blue lights reacted with the olive tones of her skin to create an unearthly radiance that emphasized the smooth oval of her face above the bulging breasts in the low-cut chemise. The dress seemed to glow more purple than red, pulled taut across the flat belly, slim hips, and trim thighs. When the music ended, she gave her dark hair a toss and moved away from the dance floor without a backward glance. Her partner, visibly winded, looked after her with admiration.

  She began to make the rounds. She was apparently well known, pausing to exchange laughing comments with a number of guys. I made myself conspicuous, pretending to be oblivious when, by my calculations, her path would soon be intersecting mine. Foiled. Before she reached me, she changed directions, and I could see her inching toward the short corridor where the restrooms were located. I headed in that direction, risking rude remarks as I pushed my way through.

  By the time I reached the ladies’ room, she had entered one of the stalls. I stood at the mirror, fussing with my topknot until the toilet flushed and Bibianna emerged. She moved to the sink beside mine, glancing at me idly in the mirror. I sensed more than saw the little jolt of recognition. She said, “Hey.”

  I gave her a blank look.

  “Didn’t you stop by this afternoon to ask about my place?”

  I looked over at her politely and then allowed myself the same double take. “Oh, hi! I didn’t realize it was you. What a coincidence. That’s amazing. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How’d the house hunting go? Did you find anything?”

  I made a face. “Not really. I got a line on an apartment about a block away from yours, but it isn’t half as nice.” Bibianna took out her lipstick. She applied an arc of red to her lower lip, rubbing it against the upper lip until the color had spread uniformly across her mouth. I made a few little gestures of my own, imitating hers.

  She capped the lipstick. “You ever been here before?”

  I shrugged. “Couple of times. Before this new management. It’s kind of unnerving, isn’t it? I don’t appreciate guys grabbing my butt every time I make a move.”

  She studied me briefly. “Depends on what you’re used to, I guess. Doesn’t bother me.” She turned her attention from my reflection to hers, leaning forward to adjust the wisps of hair around her face. She checked her eye makeup for flaws, staring at herself gravely before she glanced back at me. “I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but that hair and the getup are completely wrong.”

  “They are?” I looked down at myself, a feeling of despair washing over me. What is it about me that invites this kind of comment? Here I think of myself as a kick-ass private eye when other people apparently see me as a waif in need of mothering.

  “Mind if I make a suggestion?” she asked.

  “Fine with me,” I said.

  The next thing I knew, she’d whipped the rubber band out of my hair. She reached in her purse and took out some kind of bottled hair snot which she rubbed between her palms and then massaged through my hair. I felt like a dog being groomed, but I liked the effect. My tresses looked faintly wet now with just the suggestion of curl. The two of us checked my reflection in the mirror.

  Bibianna’s mouth pulled down judiciously. “Better,” she said. “You got a scarf on you anywhere?”

  I shook my head.

  “Let me see what I got.” She began to root around in her handbag, pulling out a joint in the process. “You want a smoke?” she asked idly.

  I shook my head. “I already toked up out in the parking lot before I came in.”

  She tucked the dope away without further comment, intent on her search through the various compartments of her voluminous bag. “Here we go. How’s this?” She pulled up a square of lime green silk and then made a face. “Eh, no good. Color’s not right for you. Dump the earrings. That’ll help.”

  How do women know these things? More important, how come I don’t? I removed the gaudy baubles from my ears and massaged my lobes with relief.

  Meanwhile, she’d managed to unearth a second scarf, this one hot pink. She held it near my face, squinting at it critically. I thought she was going to make me dampen it with spit so she could wash my face, but she did some kind of tricky fold and tied the thing around my neck. Immediately, my color seemed to improve.

  “That looks great. Now what?”

  “You come on with me. I’ll keep the worst of these shitheads away from you.”

  Chapter 6

  *

  I followed her into the crowd like a rookie soldier into battle. Male eyes surveyed us from head to toe, grading us according to the size of our tits, how much butt we had hanging out, and how available we seemed. Bibianna netted a lot of mouth noises, a hand gesture, and some disgusting propositions which she seemed to find amusing, tossing casual insults at the guys most vocal in their appreciation. She was easygoing, good-natured, with a quick, infectious laugh.

  The music started up again and she began to dance as she walked, snapping her fingers, working her way through the crowd with an occasional crotch-activating bump and grind. She was scanning faces and I wondered who she was looking for. It didn’t take long to find out. Her animation kicked up a notch, like the sudden surge in electric current preceding a blackout. Her body seemed to suffuse w
ith a palpable heat.

  “Stick around,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

  A blond guy separated himself from the pack of studs at the bar. He was curly haired, with wire-rimmed glasses, a mustache, strong chin, a slight smile turning up the corners of his mouth. I found myself making note of his physical characteristics like a beat cop on patrol at the sight of a suspect. I knew the guy. He was of medium height, broad shoulders, narrow hips, dressed in jeans and a tight-fitting black Polo shut with short sleeves pushed up by well-developed biceps. Tate. Crazy Jimmy. How many years had it been since I’d seen him? He looked at Bibianna possessively, his thumbs tucked into his belt loops so that his hands seemed to bracket the bulge in the front of his pants. His manner was tempered with self-mocking, an irresistible blend of humor and awareness. I watched, as he moved in her direction, already engaging her in some kind of wordless foreplay. No one else seemed to be aware of them. They approached the dance floor from adjacent sides, meeting somewhere in the middle as if every move were choreographed. This was mating behavior.

  A table opened up and I snagged one of the empty chairs, putting my jacket across the back of the chair beside me to ward off any poachers. By the time I looked back at the dance floor, I’d lost sight of Bibianna, but I caught a flash of her red dress in the pulsating mass of dancers and occasional glimpses of her partner’s face. I had known him in another context altogether, and I couldn’t quite reconcile the incongruity of my past perception of him with the setting in which I now saw him. His hair had been shorter then and the mustache was new, but the aura was the same. Jimmy Tate was a cop ��� probably an ex-cop by now if the rumors were correct. Our paths had crossed the first time in elementary school ��� fifth grade, where for half a year we were soulmates, bound by a pact we’d sealed by touching tongues. Solemn stuff. Jimmy was into what they call “acting out.” I’m not sure what had happened to his parents, but he’d lived in foster homes all his life, getting kicked out of first one, then another. He was a kid who’d been labeled “incorrigible” by the age of eight, rebellious, prone to fistfights and bloody noses. He was frequently truant, and since I was given to truancy myself back then, we formed an odd bond. In many ways I was a timid child, but I had a wild streak of my own born of grief at the loss of my parents when I was five. My mutiny originated in fear, Jimmy’s in rage, but the net result was the same. I could see that under his defiance, there was such pain and such sweetness. I may even have loved him in my own innocent, prepubescent way. He was twelve years old to my eleven when I met him, a bewildered boy who had no concept of self-control. More than once he came to my defense, beating the snot out of some bullying fifth-grade boy who’d tried pushing me around. I could still recall the exhilaration I felt every time we raced away from the schoolyard, giddy with freedom, knowing how short-lived our liberation would be. He introduced me to cigarettes, tried getting me high on aspirin and Coke, showed me the difference between boys and girls. I can still remember the mix of mirth and pity I felt when I realized all boys were afflicted with a doo-dad that looked like an ill-placed thumb stuck between their legs. Eventually, Jimmy’s foster mother declared him out of control and sent him back to wherever it was unwanted kids were sent in those days. Juvenile hall, I guess. I didn’t see him for eight years, and then I was astonished when he showed up my first day at the police academy. By then, his toughness had a manic edge. He was a pretty boy and a boozer, out until all hours. How he got accepted into the academy, I’ll never know. Candidates are put through rigorous psychological evaluation, at which point the unsuitable and the unstable are quickly eliminated. He must have eluded the wily probing of his examiners, or maybe he was one of those rare individuals whose personality flaws don’t show up under scrutiny. His academy grades were usually borderline, but he never missed a class and his competitive nature kept him in the game. He was savvy enough to turn the heat down when he had to, but he never kept himself in check for long. He did manage to graduate with the rest of us, but he was always skirting disaster in some form. I’d kept my distance, too invested in my own career at that point to risk the taint of his reputation.

  He’d applied for a job with Santa Teresa Police department at the same time I did, but he’d been turned down. I lost track of him for a while and then I heard he’d joined the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Word of his exploits started leaking back to us. In bars after hours, the talk would start, cops trading tales about the crazy things Jimmy Tate had done. He was the kind of officer you wanted next to you any time there was trouble. In a pinch, he was absolutely fearless, oblivious of danger. In a pissing contest with the “bad guys,” he was right out in front. His aggression seemed to generate a force field around him, a protective shield. Other cops had told me that watching him under fire, you became aware that in his own way, he was as dangerous as “they” were ��� the bank robbers, the dopers, gang members, snipers, all the lunatics who had it in for us law-and-order types. Unfortunately, his ferocity pushed him across the line more than once. I gathered he did things you didn’t talk about later ��� things you pretended you hadn’t seen because he’d saved your life and you owed him. Eventually, he was tapped as part of a special investigating unit put together to monitor the activities of known criminals. Six months later, the section was disbanded after a series of questionable shootings. Twelve officers were suspended, Jimmy Tate among them. All were reinstated after review by the police commission, but it seemed clear it was only a matter of time before something blew in a big way.

  Two years ago, I’d come across his name in the L.A. Times. He’d been reassigned to a narcotics unit and had just been indicted, along with six other deputies, in a money-skimming scandal that was rocking the department. The details were spelled out day after day during preliminary hearings. Five of the six were bound over for trial and one of those blew his brains out. I followed the court proceedings in occasional copies of the L.A. Times, though I never heard the outcome. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn he was guilty as charged. He was reckless and self-destructive, but as odd as it sounds, I knew if I’d had a brother, I’d have wanted him to be exactly like Jimmy Tate, not for his conduct and the dubious underlying morality, but because of his loyalty and his passionate commitment to survival. We live in a society piously concerned about the rights of criminals when their victims’ lives have been trashed without any consideration of the price in pain and suffering. With Jimmy Tate in charge, believe me, justice was served. There simply wasn’t much attention paid to the technicalities involved.

  He and Bibianna came off the dance floor. The band was taking a break and the noise level dropped so fast it was almost like turning deaf. I focused on Jimmy’s face, knowing any minute he’d spot me and the recognition would leap in his eyes. The two of them sat down at the table, and Bibianna pulled her hair up with one hand and fanned her bare neck with the other. She was winded, laughing, the color high in her cheeks, her hair damp at the temples where the dark strands had separated into little tendrils. “This’s the woman I was telling you about, came to look at my place,” she said to him, indicating me. “What’d you say your name was?”

  Jimmy’s smile was polite as his gaze traveled from her face to mine. I held a hand out.

  “Hello, Jimmy. I’m Hannah Moore,” I said. “You remember me?”

  Clearly he did, and I knew from his look my real name was attached to the recollection. Whatever his current status, he was still too thoroughly trained as a cop to blow my cover. He smiled as he took my hand, dosing me with the same low-voltage sexuality he turned on Bibiana. He lifted my hand to his mouth, kissing my knuckle affectionately. “God, babe. How are you? It’s been years,” he said.

  “You two know each other?” she asked.

  He returned my hand to me reluctantly. “We were in grade school together,” he said without pause, and I felt myself flush with pleasure since that was the connection I cared about. The academy and whatever happened after that wa
s the stuff of our grown-up years. The other had a magical quality that would always take precedence in my book.

  He pulled a crumpled bill out of his pants pocket with a glance at Bibianna before his eyes returned to my face. “I need some cigarettes, doll. Can you do me that?”

  She hesitated just long enough to let him know her cooperation was a gift. Her smile was underlined with irony and the look she gave me was knowing. She tucked the bill between her breasts and walked away without a word. Jimmy’s gaze traced a loving line up her legs to her hips. She was moving with the selfconscious thrust and sway of a model or a starlet, aware of her effect. She sent a slow smile back to him, puckering her mouth in a gesture that was half pout, half promise.

  I felt a laugh bubble up. “I can’t believe running into you this way,” I said. “How do you know Bibianna?”

  He smiled. “I met her in L.A. at a Halloween party a year ago. I saw her a couple times down there, then ran into her again up here.”

  “I had no idea you were back. What have you been up to?”

  “Not much,” he said. His eyes flicked across my face as he checked me out. “How about yourself? Last I heard you’d left the department and were working for some agency.”

  “I was. I got licensed. Now I work for myself. Are you still with the L.A. County Sheriff’s?”