Nevertheless, the father of the missing child had taken obvious insult to the lascivious denigration unknowingly aimed at his daughter. And after Andrew had uncontrollably attacked the on-duty cop, the table full of deputies had responded in defense of a brother officer in the blink of an eye. The cops saw the attack as a random act by some anti-cop nut-bucket.
Lucky was the only man besides Andrew who understood the context of the assault. So despite his damned sciatic nerve, he booted himself up onto the picnic table’s top and launched himself over the still-in-shock Blumenthal and horse-collared Andrew down onto the sidewalk. Then with himself between Andrew and the incensed deputies, he held up a stalling palm and shouted:
“HE’S THE GIRL’S FATHER!!!”
Lucky continued to shout out as he was dragged off Andrew and pinned to the pavement by the Samoan cop and one of his thick brethren. The remaining deputies, including the injured Blumenthal, found enough cause to pummel a few heavy feet into Andrew’s ribs while they rolled him and hooked his wrists with handcuffs.
Meanwhile, inside the taco stand, the window girl had already dialed 911. And the officer-in-trouble code went out immediately over the system. In no time at all, seven more Sheriff’s black-and-whites descended onto Jimmy J’s along with a helicopter from County Air Support. With all the flashing lights, neighborhood passersby were certain there must have been some kind of drive-by shooting or major arrest. Cell phone cameras were recording and uploading images to social media pages in a matter of micro-moments.
All because Deputy Blumenthal hadn’t a clue the runaway girl’s daddy was standing ten degrees to his stern, his ears not missing a single sexual inference, and needing little to turn volcanic.
While paramedics carted off both Andrew and Deputy Blumenthal to the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Lucky remained and made sure to insert himself into the prolonged negotiation between Lennox and Carson Sheriff’s Deputies. Bledsoe was strung in via cell phone. The bottom line was that the event was something akin to a misunderstanding gone terribly haywire. No charges needed to be brought. Blumenthal would assume responsibility for the insult in the form of a written apology and Andrew and his deep pockets would cover all medical and however many workdays the injured deputy might lose due to his concussion.
Still, during the entirety of the attack and subsequent Sheriff’s style whitewashing, Lucky was counting the seconds until he climbed back into his borrowed Crown Vic. This would be the moment he, in his own rationale, would be officially excised from the gig. Once released from the hospital, Lucky was sure Andrew could find his way back to his hotel and with a little phone work, find a proper private investigator to dig up his precious daughter. To put a punctuation mark on Lucky’s decision, he removed the burner phone from his pocket, snapped it open, made certain the battery was removed, and dumped the pieces onto the passenger seat.
The end.
An accident on the 405 freeway left the northbound artery crawling. Ribbons of flared red taillights appeared to stretch for miles. Normally, the cop in Lucky would have found the nearest off-ramp and meandered his way back to the Valley via surface streets. It was the shark in him, as if when navigating Los Angeles, he couldn’t bear to sit still in traffic. But it was anything but a normal night for Lucky. He’d just gotten into a scuffle with six fellow deputies, then recused himself from finishing a job. To Lucky, sitting in near-standstill traffic perfectly suited the lousy moment. He was in all likelihood unemployed again.
And he was glad for it.
Lucky flicked on the radio. The first station he landed on had Christmas songs on auto-rotation. Instead of instantly scanning for another station, he stalled on Mariah Carey’s cover of All I Want for Christmas. It stirred a memory of a petty dinner table fight between two brothers. Their lymphoma-riddled mother had insisted on cooking up a full-on Thanksgiving meal for her two boys. Tony was in high school and Lucky was already in his second year as a uniformed deputy. The Irish-Italian matron, long divorced from a man who had walked out years before, wouldn’t let her boys elevate from their respective seats without the threat of cracking a wooden spoon across their jar-headed scalps. Her cancer had journeyed deep into stage four and would most likely bury her within five months. This would be their last holiday season as what Tony called the Nuclear Super Trio. And hell if mom wasn’t going to cook.
Then came that petty snit of a fight. Was Mariah hot? Or not hot? Little brother Tony insisted the diva was not only hot, but a smokin’ looker from the Planet Ten. Lucky, who hadn’t really thought too much on the subject, decided to counter with the argument that Mariah Carey was uniquely unattractive. In fact, sometime during his teenage-hood he had heard that she only allowed herself to be photographed from the right side of her face. And unless brother Tony could produce photo proof of her left side, Lucky would continue to speciously insist that any designation of “hot” would have to wait.
It was a trivial scene that never rose beyond the laughs it produced from his easily-delighted mom. But it had clearly stuck. And ever since, he couldn’t hear more than a few notes of any Mariah Carey song—Christmas or otherwise—without the mental reminder of that special night. The muscles in Lucky’s face built an involuntary, if middling, smile which earmarked the memory as pleasant. At least more than the awful reality that both little brother and mother were deceased, cremated, and buried next to each other in a Mar Vista cemetery.
The Mariah Carey tune had already cross-faded into Bruce Springsteen’s rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town when Lucky’s cell phone buzzed. Instinct told him to ignore the call, calculating that it was the bruised, Midwestern daddy prepping to hurl curses his way.
A pang of guilt trickled over the tiny domes of Lucky’s nerve endings but was soon squelched by the pain welling above his hips. He needed to get home and get horizontal as soon as possible. Ease the strain on his back instead of merely swallowing more and more Percocets.
By the time Lucky landed at his Reseda apartment, the pain was such that merely climbing the steps to his apartment was a chore. To make matters worse, upon making the last turn to his front door, he found himself face to face with a large black man. No less than six-foot-four, a professional athlete’s shoulders, suited in designer gray with his gloved hands neatly folded in front of him.
“Lucky Dey?” asked the man, polite as hell. Lucky had instantly clocked him as a professional driver-slash-bodyguard.
“Who’s askin’?” was Lucky’s de facto reply.
“Mr. Conrad Ellis would like to speak with you.”
“Look, pal. I just drove over from that side of the hill,” said Lucky. “And right now, if you’ll forgive me, my back needs me to switch from longitude to latitude.”
Lucky was already familiar with the routine. Conrad Ellis, the billionaire germaphobe who preferred to keep his communiqués over the natural prophylactic of a telephone, would sometimes see the need for actual in-person visits. On those occasions, he’d send a car and driver to retrieve the subject and deliver him or her to and from his Bel-Air mansion.
Easing past the suited bodyguard, Lucky flipped his key ring until the familiar Schlage deadbolt key revealed itself in the dim porch light. He was about to turn the lock when he felt the big man’s hand softly grip his shoulder.
“Mr. Conrad is in the car,” said the bodyguard. “He’d invite himself in but—well—Mr. Conrad says you know his preference for more controlled environs.”
“Right,” said Lucky. It didn’t take a professional soothsayer to reckon a visit inside Lucky’s apartment would be something less than antiseptic.
“We’re right at the curb.”
Damning his screaming back, Lucky sucked it up and trailed the bodyguard back down the steps and through the building portico that led to a sleepy street where two- and three-story apartment buildings stretched in both directions. A corner streetlamp flickered and sporadically buzzed, the sodium bulb inside only a few hundred night hours from extinction. Taking up mo
st of the curb space was a Mercedes limousine, custom stretched and freshly polished to a liquid black.
The bodyguard swung a door wide. Lucky stiffly bent at the waist to peer inside. Conrad Ellis waved, his right hand swiveling at the wrist in a beckoning gesture.
“Come on in, Luck,” said the billionaire.
Lucky knew better than to shake the man’s hand. As he slid onto the rear-facing seat the custom leather squeaked until he settled. The car’s interior was lit as softly as the man’s home. Warm and sparse yet comfortable, giving a quiet luster to the mahogany cabinet work which housed a mini-bar and a twenty-inch video screen tuned to Bloomberg TV.
“How are you?” asked Conrad.
“Hurtin’ a bit right now,” confessed Lucky. “Had a helluva time pullin’ your buddy out of what coulda been a nasty beat down.”
“So I heard,” nodded Conrad. “As you might expect, Andrew and I spoke.”
“Figured as much,” gestured Lucky, arms slightly spread. “Otherwise why?”
“I quite like the Valley,” said Conrad. “Feels more like normal America.”
“But you live in Bel-Air.”
“Granted. What I have there they don’t have anywhere in Southern Cal.” Conrad reached into an ice bucket and refreshed his tumbler with three cubes. Then he twisted the cork from a bottle of forty-year-old scotch. “Join me?” he asked.
“I’m good,” said Lucky, already having changed his mind about swallowing a few Percocets before reclining. The pain was too significant. The idea of liquor entering into the decision-making process felt dangerous. “So you spoke to Andrew?”
“I did. He’s pleased with your progress.”
“Strange considering I almost got him jailed,” said Lucky.
“Andrew’s not so easy,” continued Conrad. “He’s a performative little creature. Type A, like most successful alphas.”
“Well, speaking as an unsuccessful alpha, I may not be the best-suited guy to find his daughter.”
“You found mine,” said Conrad, his voice dipping soberly. “Well, you found her murderer. No easy chore.”
“I got lucky.”
“No pun intended.”
“Never heard that one before.”
“Don’t quit on this,” urged Conrad.
But Lucky hadn’t quit. Though he’d surely been leaning that way, he hadn’t shared that factoid with anybody.
“What do you know that you’re not telling me?” asked Lucky.
“Like I said. I had a long talk with Andrew.” Conrad sipped at his honey-tinted scotch. The ice in the crystal tumbler made a distinct tinkling sound. “Can’t say I know you that well. But I consider myself a helluva judge of character.”
“That so?”
“And based on what I asked you to do, what Andrew has reported back to me, my guess is that after this evening you’d be pretty much ready to call it a date.”
“Fair enough,” nodded Lucky. “Maybe I’m just that easy to read.”
“You don’t have children,” noted Conrad.
“I keep hearing that.”
At thirty-seven-years-old, Lucky barely had been able to hang onto a relationship for two months, let alone fathom raising a child. Aside from playing a brief role as father figure to Gonzo’s son, Travis, the closest thing Lucky had to parenting experience was a failed run as a Parks and Rec manager of a T-Ball team made up of learning disabled children. His short tenure had ended when an opposing coach insisted on running up the score on Lucky’s crew of physically challenged six-year-olds. In retribution, Lucky met the coach in the parking lot and ran up the score of teeth he could knock out of the asshole coach’s gums. When the coach threatened to press charges, Lucky left the downed man his card identifying him as an LA County Deputy Sheriff. After a wink and a “good luck,” Lucky retired from coaching.
“Being the parent of a teenager is its own kind of crazy making,” toasted Conrad. “It’s primal. Your job is your child. And when the teenage years come, well, it can send you round the bloody bend. Especially with girls.”
Lucky nodded as if he understood. And to a degree he did. He’d had plenty of on-the-job experience wrangling teenage girls. Alone, drunk, and lost, they were manageable. But in groups, most cops knew they would need to call for female backup just for the addition of eyeballs and defense from a guaranteed sexual harassment suit.
“You’d die for your child,” continued Conrad. “Gladly lay down all that you are and all you have just to keep ’em from jumping off a cliff. And not just once. Goes on for the whole teenage cycle. Serious father would eat his child’s pain if it would make them that much safer.”
“I getcha,” said Lucky. It was clearly an intellectual response, though. The kind of human connection Conrad was describing was alien. He might as well have been talking about Bigfoot.
“Andrew’s in a bad divorce. Lost his wife. Now he’s lost his little girl. That’s enough to make a sane fellah go batshit nuts.” Conrad shifted in his seat, then pointed with that tumbler of scotch whiskey. “If Andrew wasn’t behaving like he’d burned through a few memory cards, then I’d wonder if something was off about him.”
Lucky found himself recovering something of his little brother, Tony. Theirs was more than the typical sibling affection. Without a father in the home, older brother Lucky occasionally had worn the man-of-the-house pants. And Tony was the type of teen who often needed protecting. What if he’d up and disappeared on Lucky and their mom? The thought produced a weird flash of anger that left Lucky’s face slightly flushed. As the air re-circulated inside the limo, he could feel the beads of perspiration form on his stubbled scalp.
“Feeling alright?” asked Conrad.
“Might be coming down with something,” said Lucky, knowing full well that his statement meant an end to the germaphobe’s visit.
“You understand if I ask you to leave then?”
“Of course.”
“Think about what I said.”
“Already have,” said Lucky. “And I hear ya.”
With that, any doubt Lucky had about whether or not he was quitting the private detective gig was all but quashed. Conrad had crossed Mulholland and half the Valley just to rope Lucky back in and re-close the deal. Successfully so, he added. And now it was time for Lucky to get the hell out of Conrad Ellis’ limo.
Part IV
Thursday
21
Santa Monica. 3:12 A.M.
Gabe’s apartment was a rent-controlled sublet. Five short blocks from the Ocean Boulevard cliffs that overlooked Pacific Coast Highway and the beach, the second-story walk-up was even closer to the Third Street Promenade where, only hours earlier, Lucky and Karrie’s father had been papering the misted outdoor mall with color Xeroxes sporting Karrie’s photo with the eerie caption, HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
With her fingers still gently intertwined with his, Karrie let Gabe lead her up the paint-chipped steps of a six-unit, fifties era complex. Inside her skin, she found herself strangely at peace. Maybe it was the walk on the beach. Or the long conversation over fried eggs and chocolate shakes at Rae’s. But somehow the dam had broken and, for the first time ever, she had told someone everything. All of it. Her childhood. Her parents. The volatile upbringing and the horrible, never-ending, battle over the divorce.
Her loss of virtue.
Her few boyfriends.
Her fewer girlfriends.
Her growing lust for distance from everything she thought she knew.
It was a purge that bordered on impoliteness. Self-possessed, but so full of relief. It was akin to vomiting years of poison. And all the while, Gabe merely listened with an easy patience, asked correct, incisive questions without seeming as if he were prying or pretending to play coffee-shop psychiatrist.
A loosely hung string of twinkling white Christmas lights draped the door of Gabe’s place. The leftover eight feet of strand was haphazardly wrapped around the fat paddles of a waist-high Beavertail Cactus in a cracking terracott
a pot.
Karrie giggled at the sight.
“Christmas in LA,” remarked Gabe, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I love Christmas.” Karrie heard her own declaration and made a quick correction. “Well, I love Christmas lights.”
“Oh really?”
“Why so quiet?” asked Karrie.
“Old man downstairs likes to complain about my late nights and pot smoking. My New Year’s resolution is gonna be not to deal with him.”
“It’s not New Years yet,” teased Karrie, raising her voice just enough to be irritating.
“Close enough.” Gabe unlocked the bolt and pushed the door inward with a gentleman’s gesture signaling ladies first.
“Anything I should be scared of?”
“Only me,” grinned the photographer.
“Oooh. I got the shivers.”
The apartment was dark but for the slits of streetlight that muscled past the pair of drop-roll shades masking the living room window. Karrie could feel Gabe gently behind her, not so much nudging, but expecting her to step over the threshold. So she eased forward, detecting the faint aroma of scented candles intermingled with musk once inside the door.
“You said you like Christmas lights?”
“Uh huh.”
Karrie felt Gabe’s arm stretching across her back. She heard the familiar flip of a wall switch. Then before her ignited a living room looped in Christmas lights, from colored to icicle style to twinkling, forming a virtual galaxy.
“Oh. My. God,” exclaimed Karrie.
“They were on special at CVS,” said Gabe. “Think I kinda overdid it.”
“No! You totally didn’t!”
“I’ve got beer and…” Gabe quickly disappeared into what appeared to be the kitchen. Karrie heard the familiar clinking of beer bottles along with carbon dioxide escaping as he twisted off each cap. She was still marveling at what a warm, glowing feel she got from so many indoor Christmas lights when Gabe returned at her right shoulder.
The Lucky Dey Thriller Series: Books 1-3 (The Lucky Dey Series Boxset) Page 41
