They sat quietly for several minutes and sipped their coffees.
“Are we really going to find out who did it?” she asked, hopefully. “’Cause with all this karate I’m taking, if you catch him, I want the first two out of three falls.”
Bible Bob smiled at her as he absently stirred his mocha. The spoon clicked dully in the thick pottery mug. “Then stay in shape, Mrs. Ellis,” he said softly. “’Cause I’m gonna set that meeting up for you.”
CHAPTER 18
I DON’T MEAN TO SOUND LIKE A WHINER, BUT THE months following Chandler’s funeral were more painful for me than you can imagine. We finally found Melissa. In typical Melissa “go fuck yourself” fashion, she was sleeping under a bridge off the 134 freeway. The way we found her was, one of her whacked-out, homeless girlfriends overdosed on a spoonful of Mexican Brown, curled up in a ball, and caught the big bus. Melissa was asleep near her when the cops and the paramedics arrived to bag and tag the body, then started pulling that sad bunch of runaways out of their cardboard boxes and rolled-up blankets. There was enough space paste hidden under that offramp to lift the whole bridge ten feet off the ground and set it down sideways.
So we got Melissa back. Blessing, or curse? You decide. Since her court date hadn’t come up yet, she technically hadn’t skipped bail, but her bondsman, a tattooed, gap-toothed, exprizefighter named Easy Money Mahoney, told me he knew that Melissa planned to split, and that in his opinion, she had no intention of meeting her court date. If he was going to continue to hold her paper, his insurance company wanted the whole twenty grand in escrow—a no-fault bond, he called it. See how this is going? Everything was hitting me at once. So now I had to convert the last of my company IRA account to keep her out of jail. And what did I get back from Melissa in return? A lotta fucking attitude, that’s what.
“They’re just my friends,” she snarled when I asked why she was hanging with a bunch of addicts under the bridge.
“Your ‘friends’ have more tracks than the Southern Pacific,” I said accusingly.
“My dad, the great seventies drug guru. You got all the fucking answers, don’t you?”
It went on like that. It was endless.
Melissa was just being Melissa—pissed off, making us bleed. It seemed to amuse her that I’d had to cash in our last worthwhile asset to keep her from being put back in jail. Amused Melissa—pissed-off Evelyn. There was no way to win with those two.
Speaking of Evelyn, I was seeing less and less of my scowling wife.
Here’s the story on the Mr. USA Contest. Mickey D had come in fourth, and for Evelyn, that was a big deal. She got to wear his cheesy runner-up medal around the house occasionally.
“Mickey shoulda won,” she’d grumbled. “It was supposed to be an all-natural show, but they only did random drug tests, so this other guy—who anybody with eyes could see was on steroids—didn’t have to take a piss test, and he stole it.”
Like Mickey doesn’t shoot enough gym-juice to benchpress a school bus. Our daily conversations had started to become short and angry.
“Where you going?” Me.
“Out.” Her.
“When you coming back?”
“None of your damn business.”
“Could you please go to the market? There’s no food.”
“What’s wrong, Chick? Your fuckin’ legs broken?”
It was cold enough in our house to go ice-skating. Occasionally, the girls from Hustler and I would sneak into the bathroom, lock the door, and check on the Bishop.
Nothing. Limp as a spruce willow.
I borrowed some Viagra from a friend of mine. He gave me two 50-mg little blue pills. He said to cut ’em in half. Of course, I ignored this advice. In my world, more is invariably better, but 50 mgs proved to be too much. In fifteen minutes, my heart was racing—fluttering like a hummingbird. It scared the shit out of me, but I sorta came up to half-mast. I sat there on the toilet looking at the sorriest erection since Michael Jackson’s wedding night. But at least I wasn’t hanging limp at six-thirty. Progress … kinda.
Oh yeah, and I had begun drinking much more than before. It started almost from the first day I got back to L.A. after Chandler’s funeral. I’d pound down a few shots before noon, to get the knots out of my stomach, toss back a couple more at lunch, and then engage in some serious elbowbending in the evening. By six, I was usually giving my tonsils a good shellacking. I don’t think I started drinking like that just because I killed Chandler. I think it was also because I longed to get in touch with Paige and now I couldn’t. After the funeral and my run-in with that rumpled cop, I was afraid. Half a dozen times I almost called, but froze, my hand shaking as I gripped the receiver, trapped between longing and fear. So I got drunk instead.
Evelyn started calling me an alcoholic. I wasn’t quite up to taking social criticism from a woman who spent her afternoons between the legs of a semi-literate steroid monkey. And she wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. So, when she called me a drunk, gentleman that I was, I called her a cocksucking, wall-dancing whore.
We were really having a ball, Evelyn and me. I swear, if I coulda gotten away with it I would have strangled her. I was starting to fantasize about murder. But before you make a big deal out of that, let me say I believed I was way too smart to fall into that kind of trap. So in the beginning, every time I thought about killing her, I just pushed the idea aside.
Anyway, the four months after I ran over Chandler were a living hell.
Only one bright spot. Remember Marvin Worth, the CFO at bestmarket.com? Well, he’d managed to convince one of our large account receivables, a movie-production company, that it would be better to take over our dot-com than to let it slide into Chapter 11, where they’d only get ten cents on the dollar for what we owed them.
Gladstone Pictures was the name of the outfit. It was a Canadian conglomerate and a producer of action movies. We’d sold hundreds of thousands of their DVDs and were into them for four mil, plus a mil in interest, before they cut off our credit and started screaming at us.
Somehow, Marvin Worth had managed to talk these Canucks into taking over my company for the five million dollars we owed them. Hardly a thrilling prospect, because as you may remember, a few years ago my dot-com was valued at six hundred million, but I’d also been down as low as two with that ridiculous offer from Walter Lily. So the five mil sounded okay under the circumstances. Trouble was, the deal stipulated that we had to assume all the current liabilities and indemnify Gladstone against past debts stemming from old disputes and future lawsuits. As I told you, we owed over eight million, so the bottom line was after the sale, I’d be left with an unrecoupable deficit of around three mil.
Then good fortune struck. The leaseholder on the buildings and warehouses we rented went broke. A complete bankruptcy. Since they were no longer a corporate entity, Marvin found a way to break our lease, which was on our books as a four-million-dollar liability.
Putting it all in context for you and leaving out the legal subsets—because, while fascinating, they’re probably way over your head unless you have a high degree of business sophistication—I could now sell the company and stand a good chance of coming out of it almost two million dollars to the good.
Two million dollars. Not exactly a fortune, but at least enough to get me started again—enough to set up some new offices and get a new game going.
Maybe you can see where this is heading. My problem now was going to be Evelyn. If I didn’t divorce her, I was pretty sure that as soon as she saw the two mil in the bank, she would divorce me. California is a community property state, so she would get half. Once I paid the freight on both our lawyers and their expenses, my two mil was going to be cut down to almost nothing.
That was the box I was in. “Barkeep, ’nother round, please.”
Anyway, despite all this, I was determined not to do anything stupid. I mean, the easiest, cheapest way out of this would be if Evelyn just sort of left the picture—if she married Mi
ckey D. But even I couldn’t hope for that kind of luck. Evelyn was way too smart to marry a poverty-stricken weightlifter, no matter how impressive his cuts. She would wait until she had her half of whatever I managed to salvage, then she’d move in with him. See the problem?
So that left murder.
But, as I’ve already discussed, that just wasn’t a viable option. The husband is always the prime suspect, and I’m not anxious to end my life fighting off a squad of tailgunners at Soledad State Prison. Chandler aside, I’m not a killer. So I knew I had to stop thinking about killing Evelyn. It wasn’t an option, because I knew I’d get caught. I knew that. So let’s move on. We’re moving on. Okay?
The day we were going to sign the deal with Gladstone Pictures, I had to drive Evelyn’s car because she had stolen mine. Why did she take my car? Because Mickey D liked the Porsche Targa, that’s why. He thought he looked sexy in it with the top down; he and Evelyn cruising around in muscle tees and wraparound shades. Whenever they went to the beach, he’d always talk her into stealing my car. I’d go out to the garage and the fucking Porsche would be gone. No note from her, no “May I borrow your car, dear?” It was community property, and as she’d already so plainly told me, she could do what she wanted with it.
So with the Porsche gone, I had no choice but to take Evelyn’s Mercedes SL600. But she never washes it, and the thing was filthy. I knew I might have to take one of the Gladstone executives to lunch after the signing, so I stopped at a car wash on the way to the office. I went to the drive-through on Adams.
To begin with, this place is an ethnic war zone—a sinkhole. It’s staffed mostly with pissed-off African-American parolees—black teenagers in blue jumpsuits who glower as you pull in. You’re white meat. They’re the meat-eaters. Let the games begin.
They don’t want to work there, and they squeegee your windshield like they’re swinging a razor at you, but they have to hold down a job or their P.O.s will throw their criminal asses back in the pecker palace.
I ordered the wash and hot wax, and was standing by the manager’s office, watching Evelyn’s gold Mercedes convertible go through the whirling brushes. Behind me, through an open door, I could hear the manager, a Hispanic man called Juan, in a discussion with two other men. I glanced around and saw them. Juan was a fat, short Mexican with bad skin. He was sitting behind the desk. Across from him was a middle-aged, overweight white guy, who, it turned out, was a county parole agent. He stood next to a sullen black teenager—ripped and muscled. This kid was projecting enough silent anger to start a riot.
Here’s the story I overheard while waiting for Evelyn’s car: The black banger was ready to get out of jail on state paper and needed a job to make his parole requirement. His P.O., the white guy with the big gut, was saying, “Delroy has good recs from his CUS,” which he explained was his custody unit supervisor.
I heard some papers rustle and then the manager said, “Says here you got a history of violent crimes, Delroy. Carjacking, pulling guns and shit, threatening people’s lives … I run a car wash. I can’t have you standing around here scoping other people’s rides.”
“My homies put me up on that, man. But once I got popped and did my nickel, I know dat ain’t for me. I ain’t gonna fall behind dat kinda shit no mo’, know what I be sayin’? I ain’t about ta be go an get myself rolled up on no major felony, dat’s for damn sure.”
Or something like that, ’cause to be honest, he spoke so low and with such a ghetto accent, it was very hard to understand him. It sounded like pure jailhouse bullshit to me.
“Says here, you shot a guy once when you were jackin’ his ride,” Juan said.
“Mr. Hernandez, that be a real sad story. Know what I’m sayin’? That guy was frontin’ me off, y’know? I had no choice. Hadda cold deck d’nigger, but, I’m through wid’dat, now,” the ex-con said. “Ain’t gonna be no more crime in my time. Gonna get me a piece a’da rock.”
Juan was waffling, so finally the parole officer made a deal to close it. “Just give Delroy a try. He’ll work for the first two weeks at half pay, till you’re sure. You’ll like Delroy. He wants to turn his life around. Ain’t that right, son?”
“Yessir, not be doin’ no dumbass kamikaze shit no more. Here on, I’m down for what da white-shirts say.”
There was some more paper shuffling and talking that I couldn’t make out, then I heard a chair scrape, and they exited the office behind me. I got a closer look at Delroy as he went past. He was a hard-looking, ebony-skinned, teenaged asshole with boxed-out gold front teeth, who looked like he’d kill you for your pocket change. He had a tattoo on the back of his neck that I already recognized, because Big Mac had the same one on his bicep.
B2K: Born to Kill.
This town is a jungle. Sometimes people die just because they said the wrong thing in a bar or at the water ride at Magic Mountain.
“Hey man, you’re cuttin’ in. Go to the back of the line.”
“Eat shit, asshole.” BLAM-BLAM-BLAM.
It’s all about survival.
Cut off some guy like Delroy on the freeway and you’ve cashed your last supermarket coupon. That’s what life in L.A. had become—kill or be killed.
As I left the car wash in Evelyn’s Mercedes, I pledged to myself that I was through being a target. From now on, I was taking control of my life. From now on, these assholes had better get out of my way or take what’s coming.
I had already killed one guy. Fuck with me and you could be next.
CHAPTER 19
IN EARLY OCTOBER, PAIGE GOT BACK TO THE PORTRAIT of Chandler. She was working with more emotional distance now. She found solace in trying to capture the strong, flat planes of his face. She finally liked the way it was turning out.
Given the circumstances, she was surviving pretty well. She had lost five pounds, along with her appetite, and was beginning to look gaunt, so she had been working halfheartedly at putting the weight back on.
In the afternoons, when it was cooler, she ran down by the river. She found herself stretching the distances out, keeping her pace brisk and taking pleasure in the fact that as her endurance grew, she didn’t tire. The daily run and the dojo workouts exhausted her and she slept soundly, descending into a muscle-tired REM, where the painful dreams of Chandler didn’t follow.
But the rage always lay just below the surface. She had a stress fracture in her left wrist from blocking her karate instructor’s side kick, known as a yoko-geri. She also had one on her right forearm from a missed tettsui-uke, a bottom fistblock. Her sensei had wanted her to take a month off and let them heal, but she’d ignored the advice and stayed in class; both injuries got worse until finally an orthopedist ordered her to give it up for six months. So she concentrated on her running and pushed her distance up to ten miles a day.
Bob Butler still phoned her each Wednesday to set a visit. He would bring her up to date over coffee or Cokes, but his attitude was starting to suggest failure.
“I’m beginning to think maybe I ain’t gonna get this guy after all,” Bob sadly admitted one afternoon. “Just finished goin’ back again, recheckin’ everything, recontacting rental car companies, asking them to check fender damage again.
“Same answer: no blue Tauruses with busted fenders at none a them big car agencies, so that means most likely, it ain’t a rental. Now I’m checkin’ paint stores and tire stores in the Tri-State Area.”
They were sitting on a wrought-iron bench near the aqueduct, watching two tugs work a huge oil tanker as it slid up the river. One was in front, the other trailing, each nosing the tanker occasionally, then running along beside it bumping and herding the mammoth ship like busy sheepdogs.
“Tire stores?” She was puzzled.
“Well, it’s a long shot, but if he’s smart, this perp could know we can do a pretty good job at matching treads we recover off’a bodies, or from tracks on the pavement. If our driver knew that, maybe the perp coulda went and changed tires.”
“Isn’t that going t
o make him harder to catch?” she asked.
“Maybe could be yes, maybe could be no.” He then turned and looked directly at her, finding her gaze with friendly gray eyes. “Here’s what I’m hopin’. If this doer changed the tires, that means he talked to somebody, and maybe that somebody will remember. Since the perp just ran Chandler down, could be that he or she was real stressed, acting strange. The tire store might help me get a sketch. I’ll show it to you and we’ll see if you can make the identification. If you can’t and it turns out to be a stranger, at least we got something to show around.”
She nodded and swung her eyes back to the huge ship that was now sliding by directly in front of them, its massive hull taking away the view. “How many hundreds of tire stores are there?” she asked, not really expecting an exact answer.
He pulled out several computer sheets. “Here’s all the names off the Corporation Commission’s computer. That’s just the ones that contain the words “tire” or “tread” in the corporate filing.” He handed it to her. She was surprised by the number of listings.
“Counting the chains and the independents, there’s five hundred in the state of North Carolina alone,” he said. “’Bout the same in South Carolina and Virginia. After I run through all’a them, I’ll punch out the auto parts stores that sell tires, and last, the gas stations. But that’s gonna be a pile a places, so I’m hopin’ I score with the list you’re holding first.”
“Lotta tire centers,” she said bleakly.
“Yep,” he nodded. “Gonna take a heap a doin’, but since the rental car thing was a bust, I have to go after this angle. Gonna check paint and body shops, too. Got a similar list a’them. Figure the front end a’that car musta got pretty damaged. Since the TV people put it on the news that Chandler was run down by a blue Taurus, the perp hadda know we made the car. So he puts the car in his garage for a month or two, doesn’t drive it, then when the heat has died down, he takes it out, gets the front end fixed, probably sells it after that.”
At First Sight Page 12
