“Excuse me,” he began. It was obvious that he was going to object to the girl putting her bottom on his chair.
“Bella here wants a caffe latte and a ham sandwich with the fixings on the side.”
The strength behind Ecks’s words contained a warning that the host heard clearly.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“My name’s not Bella,” she said when the waiter had gone.
“Bella means ‘very pretty’ in Italian, I’m told,” Ecks said. “And so even if that’s not your name I could call you that anyway.”
“You a pimp?” she asked easily, probing professionally, looking, as all prostitutes do, for an exit sign.
“Used to be. A long time ago and many miles from here.”
“You quit?”
“Yeah.”
“How come?” Her eyes were almost saffron in color.
“I realized that I like women too much.”
“You let ’em lead you around by the nose?”
“No, baby,” Ecks said with emphasis in lieu of a longer explanation.
“You look like you could take care’a yourself and a whole string of women too.”
“Oh, yeah. But you don’t have to do everything you can. Matter of fact, I’ve found that it’s best to hone yourself down to the one or two things you like most.”
The waiter returned with the coffee in a glass mug and a sandwich on an oval platter.
“We’re going to need this table soon,” he said to Xavier.
“Listen here, brother,” the black man said to the white one. “I’m gonna sit here and eat and drink and talk to my friend until I’m finished. And you can call the cops or maybe some bouncer you got in the back room somewhere. But if you do you’ll regret it; I can promise you that.”
Before the waiter could back away the young woman was eating her sandwich. She ate hungrily, tearing at the bread and meat with her small sharp teeth.
“You’re hungry,” he said.
She nodded and he noticed Benol Richards walking in with a tall white man in a black overcoat. She was wearing a golden dress that was a little too short and had an odd contrast with her caramel-colored skin. They were intent on their conversation and so did not notice Ecks and his date at the table behind the pillar. They walked to the elevator and she pushed the button.
“They never feed me,” the young woman said.
“Who doesn’t?” Ecks asked, still watching his quarry.
“My dates,” she said. “They always want me to drink with them. Sometimes they want me to take drugs. But you know I’d rather have a chili burger than drop Ecstasy with some fat pervert.”
The elevator doors opened. Six or seven young people came out. Benol and her middle-aged man-friend stood aside and then entered the lift. They got in and disappeared from sight. The digital counter above the doors said that they went to the sixth floor.
“Hey,” Ecks’s impromptu date said.
“Yeah?”
“Are you listening?”
“I don’t think they have chili burgers here.”
She grinned.
“My name is Pretty,” she said.
“So I was right.”
“What’s your name?”
“My name is Egbert but everybody calls me Ecks.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Ecks,” Pretty said, holding out a hand.
They shook and smiled at each other.
“You want a date now?” she asked.
“No.”
Pretty pouted appealingly, but it was obvious to Xavier that she didn’t mean it.
“You don’t like me?” she asked.
“It’s not that. You see, Bella, I’m a kind of investigator and I’m on the job.”
“You followin’ that woman in the gold dress and Jerry?”
“You know him?”
“This hotel has twelve floors. Nine are for people who rent rooms on business or vacation. The other three are split up between Roger Dees, Terra Hauk, and Jerry—the man you was watchin’. They got girls up there do just about anything. It’s cause’a the women upstairs that us outside girls cruise through the café once a night or so. There’s always guys who want another flavor after they get it on upstairs.”
“What’s Jerry’s last name?”
“What’s it worth?”
“A ham sandwich and twenty bucks.”
The young whore liked Ecks’s sense of humor. She grinned.
“Jocelyn,” she said. “Jerry Jocelyn.”
If somebody tells you that what you’re searching for is like looking for a needle in a haystack, Father Frank was fond of saying, then tell them that you will put on magnetized gloves and set aside an afternoon to move a great pile of hay one handful at a time.
Ecks reached into his pocket and took out a folded hundred-dollar bill—this he handed to his makeshift date.
“There’s something else,” he said as she took the money, looking around nervously for plainclothes vice cops.
“What?”
“You ever heard of Malcolm X?”
“No. He related to you?”
“He once gave a speech saying that there were two kinds of slaves,” Ecks said. “There was the house slave and the ones that worked out in the fields. The field nigger knew that he was a slave, nothing more than a piece of property to be worked to death out under a hot sun. But the house slave thought that he was better, a part of the family. If the white master got sick the house nigger would say, ‘Boss, is we sick?’ ”
Pretty laughed out loud. She had a big laugh, a healthy laugh. For a moment Ecks missed his previous life in New York.
“Malcolm X?” she said.
Ecks nodded.
“And he was black?”
“The best book about him was the one he wrote. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”
“I should read that.”
“Yes, you should.”
“Because you know the girls upstairs think they’re better’n us, but the minute their clients drop they will be askin’ me for tips on how to keep from gettin’ cut and beat up right out there on Hollywood Boulevard.”
She looked at her hand under the table and then at Ecks. She hesitated, almost said something and then didn’t.
“Um,” she finally uttered.
“What?”
“You give me a hundred-dollar bill, not a twenty.”
“I know.”
“I have to go,” she said.
“I know that too.”
Pretty stood up, pushed her pale little hand into the pocket of the fake fur. She produced a turquoise business card and placed it on the table.
“In case you ever change your mind,” she said.
Pretty turned and walked away.
Ecks studied the card. All that was on it was the prostitute’s first name, certainly an alias, and an e-mail address. He put it in his wallet and imagined the earth moving through space, spinning on its axis, and revolving around the sun.
It’s always impossible, Frank would say after explaining how one searched for the proverbial needle. Everything is. The red ball, the bolt of lightning, that feeling in your heart when someone says your name. Impossibility is our business—our only business.
Half an hour later Jerry Jocelyn walked out of the elevator doors. He strode forward like a man of action and certainty. Ecks wondered as Jerry passed whether he should follow him, maybe even brace him. But he was in a philosophical mood and had no desire to enter another altercation unless that action had a definite purpose. And so he satisfied himself watching the upscale pimp leave the hotel.
“Can I use the house phone?” Ecks asked the dumpy guy standing behind a small podium upon which hung a sign that read, Concierge. He had waited twenty-three minutes to see whether Benol would reemerge from the elevator.
“Guests only,” he said with a trace of disdain on his lips.
“I need to speak to one of your guests.”
“Name?”
“Beno
l Richards.”
“Ben-what?”
“B-E-N-O-L, Benol.”
The hotel man had small shoulders on top of a big stomach. He obviously wasn’t paid enough to hire a tailor, and so the suit was ill fitting, and even though it was dark blue in color Ecks could still make out various stains. The name tag over his left breast read, Ricardo, but he was pale skinned with light brown hair, maybe forty.
Ricardo sighed. There was a notebook computer bolted to the podium. This he jabbed at with three fingers.
“I can try her room.”
“Please,” Ecks said.
Ricardo picked up the receiver and entered a few digits. He waited while looking Ecks in the eye.
“Hello? Hold a moment. What’s your name?” he asked Ecks.
“Father Frank’s friend, Egbert.”
“Egbert,” the man said into the line. He listened a moment and then hung up.
“She said that she’ll be right down.”
Someone had taken his seat and so Ecks went to a large round sofa that was placed maybe eight feet away from the elevator doors.
As he waited Ecks wondered why he didn’t see many prostitutes and johns in the lobby. He finally decided that there was a special entrance for these patrons either somewhere on that block or maybe on the next street over.
Benol had come through the front door, so she wasn’t working in the hotel.
In the middle of that thought the chrome-and-green doors of the center elevator slid open. Benol, wearing a close-fitting black muslin dress and white pumps, walked out.
She had made herself beautiful.
She strode right up to Ecks and looked down on him.
“It was the driver, right?” she asked.
“How are you, Bennie?”
“So now we’re friends?”
“I found two of the boys you’re looking for.”
The woman’s eyes became like a feline predator’s orbs, dazzled by the bait he dangled. She moved to sit next to him, her round bottom pressed up against his hard thigh.
“Which ones?” she whispered.
Only the suggestion of a scent rose from her—a fragrance applied so lightly that it might not have been there at all. It was as if a perfumed woman had passed this way hours before and all that was left was this hint of an essence unknown.
“I don’t know the real names,” Ecks said. “I mean, I don’t know which is which, but I do know that one of them is Henry Marcus. He owns a surfboard shop down near the boardwalk in Venice. His adopted mother died and the father moved to Hawaii.”
Ecks was looking into Benol’s brown eyes, trying his best to subdue his suspicions.
She was good, but he could see clearly the impatience twitching at the corners of her mouth.
“Um,” she said. “What’s the address of the shop?”
He rattled it off. It wasn’t until he finished that she remembered to take a yellow pencil and a small blue pad from her red clutch purse.
He repeated the address and then waited.
“What’s the other?” she asked.
“Lester Lehman,” he said. “He’s in San Quentin.”
He had to hold back the whisper of a smile that wanted to flit across his lips. The glitter of anticipation in Benol’s eyes dimmed as she tried to maintain the equilibrium of interest.
“Lehman,” she said, reaching for the name. “Wasn’t he the one who murdered his parents?”
“Yeah. Maybe your crime saved his blood family from slaughter.”
“That’s not funny, Mr. Noland. It could have just as well driven him crazy.”
“Glass half-empty,” Ecks opined.
“Is that all?” Benol said when it seemed as if Ecks had finished.
“Two in just a few days,” he replied. “After twenty-three years I’d say that was pretty damn good.”
“Of course it is,” Benol said, looking away as she spoke. “Of course. It’s just that I was hoping to have all three.”
“Why?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why do you have to find these young men? I know I keep on asking you that, but they’re grown now. What good can you do by dredging up the pain you caused? Who knows? The other two boys might have had happy lives.”
“It’s just the right thing to do, that’s all. It’s time for me to make up for what I’ve done.”
“Join the Peace Corps then,” the Parishioner said. “Adopt three young boys and make sure they have every opportunity. Do something positive.”
“This is what I’ve decided to do.” She was still very close to him. “Do you … do you have any clue to where the third boy is?”
Ecks smiled. “I got a P.O. box in the Beverly Hills branch. I sent him a note asking him to meet me tomorrow at four. We’ll see if he shows up.”
“So you have found him?” Benol’s tone was accusatory.
“I found a name. Oscar Phillips. The person I sent the note to might very well not be him.”
“Where are you supposed to meet?”
“Just be patient, Bennie. I’ll tell you if he’s our boy.”
“I’d like to come with you,” she said, laying a hand on his knee.
“It’s best if I go alone. I mean, this is the job Frank asked me to do.”
Benol realized that she was pressing too hard. Removing her hand from his knee, she took a deep breath and considered a moment, or maybe, Ecks thought, she was pretending to consider.
“It seems as if you’re spending more time investigating me than looking for the boys,” she said.
“Not at all. I just found out where the car service let you off. Then I came here to report to you. Nothing sinister in that.”
“I’m not pulling a fast one,” Benol offered. “I’m just trying to help out.”
“I believe you,” Ecks said, trying hard not to be influenced by her proximity. “I mean, why else would Frank put us together?”
Benol had no answer for this. Ecks was not asking for one.
“Where are you meeting this Oscar?”
Xavier wondered about the woman. Did she have a habit of shooting her victims in the eye? Was she merely trying to do what was right? Or was it something in between those two unlikely poles? She was pressing very hard for someone contemplating murder. But maybe her desire to kill outweighed any notion of self-preservation.
“I need to go there alone,” he repeated.
“Fine.”
“But if you agree not to go, why do you need to know where I’m meeting him?”
“This is very important to me,” she said, “extremely so. I feel that finding the boys will make up for so much that I’ve done wrong.”
She sounded sincere. But Ecks had learned at an early age that actions were all that mattered.
“You ever hear of the Nut Hut?” he said.
Benol shook her head, watching him intently.
“It’s in the old Farmers’ Market up on Third and Fairfax. It’s this place that sells every kind of nut in the world almost. Run by this bald-headed dude name of Toy.”
“Troy?”
“No. Like a child’s plaything.”
“That’s strange.”
“If you face the counter of the Nut Hut,” Ecks continued, “there’s three round tables over to the right. Those are Toy’s tables and only his customers are allowed to sit there. I told Oscar to buy some African groundnuts and sit down there at four tomorrow.”
The look on Benol’s face was one of breathless anticipation.
“I don’t want you going there, girl,” Ecks said.
“I won’t.”
“It don’t look like that.”
“You’ll call me when you find out?”
“Oh, yeah. I will most definitely call. But you know, the chances are slim that I’d get three aces in three days.”
“I believe you will.”
On the ride back to Flower Street, Xavier wondered again what he was doing. He didn’t care about pornographers or kidnapped c
hildren, murdered ex-addict surfers or a repentant kidnapper. He owed Frank something … of that he was quite certain. The man had taught him that he could see the world differently. Frank had shown Ecks a whole new way of thinking and then he asked this favor.…
“Hello,” Benicia Torres said, answering her phone at ten seventeen that evening.
“I’m sorry to be calling you so late,” Ecks said.
“What time …? Oh, that’s okay. I was studying.”
“I wanted to call earlier but I had these people to meet.”
“About newspapers?”
“What? No. I belong to a church and they do outreach, kind of like local missionary work. I’m helping this woman find some people she lost touch with. That’s why I was asking that waiter those questions at Temple Pie.”
“Church?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Noland, but you don’t seem like you go to church, or deliver newspapers, or even that you’re named Egbert.” There was humor in her tone—but with an edge.
“I can show you my driver’s license, and I even have my deacon’s card. I could take you out on my route if you want.”
“What time do you make deliveries?”
“I pick up my kids at around four in the morning.”
“Hm,” she speculated.
“But before you make that commitment why don’t we have dinner tomorrow. I know this great Chinese place downtown. It’s called Yellow River … on Grand.”
“That sounds nice,” she said with very little, if any, hesitation.
“Eight?”
“Okay.”
“Should I pick you up?”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Great,” Ecks said, and he meant it.
Ecks went to bed soon after calling Benicia but sleep was nowhere at hand. He lay there in his single bed and listened to the uneven rumble of traffic that ebbed and flowed with no predictability. For the first time in the three years that he’d lived there, these erratic waves of sound distracted him from rest.
His gums ached and an old wound pricked at his ribs. He remembered killing a man from across the hall who had beaten his wife every other week for two years. She cried at his funeral, wailed.
At three twenty-seven he climbed out of bed and took out one of three throwaway cell phones given him by Clyde Pewtersworth. Ecks entered a number he’d written down two years earlier. This number had been placed in a personal ad in a weekly Jewish newspaper from Hoboken, New Jersey.
Parishioner Page 17
