She was busy perusing the document. “Honest misunderstanding,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, and the credit card you used to get in the back door was an honest misunderstanding, too.”
“Hey, you can believe it or not, but the door was unlocked.”
I didn’t believe her for a second. Terry was a world-class liar, dating back to childhood. She was always able to convince our mother that I was the one who’d dismembered all the dolls, pulverized the hutch window with a baseball bat, or spent my milk money on the malt liquor in the garage. It took Mom years to realize I’d been framed every single time by my silver-tongued sister.
“I’ll look out here for the money,” she said. “You take the bedroom.”
I headed into the bedroom as instructed, though I was increasingly nervous about being here at all. I searched the closet, felt under the mattress, and rifled through the drawers of the dresser next to the bed. Tatiana had left behind some stray articles of clothing, probably because they weren’t worth taking. A couple of T-shirts, worn cotton panties, a pair of Guess jeans.
Underneath the clothes I spotted a window flier advertising an evening of Russian folk music at Trotsky’s Cafe. I knew the place—a downtown restaurant specializing in heavy food, balalaika music, and angry poetry readings. The walls and booths were red, and the outdoor sign bore a hammer and sickle insignia—twenty-first-century nostalgia for the Evil Empire. If Tatiana was a recent immigrant, it would make sense for her to frequent a place that catered to homesick Russians. It was probably worth a shot if we didn’t turn up anything else.
Terry came into the room, waving the subpoena. “This is a summons to appear as a witness in Pilch v. Hattrick. A breach- of-contract action.”
“When?”
“Next Thursday. She’s got to be there or show cause.”
I showed her the flier for Trotsky’s. “Maybe we should deliver the summons to Tatiana ourselves.”
“Good thinking.” She gave me a thumbs-up. “Even if she’s not there, I’ll bet someone will know who she is. Find any money?”
“Nyet.”
“Well, I’ve been all through the rest of the place. No money anywhere. We’d better get out of here before the guy with the tattoos sobers up and gets nosy.”
We started back toward the living room, but I suddenly felt Terry gripping my arm. She put her finger to her lips and nodded toward the back door. We paused, deadly silent, listening.
Footsteps on the porch.
A heavy tread. Maybe work boots.
We darted back into the bedroom, and I pulled Terry behind the door. We waited breathlessly for a knock, but none came. Instead the back door opened and a man called into the apartment.
“Tatiana . . . ?”
I peered through the crack, but all I could see was the back door itself, opening toward us.
“Tati . . . ?” The man pushed the door further inward. “It’s me.”
He came all the way inside the apartment, looking around, then closed the door behind him. He was average height with an extraordinary build. Smooth, predatory movements. Lots of dark hair, big bedroom eyes, and Gina Lollobrigida lips.
Mario.
One look, and you knew the guy was a total sexual athlete. Maybe that was what had tempted Lenore into marriage with someone so obviously wrong for her. Wrong side of the tracks on the wrong side of the border and probably the wrong side of the law.
He tossed a black leather shoulder bag on the dinette table and went into the small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator door and looked inside.
“Shit. No pinche cerveza.”
He slammed the door. Glass bottles rattled inside, but they obviously weren’t beer. He sat down at the table and looked at his watch, then reached into his bag and pulled out a pen and a candy bar wrapper. He scribbled a note, grabbed up the black bag, and started for the door.
Then he stopped.
He unzipped the bag and took out a large business envelope, grabbing a couple of dollar bills out of it and stuffing them in his pants pocket. Then he looked around the living room, his gaze settling on the couch.
He crossed the room in two strides, grabbed a cushion, flicked open a switchblade and deftly sliced the side of the cushion underneath the piping. He stuffed the envelope into the opening, then tossed the cushion back on the couch.
I swallowed hard. This guy was mighty handy with a blade. I didn’t want to think about what he could do to our fair, yielding flesh if he was this good at slicing through tough poly fibers.
A minute later, he let himself out the back, taking the black bag and testing the knob before closing the door behind him. It was still unlocked.
I heard his footsteps receding into the distance, and I let out my breath.
“That was too easy,” Terry scoffed. “Let’s get out of here.” I grabbed the back of her jacket.
“Hold on,” I whispered. “Let him get down the alley, at least.”
We waited another couple of seconds, then Terry lost patience. “Come on. He could be back anytime.”
We rushed into the living room. She grabbed the cushion while I read the note on the tabletop. Back in five. Went to get beer.
“Hurry it up,” I said, waving my hand. “He’s coming right back.” I looked out the back window for a car, but didn’t see one. Had he come on foot?
Terry opened the envelope and thumbed through a stack of bills that were bound with a thick rubber band. “Hundreds and fifties, mostly.”
“How much?”
“Gotta be close to ten thousand. Let’s bail.”
Beads of sweat were popping out on my upper lip. “I don’t know. Can we take it . . . just like that?”
“It’s Lenore’s.”
“She says it’s hers.”
“Ah come on. Whose word you gonna take? He stole her jewels and hocked ’em.”
“I don’t know. Breaking and entering, theft. This is real borderline stuff. What if we get caught?”
“Quit fucking around and we won’t get caught! We’re acting as recovery agents now, not PIs. How were you planning to get the money back, anyway?”
“I thought we’d confront him and, you know . . . guilt him out.”
“Yeah, that’d work. You’d guilt him out and he’d stab you through the heart.”
She was right. Mario looked a lot more dangerous than we’d been led to believe, and it was a good thing we hadn’t had to talk the money out of him. I decided we’d better count our blessings and hit the pavement while we still had the chance. Terry stuffed the envelope in the back of her jeans, covering it with her shirt, and we started for the back door.
Then we heard the footsteps again. A shape appeared in the pebbled glass of the window. We froze.
Terry pointed to the front door on the opposite side of the room.
We scrambled toward it.
Then we heard someone turning the knob on that door as well.
We lurched toward the bathroom door, jamming ourselves through and getting stuck for a second, popping through to the other side like twin bowling pins. Terry closed and locked the door behind us.
“What do we do?” I whispered frantically.
But Terry was already working on the lock of the bathroom window, which by some good fortune was not painted shut. She shoved open the sash, took a quick look outside, and dove headfirst onto a hawthorne bush, bouncing off and rolling across the grass.
I wasn’t about to dive headfirst.
I jumped up on the sink and stuck my feet through the window, grabbing the bottom of the sash for leverage as I tried to ease my way over the bush.
Then I heard—SLAM!
It was the front door in the living room.
SLAM!
The door at the back of the house.
Terry grabbed me by the ankles, yanking me outside. I had almost cleared the hawthorne when I heard a man scream.
“Motherfucgggg . . . !”
I released the window in panic and landed
on a thousand sharp twigs with exposed skin, my skimpy vintage leather jacket having hiked all the way up my ribs. I cried out in pain at the same instant we heard the explosion.
It sounded like the roof had been blown off.
Terry dragged me up by the arm and we stumbled through the fir trees bordering the backyard and tore off down the alley, hearts thudding in our chests, eardrums throbbing like homebound fans after the Ozzfest.
I don’t remember running to the bike. Barely remember jamming the helmet on my head and leaping on as Terry fired up the engine and burned rubber down the street. We were two miles west on Franklin when the shaking subsided, my vision cleared, and my brain flashed me a big neon sign that said: Guilt!
“Stop!” I yelled at Terry.
She shook her head.
“Stop!” I slugged her in the kidney.
The bike angled over to the right and she turned onto a residential street, pulling into an apartment driveway, where she cut the engine.
I ripped off my helmet. “We left the scene of a crime!”
She turned and gave me a pitying look. “Could you speak a little louder? I’m not sure they heard you in Rancho Cucamonga.”
I tried to rein in my hysteria. “What was that?” I said, climbing off the bike.
“I’m guessing large-gauge semiautomatic.”
I paced around the driveway. “We have to go back. Someone could have been killed. We’re material witnesses.”
“Okay,” she said, “let’s go back. It’s your first offense, so they’ll go easy on you. Two, three years max in Sybil Brand for breaking and entering and grand theft. It’s my second strike, so I’m two-thirds of the way to a life sentence. But hey. When you’re right, you’re right. Let’s go turn ourselves in.”
“You . . . ! You were arguing the other way ten minutes ago! You said we were perfectly within our rights to take that money!”
“That was my perspective. I think Johnny Law might have a different perspective. He might see us as a couple of sneak thieves. There are two sides to every story, Ker.”
My teeth were grinding themselves into chalk dust. I unhinged my jaw and took a deep breath. “Tattoo Man. He can identify us.”
“Maybe.” She casually took a tube of cherry-flavored lip gloss out of the pocket of her cargo pants and applied a coat. “Or maybe the ganja caused him to see double. Or maybe it was yesterday and he thought it was today. The guy’s fried to a crispy crunch. He’s useless as a witness.” She snapped the cap back on the gloss and smacked her lips.
I bonked myself on the head with the helmet. “How did I let you get me into this?”
“How did I get you into this? Ms. I-Couldn’t-Turn-Down-a-Friend-of-Reba’s?”
I looked down, my cheeks flaming.
“Listen, what’s done is done,” she said. “We need to put some miles between us and that apartment. Now.”
“But who got shot? Mario? Tatiana?” Then a more frightening thought occurred to me. “Or were they shooting at us?”
She shook her head, eyes narrowed as she tried to put it together. “I don’t think so. We heard two doors open, one shot fired. Somebody screamed, a man—” She checked her watch. “If we hurry over to the hotel now, we can get home in time for the ten o’clock news. Maybe they’ll have the story.”
“But what do we tell Lenore?”
Terry’s eyes went sideways. “We could tell her we didn’t find him. Keep the money as hazard pay. After all, she neglected to mention switchblades and gunplay. We could cover the property taxes and have enough left over for a weekend in Vegas.”
I glared at her.
“Or not.”
“This could be blood money,” I said. “I don’t want any of it.”
“Look, if we don’t take our twenty percent, it will show consciousness of guilt.”
Damn. This girl could rationalize anything.
“But what do we say about how we got it?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? A good lie is one that sticks close to the truth. We saw him leave the apartment, then we went in through an unlocked door and found the money in a cushion. Then we left. We have no idea what happened after that.”
Sirens began screaming a half-mile away.
“There’s the cops, they’ll take care of it,” she said, reaching for the key. “Let’s go give Lenore her money and be done with this.”
I was beyond resisting. I threw my leg up and it flopped over the seat like a big dead thing. Exhausted after the adrenaline rush, I had all the willpower and motor control of a Raggedy Ann doll.
Terry, however, was cool as a cuke. She made a skillful turn in the driveway, looked both ways, then buzzed into traffic on Franklin like it was just another day.
Twenty minutes later we were back in the lobby of the Dauphine, where Alphonse materialized out of thin air.
“’Allo-o-o,” he crooned. “Mrs. Templeton is expecting you?”
He had to ask, either out of habit or just to be annoying.
“No, she’s not,” Terry said. “Guess we’ll be going now—”
I was not going to let her walk with Lenore’s money. “Would you like to call her, Alphonse?” I said, grabbing Terry by the hem of her jacket. “Let her know we’re coming up?”
Terry gave me a resigned look, as Alphonse snapped his fingers at a young woman behind the counter. “Call Mrs. Templeton,” he said. “Try 302 and 308, and let her know ze young ladies are here.”
The clerk made the call and nodded to Alphonse. “She’s in her room. Number 308.”
I punched the call button expecting Alphonse to accompany us for the ride, filling the elevator with his musky pungency. But I got a shock when the doors opened.
The elevator contained a woman with a face like a Braque canvas, gray and green alternating blotches on cheeks that looked like they were stuffed with wadding and overwhelmed by giant Jackie O. sunglasses. She was hunched with osteoporosis, leaning precariously on a gold-tipped cane.
“Mrs. Magnuson!” Alphonse two-stepped it to the elevator. “You should have told me you were ready to leave ze hotel! I would have brought ze wheelchair!”
“I don’t need a wheelchair, you ponce,” she croaked, thrusting the cane in front of her like a blind person and nicking Terry in the shin.
“Ouch!” Terry scuttled backward.
The woman lurched out of the elevator without a word of apology. Alphonse ran to her side, gripping her bony elbow as she staggered forward. Either Mrs. Magnuson had inner ear problems or she’d spent the entire afternoon on a minibar bender.
“A basket for Mrs. Magnuson!” Alphonse yelled.
The young female clerk dipped down below the counter and came back up with another of the ubiquitous gift baskets.
Terry gave me a puzzled look—Okay, getting a basket when you check in makes sense, but getting one when you leave?
The clerk hurried around the counter with the basket, cellophane crinkling. A bellhop came zipping out of another elevator pushing a brass cart loaded with designer suitcases. The clerk ran to him, stuffed the basket next to Mrs. Magnuson’s brown lizard hatbox, then watched as the bellhop wheeled the cart out to a beige Rolls Royce that was parked at the curb. A uniformed chauffeur stepped out and installed the luggage and the basket in a trunk big enough to picnic in.
Alphonse helped the wobbling little figure into the backseat of her Rolls. She slapped his hand away and he responded with an ingratiating bow, clicking his heels together before closing the door.
The clerk returned to her post at the registration desk. She had straight blonde hair, a button nose, and an apple-cheeked pudgy face that seemed to be at odds with her tall slender body. Straight off the boat from Nebraska, I thought. Splits her time between working at the hotel and auditioning for Burger King commercials. Terry sauntered over to her. I let the elevator doors close and followed.
“That’s a nice going-away gift,” Terry said, leaning on the counter with a confidential air. Just a li
ttle girl-to-girl chat while the men were out of earshot. “What’s in it?”
“Don’t know, exactly,” the girl said. “You think they ever give the employees one of those, even at Christmas?”
“They don’t?” Terry looked appalled. “What’s the big deal? It’s just promotional items, I’ll bet. Probably get ’em for free.”
“Who knows? They treat them like gold. They put them together in the back office under lock and key, like we’re a bunch of thieves, gonna steal their little prizes. These rich people, they can’t get enough free stuff.”
“Pathetic,” I said, shaking my head.
“And it’s not just when they leave. They’ve got to have them all the time while they’re here, delivered up to their rooms. Some of those women can go through a basket like that in two days. I don’t know where they put it. Most of them weigh about eighty pounds, soaking wet.”
When Alphonse returned from seeing Mrs. Magnuson off, he looked surprised and not at all pleased to see us still on the ground floor. The clerk caught his eye and suddenly got busy with some paperwork, ducking her head.
Since when was it a crime for front desk personnel to be friendly?
This five-star hotel had the locked-down feel of a prison camp, with Alphonse doing duty as a Froggy Colonel Klink. He gave us a little wave and a superior smirk as we turned to get on the elevator.
“Give my best to Mrs. Reeechling,” he said, using her real name this time.
I wondered at the breach of security, then shrugged it off.
We knocked at the door to room 308. We heard scratching on the door and whimpering, then Lenore calling out, “Coming . . . ! Out of the way, precious, Mommy has guests.”
The door swung open and Lenore stood there, resplendent in a red silk kimono and black bell-bottomed slacks, fresh fire-engine red enamel on her nails, her watery blue irises peering out at us from ballooning eyelids.
She shoved Paquito into her armpit and clamped down on his body with a skinny, viselike arm to hold him in place as she let us in the door. Then she plopped down with him on the bed and rubbed the heel of her hand against her face, apparently still plagued by itchy stitches.
The Butcher of Beverly Hills Page 4
