by Teri White
“He was a user, right?”
A quick glance around. “Pills is all. Not the hard stuff. He didn’t even smoke. Made him sick, he always said.”
Spaceman saw Blue approaching. There wasn’t anything else to be learned from Martin. He did manage to squeeze the address of a downtown crashpad out of him, supposedly a place where he might be reached, should the necessity arise. Spaceman wouldn’t have bet the rent money on that, but he let the boy go.
Martin started away, then paused long enough to watch the sod being replaced over the grave. He shook his head and walked away quickly. It would have been nice if the sight made him think a little bit about his own fragile mortality, but Spaceman knew it wouldn’t. Pete was already a part of history, except that for Martin, like for so many others in this city, there was no such thing as a past. There was just the future. Martin would keep looking ahead, never back, and still he wouldn’t see disaster coming. Until it was too late.
Blue reached the spot where Spaceman was standing. “Nothing?”
“Nada. Of course.” Spaceman turned to look at him. “Believe it or not, Martin was just a good buddy. He thought Pete ought to have one standing by.” He shrugged. “Sometimes even the creeps of this world will do something nice.
“Well, maybe our plump friend felt the same way. Maybe he just wanted to do something humane.”
“You run the license?”
“The car is registered to a guy named Donelli. Managed to find out that he owns a drugstore in Westwood.”
“A drugstore?”
Blue nodded as they turned and headed back toward the car.
“Martin just told me that young Peter’s single vice was pills. He liked to take them.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I think so.”
It wasn’t until they were in the car and headed for Westwood that Spaceman mentioned the message he’d found scrawled on the wall of his apartment the previous day. “‘You’ll be sorry,’ it said. That’s all, in big purple letters.”
Blue frowned. “What was taken?”
“Not a damned thing. Except the purple pen.” He shrugged. “Probably just kids.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. What else?”
“Maybe you have a secret enemy out there somewhere.”
Spaceman snorted. “I have a lot of enemies, but not many of them are subtle enough for this kind of thing. Most of them would just lay a two-by-four alongside my head if they wanted to make a point.”
Blue hesitated before speaking again. “If I say something personal you won’t take it wrong, will you?”
“I might. Say it anyway.”
“You think maybe it could have been your son?”
“Robbie?” The possibility hadn’t even occured to him.
“Well, I just thought he might be really pissed about something,” Blue explained quickly. “That might explain why he ran away and this could be just more of the same.”
Spaceman wondered if maybe he should blow up at a suggestion like that. But as he thought about it, and about what he’d learned the last few days, he was forced to consider the idea seriously. “I don’t think Robbie would have done it,” he said. “But who the hell knows? I never thought he’d steal or shack up with some rich bitch, either.”
If Blue was surprised by the revelations, he didn’t show it. “Well, it probably wouldn’t hurt to keep your eyes open for the next few days. Just in case.”
“Just in case. So I can fight off the flying two-by-fours, right?”
The drugstore had a sleek façade, fitting the image of the greenery-bedecked mall in which it was located. Not exactly the kind of place a street kid like Pete would be expected to feed his pill habit. They spotted the car from the cemetery parked nearby.
As they sat there, a steady stream of customers moved in and out of the store. None of them looked like anything but straight Republican ticketers. “Well,” Spaceman said finally, “shall we converse with Mr. Donelli?”
They got out of the car and walked into Donelli’s. Spaceman loosened his tie as he moved. The chic store was stocked with trendy greeting cards, best-selling paperbacks, and all the other necessities of life in the fast lane.
Donelli himself was at the back, manning the pharmacy counter. He had shed the dark sport coat he’d worn to the funeral, wearing instead a lime green smock over his shirt and tie. They waited patiently until he finished filling a prescription for an old lady bent and twisted with age, and then Spaceman leaned across the counter. “We need to talk, Donelli,” he said quietly.
The man looked up and saw them. A faint but visible shudder passed through his body. He had a beer gut that shook. “I’m busy,” he said, trying to sound brusque, but coming off scared.
“Get unbusy. Or we can go downtown, if you’d rather.”
He blanched. “Come into my office.” He released the hidden catch on the gate and they passed through. “Dinah, take over out here, please.”
A young woman in a matching smock appeared from somewhere and nodded. “Sure thing, Mr. D.”
Donelli led them into his office, closed the door firmly, then turned to look at them. “It was really stupid of me.”
“What was?” Spaceman asked.
“You know. Going to that damned funeral.”
“Why did you?”
Donelli sat behind a cluttered desk. They could almost see his mind clicking behind the thick glasses he wore. “I went,” he said finally, “because I knew the boy. That’s no crime.”
“Depends. How did you know him?”
“What do you mean, how?”
Spaceman sat in a chair facing Donelli. Blue remained standing by the door. “I mean this. Pete was a street hustler. He lived by having sex with men and getting paid for it. Nobody can work all the time, though, and Pete had a hobby. His hobby was swallowing pills. It just seems a little curious to me that somebody like him would number among his acquaintances a man like you. Successful businessman. Married, I’ll bet, with a couple of kids.”
Donelli nodded miserably. “Three,” he said.
“There you go. Just like I figured, the perfect American family.”
“Except for one thing,” Blue put in. “The simple fact that it isn’t enough for you. Maybe you need more. Maybe you need something only a kid like Pete can give.”
The man’s face was by now almost the same shade of green as his smock. “You have no right to say things like that. You have no proof of anything. I knew Pete, but it was nothing like that. We just knew each other. Go away, please, and leave me alone. Before I call my lawyer.”
Spaceman nodded. “You’re right. We can’t prove a thing, so I guess you’re off the hook. But humor me. How about if I just theorize a little?” When Donelli didn’t respond, he glanced at Blue.
“I don’t mind,” Blue said cheerfully. “Theorize to your heart’s content.”
“Thank you. The way I see it is, Donelli here likes to have his kicks with boys. Young boys. Now, I’m not in the business of passing moral judgment, no matter how sick and disgusting anyone might be. Different strokes, you know?”
“That’s a nice liberal attitude,” Blue said.
“Thanks again. Anyway, Pete liked pills, all the pretty little bits of color that made him feel good … and maybe made what he did with creeps like Donelli here a little more bearable. So I figure they had what is known as a reciprocal relationship. Sex for pills. Or pills for sex, depending on how you look at it.”
Donelli was staring at the top of his desk. “You can’t prove anything,” he repeated dully.
“True. But we can make your life very unhappy from now on, and I think we will.”
Donelli made a gagging sound which was followed by a silence that lasted for minutes. Then he sighed deeply. “Pete was supposed to meet me downtown,” he said in a whisper. They had to strain to hear him. “The night he died, we were supposed to get together at the bus station. He called that afternoon to set
it up.”
“Where was he calling from?”
“At the beach someplace, that’s all I know.”
“How was he going to get downtown to meet you?”
“I suppose the same way he got everywhere. Hitch. But he never showed up. I waited over an hour, but he never came.” Donelli was starting to cry, but Spaceman figured the tears were for himself, not for Peter Lowe. “I shouldn’t have gone today. It was stupid. But Pete was a nice boy.”
They didn’t answer, and in a few more minutes, they were ready to go. There was nothing they could do to Donelli, except warn him to shape up, but Spaceman felt a grim satisfaction as they departed. The fat pig would think twice the next time he paid some kid to get on his knees in front of him.
They spent several hours cruising the streets that night, talking to the kids and the crazies, bluffing a little, making some threats and spreading some petty cash. It all added up to nothing.
Spaceman also flashed Robbie’s picture around, but that netted him no more than did their questions about the murdered boys.
It was after midnight by the time they gave up and parted company. Spaceman didn’t feel like facing his apartment alone, so he went to Mandy’s. She was having a party and most of the guests still lingered, working on the last of the wine and the joints. They all knew Spaceman and knew he was a cop. He went first into the bedroom to shed his jacket and hide the gun. It bugged Mandy when he did that; she said it was like accusing her friends of being criminals or something. He never bothered to debate the issue with her.
Turned for the moment at least into a civilian, he joined the circle sitting on the living room floor. Someone handed him a Dixie cup filled with cheap red wine and someone else passed the joint. He drank first, then inhaled noisily. In only a few minutes he had started to relax.
They were heatedly arguing the merits of some French movie that he hadn’t seen and didn’t want to see, so he felt no obligation even to listen. Instead, he stretched out on the rug to let the pot, the wine, and Mandy’s massaging hands do their job. He could almost forget the case and Robbie.
Which was why he kept coming back.
That and the sex.
One of the jerks kept giving him dirty looks. Maybe he had figured on scoring with Mandy tonight. Too bad, Spaceman thought airily as Mandy ushered everyone else out, including the disappointed Romeo. Too bad.
When they were alone, Mandy led him by the hand to the waterbed. He was too whacked to do much more than just lie there and enjoy the touch of her hands and mouth roaming over his body. He concentrated on the stars overhead.
Stars. Like the ones on Hollywood Boulevard. Like the galaxies Pete probably saw when he swallowed the pills. Better make-believe constellations than the reality of Donelli.
Stars. Poor Chris, who probably would have sold his soul to have his name on the Boulevard, and who died in futile pursuit of that dumb dream.
It was all too much for Spaceman and he stopped thinking about it, concentrating instead on what Mandy’s mouth was doing. It got better and better; he built and built until everything came together perfectly.
The universe exploded in his head.
Blue was having a hard time getting to sleep, so he sat in the dark, drinking. He knew the reason: This was the anniversary of his father’s death. Some things hung on a lot longer than they should have. It wasn’t exactly an act of mourning that kept him awake. Not the mourning of his old man’s death anyway. Maybe it was just the sense of loss and failure that had been their relationship.
Like the hunting trip when he was twelve.
Hank Maguire was a man of action and he loved hunting. Probably it was that very lust for action that made him the success he was in business. He wanted his son to take after him in that. So when he ordered, Blue took the rifle and donned the clothes, and into the woods they went.
But when push came to shove, when Blue had the deer within his sights, he couldn’t pull the trigger.
“You lack the killer instinct,” his father said in a cold and distant voice. “No man can be a success in this world without the goddamned killer instinct.” Then he killed the deer himself.
He had the right instincts.
Blue poured another shot and smiled into the darkness. Too bad the old man hadn’t been able to see him in Nam. It would have made him proud the way his boy learned to kill.
Unfortunately, by the time Blue got out of the POW camp and home, Hank Maguire was dead, so Blue never knew what his father thought about it all.
Blue was disgusted with himself. All this maudlin thought was pointless. He needed to go to bed and get some sleep, so that tomorrow he could be sharp. They had to find out who was killing kids.
He dumped the rest of the drink down the drain, rinsed the glass carefully and went to bed.
Spaceman woke up sometime in the blackest part of the night. He went to the john, then hunted for his cigarettes, in his jacket pocket. Instead of the cigarettes, he pulled out the creased memo from Lompoc. Why the hell was he still carrying that around?
He crumpled the paper to throw it away.
Then, instead, he shoved it back into his pocket. Forgetting the cigarette, he went back to bed.
Chapter 26
Jody didn’t like what they were doing.
“It’s too fuckin’ dangerous,” he complained for the hundredth time that day. They were sitting in the newly acquired car, parked outside a drug rehab center on Spring Street. Kowalski and a man who was probably his partner were inside.
“We have to take a few chances,” Tom said. “Or else we’ll never get anywhere. Risks are necessary.”
“I don’t even know what the hell we’re supposed to be doing besides following Kowalski all over the damned city.” He was slumped against the car door, the Times in his lap.
“I know.”
“Do you really, Tommy? For sure? Have you actually thought this thing through?”
Tom smiled. “Sure. I’ve had ten years to think it through. After all, I didn’t have a job and a lot of friends to keep me busy. There was just me and my thoughts.”
Jody sighed, but didn’t say anything. His head was pounding again, and he realized that the headache had been there since the night Tom got out of the hospital.
That seemed like a disloyal thought, and he squelched it immediately.
Jody knew for damned sure that he, himself, hadn’t thought any of this through. In the beginning, all he wanted was to have Tom out of that place. He’d done enough time. But now Jody was finding out that there was a lot of difference between visiting his brother for an hour or so every few months, and being around him all the time. He used to think that having his brother with him would make life better.
Better.
Shit, what a joke that was. Nothing was working out the way he’d planned. Now he had a headache all the time, he was scared, and he was a killer.
He shoved that thought away, too.
Life before had been good. After all the rough years, things had finally fallen into place. He liked working in the bookstore. He liked the little house that was almost in the country. And he especially liked living with Jerry.
Jerry. What must he be thinking? Was he hurt by the way things had happened? Jody hoped not. Maybe someday he could explain it all to him. Maybe someday he could go back to the funny little house and his life there.
But for right now, he was stuck. He owed Tommy.
Jody sighed and lifted the paper again.
Tom kept his eyes on the door of the shabby building. He didn’t want to take a chance of missing his prey. Not much chance of that happening, of course, with them riding around in that fancy car.
He knew that Jody was getting restless and he heard the sigh. It bothered him, made him think that maybe Jody was slipping away. He reached out to rub his brother’s arm. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”
“Yeah, if you say so, Tommy.”
“I say so.” He glanced down at the newspaper and Kowalski
’s name seemed to jump off the page at him. “What’s that about?”
Jody read quickly. “It’s about Pete and Chris,” he said softly. “About what happened to them in the park.”
“No shit? It’s in the paper?”
“Yeah. A small story.”
“Kowalski’s on the case?”
“Seems to be. He had no comment, but a spokesman said they have a number of strong leads and an arrest is imminent.”
Tom laughed. “Hell, he doesn’t have nothing. That’s just bullshit for the press.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “You know, it’s pretty ironic. That’s what it is, ironic. Him being the one on this thing.”
Jody didn’t laugh. “He caught you once before. What makes you so sure it can’t happen again?”
Tom straightened. “I was just a kid then. What did I know? He won’t be so lucky this time.” An idea started to take form, ever so slowly, in Tom’s mind. “Besides,” he said thoughtfully, “maybe he won’t have the chance to catch me this time. Maybe we’ll catch him first.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
He wasn’t sure yet; it was all still too vague, but he was starting to get a little excited anyway. “Maybe we’ll snatch him.”
“Terrific.” Jody sounded sarcastic. “And then do what?”
Tom smiled again. “Whatever we want.”
It got boring following the two cops in their fancy car, so when they stopped for lunch at a place on Melrose, Tom told Jody just to keep driving. There was no risk. He knew, now, that he could reach out and put the drop on Kowalski whenever he wanted. They drove to a Pizza Hut and shared a large pepperoni and a pitcher of beer.
When the pizza was gone and they were working on the last of the beer, Jody leaned closer and spoke in a low voice. “Were you serious about what you said before?”
“About what?”
“Snatching the cop.”
Tom glanced around, but the lunch rush was over and no one was sitting near them. “I think so. I think I was real serious.”
“Kidnapping is a bad rap, you know.”
He just looked at Jody, who finally realized the absurdity of what he’d said, and shrugged. “Anyway,” Tom went on, “I’m crazy, right? They’ve been saying for years that I’m off the wall. So I’m not responsible.”
