Girls in Pink

by Bob Bickford

  I called the police station to see if they were making any progress, since I wasn't.

  “I left my card and a note on your crazy neighbor's door,” Rex Raines said. “She hasn't been in touch.”

  “She's been busy,” I said. “Cleveland's gang is chasing her around the city and trying to kill her.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Have her come in and file a complaint.”

  I had my feet on the desk. I shifted the telephone receiver to my other ear and lit a cigarette. “I'm surprised you people haven't been getting complaints about the noise,” I said. “All the shooting. Her car's sitting behind her house with a couple dozen bullet holes in it.”

  “We can't get interested, no one tells us about it.”

  “The only one in the police department who seems very interested in all this is Earnswood,” I said. “You ever find out why?”

  “Do you have any idea what you're poking around in?”

  There was a noise behind me. I put my feet down in a hurry and swiveled my chair around. A seagull had handed on the sill of the open window. He had one curious yellow eye fixed on me. I thought about shutting the window and decided he wasn't bothering me enough to get up.

  “I know that Sal Cleveland is popping up everywhere I look,” I said. “I know he killed a client of mine. I know there's an eyewitness and you people aren't talking to her.”

  “Your eyewitness can't keep it together for five minutes,” he snorted. “She couldn't give an answer that made sense if you asked her about the weather.”

  “She makes plenty of sense to Cleveland,” I said. “She makes enough sense that he wants her dead. She makes enough sense that two guys he sent around to bother her get shot in the alley behind my office. Let me see...”

  “All right, all right...”

  “Let me finish. She makes enough sense that a car full of Cleveland's people chases us down a highway and turns her car into Swiss cheese with us inside it. Enough sense that a dirty cop named Earnswood is hanging around, and not even you will say why. How's that for making sense?”

  “Give me a chance to do my job,” he said. “It will all work out.”

  There was a flurry at the window as the seagull left.

  “I think it's too late for any of it to work out,” I said. “I really do.”

  I started to say goodbye and thought of something else. “You know a guy named Fin?” I asked. “Runs with Cleveland?”

  “Fin? That his last name?”

  “I don't know,” I said. “Could be either. Pale, creepy guy...looks sick but not weak. Sharp dresser. Seems like he has some authority.”

  “Don't remember hearing about him,” he said. “What's he got to do with all this?”

  “I expect we'll find out.” I said. “Sooner or later.”

  A small chrome jukebox hung over every table. You put in a nickel and picked out a song. At a nearby booth, someone was playing “I Love You Madly,” which seemed like an omen. Roxanne wasn't working tonight.

  One of the fluorescent tubes over my head needed changing. It flickered, and buzzed louder than the clinking of china and silverware and the low, tired murmurs of the other patrons. The Camel Diner wasn’t full, not by a long shot, but the exhausted waitresses were busy, endlessly moving behind the counter in a kind of haggard slow motion. I felt tired, watching them. I figured they went home every morning and crawled into their twisted bedclothes. They twitched and hummed, tried to avoid the sunlight that fell from the windows, and pretended to doze until night fell and they could get up and come back here.

  I sat alone in a booth covered in an orange vinyl that hurt my eyes. I butted my cigarette in a glass ashtray and lit another. The black and white clock on the wall said a minute before twelve. I watched it and waited for the second hand to sweep me into the next day. I didn’t know what else I was waiting for, except a sign it was time to go home. A waitress passed by and filled my coffee cup without slowing down.

  The door opened, and Annie Kahlo walked in, bringing some of the night in with her. I could smell rain, even though a dry desert wind was blowing outside. She took off her dark glasses and stood looking around the place until she spotted me and came over. She was drop-dead gorgeous, but none of the customers at the counter looked up at her.

  “I’m mostly invisible,” she said in lieu of hello, as though she could read my mind.

  “Want coffee?” I asked. “A piece of pie? Blueberry’s pretty good here.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I knew I’d find you in here.”

  Until I’d walked in on impulse a little while ago, even I hadn’t known I was coming here. I let it go. I caught the waitress’ eye. She nodded, and brought Annie a cup. She seemed able to see her all right.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, intent on the ritual of cream and sugar. When she had finished, she set the spoon in her saucer. “Curdled,” she said. “A little bit. I like it that way, sometimes.”

  Her dark eyes were quietly amused, and as always her glance left me a little short of breath. She watched me for a moment, and then tasted her coffee before she spoke.

  “I wanted to tell you I think you’re doing a good job,” she said. “You get discouraged awfully easily, but everything feels perfectly in order.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” I said. “So far, I'm finding dead bodies and I’m managing to annoy everyone I meet while I'm doing it. I spend most of my time looking over my shoulder at Sal Cleveland’s thugs, or else the cops, and I don’t know which bunch worries me more.”

  “Don’t go on so much about making people angry. You’re just creating space.”

  She touched my hand, and I smelled the rain again.

  “Creating space?”

  “You'll see.”

  “Annie…what exactly is in this for you? Your sister is buried. Nothing's going to come of any of this that resolves what happened to her. We're never going to know for sure. It was just too long ago. What is it you're hoping for?”

  She thought about it for a minute, staring into her coffee. When she looked up at me, her slow smile was just about perfect.

  “We’ll find out when we get there,” she said. “That’s the whole point.”

  She tasted her coffee and stood up. I started to stand, and she held up a hand.

  “I'll walk you home,” I said.

  “I'm not going home,” she said. “I have things to do.”

  She started away, and turned back. “I saw your dog in the yard,” she said. “I didn't know you had a dog.”

  “I'm not really sure he's my dog. He sort of found me, and hasn't left.”

  “What's his name?”

  “I don't call him anything,” I said, a little surprised. “He doesn't have a name.”

  “When June and I were little, we had a dog that looked like that. His name was Button. Will that do?”

  “I think Button is a fine name,” I said. “I'll tell him when I get home.”

  I had a sudden thought. Her green convertible was still out of commission, full of bullet holes.

  “Say...did you walk here? Want to meet him? I brought the car. I'll give you a ride home, if you like.”

  She threw me another of her brilliant smiles. “I have a secret,” she said. “Button and I have already met, in your yard, and we're friends. He knows his name. I told him. I'll take the ride, though.”

  When we pulled away from the curb, a set of headlights pulled out a half-block back and followed. It didn't feel like coincidence, and I made a random left turn and then a right to be sure.

  “I thought we were going home,” Annie said.

  “We've picked up a tail. Probably Cleveland's people.”

  “I wonder why,” she said. “They already know where we live.”

  I had done this before. I picked an intersection I liked, went around a corner and turned off my lights. I was parked in the dark, neatly in front of a delivery panel truck, when a
gray Dodge sped past. I thought I recognized the car. I pulled out to follow it.

  “They're watching us, and we're watching them,” I said. “No one is absolutely sure what anyone else is up to, so everyone is watching everyone else. It's how the game is played. Cleveland's lost a couple of his guys, and he thinks I killed them. He's probably going to try to have me killed, but for now he's watching.”

  “Did you kill them?”

  “Of course not,” I said, startled by the question. “I have a beef with Cleveland. He killed his wife. I wouldn't waste any time or energy on a couple of his low-lifes. What for?”

  “Maybe to make him suffer,” she said. “Maybe to make him afraid, to make him wonder when you’re coming for him.”

  I kept an eye on the red tail lights in front of me. There wasn't much traffic, so I was able to stay well back. The driver probably knew he had lost me, and would hopefully head for home.

  “Cleveland is bringing up prostitutes from south of the border,” I said. “They aren't prostitutes until they get here. They get lured with promises of jobs as domestics, told they can bring their families up later, and then they disappear.”

  “Why hasn't anyone stopped him?”

  “He's careful, and I imagine he has friends in the right places. He's been working this city for a long time. I had evidence of some of it, enough that it couldn't get swept under the carpet easily. He could have gone to jail.”

  “What was the evidence?” she asked. “Can you tell me?”

  “It was a photograph. It showed Sal Cleveland standing at the back of a truck full of Mexican women. Two of them were outside the truck, one on either side. He had an arm around each of them. None of the women looked happy, but he smiled for the camera. They could have been farm workers, but they weren't. An affidavit was written on the back and signed by someone who was there and knew what was going on.”

  “Why don't you use it?” she asked. “Bring it to the police?”

  “I did use it,” I said. “I traded it to Cleveland for his wife's divorce. I bought her freedom with one photograph. Fat lot of good it did her.”

  I was quiet for a moment, thinking. “I think prostitutition made probably the best case for those women,” I said. “Some of them just disappeared. There are bad people hiding under rocks, with strange tastes. That's what Cleveland caters to. I think about the faces in that photograph, and try not to think about what happened to them.”

  The car we were following stopped for a red light, and I took my foot off the gas and slowed to a walking pace. I didn't want to get too close.

  “It's worse than that, Annie,” I said. “Some of the people in the truck were young. They looked like children, just girls.”

  Her voice turned suddenly bitter.

  “That's the man I asked you to kill,” she said. “That kind of a man. A man like that, and you were horrified at the idea of killing him. You're too good for that. You looked at me like I was crazy.”

  My own anger bubbled up, and I spoke before I could stop myself. “That's the man you were in love with,” I blurted. “The man you're probably still in love with. The man who killed your sister. Is that the same man we're talking about?”

  The slap came so hard I nearly drove into a line of parked cars. My cheek felt wet with the sting and my right ear rang like a bell. I forced my hands on the wheel and struggled to keep my eyes on the road.

  “I'm sorry,” I said, and I was.

  Annie was crying, but there was nothing I could do about it.

  I followed the gray coupe into a dead end off Olive Street. Its brake lights flickered red, and I swung over to the curb and waited. My headlights caught the white face in the driver's window as the car backed up and turned around. I was caught. There was no point any more in pretending I wasn't following it, so I turned around too. I picked up the car again at the end of the next block.

  “Is that the woman who shot my car?” Annie asked.

  Her voice was ragged. I looked over at her and nodded. She had curled up against the far door, and her face went gold and then dark as we passed under the streetlights.

  “The bitch,” she said.

  “She's a bitch,” I agreed. “Her name is Mary Raw.”

  “The same as...?”

  “She's Dog Raw's widow, yes. She's more important to Cleveland than her husband was. She tends the bar at the Hi-lo, but I've heard she's high up in the organization. I've also heard that she and Cleveland are intimate, which is passing strange. She's as ugly as sin.”

  Annie started to hum to herself. The sound of it was unsettling in the dark car. The tune seemed familiar, but I couldn't put a finger on it.

  The Dodge hung a right onto Cabrillo and sped up. We followed the ocean for a mile or two over to the west side of town, and then we turned off into a series of cul-de-sacs I didn't know the names of. I knew where we were, though.

  The darkest, dirtiest neighborhood in town, it was a place I did my best to stay out of, one of those places where even the stray dogs stay out of sight after dark. Apartment houses crowded up close to the street; broken records played from broken windows and the air smelled like reefer smoke and cheap whiskey. The red lights ahead of us flared again and the gray coupe coasted to the curb.

  I pulled over well behind it and set the brake. We sat quietly for a few minutes, soaking up the poisoned air. Nothing moved. I could see the back of Mary Raw's head in the small rear window. The engine of my car ticked softly as it cooled down, and I sighed and got the Browning from the map compartment. I checked the load and then looked over at Annie as I reached for the door handle.

  “Stay in the car,” I said. “I may have to break a few rules here. She's spotted us and she's stalling. She's just going to sit there until we go away. I might just have a word with her, see if I can rattle her a bit. The last time she saw me, she jammed a shotgun into me. I'd like to return the favor.”

  She reached for her own door handle and laughed, a sound like bells. Her eyes were strange.

  “You don't know the first thing about breaking rules,” she said. “You make rules for yourself.”

  “Those are the ones I don't break.”

  Just then, Mary Raw got out of the coupe. She looked back at where we were parked, made an exaggerated pistol with her thumb and forefinger and fired. Two shots, one for each of us. Then her ugly face lit and twisted into a jack-o-lantern grin. She waved and went into the apartment building without looking back.

  “What are you going to do now?” Annie asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “She tailed us, so we tailed her. The game hasn't started yet. For now, everyone's trying to look at each other's cards.”

  “Let's go home,” she said.

  Home turned out to be my place. Annie fussed over Button for a little while, and then went up the hall to the bedroom. She was undressing when I came in.

  Our lovemaking was desperate and hurried. At the end, I tasted her tears. I woke up later and saw her silhouette against the window, getting dressed again. She left without turning on a light or saying a word. I lay in the dark and hoped it hadn't been for the last time.

  I had passed the door, set into a stucco building on Ortega, a thousand times and never known there was a cantina behind it. There was no sign. If you didn't know it was there, they didn't want you to find out.

  I sat at a tiny table across from Danny Lopez. We drank Mexican beer from bottles. The cement walls were painted a dark green, gray-white in places where they had been chipped. A string of red lights hung over the bar, an effort at festivity. It was authentic, though, I felt as though I were in a strange city a thousand miles to the south.

  The strangeness made me feel safer than I'd felt in a long time.

  “Sooner or later,” I said, “they'll just kick her front door down and shoot her.” I thought for a minute. “Hell, I don't even know if she locks it.”

  Lopez took a long pull from his beer and nodded to the heavy-set woman behind the bar. She brought two
bottles to the table and set them in front of us.

  “Why haven't they done that?” he asked.

  “I'm guessing they don't know what to do,” I said. “Sal Cleveland's bad business, but killing people isn't how he solves things unless he has to. I guess he thought he had to kill Charlene, and he knows Annie saw him do it. He probably guesses by now that the cops don't have her testimony. I doubt if he knows they think she's too crazy to go on the stand.”

  “So why chase you down a highway shooting at you?”

  “I think we surprised them by walking into the Star-lite,” I said. “I think it was just instinct.”

  “Then this guy comes to try to talk you into walking away and forgetting it.”

  “Fin,” I nodded. “And you've never heard of him?”

  He shrugged elaborately. “Amigo, I've heard of everybody, and this guy's a ghost. No one I talk to has ever heard of him.”

  “He said he went to school with Sal back in Ohio. Maybe he's just come west recently.”

  “Then the connection is very old,” he said. “Cleveland has lived here for many years.”

  A man in a western shirt and a straw rancher's hat sat with his elbows on the bar glaring at me. He made it clear I was unknown and unwelcome. I did my best to ignore him.

  “Now Cleveland's lost two men, and thinks I killed them,” I said. “I didn't, and don't know who did. Earnswood’s floating around the edges of this, and the cops I know don't seem to even want to say his name out loud.”

  “I told you, he's dirty.”

  Danny Lopez half-stood, looking almost apologetic, and let the man at the bar get a look at him. Recognition dawned, and the man touched his hat brim and turned around to face the bar. Lopez sat back down and returned his attention to me.

  “I might need help with this,” I said.