Cat's-Paw, Inc.

by L. L. Thrasher

  I surprised myself by managing a genuine laugh. “How many kids do you have?”

  Bundy sighed. “LuAnn wanted a big family so we had four, two of each. Four wasn’t too bad. I could almost afford to feed them. Then a couple years ago, LuAnn gets this funny look on her face and says, wouldn’t one more baby be nice? Shit, our youngest was six. The oldest was thirteen. We just reached the point where we could go out to dinner without taking out a loan to pay the babysitter. But what are you going to do, right? So I said okay, one more, then don’t ever mention it again. So guess what she went and did.”

  “Had twins?”

  “Yeah, identical girls. Eight months old and cute as anything but, Jesus Christ, six kids on a cop’s pay.”

  “I’m a twin.”

  “You mean there’s another one of you running around loose somewhere?”

  “Not exactly. Our mother used to tell people we were identical twins of opposite sexes.”

  “Oh, yeah, your paperhanging partner. How’d you get the scar? If you put another line at the bottom, you’d be monogrammed.”

  “I’ve thought of that but I can’t reach and I haven’t found anyone kinky enough to do it. I got it in a fight in a bar. Fell through a window.”

  “Ouch.” Bundy went behind his desk and sat down. “So what happened?” he asked.

  I put my cup down on the desk. “I saw the girl earlier. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. She was with four other kids. I showed them Jessica’s picture. They said they’d never seen her. The girl was crying, said her contacts were bothering her. She must have followed me down to the bridge. And the man was following me, too. Maybe I’m in the wrong line of work.”

  “You’re in the right line of work but you should be carrying a badge. You’re one hell of a shot. Twice in the chest in the dark and at twenty-five feet with a thirty-eight. That’s damn near impossible.”

  “Mostly luck.”

  A woman came into the room to hand Bundy some papers and a ragged gray sweatshirt, which he tossed to me. I pulled it on. Its sleeves had been cut short unevenly and it had several small holes in it but it was warm. I flapped the loose fabric against my chest. “Who does this belong to? King Kong?”

  “We got some cops who make you look like Tom Thumb.” Bundy quickly scanned the papers he was holding. “Guy’s name was Richard Bolin. Several AKA’s. California record a mile long. Mostly petty stuff. The L.A. cops say he fancied himself a big-time hit man but he was mainly a kneebreaker for loan sharks. Did some time as a mercenary in South America. Guerrilla warfare crap. Could be why he was so good at staying out of sight.

  “Ballistics will take a while but the gun’s sure to be the one used on Brandy. And he had a twenty-two in his jacket pocket. So. We have three girls dead and one dying and the man who did it is down at the morgue. Which leaves the big question. Why?”

  “Jessica has to be mixed up in it.”

  “Yeah. Tell me about the kids the girl was with.”

  About halfway through my description of the motley group of children, Bundy nodded his head toward the open doorway. “Is that them?”

  I turned to look. The girl who had spoken to me in Old Town was talking to a uniformed cop, her three ragtag companions huddled close to her. The other kids stayed behind as the cop led her to Bundy’s office. I stood up to give her my chair and leaned against the doorjamb.

  She struck her bargain first. “I’m eighteen,” she said. She would tell what she knew but not if a warm bed and a hot meal in Juvenile Detention was the price she had to pay.

  “All right,” Bundy said. “What’s your name?”

  She thought it over carefully and decided to be Kimberly Jones.

  “The girl who was shot didn’t have any ID. You know her name?” Bundy asked.

  “Peggy. I don’t know her last name. Is she dead?”

  “She’s hurt pretty bad. The doctors are doing everything they can.”

  Kimberly didn’t receive Bundy’s words with any apparent optimism about the medical profession’s ability. She separated a thin strand of oily brown hair and pulled it between her lips. Her skin had the gray matte look of malnutrition and poor hygiene. An infection was going up the corners of her eyes and she wiped at them every couple minutes with the cuff of her worn jacket sleeve.

  “Do you know why she was shot? Does it have something to do with the girl Mr. Smith is looking for?”

  She nodded. “Jessica Finney. I never seen her but Peggy did. The others, they don’t know nothing about it.”

  “Where did Peggy see her?”

  “I dunno. I can tell you what happened to Peggy.”

  Bundy nodded and Kimberly crossed her ankles and clasped her hands in her lap, a schoolgirl reciting her lesson. She said, “This is what happened to Peggy.” She stared at the wall behind Bundy for several seconds before she started talking.

  “Peggy, she run off from home. I dunno when. She got here, I think it was in May. I dunno for sure. We didn’t know her then. She’s thirteen, fourteen, I dunno for sure, and she had a hard time. She didn’t know nobody on the street. Some nigger pimp—” Kimberly suddenly sat up straighter and some color came into her cheeks. Bundy’s face was expressionless. “Some black guy, a pimp, put her to work but she was scared and she run off.”

  “Then she met this woman, name of Molly. Molly took good care of her. Put her in a motel and gave her clothes and food. Took real good care of her. Peggy’s real pretty.” Kimberly touched her own plain face briefly. “Anyway, this Molly said she could help Peggy make lots of money. Said all she had to do was make a movie. So Peggy says okay and some men, some friends of Molly’s, take her out to this house in the country. Old house with a barn. Peggy didn’t know where it was. Said it was a long drive.”

  Kimberly’s voice was getting rough, rusty-sounding, as if she didn’t use it much. Bundy asked if she would like a soda and we waited silently until someone brought her a Coke. She popped the top and took a long swallow.

  “The movie,” Bundy said. “They made a porno movie?”

  “Yeah, I guess, but it wasn’t real bad. It wasn’t…”

  “Hard-core?”

  “Yeah, hard-core. It was just… Peggy was naked and there was some man in it but there wasn’t no real sex. Just make-believe. Acting, you know?”

  Bundy nodded.

  “Then,” she said, “the next night, they did it.”

  “What did they do, Kimberly?”

  “Peggy, she was sleeping in this room upstairs. There was a big mirror on the wall. The whole wall was a mirror, you know? She was asleep and all these lights come on in the ceiling. There was like sheets of plastic on the ceiling so you didn’t know the lights was there. Anyway, all these lights come on, real bright, and Peggy woke up and there was two men in the room. Naked except they was wearing ski masks. And they raped her. Both of them. She was real scared. She thought it was real, you know, and she tried to fight. She didn’t know about the cameras behind the mirror. She didn’t know it was just a movie and she was real scared.”

  The secret, made manifest.

  Kimberly took another long drink of her Coke and wiped her eyes.

  “They kept her there, maybe a week longer. Until the bruises was gone, you know. Then they put her back on the street here. Didn’t give her hardly any money. They said she couldn’t tell nobody about the movie, the rape movie, because they had the other movie, the one she did first. And everybody’d think she knew what she was doing, like she knew being raped was just a movie, just acting, you know? So she didn’t tell nobody. We met her in July. She’s been with us since then.”

  “She saw Jessica?” Bundy asked.

  “Yeah, with Molly. She saw them together somewhere. I dunno where. She told me all this a couple nights ago, real late. She was crying and everything and it was hard to understand her.” Kimberly turned to me. “We saw the picture before. This guy who’s with us sometimes had it and Peggy saw it and got all upset and that night when everyone else was a
sleep, she told me about it.”

  Bundy questioned her for a while longer, carefully, gently, the way I could imagine him questioning one of his children about some schoolyard squabble. She told him that Peggy was from somewhere in the South but had never talked about her family or her reasons for running away. Peggy had not described Molly. There were three or four men at the house in the country but she hadn’t named any of them or described them, except for the man in charge. “She said he was real fat, a real pig. Gross, you know? Can I go now? I don’t know nothing else. And they’re tired. We gotta find some place to sleep.”

  Bundy gave her the addresses of a shelter and the street clinic. She took them politely but would probably never use them. As she was leaving, she said to me, “You know why she was going to tell you?”

  I shook my head and Kimberly said, “She said you look just like Superman. In the movies, you know? Just like Superman in the movies.” She laughed harshly. “Guess she thought you could do something.”

  She left, collecting her ragged band of surrogate children. Minus one. I sat down in the chair she had vacated. “So now what?” I asked Bundy.

  “Shit, I don’t know. You know, she’s right. If you slicked your hair back a little, you would look—”

  “I don’t look anything like him. And I can’t fly worth a damn.”

  Bundy locked his hands behind his head and tilted his chair back. “Molly and a fat man and an old house with a barn somewhere out in the country.”

  “Any chance of getting a line on the movies?”

  “I doubt it. They’re sure to have a very private list of customers.” He brought his chair legs down and ran his hands roughly through his hair. “Rape movies. I wish it shocked me. I’ve been at this too many years. Jessica Finney was with Molly. Which means she’s probably with the fat man. Which means…”

  “That killing her would be the smartest thing they could do. I’m tired. I’m going to get some sleep and then I’m going to find Jessica.”

  “She could be dead already.”

  “Then I’ll find the fat man.” I stood up, picking my gun up from his desk.

  “Sit down,” Bundy said. I didn’t sit down. He was about five-ten but I had the impression my size wasn’t intimidating the hell out of him.

  “I’m looking for her,” I said.

  “Sit down.”

  I sat down.

  Bundy seemed to take a dim view of an armed civilian wandering loose in a killing mood, but eventually he agreed that I could look for Jessica. On his terms. From ten at night until two in the morning with two undercover cops dogging my footsteps.

  “If you weren’t our only lead, I’d tell you to get back to Mackie and stay there. But you’re all we have. If we’re lucky, they’ll send someone else to tail you and we can spot him.”

  “Or another girl will stop me on the street and we can keep her alive long enough to talk.”

  “Yeah. I want you off the street the rest of the time. If anyone calls you, I want to hear about it right away. Try anything on your own and you’ll be hanging wallpaper full time. Get some sleep. Come in at eight tomorrow night and I’ll introduce you to Garcia and Wilson. They’re good. If anyone can spot a tail, they can.”

  “Maybe they can give me lessons.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  I got up and walked to the door. “Bundy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You think you can give me a ride to my car?”

  “Anything to keep you off the street.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I watched Allison sleep for a while and then I counted raindrops on the window. When that got boring, I pulled off the ragged sweatshirt, dropped to the floor at the foot of my bed, and did a hundred and twenty and a half push-ups. The half was agony. I lay flat on the floor, my forehead pressed to my crossed wrists, and counted heart-thuds until I got to a hundred. Then I raised my head and looked at the feet in front of me. I rolled onto my back and looked up at the legs attached to the feet.

  Allison pressed my T-shirt tight against her legs. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Sweating like a pig at the moment. Did I wake you up?”

  Stupid question. She didn’t bother answering. I raised my arms over my head and slid my hands up her calves, tugging gently. She obligingly dropped to her knees, leaning her face down to mine, her hair forming a gold curtain around us. Nothing fits quite right in an upside down kiss but it was good anyway.

  She stretched out on her back on the floor behind my head, putting her head on my shoulder and flinging honey hair all over my sweaty chest.

  “Is that blood all over your pants?” she asked, exactly the way a wife would ask, “Is that lipstick all over your collar?”

  “If you fall asleep down here, you’ll have to stay. I’m too tired to pick you up.” I nudged her head off my shoulder and rolled over for another upside down kiss. “You should have a Surgeon General’s warning tattooed on your forehead.”

  She smiled. “Am I hazardous to your health?”

  “You’re highly addictive.”

  “You killed someone tonight, didn’t you?”

  Takes one to know one. Her eyes were every bit as beautiful upside down. “I’m going to take a shower,” I said. I got to my feet and held out a hand to her. “How come you never wear your nightgown?”

  “I like your T-shirt.”

  I liked it, too, especially when she was flat on her back and the thin fabric clung to very curve and hollow. She held the shirt down with one hand and gave me the other and I pulled her to her feet.

  “I never realized how good I am at resisting temptation,” I said.

  She sighed. “You’re too good at it.”

  I got an old sweatsuit out of my suitcase and went into the bathroom, locking myself in and temptation out.

  The shower didn’t help. I came out feeling as wired as I ever felt on speed. The soft fleece of the sweatsuit felt prickly, as though my skin had become hypersensitive. Allison was in bed but awake. I joined her, tucking the covers around her and then pulling her into my arms. She snuggled her head against my shoulder.

  I told her all about Jessica and the three dead girls and Peggy, who might be dead by now. She never said a word and by the time I finished, she was motionless and heavy against me. I was pretty sure she was asleep but I wasn’t going to let a little thing like that stop me. I was on a roll.

  I went straight from The Great Jessica Finney Caper into The Life and Hard Times of a Deserted Husband. “I couldn’t believe she left like that. Literally couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. I had all kinds of crazy thoughts, like it was some kind of bizarre kidnapping or she was sick, had a brain tumor or something and wasn’t thinking right. Or somebody told her lies, told her I was cheating or something. She couldn’t just leave. It didn’t make any sense. We were happy. I was happy anyway and she sure acted happy. We didn’t fight. We didn’t really have any problems at all. We were… best friends. I thought I knew her better than I’ve ever known anyone. And I didn’t know her at all. Divorce is easy. If she wanted out, I couldn’t have stopped her. Why do it that way? And it wasn’t just me. Her parents, her brother and sister, all her friends – she just walked out and left us all. No note, nothing. Why would she do it?”

  No answer was forthcoming. I went on to an unnecessarily graphic description of the trips I had made to morgues to see if a Jane Doe was really an April Smith. The morgue trips made a great lead-in to I Was a Teenage Dope Fiend. I explained the finer points of burglary and shoplifting and ripping off family and friends to support a few habits. I ended where it had ended.

  “My parents never knew what was going on but Carrie did. She covered for me and lied for me and occasionally stole for me. Right after school was out for the summer, Mom and Dad came home when they weren’t supposed to and found their only son zonked out of his mind. Even then, they didn’t realize how deep I was in. They grounded me for the rest of my life so I climb
ed out my bedroom window and spent the rest of the summer on the street.

  “I stayed in contact with Carrie and she was catching hell at home because they knew damn well she knew where I was. Then one night one of my doper friends slipped me a joint laced with PCP. I think I dropped some speed, too. I don’t remember anything after I smoked the joint. They told me later the Highway Patrol picked me up on the Santa Monica Freeway. I was eastbound in the westbound lanes, playing chicken with the cars. I was on a skateboard. Fortunately it was about four in the morning and traffic was light. Some cars scraped the guardrail trying to get away from me but no one got hurt. I’ve always been glad I don’t remember it.

  “I woke up three days later, strapped to a hospital bed. There wasn’t any other furniture in the room and Mom and Dad were sitting on the floor, crying. I had the distinct impression that I had really fucked up. I spent the next eight months in a private rehab center. I haven’t been on a skateboard since.”

  That was funny. I laughed but my laugh sounded strange so I stopped it and went on. “They didn’t tell me about Carrie for a long time. I wasn’t carrying any ID when I was picked up so it took them a while to figure out who I was. When a cop showed up at the house the next day and told them where I was, Carrie went into the kitchen and slit her wrist with a butcher knife. It wasn’t much of a suicide attempt. There were three people practically standing beside her. She says she doesn’t remember doing it. She just remembers thinking it was all her fault. Carrie always thinks I’m her fault. Anyway, there we were, me in a detox ward and Carrie in a psych ward and Mom and Dad having a grand old time running back and forth between us.”

  I was silent for a moment then I went on to the story I wouldn’t tell Bundy—the sorriest story in what seemed like a lifetime of sorry stories. Why I Quit the Cops by Zachariah O’Brien Smith.