by Paul Neilan
She looked at me.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Harrigan?” she said. “We’re at a funeral. The only one this chinless dickhead is ever going to get. Show some respect.”
“It’s true,” I said. “A detective told me.”
“What detective?” she said.
“He goes by Sidowsky,” I said.
“Never heard of him,” she said.
“Why would you?” I said. “You hanging around downtown now?”
“Zodiac runs downtown, Harrigan,” Evie said. “All the cops have rings. The ones who matter anyway. And what are you doing talking to a detective? You turning pigeon?”
“He doesn’t buy Lompoc as a suicide,” I said. “Too many stiffs turning up with their pants down and a belt around their neck.”
“Sounds like a fantasy,” she said. “You two should get along just fine. If there was anything official I’d know about it.”
“Look at you,” I said. “Evelyn Faraday, Zodiac big shot. Clyde must be proud.”
She tipped the umbrella, rain sliding down on top of me.
“You turn up anything on the girl?” I said.
“What girl?” Evie said.
“The one whose apartment you broke into while I was taking a nap,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be worried about her, Harrigan,” she said. “You should be worried about yourself. I saw you blew Assessment.”
“Checking up on me?” I said.
“You know what happens when your Score dips below the threshold,” she said. “You’re already Borderline. I can’t protect you, Harrigan.”
“I never asked you to,” I said.
“I know you didn’t,” Evie said, looking at me. “And I know you never would. Because you’re too fucking stubborn to ever give yourself a break.”
“I’m not getting on Grid,” I said.
“You never know, you might enjoy it,” she said, smiling. “Watch a few commercials. Run a simulation or two. You were always good with those. They’re so much easier than the real thing.”
She tilted the umbrella again, soaking me.
“You’ve got to play the game, Harrigan,” Evie said. “You might as well. It’s already playing you.”
She walked away with her umbrella, left me standing over Eddie Lompoc’s grave. I watched her go. She never turned. Not once.
On my way out of the cemetery I saw the green gardener in full sprint, without his spade, five peacocks on his heels. He slipped rounding a headstone, wiped out in the mud as they encircled him. Unfurled their feathers like veils.
“Ya!” he squealed, behind the lurid curtain. “Ya!”
You can’t always fight it. Sometimes the animals win.
I went out through the wrought iron gate. Hit the sidewalk. Turned into the rain.
* * *
I thought back to the last job I pulled for Clyde Faraday.
“What I’m saying is, it all comes from somewhere,” Eddie Lompoc said. “Like last names. Cooper, Baker, it’s whatever your dad used to do. So where the fuck did the Dickinsons come from? How did that bloodline get started? You want to be a boy in that family? Daddy, no!”
“Some of Emily’s most depraved poems were about her brother and her father spending quiet time together,” Lorentz said. “Haunting shit.”
We were on the corner in an old station wagon, waiting for a transit van.
“Where’d you pick up this lead?” I said to Eddie Lompoc.
“Didn’t come from me,” Lompoc said. “Straight from Clyde himself.”
Lorentz fiddled with the jammer switch in his hand.
“You sure that’s going to work?” I said.
“It’ll knock out the cams and the coms in a two-block radius,” Lorentz said, turning a dial. “The driver won’t be able to call out for help once you hit him. The button on the side is for the traffic light.”
It was a straightforward snatch and grab. We’d done it a hundred times. But there was something about it I didn’t like. I was trying to figure out what exactly when I heard a tapping on the window.
“I thought Clyde wanted you off this one,” I said as Evie climbed in the back.
“He always does,” she said, checking her gun. “I can’t let you boys have all the fun.”
Eddie Lompoc gave me a look in the rearview. I let it go. There were headlights at the end of the street.
“Here he comes,” Lorentz said.
We got out of the wagon as Lorentz slid over to the driver’s side. The traffic light above us showed red in all directions. When the van pulled up we stepped in front, showed the driver our guns. He put his hands up, off the wheel. I motioned him out the door, told him to start walking. He took off in a run. Eddie Lompoc went around back, opened the door.
“Harrigan,” he said. “We got a problem.”
I circled around, Evie beside me. We looked in the open door. The van was empty.
Four black SUVs roared up from each direction, pulled diagonally in the street, blocking our exits. There were no sirens. No cops. Zodiac private security.
“It’s a setup,” Eddie Lompoc said, his eyes wide.
“Aries!” the security detail said. “Put your hands where we can see them!”
I looked at Evie. We both started firing, ducking behind the doors of the van. It was coming from every direction. The windshield blew out, the tires hissing, the door pockmarked right above my head. Lorentz swung the old station wagon around. We piled in, Evie covering, Lorentz flooring it as she dove in the back.
“Hold on!” Lorentz said, hopping the curb, sending a mailbox flying as he swerved around the black SUV in the street.
I fired out the busted back window, steam shooting from under the hood. They weren’t following as we sped down the street.
“Why aren’t they coming after us?” Lorentz said, checking the mirror.
“Zodiac won’t risk a chase,” Evie said. “They don’t involve LAPD unless they have to.”
“No,” Eddie Lompoc said. “They were sending a message. That was a hit.”
For once I agreed with him.
“What the fuck was that, Clyde?” I said when we got back.
Clyde Faraday was behind his desk in his office, a back room of the old Blackrock distillery off Bronson. There was a framed picture on the wall of him with his hands taped up in a boxing gym, when he was young. A pool table in the corner, the cues leaning upright, waiting. I was in no mood for a game.
“Sounds like the job went sideways,” Clyde said.
“That was no job,” Evie said. “That was a trap.”
“You weren’t supposed to be there, missy,” Clyde said. “I don’t want to hear it from you.”
“You’ll hear it from me,” I said.
“Yeah?” Clyde said. “And what are you gonna tell me, Harrigan?”
“Who gave you the tip on the van?” I said.
“That information’s above your pay grade,” Clyde said. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to.”
“I heard on the vine Zodiac’s paying bounties for operators,” Eddie Lompoc said. “Collecting scalps.”
“You think you’re worth that much, Eddie?” Clyde said. “If so you would’ve sold us all out already. The driver called in the cavalry. Simple as that.”
“I was jamming his coms,” Lorentz said. “No signal got out.”
“I gotta listen to you too?” Clyde said. “Fucking Lorentz getting mouthy? What’s this world coming to, for christ’s sake.”
“They were on us before any kind of call,” I said. “Coordinated, from every direction. They knew.”
“You’re paranoid, Harrigan,” Clyde said. “The business is getting to you.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “Maybe it’s not the business I’m worried about.”
Clyde Faraday looked at me. “You think you should be in charge, is that it?” He stood behind his desk. “You want to call the shots? You don’t have what it takes, Harrigan. Trust is all you’ve got wh
en you’re working a crew. I thought we had that. And all the while you’re out running around, the two of you, thinking I wouldn’t notice.”
He looked from me to Evie. “I’d expect it from her, but you?” he said.
“Clyde,” Evie said.
“I don’t want to hear it from you, missy,” Clyde said. “Not anymore. Not ever again.”
They glared at each other.
“No, the real kicker is I have to listen to it from Eddie Lompoc about you two, whispering in my ear,” Clyde said. “That’s what this crew’s come to. There’s the loyalty in this gang.”
I looked at Eddie Lompoc. My hand went to my gun, stayed there. Evie’s too. Lompoc was ready to pull himself. Clyde stood behind his desk, his chest out.
“Let’s take it easy,” Lorentz said from the corner.
“The time for taking it easy’s long gone,” Clyde said. “We’re playing hard now, aren’t we, Harrigan.”
I looked at Evie.
“Don’t you look at her,” Clyde said savagely. “Putting her in this spot, that’s on you. Which one of us do you think she’ll draw on, if she has to?”
Clyde had a .45 strapped to his hip. His fingers tapped the handle.
“You don’t really know, do you,” he said. “Maybe she doesn’t either. You want to find out?”
I stood there, tensed. Relaxed my hand. I took my gun out, slow, laid it on the desk before Clyde Faraday.
I turned to go. I didn’t look at Evie. I left without saying goodbye.
* * *
It was four blocks before I caught the tail. I hung a right on Wilton, waited under an awning around the corner.
“Oh,” Moira Volga said when she turned the corner, saw me standing there. “Hi.”
I looked at her.
“Funny seeing you here,” she said. “I was just out for a walk, in the neighborhood, and, uh—”
“Drink?” I said.
There was a bar across the street that had a mounted moose head on the wall, sawdust on the floor. We sat by the window, away from its eyes.
“You shouldn’t be following me,” I said, after I brought over the glasses.
She had a lit cigarette waiting for me, turned her hand in another magic trick before passing it to me. She drew on her own.
“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I came to see you this morning and you were already walking out the door. I tried to catch up with you on the corner, but you crossed at the light and I missed it, so I started walking along the other side of the street, figuring I’d meet up with you at the next corner, but then every light was against me and I didn’t want to yell Harrigan! Harrigan! like a crazy person so I just kept walking, and then after a while I figured I couldn’t just say, Hey! I’ve been following you for twenty minutes! Isn’t that insane! But then I didn’t know what else to do.”
She looked out the window at the rain in the street, took a drink. “You’ve had a rough day,” she said.
“Why’s that?” I said.
“A hospice and a graveyard?” she said. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but does any of it have anything to do with Stan?”
“I haven’t found him yet,” I said. “If that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t know what I mean,” she said.
She drew on her cigarette, exhaled. Her smoke curled against the glass.
“So how did you get to be a detective, Harrigan?” she said.
“I didn’t, Moira,” I said.
“But you find people,” she said.
“I can,” I said.
“Do you ever not find them?” she said.
“Not if I look,” I said.
“I should’ve known something was going on with him,” she said. “I did know. I asked him about it. I knew something was wrong. We’d fight. He’d apologize. He’d blame himself. But he’d never tell me what it was. Why wouldn’t he tell me?”
She looked at me. “Why wouldn’t he talk to me?” she said.
I took a drink. She did too.
“Can I tell you something?” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to anyway,” she said. “I hate my name. I always have. I always will. Moira Volga? I sound like a goddamn Bulgarian horror movie. Doctor, I’ve been crying blood ever since I got married. Can you tell me what it is? You have become Moira Volga. You will walk in the darkness of eternal night, until the end of days. But how will I know when the days end if it’s dark all the time? None of it makes any sense.”
“I think you’re all right,” I said. “Like a Latin Bible banned in the thirteenth century for heresy.”
She lit another cigarette for us both, passed mine to me. My smoke mixed with hers, twisting up the glass.
“What did it used to be,” I said.
“Hmm?” she said.
“Your name,” I said.
“Bawn,” she said. “I was Moira Bawn.”
She smiled like she hadn’t heard it in a while. Touched her dark hair with her hand. The rain was still in it.
“I forgot my umbrella again,” she said.
“I never carry one,” I said.
“Why not?” she said.
“I don’t mind the rain,” I said.
“I don’t either,” she said. “I love being out in it, but not getting drenched. That’s why I like an umbrella. I can listen to it pour, right above my head. Like it’s trying to get at me, but it can’t.”
I knew what she meant. Shielded. Defended. Protected. I looked for it in the overhangs and awnings, the broken eaves and trees. Temporary shelter, such as it was.
I took a drink.
“Looking for people,” Moira said. “Is it ever dangerous?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “Some people don’t want to be found.”
“Do you carry a gun?” she said.
“I used to,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“Why not?” she said.
“It’s the same with umbrellas,” I said. “If I had one I’d use it, whether I wanted to or not. You’re tied to the weather.”
“Only when it’s raining,” she said.
“It’s always raining,” I said.
“Good thing we don’t mind,” she said.
We clinked glasses, drank.
Smoke gathered on the glass. Rain fell in the street. We sat by the window. Had another round. Moira Bawn and me.
* * *
I split from Moira outside the bar. My screen vibrated as I watched her walk away. I looked at the number, picked up.
“Harrigan,” she said. “I’m surprised you answered.”
“Leda Dresden,” I said. “So am I.”
She was an operator who ran with Lou Tremaine’s crew. She had a reputation for demolition work. I had no idea why she was calling.
“Can you meet?” she said.
“For what?” I said.
“We have a few things to discuss, you and me,” she said. “Eddie Lompoc being one of them.”
“Where?” I said.
“The Getty,” she said. “In front of Van Gogh’s Irises.”
“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said.
* * *
She picked someplace public. She didn’t trust me. I didn’t mind. I didn’t trust her either.
The Getty was too far to walk. I’d have to take a bus. I found a covered stop on the corner where a guy was squatting against the wall, lost in lamentation.
“Come on man, can’t be sitting here farting next to a lit cigarette,” he said to himself. He looked up at me. “You don’t pass gas. Gas passes you.”
I left him to it, got on the bus when it came and was immediately greeted by a woman in three layered coats saying, “Can you love a tapeworm? I’ll never forget how skinny you made me. Never in a million years.”
The buses were like rolling psych wards, the robo drivers taking the patients out for a spin around the city. It was always the same unhinged crowd. I went down the length of the bus, found a seat behind two g
uys in stained ponchos, one of them watching a screen.
“What the fuck is that?” the first guy said, clutching the wisps of his ragged goatee. “Wayne, that guy’s got a zebra on a leash!”
“That’s not a zebra, Ollie, it’s a dalmatian,” Wayne said, looking at the dog sitting up front in the disabled section, wearing an orange service vest.
“What the fuck is a dalmatian?” Ollie said.
“They’re those dogs that live at the firehouse,” Wayne said.
“What the fuck is a dog doing at a firehouse?” Ollie said. “What are they gonna do, bark at the flames as my house is burning down? You ever see what they do to fire hydrants? It’s disgusting.”
“They’re friends with the firemen,” Wayne said. “What’s it to you?”
“I don’t care if they’re friends,” Ollie said. “What good are they in a crisis? It’s like all the king’s horses in ‘Humpty Dumpty.’ What the fuck is a horse gonna do about a busted egg? They don’t have the skills to put him back together. They don’t even have hands! They’ll trample all over him.”
“Would you shut the fuck up?” Wayne said. “I’m trying to watch my movie.”
“What movie?” Ollie said, looking down at the screen. “What’s the—Jesus Christ! Why did those two guys just jump out of an airplane? They’re too old to be doing shit like that.”
“They had to,” Wayne said. “It was on their bucket list.”
“What the fuck is a bucket list?” Ollie said. “And why would it make you jump out of a plane? Are you making this shit up?”
“It’s a list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket,” Wayne said.
“Who kicks a bucket?” Ollie said. “They’re full of dirty water and shit. You’ll get it all over your shoes, maybe hurt your foot. It makes no sense.”
“No,” Wayne said. “When you kick the bucket it means you die.”
“Buckets can fucking kill you?” Ollie said. “Why didn’t you tell me this shit before? They’re fucking everywhere! We gotta get out of this city. It’s too dangerous.”
“Would you stop,” Wayne said. “It’s just an idiom.”
“You’re just an idiom,” Ollie said. “I’m asking you a question and you’re calling me names. I got a zebra looking at me like I’m on fucking safari and these buckets are gonna kill me unless I jump out of an airplane. What the fuck. I should’ve stayed in bed.”
