Romeo's Hammer

by James Scott Bell

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “No hard feelings. But I’d like to ask if you might have spotted this woman, Brooklyn, maybe out there on the beach or walking around.”

  He shook his head. “But if you want to know which of these homes she came out of, you can start three houses that way.” He pointed with the gun toward the Cove. “Remember Jon-Scott Morrow?”

  “Sure,” I said. Morrow had shot to movie stardom in the late eighties in a tragic love story about a young man and an older woman played by Ann-Margret. He was People magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year around 1990 or so. But his star faded when critics woke up to the fact that his acting range started at A and ground to a halt at B. I hadn’t heard much about him, except that his teenage son died of a heroin overdose about ten years ago.

  “Then why don’t you take your investigation out that way?” he said. “You don’t have to speak to my wife again.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it anyway.”

  “Man, I wish I was you.” He put the gun on the bar and started to make himself a drink.

  I let myself out.

  Nikki was sitting in the same chair, lost in her thriller. I walked along the sand to the third house from hers.

  Where I saw a big guy in a black T-shirt and black jeans and bare feet. He was standing on the deck, his elbows resting on the wooden railing as he looked at the beach through binoculars.

  I fished out Ira’s lawyer card from my wallet and held it up. “Greetings,” I said. “Mind if I ask a question or two?”

  The big guy lowered the binoculars. He was about my age, with roid-pumped muscles. Jacked up for intimidation, not functionality. I was not impressed.

  “About what?” he said.

  “A missing girl. Around twenty-five or six. Black hair. Tall and beautiful.”

  “Which is like every chick around here.”

  “Here?”

  He gestured toward the beach.

  “Is Mr. Morrow at home?” I said.

  Big Guy stiffened. “Where’d you get that information?”

  “It’s not a secret, is it?”

  “Mr. Morrow likes his privacy. Like everybody else on this strip.”

  “I keep getting that impression,” I said. “Maybe you could go in and see if he’d talk to me.”

  “I don’t have to ask.”

  “Ask anyway.”

  Big Guy swung his legs over the rail. Then he jumped off and landed on the sand in front of me. He puffed out his chest. I almost laughed.

  “Drift,” he said.

  “How many times do I have to explain that this is a public beach?”

  “Not as long as I’m around.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You don’t want to find out,” he said.

  “You wouldn’t last two rounds. Your arms couldn’t stay up. Your pecs are cosmetic, not supportive. And your range of motion has got to be a thing of horror.”

  “You want to try me?”

  “It’s too nice a day and we’re in Malibu, where the living is easy. I’m just trying to do a job. I’m not going to be a problem. I’ll ask—”

  “What’s going on, Claude?”

  I looked up at the deck. It was Jon-Scott Morrow. His face was the same, though puffier and with more lines than when Ann-Margret seduced him in Love in Season.

  No doubt he’d bought into Malibu when he was hot. Now that he was not, he at least was sitting on a sand dune of equity.

  He wore a light-blue terrycloth robe that was cinched against a paunch and ended above knobby, pallid knees. His curly hair, which had once been a wheat-colored thatch that drove women wild, was now in major recession and mostly gray.

  Claude said, “I got this, Mr. Morrow.”

  “What, exactly, have you got?” Morrow said.

  “I was just about to get him to leave,” Claude said.

  “Mr. Morrow,” I said, “I’m on official business and if I could ask just a couple of questions, I’ll be on my way.”

  “You’re not police, are you?” Morrow asked.

  “No. I’m working for a private party.”

  “Then I don’t have to answer anything, do I?”

  “You don’t,” I said. “But it would be a great favor to me if you would.”

  “Clear him away,” Morrow said to Claude.

  “Let’s go,” Claude said, and then made his first mistake. He put his hand on my shoulder.

  I GAVE CLAUDE an old-fashioned cup-slap to both ears. Bam. Pounding the ears like that causes disequilibrium and sometimes a concussion. I didn’t go all out because I kind of felt sorry for what I was about to do to Claude in front of his employer.

  Next it was a matter of putting my right thumb between the thumb and forefinger of Claude’s left hand. Then, with my left hand I grabbed his left elbow and turned my body so we were both facing the same way. At the same time I pulled his elbow up. With simple pressure applied to his hand and wrist I now controlled him completely.

  “Where would you like me to put him?” I said to Morrow.

  “You let him go!” Morrow said.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll call the police!”

  “Please do,” I said.

  Claude tried to move away from me. I upped the pressure on his hand.

  Claude yelped.

  “All right,” Morrow said. “Just let him go and I’ll talk to you.”

  “Did you hear that Claude?” I asked.

  Claude nodded.

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” I said.

  I let him go to his visible relief. He started rubbing his left hand. His eyes were watery. He looked at me and said, “You’re a dead man.”

  Then he made his second mistake.

  He poked my chest with a steroidal index finger.

  Which hurts.

  And pain annoys me.

  So I gave Claude a side kick to his ribs. It was lightning fast and I was rather pleased with myself.

  As he oomphed I moved behind and roped him with a Mata Leão. That’s a choke hold that can easily become lethal. I now controlled the amount of oxygen going to Claude’s brain.

  “I don’t like your professional manner, Claude,” I said. “You’re like a Visigoth strutting around Rome.”

  Claude said nothing. Maybe it was because he didn’t understand my reference. More likely it was because I was choking him and he was about eight seconds from unconsciousness.

  I let up on him a little. He sucked in a pitiful gasp.

  I said, “I’m going to let you go now. I want you to sit here on the sand with your right leg over your left. If you uncross your legs I’ll kick your head and put you in this hold again. Is that clear, Claude?”

  I took off the choke hold but put both hands around his throat. At the same time, I pushed the crook of his knee with my heel and guided him down to a sitting position.

  “Now stick your legs out and cross them,” I said.

  He tried to get up. He made it about an inch before I cut off his air supply.

  “Just do it, Claude,” Jon-Scott Morrow said.

  Claude dropped back on the sand. Then crossed his legs. I let him breathe again.

  Morrow said, “You’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble just to ask me a question.”

  “And I’m a little cranky, too.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’m looking into the disappearance of a woman named Brooklyn Christie. Does that name mean anything to you?”

  “Who told you to talk to me?”

  “I keep my sources confidential,” I said. “But that applies to you, too. Anything you tell me stays between us.”

  “What did you say her name was?”

  “Brooklyn Christie.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “She looks like a model. Tall. Long, dark hair.”

  Claude uncrossed his legs.

  I slapped the back of his head.

  He crossed them again.

  Morrow said, �
�I know a great many models.”

  “Did you have a party here a week ago?”

  “I don’t see as I have to answer any more questions.”

  “I can be a regular nuisance,” I said.

  “So can the police, who I’m going to call now.”

  “Let it go, Jon,” I said. “We’ll have another chat sometime.”

  “I don’t think so,” Morrow said. “Next time Claude will be more prepared.”

  “That right, Claude?” I said.

  “Wait and see,” Claude said.

  “Check your underwear for sand fleas,” I said.

  NOT MUCH HAPPENED on my walk back to the Cove.

  Unless you count the explosion.

  It was distant but distinct. Not the kind of thing you hear on a nice, sunny day in L.A. You’re more likely to hear gunfire than a bomb or dynamite. It was loud enough to get most of the beach goers looking over their shoulders. It came from the Topanga Canyon direction, south. But that was all I could tell.

  I registered the sound in my brain, filing it under TBLAL—to be looked at later. Then I went to my crib to jot down some notes in a chronology I would turn in later to Ray Christie.

  There wasn’t much to report, of course, but one of the things Joey Feint taught me was that clients, more than anything else, just want to know that you’re working for them. Doing something. And keeping in touch about it.

  That’s the basis of world religions, too. Everybody would like to know that a deity is doing something for them and keeping in touch about it.

  Those who give up on that hope are called atheists.

  Those who hope they might be able to hope again are called agnostics.

  Those who never give any thoughts to these matters are called fools.

  Those who keep going over and over things because the psyche shifts around are called wanderers in the earth.

  My category.

  As I was typing away on the laptop Ira had generously donated to me, I heard a knock on my screen door.

  C Dog. And he looked like he’d been crying.

  I waved him in.

  “Oh, man!” he said, closing the screen behind him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My ax, man! My Paul Reed Smith! That guy ripped it off me!”

  “What guy?”

  “That guy from the beach, you shoved seaweed in his mouth.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Just now!”

  He wailed like sad dog, put his face in his hands.

  “Sit down,” I said. “Take a deep breath.”

  “I want you to get him,” he said. “I want you to find him and rip his lungs out.”

  “I’m not a hit man, C. Let’s go to the police with this.”

  “I can’t, man.”

  “Why not?”

  He sighed. “Outstanding warrant.”

  “Sit down, C.”

  He plopped himself on the futon. “What is wrong with this world?”

  “Much,” I said.

  C DOG SAID, “What am I gonna do?”

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  He waved toward the ocean. “I’m just sitting out there, minding my own business, practicing unplugged, you know?”

  “Were you high?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  I glared at him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “So he comes up to me and says, ‘Cool guitar.’ He knows I know who he is. He says, I really want a guitar like that, can I have it? And I try to laugh but he pushes me down and takes it, just rips it off. Then he hit me in the back of the freaking head and I’m like lying there wondering what just happened and what is wrong with this freaking world!”

  “The world would be a great place if not for the people,” I said.

  “You got that right! And there was nothin’ I could do, he’s too big! Why would he do that?”

  “To bait me,” I said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I know the type,” I said. “I shamed him. Instead of coming at me directly, he came after somebody weaker.”

  “Hey!”

  “You don’t have to remain that way,” I said.

  “I just want my guitar back, man. Can you help me?”

  “I might.”

  “Might?”

  “You’ll have to pay me,” I said.

  “Oh, man, I can’t pay you. I don’t have spare money.”

  “You have enough to buy pot,” I said.

  He threw up his hands.

  I said, “Tell you what. I’ll do it for no money. But we will enter into an agreement.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “You agree to do some things for me.”

  “Like what?”

  “First thing is, you stop firing up.”

  “What!”

  “You’re going to get off weed.”

  “Oh come on!”

  “That’s condition number one.”

  C Dog stood up and circled around, just like a real dog looking for a place to lie down and, not finding one, growled.

  “That’s outrageous, man!” he said.

  “Is it?” I said.

  “You expect me to give up smoking a little?”

  “You smoke a lot.”

  “Yeah! So?”

  “You want your guitar back?”

  His mouth dropped open like a drawbridge at some medieval castle.

  “You don’t have to turn this into Sophie’s choice,” I said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “A character in a famous novel. She had to decide which one of her children to give up to the Nazis to be killed.”

  “Whack.”

  “This is only a guitar and some weed,” I said. “So what will it be?”

  “You’re killin’ me.”

  “I will also teach you how to defend yourself.”

  He perked up. “Really?”

  “You want to learn?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you must also learn virtue.”

  C Dog plopped back down on the futon, defeated. But in that defeat I could see the beginnings of his reconstruction.

  “Man, who are you?” C Dog said. “You’re not like any dude I ever met before.”

  “You will become unique as well, C Dog. We cannot master anything until we master ourselves.”

  “Can I …”

  “Can you what?”

  “Have one more bowl? For the road?”

  “That road is now closed, C Dog. Yes or no?”

  “Oh, man!”

  “You can have a Coke. They’re in the refrigerator.”

  C Dog got up, shook his head like he’d been dinged. Which he had. Then he shuffled toward the refrigerator, looking like a soul in purgatory.

  I CALLED IRA.

  “Any luck with Brooklyn Christie?” I said.

  “Training and skill,” Ira said. “Luck has nothing to do with it.”

  “I’ll concede the point.”

  “As well you should.”

  “Don’t force me to construct an argument, Ira.”

  “I would cut you to ribbons.”

  “Uncle,” I said.

  “Good,” Ira said. “I found a last known address for Brooklyn Christie. But it’s not by the beach. It’s out in Sherman Oaks. An apartment. You ought to swing by.”

  “I’ll do that now,” I said. “Hey, I heard an explosion, about an hour ago. Can you try to find out what it was?”

  “Tell me more,” he said.

  “It sounded like major demolition, something like that. Not far from the Cove.”

  I heard him clacking the keyboard. There is comfort in Ira’s typing. He was one of the first computer ops in Mossad. A bullet put him in a wheelchair. But his head and hands were as awesome as ever.

  After a minute or so, Ira said, “There does appear to be something here. CHP is closing PCH from Sunse
t to Topanga. That’s going to be one royal mess at rush hour.”

  “Where’d it happen?” I said.

  “They don’t say exactly. But I’m looking at a satellite feed that refreshes every twenty minutes or so. There’s something of a disturbance in the hills right above the Getty Villa.”

  That would be J. Paul Getty’s former home. The outrageously wealthy oil man had fashioned the place like a Roman emperor’s summer retreat. It housed an invaluable collection of Greek and Roman art and stuck its nose over PCH, pointed at the ocean.

  “Think that’s it?” I said.

  “Don’t know yet. I’m fast, but not a miracle worker.”

  “Guess what?” I said.

  “They found Amelia Earhart.”

  “Close. I have a date.”

  “A date date?” Ira said.

  “A first date.”

  “As if you were in high school?”

  “I skipped high school.”

  “Be kind and considerate,” Ira said.

  “I was thinking of being charming,” I said.

  “Don’t pull a muscle,” Ira said.

  SHERMAN OAKS IS a prosperous slice of the San Fernando Valley. It backs up into the hills that look down on Ventura Boulevard and a thriving commercial and shopping district. Here is old L.A. money invested in what was once a bucolic retreat from the hubbub of Hollywood and downtown.

  Brooklyn’s lowland building was a two-story on Magnolia. It was situated to the right of a McMansion, one of those overbuilt homes on a simple, middle-class street. The McMansion looked like an ostentatious woman’s hat, complete with ostrich feathers. Only instead of feathers it was palm trees and white birch.

  On the other side of Brooklyn’s place was a similar apartment building, with a wide driveway separating the two complexes.

  Brooklyn’s unit was number 2, in the front corner.

  I knocked on the door, waited. No answer.

  I went to the next unit down, number 4. Knocked. Waited. Knocked again.

  Nothing.

  Then a scraping sound. Only it wasn’t coming from the apartment. It was at the back edge of the building.

  A mirror, deep set inside a blue plastic housing, jutted from the edge of the building. In the mirror I thought I could make out a small pair of eyes.

  A kid’s periscope.

  I was being watched.

  “You got me,” I said.