Nobody Move

by Philip Elliott

  “I bet.” He felt tingles in his groin at the way she was speaking about herself, so full of energy, full of power.

  Dakota looked at him with an expression of utmost sincerity. “You have to understand, it’s not that I don’t appreciate my culture and heritage, my people—because I do, I really do, and I wish there was some way I could help them—it’s just that I never had the opportunity to appreciate something else.”

  Eddie nodded. “I understand. If I help you find your sister, would you leave L.A. and go somewhere with me?”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “You want me to be with you?” Not feigning the surprise, meaning it.

  “Dakota, even in all the crazy situations I’ve been in, some of them straight from your Hollywood movies, nothing has ever made me feel as alive as I feel when I’m with you.”

  It hit her in the heart; he could tell by her expression.

  “Yes, Eddie Vegas, I’ll come with you.”

  She kissed him and he cupped her breast, eager to make love for the second time in his life.

  A thought entered his mind. “One last thing: What happened to the men who … did that to your sister?”

  Dakota narrowed her eyes and looked past him, a hard look on her face. “They got what they deserved, put it that way.”

  Eddie knew better than to ask. He lay Dakota on her back and kissed her slender belly, the cool evening air from the open window washing over his back.

  10 | Heavy Rain

  Alison kissed Charlie on his soft cheek and pulled him closer, the two of them wrapped in a blanket with a bowl of salty popcorn between them. On the TV Toy Story 3 was drawing to its close, Alison surprised to find herself tearing up at the incessant hardships these children’s toys endured. Charlie’s little face looked up at her, content with this rare opportunity to watch his favorite movie with his mom. He was a quiet boy, and that made her love him even more, the love sometimes a painful thing in her chest. So when her cell phone beeped as a text message came through, she cursed it silently, knowing exactly what it meant. She knew Charlie knew it, too.

  He watched her with resigned eyes as she leaned forward to pick up the phone.

  Homicide: 4th Fl., 543 S. Olive St., 90013.

  She sighed. That address was beside Pershing Square, twenty-five minutes away. The problem with being on call in this city: you always get fucking called.

  “Sweetie, I’m really sorry but I got called into work.”

  Charlie turned back to the TV without a word.

  “I’ll get Sarah to come and sit with you while I’m away.”

  No response.

  “I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart, I promise. How about we go to the movies tomorrow, after school? We can see anything you like. We can even get pizza.”

  Nothing; she may as well have left already.

  Alison kissed Charlie’s cheek and stood looking at him for a moment, stroking his head. There it was, that pain again, like a shard of glass lodged between her ribs.

  “I love you,” she said, and went upstairs to change into something less comfortable, dialing Sarah on the way.

  The address turned out to be the office of a hotshot lawyer known to represent some of the city’s richest criminals. Alison remembered the lawyer, named Jerry Boylan, had gotten a top banker off the hook during a rape trial in what the media painted as a fluke win but one which, in reality, L.A.P.D. had been expecting, the D.N.A. evidence found at the scene having proved inconclusive. But everybody and their mother knew they’d caught the right guy, everything pointing the finger at him, including the victim, but nothing irrefutable. That snake lawyer twisted the whole thing, made the victim look like a jilted ex-lover and got the jury—mostly older conservatives—sympathetic to the banker: What’s a poor guy to do when a spurned woman cries rape, after all? So Alison didn’t much care that the lawyer had been murdered until she saw the wound in his sternum: deep and narrow and identical to one she’d read about in the paper just that morning. The article (written by Frederica Lounds, no less) claimed that two men had been murdered three days ago in a gas station in Indio, just off I-10. But what had caught Alison’s attention was the method: an approximately three-inch deep, half-inch wide penetration in the sternum of one of the victims, and both of the victims with their throats cut. The lawyer had the same wound in his sternum. His throat had been cut, too.

  Something shiny beneath the desk caught her eye. She bent down and picked it up. A Zippo lighter of solid gold with a silver “R” engraved into it. R? Probably not the lawyer’s.

  As Alison stood looking at the lawyer dead in his chair behind his desk, and then looked out the wall of glass behind him at Pershing Square four floors below, she remembered something else: Mandy, the dancer in the strip club, had said that a lawyer had come into the place that same day asking about Kaya. Was it you, Jerry? Were you involved in the murders? Certainly you had the clientele for it.

  “You all done here, Detective?” said a voice behind Alison.

  She spun to find a forensic standing there, a case in her hand.

  “Jeez. Creep around much?”

  “Sorry.”

  The young woman could have been doing jumping jacks behind her and Alison wouldn’t have noticed, lost to her thoughts.

  “It’s okay, I was ten miles away,” Alison said. “All these bodies, they ever get to you?”

  The woman hesitated, probably shocked a detective had given her the time of day.

  Alison said, “I guess not. Would make it pretty difficult to do your job if they did.”

  “Sometimes. It’s not the fact they’re dead that bothers me. It’s that they were murdered.”

  “I hear you. Nobody in this city realizes how many murderers share it with them. Eat the same food, walk the same streets, vote for the same politicians.” She looked at the forensic, the woman waiting patiently for whatever this was to end. “You know what I’ve learned in my over three years now in homicide?”

  “What’s that, Detective?”

  “Not a goddamn thing. People kill people. Period.”

  “Know what I’ve learned in my two analyzing crime scenes?”

  “That detectives are jaded assholes?”

  The forensic smiled. “That murderers make as many mistakes as the rest of us.”

  Alison nodded. “Except when they don’t,” she said, thinking of Jennifer O’Malley cut into twelve pieces and scattered across twelve locations, not a single clue left behind.

  The forensic said, “Sometimes, to make it easier, I pretend they’re dummies. Like I’m back in uni, learning how to do it.”

  “That might work for you here, collecting evidence. But when I’m out there speaking with distraught families, interviewing suspects, and when the months keeping rolling by and the killer’s still out there, getting away with it, the only chance these people have at justice means I can never forget that they are people.”

  Alison shook her head, hearing herself. She needed a vacation, just her and Charlie and hot sand between their toes.

  “Yeah, I’m done here, go ahead,” she said.

  She took one last glance at the lawyer, his sliced throat aimed at the ceiling, terrible shock in his eyes, and left the office.

  10:45 p.m. Mandy should be out soon, if she was working tonight. Sitting in her car parked across the street from the alleyway at the back of the Pink Room, Alison took a bite out of the veggie burger she’d got at a drive-through and chugged her coffee. The rain had returned, pummeling the roof like a thousand tiny fists while the car’s speakers sang her music library to her, currently “Spark in the Dark” by Alice Cooper. Sometimes it was better to live in the ’80s.

  Alison spotted the shape of a man almost entirely hidden within the darkness of the alleyway, the slow burn of a cigarette giving him away. He faced the back door of the club, waiting for someone, it seemed, his back leaned against the wall.

  Alison put her hand into her pocket and was surprised to feel something the
re. She pulled it out: the lighter. Shit, she’d totally forgotten about it. It should have been checked for prints. By now, any prints it might have had would have been totally destroyed by her own. It was unlike her to make such a mistake. The lack of sleep was getting to her. She flicked open the cap and thumbed the wheel. A flame crackled into life. Was it the same lighter her killer had used to light his cigarettes? She had a feeling it was.

  Ten minutes later the back door of the club opened and white light beamed out of the crack as a woman came out into the alleyway. The woman opened an umbrella above her head as the door swung shut behind her. For a moment, everything went black. When Alison’s eyes adjusted she saw that the man had approached the woman, saying something to her now. The woman pivoted away from him, shaking her head vigorously, and marched toward the street. The glow of a streetlight illuminated the woman’s face: Mandy.

  The man ran after Mandy and grabbed her shoulder, spinning her, then grabbed her throat with one arm, slamming her into the wall. Mandy dropped the umbrella, her hands clutching at her neck.

  Alison was out of the car and running before she felt the emptiness of her holster and remembered that she’d set her Glock onto the passenger seat. Too late to go back; she’d have to attack the guy, the element of surprise her only advantage. Always assume the perp is packing, one of her trainers in the academy had said. She never forgot it.

  She sprinted up behind the man, the heavy rain drowning out her footsteps, and jammed a heel into the back of his knee. He cried out as his leg buckled, and released Mandy, who gulped at the air. Alison swung her fist as the man dropped, hitting him firmly in the jaw, sharp pain shooting up her wrist. The man collapsed onto the pavement on his back.

  Alison glanced at Mandy and went to check the man for a weapon. He lashed out a leg and caught her in the stomach, knocking the wind out of her. She doubled over, gasping, a hand on her belly, and heard the click of a revolver being cocked.

  “Lewis stop!” Mandy said. “She’s a cop!”

  Alison looked up to see what would or wouldn’t be the last thing she’d ever see. Lewis hesitated, the revolver in his hand staring at her hungrily. A huge tattoo on his neck gave it a stretched look.

  “Damn it,” he said. He got to his feet and backed away slowly, still pointing the gun at her, until he turned and fled into the darkness.

  Alison struggled to an upright stance, sucking in deep breaths. Her knuckles throbbed.

  “What the fuck were you thinking, lady?” Mandy said, rubbing her throat, red now with a handprint. “He’s gonna make me pay for that.”

  “Make you pay? Why don’t you have him arrested?”

  Mandy shot her a look that said, You for real? “You fucking cops, you’re all the same.”

  “I don’t get it. The guy was choking you.”

  “Yeah, Lewis is a problem. But he’s my problem. And he was just trying to scare me. But now …”

  Mandy picked up her umbrella, held it above her head, and fished a cigarette out of her purse.

  “Where’d you meet a piece of shit like him?” Alison said.

  “You’re looking at it.”

  “The club?”

  “Where else?”

  Mandy lit the cigarette and sucked deep. She exhaled a plume of smoke and her body relaxed, a calmness settling over her.

  She said, “He was nice at first. They always are. We went on a couple dates. I wouldn’t usually date a customer, it’s, like, an unspoken law of stripping, but, I dunno, he was charming I guess. Then we slept together and everything changed. Lewis started freaking out about me being a dancer, jealous of other men watching me. I said it’s my fucking job, asshole, and he said ‘No, your job is to be my woman.’ Me being a dancer is how we met in the first place, so …” She shrugged her shoulders. “Fuck if I know how men think. All I know is they’re all broken in some important way. Fucking assholes.”

  Mandy took another drag and looked at Alison curiously. “What you doing here anyway?”

  Alison had almost forgot. “I have another picture for you to look at.”

  “Lucky me.”

  “Nothing gruesome this time.”

  “Come on then, give it here.”

  Alison took her phone out of her pocket and found the photograph of Jerry Boylan she’d downloaded from his website, the slimeball smirking up at her, smug even in death. She handed the phone to Mandy without saying anything.

  Mandy looked at it for two seconds and handed the phone back to her.

  “Look at you, Clarence Starling. Catching killers and kicking ass.”

  “You recognize him?”

  “It’s the lawyer who came by yesterday asking about Kaya, as I’m sure you’ve figured. I’d ask how you found him but you probably can’t tell me, can you?”

  Alison pocketed the phone, aware now of how soaked she was from the rain. “No, I’ll tell you. He was murdered.”

  Mandy blew smoke at her. “Sounds like you got your hands full.”

  “In this city, always. Thanks again for your help, Mandy. See you around. And get yourself some pepper spray. Next time that asshole tries anything, blind him.”

  Alison made for her car, beginning to shiver now. If it was because of the rain or having stared down a barrel, she couldn’t say.

  “Hey, Detective,” Mandy called from behind.

  Alison looked back.

  “Can you give me a ride home?”

  11 | Gay Larry

  Right as Eddie was about to fall asleep, his eyes snapped open. He squinted into the darkness of the hotel room and listened. Just the sound of Dakota breathing beside him.

  He slipped out of the bed and crept silently toward the opened window, peered out. The street below was dark and empty except for a group of young women dressed to the nines, flailing their handbags about and laughing. He looked at the clock beside the bed: 12:31 a.m.

  Eddie stood over Dakota and shook her shoulder, whispering her name. She stirred but didn’t wake. He shook her harder.

  She squinted up at him. “Kaya?”

  “Dakota, get up, we have to leave here. Now.”

  “What? What time is—”

  “Get up, come on, we have to go.”

  She sat up, switching the bedside lamp on. In the light her hair was messy, half of it coming up over one side of her head, her eyes so squinted they could have been glued shut. But, fuck, she was still gorgeous.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  He forced himself to remain calm. “What’s going on is Saul’s men are going to bust in that door any second and shoot both of us in the head. We need to leave right fucking now.” He failed.

  It opened her eyes. “Shit, okay. Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you think they’re coming all of a sudden? You seemed pretty relaxed when you were fucking me last—”

  “I know I know, but, look—” He thought about it. “Just as I was falling asleep, I had this image of that big cowboy sitting there in your motel room when I arrived, and then I thought of how Floyd walked in right behind me, and then I thought, how did they find the room?”

  Dakota stared at the bedsheets for a moment. “Floyd probably waited outside your apartment and followed you there. But the cowboy … I have no idea how he knew all he knew … You’re right, it’s not safe here. Why do you think they’ll shoot us? Don’t they want to take you somewhere?”

  Eddie shook his head. “That was then. I’ve slipped away twice now, and lemme tell you, Saul is not a patient man. I once saw him shoot a man in the kneecap for being five minutes late to a meeting. He’ll be so pissed by now he’ll just want me out of the way. And that means you too, you’re part of this whole thing now. And I can tell you another thing: we won’t get away a third time. Not even Jesus Christ himself would get away from these guys a third time. And that fucking cowboy, I don’t want to see him again.” He thought about Floyd and Sawyer as he said it. They’d been through a lot together, the three of th
em; could they really kill him in cold blood? A second later, the answer arrived: Yes, they could. These men were of a different breed, he’d always known that. And if they were coming to execute him, there’d be more than just the two of them …

  Dakota said it as he thought it: “Where will we go?”

  He looked at her. “What if we left the city right now, didn’t look back? We’d get away—”

  “Not without my sister.”

  It was an argument he had no hope of winning. He nodded. “There is someone they don’t know about. I was going to bring you to him tomorrow anyway. He might be able to help us find your sister. But I don’t know if he’ll go for it. It’s been years.”

  “Who?”

  “Gay Larry.”

  “Gay Larry?”

  “Gay Larry.”

  “Right.”

  “Trust me, you’ve never met a man like Gay Larry.”

  “Actually, there was a Gay Larry in the reservation.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “You’re funny. Now get changed, we gotta go.”

  “We’re just gonna show up?”

  “I’d call him but I don’t remember his number. Last I heard he was doing well for himself, living up in the hills. I remember the house because I drove by it last summer. Well, I’m pretty sure it was his place.”

  What if Gay Larry had moved since then (if it was even the right place)? Shit, what choice did they have?

  Gay Larry lived on Mulholland Drive in one of those extremely modern and expensive houses that hang out of the Hollywood Hills like tumors. When Dakota saw a street sign in the cab, she said, “Mulholland Drive! Like the movie!” Then, “Well, I hope not like the movie …”

  Eddie said, “Honestly, sometimes I feel like I’m living in a movie. No, not just one movie, but different parts of lots of movies.”

  The cabbie said, “Sometimes I feel like I’m Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, but the L.A. version.”