Cracked (18 page)

None. Zero. Nada. And if that makes me a bad person, so the fuck be it.

There was no doubt in my mind that Lowell the bartender had had some knowledge of, if not hand in, what had happened to Ginger or Dominic or the boys, or all of it. At the very least, by locking us in with him and his piece behind the bar, he was making a choice. And Lola? Whatever her role, she was in deep, and my only regret was that I didn’t have more time to get information from her. I was glad I hadn’t dragged her along with us, though. Would have been hard to conceal an unwilling passenger in a tiny convertible. Criminal mastermind, my brother was not.

We got into Palm Springs proper and cruised the ten or twelve blocks of the strip. It was beautiful weather in the desert, and tourists were everywhere. I had been here before, with Ginger. It was one of her favorite places.

We didn’t discuss where to stay. Darren pulled onto a street parallel with the strip, where some of the lesser-priced hotels were located. We pulled into a mid-price motel with lots of palm trees and a pool.

“Ginger and I stayed here one time,” Darren said. “With Fred and the boys. We swam in that pool. Few years ago. Before chauffeurs and butlers. Or bodyguards,” he corrected himself.

It was my second time staying in a motel formerly frequented by my sister. I hoped it would be more successful than the last time.

Darren and I discussed room arrangements. “One room,” he said. “You, me and Dave here. Two beds, and then Dave and I can get cozy. Right, Dave?” He grinned over the backseat at our passenger-slash-hostage.

“Really? I have to stay with the boys?”

Darren took his sunglasses off. “Danny. You think I’m going to let you stay in a motel room by yourself right now? Uh. No.”

“How ’bout you, Dave? Ready for a slumber party?”

Dave smiled. “This is a nice place,” he said. “Do you think they’d mind if I swam in that pool in my boxers?”

Darren and I looked at each other and laughed. It felt good. “Dave. My man,” Darren said. He was laughing a little too long, a little too loud. “You and I are going to need to do some shopping.”

“Me, too,” I said. “I bought this outfit at Macy’s today,” I said to them. “What do you guys think?”

Darren stopped laughing. “You’ve got blood on you,” he said. “Good thing that shirt’s black.” I looked down at myself. I did have blood on me. On the way up, I had tried to clean the blood off my face in the car, with a little spit and a tissue. I hadn’t checked my shirt.

Dave suddenly leaned out the side of the Fiat with his head down, looking like a puppy. “You guys crazy or something?” He seemed weirdly resigned. I figured he was probably in shock. He just found out his buddy had been killed, but at least he knew we didn’t do it.

Darren and I looked at each other. “Maybe,” I said.

Dave nodded, as if he understood.

“Well,” Darren said, getting out of the car. “You kids stay in the car. I’m going to get us a room!” He tossed me the keys. “Danny. Move the car, maybe?” He indicated spaces further from the road.

“Copy that,” I said. I slid behind the wheel of the Fiat. I hadn’t driven in a while, and forgot how much I loved it. Even just across a Days Inn parking lot.

Twenty minutes later, all three of us were ensconced in a twin double room. It was decent if bare bones, but the pool, which we could still see out our window into the twilight, looked inviting. Darren ordered a pizza and wings, and two four-packs of soda.

“I want a swim,” I said. I had an urge to scour myself with chlorine.

“Not yet,” Darren said. “First, we need to talk to Dave here. How you doin’, Dave?”

Dave was lying on one of the beds, a wet washcloth over his eyes. “I’m getting a migraine,” he said. His knock-off Nikes were hanging off his toes. He didn’t even have the energy to kick them off. He looked twelve years old, all of a sudden, and I felt a motherly pull towards him.

“We’ll get you some pills later,” Darren said. He rooted around in the desk drawer and pulled out some Days Inn stationery and a pen.

“Danny. We need to think now. Okay? You okay?” It was serious Darren again. I was starting to wonder about these mood swings I’d seen in him. That, or it could have been seeing him shoot someone’s head off today.

Not that I’d behaved like a Girl Scout myself. I could still feel Lola’s hair in my hands. I was glad I had broken her nose. And her arm. But still, I was glad I hadn’t killed her when I had the chance. That was something I was pretty sure you couldn’t come back from. It was what I had wanted to shield Darren from. Obviously that plan hadn’t worked out very well.

“Okay. I’m ready,” I said. I looked at Dave, who looked fast asleep now. Darren made a move as though to wake him, but I stopped him.

“Let him sleep for now,” I said. “He just found out his best friend was killed last night.” Not to mention being kidnapped by the killer and his sister, who were, for all he knew, on some kind of
Natural Born Killers
spree. If he could sleep, good. Better than hysterical screaming and running for the door.

“Since we were five,” Dave said from under the washcloth. So much for my powers of observation. “We grew up together. We were foster kids together.” He rolled over with his back to us. I looked at Darren and he looked back at me, and nodded. We left him alone.

On a sheet of paper, Darren and I wrote:

Dead People
Giner
Dominic Pastore
Lowell the Bartender

Injured People
Danny
Detective French
Lola aka Drug Dealer

Persons of Unknown Whereabouts
Matthew and Luke
Fred
Fake Danny

People Who Might Know Something
Detective Miller
Detective French
Dave
Lola
Fat desk clerk at Sunny Jim Motel
All of the Persons of Unknown Whereabouts

“Huh,” I said, after we finished the list. “We’ve made progress.”

“Who should we talk to first?” Darren said, leaning back on his elbows. He rubbed his eyes. His jacket was hanging over a chair, and he was wearing his jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt.

“Darren. Where the fuck is the gun,” I said. Darren looked at himself, then at me, then grabbed the keys where I’d thrown them on the desk, and ran out to the car. Three minutes later he was back, holding his gun in his hand.

“Are you insane?” I said. “Didn’t think to hide that maybe?”

Darren shrugged. “Off season. No one around.” He put the gun carefully on the desk. I looked at him.

“Darren. We might end up having to go to jail.”

“We might, at that,” he said. “How you feel about that?”

“That I would rather not,” I responded. “But I need to see this thing through.” I examined the bottom of my foot. I wished we had Advil for pain. Or something stronger. I sighed, suddenly feeling the crack urges come back to hit me again square in the chest.

Funny thing, that. A little uber-violence had erased the urges for a while, more than anything else ever had. Now that I was calmer, I wanted my real drug.

“I didn’t see anything,” Dave piped up from the other bed. Darren and I looked at him. He removed the washcloth from his face. “You guys don’t have to worry about me. That Lola…”

“What about Lola, Dave? You two seemed pretty cozy when you walked into Lucky’s.”

Dave sat up. “I’ve known Lola a while,” he said. “She’s been coming into the bar maybe a year? Maybe less. Everybody knows she runs a few things through there. But I didn’t think she was bad people.” Two fat tears appeared and ran down his cheeks.

“Did she know my sister?” I still wasn’t sure how much Dave knew.

“Your sister is Danielle, right?” This again.

“Was. Ginger, actually. Danielle is my name.”

“Danny is your name,” Dave corrected me. He wasn’t going to be on
Jeopardy
any time soon. It took a while, but between us, Darren and I managed to make Dave understand that I was not my sister, and she was not me.

“Did Lola know Ginger?” Darren asked him.

“Ginger. Weird,” Dave said slowly.

“Dave,” I said, flopping myself down on the bed. “Please.”

“Yeah, yeah, they knew each other. Ginger started coming into the bar. We don’t get a lot of girls at the bar,” he said. “Ginger started coming in, and around that time I think is when Lola started hanging out there. They were pretty tight. At least I think they were. Ginger gave Lola’s sister a job, even,” Dave said. Darren and I looked at each other. “Taking care of her kids,” he continued. “Lola’s sister, she’s different than Lola, that’s what Ginger said. She wasn’t in the life. She didn’t do drugs or anything. She was going back to school or something or other. Literature?” He then went bright red, as though he had insulted me, or insulted my sister, by talking about our drug use. “Jeanette. That’s her name. I remember ’cause it was my first girlfriend’s name.”

There was silence for a minute. The mystery nanny. The mystery nanny who took the kids. Jeanette.

All of a sudden I remembered my dream. When I had turned into Ginger. Or she had turned into me. I remembered the voices in the room. I closed my eyes, and tried to remember if I had seen faces. Figures. Anything. But dreams fade.

“What does Jeanette look like?” I said quietly.

“I dunno. Not like Lola,” Dave said. “I think they weren’t really sisters. Maybe they were adopted? Or in a group home or something when they were kids, like Dom and me? Her sister is more white. Looks a bit like you,” he said, gesturing at me. “Tall like that. Not as pretty, though,” he said, smiling a winning smile. “I only ever saw her one time. She didn’t hang out at Lucky’s.”

Someone knocked at the door. Darren checked through the peephole and I hoped there wasn’t a gun on the other side. Luckily, it was the pizza guy, and if he was packing heat, he didn’t let on.

“Hey, Dave,” Darren said, once we were all tucked in to a couple of slices. “Tell us everything you know about Lola and her sister.”

“And our sister,” I added.

“After that, can I have a swim?” Dave said. He bit the point of his second slice. “You guys are pretty cool.”

“After that, you can swim all night if you want,” I said.

“In your underwear,” Darren added.

* * *

That night, I slept like the dead. No dreams, either. And when I woke up, I didn’t want crack. Immediately. I wanted coffee, Advil and Marta’s churros, but crack didn’t occur to me for, oh, about twenty minutes.

Progress.

I lay in the semi-darkness, squinting at bright sunlight breaking through a gap in the heavy drapes. I wondered where the twins were, if they had slept last night, how scared they were. I closed my eyes and tried to pray, but my soul didn’t feel clean enough. I could hear Lola’s arm breaking.

Darren and Dave were both still sound asleep in the next bed, Darren’s arms and legs hanging off the bed, with Dave sprawled across most of it. I wished I had a camera, and a reason to blackmail my brother.

The night before, Darren and I agreed that one of us would have to call the house in the morning. There might be news about the boys. Besides, no doubt half the police in Southern California would be looking for us, and Darren hadn’t checked in with Skipper and Laurence since yesterday morning. We didn’t know what story Lola would tell the police, the truth or not. Or whether she would have even gone to the police. She might have gotten out of Dodge and gone to some underground crackhead doctor and had her arm and nose set. Her type tends not to like the authorities. In my experience.

I hoped Lucky’s didn’t have security cameras somewhere. It seemed highly unlikely, given the shady nature of some of the goings on there, so I decided not to dwell. But ballistics would show what kind of gun had killed the bartender, and I didn’t know how long it might take Rosen to crack and tell Miller that he had loaned Darren his trusty sidearm.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said quietly as I got into the shower. Everything had happened so fast in the last couple of days, and I, at least, had acted on nothing but pure gut instinct. Which was about to get both Darren and me thrown into jail for the rest of our natural lives.

But we did have more information, courtesy of our new best friend Dave, than we had the day before.

The motel might not have been much, but the shower was killer. I forgot about everything for a few minutes and let hot water run over my head. There was even shampoo and conditioner. I was almost content, for five full minutes.

Which lasted until I came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around myself and one in a turban on my head, and saw Darren standing at the desk, looking down at it in horror.

“The gun,” he said. “The fucking gun. It’s gone.”

Darren shook Dave awake. “Hey, fuckhead! Wake the fuck up! Where is it?”

Poor Dave took a second to wake up, even with a crazed former gunman yelling in his face. I couldn’t imagine him getting to work on time with a normal alarm clock.

“Where is it?” he said, sitting up. “Where’s what, dude?”

“The gun, Dave, the fucking gun!” Darren was shouting. The clock said it was eight a.m.

“Darren. Be quiet,” I hissed. Someone in the next room yelling about a gun at eight in the morning tends to alarm the tourists.

“Where did you put it last,” Dave said. “Look there.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I may have had a touch of the old hysteria.

Darren, however, didn’t see the humor in the situation. He was rummaging around on the floor, amongst the empty pizza boxes and soda cans that the boys had thoughtlessly left strewn everywhere. Having a sore foot, I had declared myself exempt from clean-up duty. It was there, I was sure. Dave wouldn’t have taken it – if he had, why hadn’t he shot us in our sleep and made off in the Fiat? Or brandished it threateningly if he was a bad guy?

I helped Darren search, and after a toddle to the bathroom in his boxers – which had seen better days, I could not help noticing – so did Dave. We looked under both beds, even using a helpful little penlight Darren had on his keychain. We looked in the two wastebaskets, and in the pizza boxes, and Dave even shook the soda cans, as if David Blaine had come in during the night and hidden the gun there. We stripped both beds and piled the bedding up in a corner. Darren even looked in the toilet tank.