Grist 01 - The Four Last Things (3 page)

“You,” Harker said. “You. Waiter. Goddammit, I’m trying to get another Perrier. Perrier, don’t you understand English? Perrier, Perrier, Perrier,” he said three times in French. He hit the table with the knife every time he said it, three amplified whacks. It even cut through the disc jockeys’ egos; some of them actually looked at us.

The waiter looked down at my beer and then at me. I nodded and he headed for the bar.

“You sure know how to handle help,” I said.

“Nobody speaks English anymore. This goddamned city is full of immigrants.”

“America is full of immigrants,” I said. “I’m an immigrant. You’re an immigrant. Now, why don’t you tell me who recommended me?”

“Skippy Miller,” he said sulkily, taking a browser’s bite of his salad.

“Why is that such a big deal?”

“You’re for hire, right? That’s what you do. Hire yourself out. Why should you care who gave me your name?”

“Listen. You may have two last names to my one, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go all buttery just because you offer me a job. I like to know what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and who I’m doing it for. What did Skippy tell you about me?”

“He said that you’d helped him out when his series was in its first year and one of the scandal papers had gotten something on him that could have ruined everything. He didn’t tell me what it was.”

“He wouldn’t,” I said. Skippy was a big, fat, middle-aged actor with an extremely sloppy private life. Not a bad guy, but a messy one. “What else did he say?”

“That you were bright.”

“How dangerous is this going to be?”

“Dangerous? She’s a girl.”

“So are black widows.”

He was looking around the room, trying to catch the waiter’s eye. He snapped his fingers and gestured impatiently at the table. “She’s not a spider,” he said.

I sighed and palmed his card. “Enjoy your salad, but try not to get too festive,” I said, sliding across the seat of the booth. “People might think you’re a disc jockey.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’d say I want to wash my hands, but you might misunderstand. I have to go to the john, okay? You can catch up on your nails while I’m gone.”

The telephone was in the men’s room. I wanted to make sure that Harker was really Harker. First I called Skippy and got a woman on his service who knew me. Skippy, she said, was on a one-week retreat someplace near Big Sur and wouldn’t be back for six days. Then I called the private number Harker had given me. No one else ever answered it, he said. It rang eleven times before I hung up and called the main number of Monument Records, which he’d said I was never to call.

I asked for Ambrose Harker’s office and was put through. Mr. Harker, I was told, was at lunch.

“This is Clyde Barrows,” I said, trying for a drawl. “I’m Mrs. Harker’s brother. Do you know where he’s eating?”

“Does Mr. Harker know you’re in town, Mr. Barrows?”

“Ackshully, me and Bonnie, that’s the little woman, just got in from Oklahoma. We’re going to Singapore on a four-o’clock plane. So we’ll either say hi at lunch or not at all. Be a shame to miss old Ambrose.”

“I’ve never heard anyone call him old Ambrose,” she said in a pleased voice.

“Hell, honey, we all call him that. Man was thirty-nine when he was born.”

“If he was born,” she said. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Your lips to God’s ears.”

“Thanks. The reservation was for twelve-thirty at Nickodell’s on Melrose. Do you know where that is?”

“Honey, even the French, may they all go to heaven and never throughout all eternity meet anyone who isn’t French, know where Melrose is. Think there’d be room for us at the table?”

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “The reservation was for two.”

“Well, we’ll just pull up some chairs and squat for a while. If you can’t eat squattin’, the food ain’t no good, as Bonnie always says.” I had a feeling I’d gone too far.

I was wrong. “Order the chicken salad,” she said. “And have a nice squat.”

I hung up and went back into the restaurant. Even from fifteen feet away, Ambrose Harker looked mad. On the table in front of him were three full glasses of Perrier. With lime.

Chapter 3

O
n the second day of my surveillance, I burglarized her car.

It couldn’t have been much easier. The security guard watching over Monument Records’ underground parking lot was a dozing fat man. Sleepy eyelids flicked in my direction as I walked by, and for a moment I thought he was going to establish a personal best by getting up three times in a single day. I jingled my keys over my head and grinned at him, and he settled back into a torpor that would have made a giant sloth look like Ralph Nader.

I already knew what the car looked like, an Oldsmobile Cutlass in an institutional shade of gray, not at all what I would have expected after her rainbow wardrobe. It opened as gratefully as a Catholic at her final confession.

The car was as spotless as a martyr’s conscience: the Immaculate Conception by General Motors. For the first time, I got suspicious of Sarah Marie Theresa Oldfield. In L.A., most people’s cars are full of junk: wads of used Kleenex, bills they haven’t paid yet, McDonald’s coupons, the detritus of a life spent largely on wheels. If this Oldsmobile had been a time capsule, archaeologists would have concluded that no one lived there. It was a cipher.

The rain was threatening a return engagement, so I went back to Alice and endured the radio. People told me I could consolidate my bills with a quick and easy loan and I laughed. Other people invited me to stash my parents in various rest homes; elderly parents are an awkward intrusion into the Southern California life-style. I thought about dragging my profane and politically radical parents, kicking, screaming, and cursing me inventively, into a rest home, and laughed again. About the only thing that wasn’t funny, if you didn’t count the disc jockeys, was the music. It had all the verve and variety of a sheet of stamps.

Sally came out at precisely one-twenty. The rain had given up on L.A. and gone east to give the desert a hard time. Traffic was flowing. I managed to muscle my way into it in time to watch the light at Gower and Fountain turn red just as she jumped once again into the white Corvette.

I looked left. I looked right. Then I stopped looking at anything but the stoplight. An LAPD black-and-white cruised in a stately manner through the intersection, heading east on Fountain. The hell with it. I knew where Oldfield and friend were going anyway.

The Sleepy Bear Motel was doing its usual landmark business in midday quickies. Mr. Needle-nose’s Corvette was in its usual parking space. It wasn’t raining, so the usual bum wasn’t in his usual phone booth. I grabbed my usual space and settled into my usual wait. My eyelids sagged into their usual half-mast position. God, surveillance was exciting.

Someone rapped on the window. I looked up to see a tired-looking Chicana peering in at me. She was wearing a red dress that somehow managed to be both low-cut and high-cut.

“Hi, handson,” she said. “You wan’ a date?”

I lifted my arm and checked my watch, a complicated electronic affair given me for my birthday by my ex-girlfriend, Eleanor. It told me the time, the date, the day of the week—everything but the humidity. “I’ve already got one,” I said. “November eleven.”

She took an apprehensive look at the sky. It might rain yet. “You know wha’ I mean,” she said. “Half-hour, fifty bucks. We can do it here.” She thumbed over her shoulder in the direction of the Sleepy Bear. Then she looked down and said, “No, Dulcita, no’ yet. Down.”

“
You
can do it here,” I said. “Keep me out of it.” I leaned sideways to look out the window. A white toy poodle sat at her feet, looking up at her. It had a neat little red bow tied to its collar.

“What’s with her?”

“She goes wi’ me. They don’ mind. She’s always real good.” The poodle sensed she was being talked about and wagged her tail wildly. ”Aren’ you, sweetie?” the girl said. “
Querida mia
.” Then she looked back up at me. “Fifty bucks, no big deal. I promise you have a good time.”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“So why you parkin’ here?”

“I’m out of gas,” I said. “Just waiting for the Auto Club.” I looked up at room 207 and suddenly thought about how much I disliked Ambrose Harker. I pulled a wad of his money out of my pocket. “How about I just give you the fifty?” I said.

“For what?” She unsnapped her little white handbag and looked into it, as if the answer to how low she would go was inside, next to her face powder.

“For going away. For hitting the next block.” I peeled off five tens and waved them at her. The little dog sat up on its rear legs, front paws in the air.

“Honey,” she said, “you don’ want nothin’?”

I passed the money to her. “Darling, we’re both too pretty to die. Haven’t you heard about AIDS?”

She looked at the bills and then back up at me. “You for real? This is jus’ for me?”

“This is for just taking care of yourself. Be careful, okay?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Gimme a hunred,” she said.

“For what?”

“So my man don’ hit me.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is tomorrow. I already did fi’ hunred today. Si’ hunred is enough, Dulcita and me can go to bed.”

I gave her another fifty. “Go to bed,” I said. “But if I see you on Sunset again today, I’ll take the money back and call the cops. Got it?”

“Don’ be funny. I been working since three a.m. All I wan’ is dreamlan’, you know?”

The door to room 207 opened.

“Lean inside the car,” I said.

She did. “What do you want?” she asked a little apprehensively. Up close, I realized she was no more than eighteen or nineteen. A little gold crucifix dangled at her throat.

“Your perfume,” I said.

She looked alarmed. “You wan’ my perfume?”

Needle-nose came down the stairs and walked past us on his way to the Corvette. If he registered Alice it didn’t show, and he couldn’t get much of a shot at me with Dulcita’s mistress filling the driver’s window.

“I don’t want your perfume,” I said, watching him in the rearview mirror. “I like it. I want to know what it is.”

“You got some nose,” she said. “Is flea shampoo, for Dulcita. I washed her this mornin’ in the dark. Ho, perfume, says the guy. Like I say, you got some nose.” She laughed and suddenly looked a lot prettier.

The Corvette caught and pulled out. Needle-nose didn’t look back.

“Well, it smells good on you,” I said.

Her face was about a foot from mine. She
did
smell good. “You know,” she said, “you’ pretty cute.”

“You’re not exactly chopped liver yourself. Why don’t you get a job?”

“Don’ start with me, okay? I do the bes’ I can.”

“Go home, then,” I said. “Go to bed, like you said.”

“Ri’ after I feed Dulcita. Listen, thanks. He be aroun’ pretty quick now, so I gotta be on the sidewalk. He see me yakkin’, he gets upset, you know? Like he starts to play with his knife, shinin’ up the blade and stuff. Thanks for the hunred.”

She headed for the sidewalk, a little brown girl in a red dress on a gray day, with a white dog at her heels. She took up an alert stance at the curb and combed the oncoming traffic for her pimp. Dulcita sat at her feet and gave herself a professional-looking scratch behind the ear. A car honked twice.

It was Sally Oldfield’s Courtesy Cab, a different number this time but the same company. After a moment the door to 207 was thrown open and Sally hurried out and down the steps. She threw the driver a radiant smile and got in back. She sure in hell was happy about something. She’d been in the room thirty-eight minutes, same as yesterday.

As the cab door closed, I saw a flash of red on the sidewalk. The Mexican girl had picked up Dulcita and tucked her under a slender brown arm, and now she was wading out into the traffic. Pulled into the curb across the street was a white Cadillac convertible with gold wire wheels and a spare mounted behind the trunk. Very fancy. The driver’s window slid down and I saw a skinny, sharp-featured white guy with hair so blond he looked albino. He was, presumably, the hooker’s man.

Sally Oldfield’s cab made a right onto Sunset and headed back toward Monument Records, where another five hours of listening to the radio awaited me. I hadn’t brought a book. I sighed and snapped on my turn indicator.

The Mexican girl was standing on the passenger side of the Cadillac. She was saying something, trying the door handle. It wouldn’t open. She looked very unhappy.

I let an opening in the traffic go by and watched the white car. The passenger window went down about eight inches and the man at the wheel stuck out his hand. The girl looked even more unhappy, shook her head, and tried the handle again. No go. It was locked.

She slipped an arm over the top of the open window and tried to unlock the door inside. The driver hit the button, and the window went up and clamped onto her arm. He let the car roll forward at about five miles an hour.

The girl stumbled on her high heels and fought her way to her feet again. She slipped off the curb and cracked her head on the roof of the car. Dulcita trotted anxiously along at her heels, barking.

After half a block the driver of the Cadillac hit the brakes. The girl straightened up, crying, as he put the window down and extended a waiting hand. She rubbed the arm that had been caught in the window, then reached into her purse and handed him a wad of money. He rolled the window back up, put on a pair of mirrored shades, and took off into traffic.

The girl stood at the curb, looking at nothing. She was still crying. Dulcita sat down at her feet.

I’d really had enough surveillance for one day. Nothing was going to happen anyway; Sally Oldfield was back at Monument now and she’d stay there until quitting time, when I’d trail her home again. And if I was wrong, and something did happen, maybe Harker would fire me. Maybe I’d quit even if he didn’t fire me. I could always start looking for Mrs. Yount’s cat.

The next thing I knew, I was two cars behind the white Cadillac, heading east on Sunset. The pimp made a right onto Cahuenga. So did I. Then we both made a left on Franklin and headed for the hills.

The second girl was an emaciated blond in a thin blue dress who looked like she was freezing to death on the corner of Franklin and Highland. No argument this time, just more money passed in through the passenger’s window. Then the blond boyo at the wheel slid on up Franklin and turned right on Outpost, into a residential area of tree-hung streets, big fenced yards, and lots of privacy.

If he’d looked back he would have spotted me easily, but he was busy. He needed all this privacy in order to deliver a to-go order to his nose, and that plus the demands of navigating the curves kept him fully occupied.

I reached over and popped open Alice’s copious glove compartment. First I took out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses I’d found in a parking lot. They were mended over the bridge of the nose with white surgical adhesive. My ex-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, said they made me look like Jerry Lewis. I slipped them on, refocused through the distortion of the lenses, and then reached deep into the glove compartment to pull out a small flat-black automatic with a big, very black hole at the end of its barrel. I dropped it into the pocket of my windbreaker and waited for the right curve to come along.

We hit it as we went back downhill. On either side of the street were high walls, protecting the folks behind them from exposure to all us drive-by riffraff. Pepper trees trailed their tendrils at car-top level, further reducing the visibility. As the white Caddy went into the curve I punched Alice’s accelerator to the floor and rear-ended the pimp’s car at about thirty miles an hour.

The whore’s man was a terrible driver. He did everything wrong, hitting the brakes and crimping the wheel in the opposite direction. The car skewed around, out of control, and the front-left wheel jumped the curb. One second later, the Cadillac was half in the road and half on the sidewalk, and I was already out and running toward it, pushing my voice up into an unthreatening music-hall tenor.

“Oh, my golly, I’m so sorry, oh, Jesus, this is terrible, are you hurt? I don’t know what happened, the car just seemed to jump, and all of a sudden there we were,
colliding
like that… .”

The glasses had slipped partway down the bridge of my nose. I shoved them back up and kept coming. He’d opened the driver’s door by now, and I saw the knife gleam in his hand.

“You fuckin’ jackoff,” he said. “That’s my fucking spare wire wheel back there.” He put the knife hand behind him and started to climb out.

“Oh, I know it,” I said, “don’t look, it’s terrible, that’s the trouble with gold automobiles; they’re so
soft
.” He had one leg out now, still holding the knife behind him, and I reached out my left hand to help him.

“But what’s important,” I babbled, “is no loss of life and limb. Are your limbs all right?” He looked at my extended left hand as though he was going to spit on it, and I pulled my right from my jacket pocket and touched the gun to a spot midway between his eyes. “Say anything at all,” I said, “and I’ll put a picture window in the back of your head. Now, take your right hand out from behind you very slowly, and it had better be empty.”

He was cross-eyed looking at the gun. He licked his skinny little lips and started to say something. I poked him between the eyebrows with the gun barrel, hard, and he thought better of it. When the hand came up it came up open. There was nothing in it.

“Good boy,” I said. “All it would take for me to kill you would be the wrong syllable. Since you don’t know what the right syllable is, just don’t say anything. Now, put your right hand on top of the steering wheel and keep it there until I tell you to move it.”

He did as he was told. His eyes kept flicking from the gun to me and back again. A car went by without slowing, obeying the First Urban Commandment: Don’t Get Involved.

“Okay,” I said. “I want all the money, and I mean every last cent. Use your left hand, keep the right on the wheel, don’t even twitch it. I saw where you put it, so just reach very,
very
carefully into your upper-left-hand pocket and pull it out.”