Point Doom (13 page)

“Thank you,” she said. “Thanks a lot. It’s really nice and beautiful too.”

“So tell me your name,” I said.

“Janie. I’m Janie. That’s me.”

“Well Janie, that lucky charm is for you but you can’t tell anybody where you got it. Is that okay? I mean if somebody sees it and asks about it just say you found it here by this bench. Will you do that?”

“Sure. Okay.”

“And any time you are sad or worried or unhappy, just hold it in your hand and remember everything will be okay. Will you do that?”

“Okay. I’ll do that. What’s your name, mister?”

“JD. My name is JD.”

JANIE AND I
sat on the bench and talked for a couple of more minutes and then her dad came through the double doors of the storage building, carrying the microwave oven. He saw us sitting together on the bench and made a face that reflected his mood. “Hi,” I said, “I was talking to your daughter. Your little girl. She’s a great kid.”

The guy eyed me up and down, then set the microwave at his feet on the concrete. His hands were on his hips. “Yeah, so . . . who are you?”

I tried to keep my expression even. “She’s a great little girl. We were talking—making friends.”

“Yeah, well, that’s swell. So how ’bout minding your own fucking business, pal? How ’bout getting up from that bench and leaving my kid alone? I don’t like her talking to strangers. That okay with you?”

“You know,” I said, “I heard you yelling at her before. You might try to go a little easy on her. She’s a sweet kid.”

He glared at me, then took two steps closer. “So, okay, how ’bout this: Drink your pussy soda and get in your little red pussy car and leave me and my kid alone. Think you can handle that?”

“You need to be nicer to your little girl. That’s my suggestion.”

Now he was walking toward me. His face was red and he looked ready for trouble.

I stood up. My intention was not to bust the guy up. I didn’t want to do that in front of his kid. So when he tried to push me, instead of delivering a blow that would break several facial bones and cause plenty of bleeding, I sidestepped the thrust, grabbed him by that arm, and used his momentum to trip him. When he was down, I slammed one knee into his crotch, then used them both to pin his shoulders. My hands were at pressure points at his throat.

“Have you got a cell phone, friend?” I whispered.

“What?” he croaked in pain.

“Have you got a cell phone?”

“Yeahhhh, I got a fucking cell phone.”

“Pull it out.”

I allowed him to reach down into his pants with a free hand and fish for the phone. He held it up.

“Punch in 9-1-1,” I said, easing the pressure of my hand on his throat.

“Wha for?”

“You might need an ambulance, and if that happens your daughter Janie is going to need a ride home.”

SIXTEEN

M
y next stop was at a Rite-Aid Pharmacy on Lincoln Boulevard in Venice. At the prescription counter I asked to see the pharmacist. The guy who came up to talk to me was a tall Latino wearing a white smock with a green nameplate on the front. It read “Roberto Galvan” in fancy calligraphy. He was young and hip and clearly gay, with two thick sterling silver ear piercings.

There was no one else with him in the department other than the girl twenty feet away at the drop-off counter.

I flipped open my New York City gold detective shield, then dropped the two pills from my pocket onto the thick glass counter in front of me. “Roberto,” I said, “I need your help. I need some answers.”

“Detectiff?” he lisped, rolling his eyes. “A New York City detectiff?”

“Correct, I said. ”We’re involved in an ongoing investigation. The person of interest we’re looking for has been taking these pills. Someone from his school sold them to him. Can you tell me what they are and what effect they have?”

Now Galvan was all business. Unfazed. “Company policy, Detective. I’m not permitted to give out that information. You’ll have to call corporate.”

He began walking away.

I held up the badge again and spoke loudly. “This is an emergency situation, Galvan. There’s a life on the line here. We need your help now!”

The young guy turned back and studied my face. Finally, he picked up one of the pills. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.

He stepped behind a tall partition. I could only see the top of his head. I wasn’t sure whether he was making a call or examining the pill. All I could do was wait.

A couple of minutes later he was back, holding a hard plastic cutting board. The round, light-orange tablet I had given him had been crushed to a powder on the board’s surface.

“Okay, look,” he said. “You can’t hold me to this and I can’t be a hundred percent sure, just by sight.”

I shook my head. “You’re the pharmacist. Just give me your opinion of what it is.”

“It’s lithium. The pill is in a generic form. Lithium carbonate. Is the person taking this drug also on antipsychotic medication?”

“No idea,” I said with an even face.

“There can be harsh side effects if this medication is stopped abruptly.”

“That sounds right. I’m dealing with someone that’s pretty unstable.”

The pharmacist eyed me again. “That’s all I can tell,” he said. “By the way, what’s a New York City cop doing in Marina del Rey?”

“Stalking an asshole, sir,” I snarled.

I swept the remaining pill off the counter. “We appreciate your assistance in this matter, Roberto. Have a nice day.”

I was making progress.

I HAD NO
intention of going back to my apartment. It was hot there and I wouldn’t go back at all if I could help it.

Back in Woody’s car, I drove the two miles along Pacific to the ramp at Santa Monica Pier, then took it down the hill to the ocean. Once on the Coast Highway, I headed north.

Fifteen minutes later I was in the La Costa area of Malibu, where a steep hillside of three-million-dollar homes meets the coastline.

I pulled up in front of a tourist-type shop, just south of the old Malibu Sheriff’s Station.

I got out and locked Woody’s Honda.

Inside the shop, along with T-shirts and souvenir key chains, Malibu calendars, swim fins, and Styrofoam surfboards, I found what I was looking for: a prepaid cell phone with a thousand minutes of talk time. I paid cash for the phone. I was now further off the radar.

HEADING NORTH AGAIN
toward Point Dume, the traffic was moving easily. Twenty minutes later, when I got to the back gate of Mom’s house, I parked fifty feet away on the street outside her wall, under a row of her tall fern trees.

This was not a social visit. I quietly unlatched her back gate, then walked quickly across the paved carport to her open garage.

Once inside I went directly to Jimmy Fiorella’s old freestanding metal cabinet that had been kept in the garage for years. It contained personal junk. Athletic stuff mostly. His three sets of golf clubs, the baseball bats and gloves I had used as a kid, and an old cracked and worn leather jacket Pop had worn years before when he hiked the cliffs of Point Dume in the wintertime.

On the only shelf were two of his old, broken typewriters and a thick canvas bag tied shut with a long strip of rawhide. I was in luck. It was still there!

Pulling the bag down I untied the leather strapping, wiped off the dust, then opened the box. The gun inside was a wooden-cased .44 caliber 1851 Army Colt. A presentation piece. Pop had won it in a poker game many years before from a neighborhood bulldozer driver and had promised to pass it on to me when I was still a teenager. He had taken the gun in lieu of a three-hundred-dollar debt. His bulldozer gambling buddy had never come back for it.

I had come to have a decent knowledge of guns over the last several years and was sure the old Colt was worth considerably more in today’s market—enough to maybe purchase the kind of gun I needed and maybe enough to spare to keep me going until I found out who had killed my friend, then evened the score.

I retied the rawhide around the canvas bag, then started walking to the back gate.

Halfway through the gate I stopped, realizing I wanted to check in on Mom. We’d been having a rough time these last few weeks.

I stowed the Colt in the canvas bag in Woody’s trunk and headed back through the gate to Mom’s kitchen door, then knocked.

Coco let me in, smiling. “James,” she chimed, “always good to see you. Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” I said, hugging her. “How’s the old girl?”

“She’s her usual self, James, working on a new chart; in good form, except of course concerning her blood pressure. Please come in and say hi.”

When I reached the patio Mom looked up. I walked over and gave her a kiss. “Whatcha workin’ on, Ma?”

She smiled up at me, then began flipping some pages. “Oh, I just started doing this man’s chart today,” she said. “He’s one of the richest men in the film business in Los Angeles and, according to this, anyway, he’s easily among the most strange.”

I looked down at the printed and graphed white sheets in front of my mom. “Did you get him from your ad in
Malibu
magazine? Those clients usually pay you pretty well.”

“I think so, but I’m actually not sure. His secretary telephoned, then put me on hold. It took my client five minutes to finally come on the line. He never told me how he’d found out about my work. But I am pleased to say I’m being compensated handsomely. By the way, James, did you hear about the two foreign girls who went missing at the beach near Paradise Cove? The paper said they were from Guatemala. They were nannies for a rich couple. It’s quite odd.”

“Yeah, I did. I heard about it at the noon AA meeting. Any news about what happened to them?”

No. They’ve apparently disappeared and no one seems to know why. We live in unusual times. Even a place like Point Dume isn’t safe anymore.”

“So fill me in on this strange new client, Ma.”

“Well, he has one of the most unusual natal charts I’ve ever come across. It’s a bit bizarre, actually.”

“No kidding. Who is he? What’s he like?”

“No names. Remember, he’s a client. But I can tell you this: his natal Pluto is in the eighth house, squaring Venus. It’s very odd. Violence and sexual obsession.”

I rolled my eyes. “Geez, Mom, right here in Malibu? On stable, conservative Point Dume? First the Guatemalan nannies and now your weird new client.”

“You have a tendency to trivialize what you don’t understand, James. It’s not your most endearing personality trait. In fact the earth—all of us—are undergoing a major transition cycle.”

“More Mercury retrograde, right?”

“It’s rather more complex than that. In fact many in my field see it as a day of reckoning, the possibility of impending transformation.”

Mom took off her glasses and stared up at me as if expecting bad news. “So, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company today? Dare I inquire into your financial situation?”

“I wanted to say hi is all, Ma. I was out this way so I decided to drop by.”

“Very thoughtful, James. Thank you. Please sit down with us and have a cup of tea. Would you like a sandwich? How about some pie? Coco made a nice mince. I know you like mince pie. I can put this chart aside. It’s not pressing and not due for another week.”

“Sure, Ma,” I said. “Pie and coffee sounds good.”

ON MY DRIVE
back toward Santa Monica I let my mind go back over what I knew—the swirl of disconnected crap that had invaded my life over the last half month.

1. Over two weeks ago I’d chased down a crazy woman (impersonating a man) in a yellow Porsche convertible on my way home from a job interview. Then, after that, I had caught up to her at Guido’s Restaurant and evened things up. The woman had threatened me with death.

2. Three days later my mother’s car had been torched down the street from Sherman Toyota. Perp still unknown.

3. My biggest sale at the car dealership had turned out to be a scam—identity theft. My commission was lost.

4. I’d found my friend’s mangled and tortured body.

5. I was suddenly fired from my job for not divulging information the car dealer should not have had access to.

6. I’d met Vikki and begun an affair, for better or worse.

The swirl of sudden complications could not all have been coincidence. I didn’t believe in coincidence. Somehow I’d made it to the top of someone’s shit list. The question was who and how.

WHEN I REACHED
the Cross Creek shopping center I turned left at the light. My job now was to find out if there was a potential link between the crazy girl in the Porsche and the other stuff. I needed to get as much information as I could about the incident on the Coast Highway and the confrontation with the woman at Guido’s Restaurant.

After parking Woody’s Honda, I approached the two red-jacketed valet-parking guys, who appeared to be ready to change shifts.

Fishing in my pocket I came up with a ten-dollar bill.

“Hey,” I said to the good-looking blond surfer type, whose nametag read “Tim,” “I could use your help.”

Tim smiled. “Sooo . . . what’s up? You a cop?”

“Cops don’t hand out money, Timster,” I said holding up the folded bill but making sure the number ten on it was covered by my thumb.

“Okay, so whose chimp do I have to screw while you film me? Ha ha.”

“I’m doing backup work on an investigation. A couple of weeks ago a yellow Porsche got vandalized here on your lot. I need some details about the Porsche and the driver. Can you help me out?”

Tim looked at the folded bill in my hand. “Sure, I guess so. I remember filling out the insurance papers with the other guys who came out from town. I’m pretty sure I’ve still got my copy in my truck.” He pointed. “Over there. You from the insurance too?”

“I’m following up,” I said. “Double-checking the details.”

We walked to Tim’s yellow truck, which had a surfboard rack in the bed. He chirped the driver’s door open. After fishing around in a plastic file box on the floorboard, he came up with a duplicate yellow form. He handed it to me. “There ya go,” he said. “Now, I’ll take my money.”

“Thanks,” I said, handing him the bill. “Do you need the form back?”

Tim unfolded the bill, then sneered. “Geez, pal, you’re quite the big spender. A guy can’t take a leak in this town for ten bucks.”

“Sorry. Next time I’ll bring the gold watch.”

“Yeah, whatever. Anyway, they said that the car insurance is gonna take care of the damage, so the restaurant skated and no one blamed us. So, you know, no biggie.”

Opening the yellow insurance form I read down the checked boxes. The policy number was there but the Porsche owner’s name was nowhere on it.

“What we have is a zero here, Tim. There’s no plate number. I need to confirm the owner’s information. How about the tow truck? The car was towed. Who did the owner call? Or did you call the truck yourself?”

“Auto Club, as far as I know,” says Tim.

“Well,” I said back, writing the information down, “that’s a beginning. I can start there.”

“Did you need the name of the driver?”

I scratched my head. “That’s why I’m here, Timster. I did say ‘owner’s information,’ didn’t I? I sorta thought you’d put that together on your own.”

“Hey, sorry. Ha ha. Well, okay, the car belongs to that producer guy, Karl Swan. His daughter Sydnye was driving it that day. They live on Point Dume. The big mansion with the gate on Grey Fox.”

“That’s what I’d call helpful, Tim.”

“She never smiles. She’s been here quite a few times. And she tips like for shit, too. Mikee helped her for an hour and a half that day. Made calls for her, got her two cold glasses of water—and guess what Mikee gets for his trouble?”

“What did Mikee get, Tim?”

“Zippo! Not even a friggin’ thank you.”

Back in Woody’s Honda I now had what I needed. I started the engine. “Bingo!” I said out loud.

IN SANTA MONICA,
at Ace Loans Pawn Shop on Lincoln Boulevard, I parked at a meter, then used my fake Handicapped placard to avoid dropping quarters into the meter. I stuffed my snub-nose under the front seat, then went inside with my dad’s Colt in the canvas bag under my arm.

The store had strong overhead fluorescent lights fastened to the high ceiling by long chains. It was empty of customers but packed floor to ceiling with pawned junk.

The guy behind the counter was on the phone. I looked around for a few minutes at the watches and jewelry and knives in the showcases until he’d hung up, then I took the boxed Colt out of its canvas bag and set the box on the counter between me and the uncle who wore rimless glasses balanced on his forehead.

“I want to sell this gun,” I said.

The middle-aged unsmiling guy reached under the counter and pulled out a rubber-tipped kind of screwdriver. He flipped his specs down onto his nose, then opened the case that held the gun, using this tool to prevent scratching the antique finish of the box.