Strip (8 page)

“What would we have?”

“Potential.”

“I think we do. Would your friend mind if you and I went somewhere for an after-dinner drink?”

“She’s my sister—a year older. Please don’t say you thought so. It’s like saying you had the right answer on the tip of your tongue. You didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t”

“So you’ve decided to be honest.”

“Yeah. To tell you the truth I never really looked at her. From the first second, it was you all the way. She was just the person who came in with you”

She laughed. “You’re such a liar. You have that plain, innocent face, and you never go out of character. Are you an actor?”

“Maybe I’m telling the truth. I’m a simple guy.”

“I saw you look at both of us the second we came in the door. When my sister turned around to sit down, you were staring at her ass. I saw you.”

“The mirror distorts things. I was probably looking at my shirt to see if I got gravy on it.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jeff”

“Show me your license.”

He took out his wallet and handed her his driver’s license.

“Arizona? You live in Arizona?” She seemed disappointed.

“No. I moved here a couple of months ago.”

She handed it back to him. “It says Jefferson Davis Falkins, all right. It’s also expired. You might want to do something about that before you get arrested.”

“I will. At least before I get executed. What’s your name?”

“Carrie.”

“I won’t ask for your license. But will you give me your phone number?”

“I haven’t decided yet. What do you do?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Then no.”

“I’m an entrepreneur. I invest in good ideas, turn them into businesses, run them for a while to prove they work, and then sell them.” He had heard someone say that on television and it had sounded good to him. “That’s why I don’t know yet what business I’m going to be in.”

“Is that true?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ve never lied to you before, have I?”

“No, never in all these years.” Her eyes focused on something beyond his head, and she quickly took a business card out of her purse and handed it to him, then withdrew her hand.

He could tell it must be her sister coming back, so he palmed the card and said, “When can we go for a drink? Are you free later?”

“After we pay our check, give me an hour to get back here.”

He nodded, pocketed the card, and then Carrie’s sister reappeared. As she prepared to resume her place at the table, Jeff stood and held out his hand. “Hi” he said. “My name is Jeff. I thought I should introduce myself.”

The sister looked down at his hand with distaste. “Why?”

He let his hand drop and she turned to Carrie. “Are you two friends now?”

“We’ve just been talking for a minute.”

Jeff said, “Is it okay to say I can see the resemblance now?”

“Resemblance to what?” The sister seemed suspicious, hostile.

“Each other. You’re sisters.”

The woman glared at Carrie. “We are not sisters.”

Carrie shrugged and smiled at Jeff. “We’re such close friends that it feels like sisters sometimes. This is Laura.”

Laura looked at Jeff with undisguised contempt as she picked up the check from their table. “Come on. I’m not feeling this. Let’s go.”

“All right,” said Carrie, and stood up. When she saw Laura start out for the door, she gave her three seconds, then said, “Remember. An hour,” turned, and hurried after her.

Jeff considered. He had to kill time until around 2:00
A.M.,
and Carrie was cute. No, she was actually beautiful, but she was also young and playful. He was aware that the number of men who had waited in some public place for some girl they didn’t know and got stood up was in the billions. He decided not to mind. It gave him something to think about while he waited for closing time. But he knew that most of the women who stood men up were playful and cute in exactly the same way Carrie was, and she had already lied to him once about her friend.

He stayed where he was and ordered a piece of pie and coffee. As he sat at his table drinking coffee, he wondered about women. There were girls who seemed to be completely sane. They wanted things a man could understand—maybe a good time she couldn’t afford but the man could, or sex. Actually, the sex they wanted was not so much sex in itself, but a nice friendship that might include sex at a future time. Or they just had an honest wish to kill a long night without being alone in a crummy apartment in a city they weren’t born in. But then there were these strange, incomprehensible women who wanted to play tricks and humiliate men they didn’t even know, who had done nothing but show interest in them. If Jeff had met a girl he wasn’t interested in, he wouldn’t have said he was giving her his number and really given her the number of the police or the YMCA or something. It was a mystery.

After he’d had two cups of coffee, he was nearly ready to leave. He went upstairs to the men’s room, came back down the stairs, and found Carrie sitting in the seat across from his.

“I was afraid you stood me up,” she said. “But you didn’t.”

“Never crossed my mind.” He took out a fifty-dollar bill, tossed it on the table by his check, and took her arm to guide her up. “Come along.”

She came. “Where are we going?”

“I think we said ‘out for a drink.’ But since you had practically nothing but coffee for dinner, we might want to go someplace that sells food.”

They went outside and he walked her to his Trans Am and opened the passenger door for her.

“What’s this car?”

“What do you mean—model? It’s a Pontiac Trans Am. It doesn’t look hip, but it’s got an engine and transmission and stuff in it that cost me more than most cars. It’s pretty fast.”

She looked at him in wonder. “My God. You’re a throwback, aren’t you?” She cocked her head and squinted at him. “Are you a good kisser?”

He shook his head. “Not as good as you deserve.”

“Amazing,” she muttered, and put her hand on his chest to make him hold still while she kissed him softly on the lips.

Jeff put his arms around her, pulled her to him, and extended the kiss a few more seconds.

She pulled back to end it, her hands pushing off against his chest. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“I felt the gun under your jacket, asshole. What did you have in mind? Were you going to bury me in the desert or the mountains?”

“That’s crazy. I would have told you about having it, but I never expected you to kiss me like that. I have to carry it as part of my job.”

“I thought you were a big-shot investor or something.”

“Not a big shot. But sometimes I have to carry money or negotiable securities. And sometimes kidnapping is a concern. That’s why the police gave me a permit.”

“Come on. The police never issue permits to anybody here. Try again.”

He sighed and shook his head in frustration. “You win. I’m a crazed pervert who finds pretty women and shoots them. Let’s leave it at that.” He shut the passenger door and walked around the back of his car to the driver’s side.

But she followed him, not satisfied. “Well, what are you, then? I never believed that entrepreneur shit. You can barely say the word, and this car … It’s all just ludicrous. Are you a robber?”

He was not sure why he was saying it, but he said, “Yes, I am. I was in the restaurant by myself because I like to get focused before I go pick up some money.”

He watched her face go through a series of expressions, one following rapidly on the other. First was fear, but fear had a way, once the person noticed it, to change to anger. Or maybe her expression was a simple fight-or-flight response, her body reacting with a huge release of adrenaline, and her face showing only that.

Her next expression was a widening of the eyes as she stared at him. The slight curvature of the upper lip that he had thought was going to be a snarl stretched into a grin. She laughed. “I knew it. I could tell you were, like, this outlaw. That is so cool. You’re a bandito. Armed and dangerous.”

“I am.”

She gripped his arm and pulled her body as close as she could to his. “You’ve got to take me with you.”

As he got into his car and started it, she rushed to get into the passenger seat and slam the door. In the second or two he was allowed to think, he supposed that her reaction to his real profession could only be to say “You’re scum” or “You’re hot.” He was amazed that she had chosen the second. It was even more amazing that it didn’t feel like good news.

“It’s not a good idea. People don’t want to get robbed. They just don’t like it. You’d think the sight of a gun would make them go all weak in the knees, and it usually does. I’ve robbed a few stores where the clerks were so scared they wet their pants. But that’s not always”

“God, I’d love to see that.”

He wondered about her, but only for an instant, because he needed to win this argument quickly before her heart was set on it. “But not always,” he repeated. “Sometimes the sight of a gun makes them so mad they look like they’ll explode, and then they sort of do. They try to kill you first. It’s not a rational thing, because even if they can see there’s no chance that they’ll succeed, they come right after you.”

“Then you have to kill them, right? Just open up.”

He wondered about her again, this time more seriously. Her face was so close to his that he couldn’t really see it all at once, so he wasn’t sure if she was just being ironic. Her eyes seemed huge, and he could feel her breath on his cheek. “Well, sometimes. I mean you have to be prepared for something ugly to happen. But you don’t actually want to shoot anybody. If you get caught they put you away forever, and there’s nothing in killing for you. It’s the robbing part that gets you the money.”

“Just let me go,” she whispered into his cheek. “I want to. I’ll do whatever you tell me. I won’t ruin it, I promise.”

She was so insistent, and she kept pressing herself closer, across the front console and in his face. It was flattering and erotic and confusing. He couldn’t think of a way to resist, and he wasn’t sure he even wanted to. “Let’s get out of this parking lot,” he said. “It’s a long time before I have to make a decision. I’m not pulling this until two
A.M.
”

“I understand,” she said in a small, earnest voice. “I really do.” She released his arm, sat back in her seat, and let him drive ahead out of the parking space and off the lot. He turned east on Ventura because it was a right turn and a left was more work.

He drove along past Colfax, then Tujunga, before he felt a sensation that was familiar, yet unexpected. He looked down to confirm that it was her hand on him, and then his eyes moved rapidly up her arm to her shoulder to her face.

“I don’t want to just drive around” she explained.

“You’re killing me.”

“There are two nice hotels right up the hill at Universal Studios.”

“Hotels aren’t a great idea if you’re pulling something.”

Her beautiful smile returned. “No?”

“A crime. You give them your name and your credit card number and they get a video record of you and your car. If anything goes wrong, there you are.”

“We can spend some time at my house, then,” she said. “It’s just up in the hills.”

“Where?”

“Make a right at Vineland and go straight up”

He made the turn at Vineland, then let the upward slope slow his car down. “Do you have roommates or family? A real sister or somebody?”

She looked at him but didn’t move her hand away from his lap. “I have a boyfriend.”

“A boyfriend?” He veered to the right and stopped by the curb.

“But he’s away. For, like, the last two weeks and the next three weeks. It’s a work thing.”

Jeff drove on up the hill, stopping to look both ways at each intersecting street. Everything seemed unnaturally quiet. He saw only a couple of cars in motion on the cross streets. The curbs were lined on both sides with cars parked so close they almost touched.

She guided him up into the neighborhood. “Turn left here, then a quick right. Now left up here. See the house with the brick front and the big garage?”

He turned into the driveway, and she stopped him. “Stay here but keep your motor running. I’m going in to open the garage.”

I
T WAS NIGHT NOW.
Since his visit to Kapak’s house, Joe Carver had been taking a more aggressive attitude toward Manco Kapak. He had come back early in the morning, driven past Kapak’s house, and looked at the signs on his front lawn. They all said
PROTECTED BY DEDICATED SECURITY,
and under that,
ARMED RESPONSE.
He drove to the Sherman Oaks public library and signed up for half an hour of computer use.

He wrote Dedicated Security an angry letter from Kapak. He demanded a full refund of the cost of the monitoring service for the past six-month billing period, because the alarm system had not detected a break-in or summoned the armed response. He said he also intended to sue the company for the cost of the alarm equipment in his home. He demanded that his security service be terminated immediately and warned the company not to bother him with other offers, but to simply send the refund check or suffer consequences he did not name. Then he printed out the letter and drove it to the post office to send it by certified mail.

Since his recent infusion of money from Kapak’s credit card, Carver was able to pay in cash to sleep in hotels around the city under false names, but he only did it once. He found that day that the new clothes he had bought with Kapak’s credit card helped to make him more acceptable to hotel staff and guests. Women seemed to be the ones most aware of the quality of his costume. His uncle Joe had told him when he was young that if he wanted to get people to take him at his word, he should spend the most he could on his shoes, watch, and haircut.

Early in the morning, Carver had gone to the Department of Building and Safety in the governmental complex at 6262 Van Nuys Boulevard and found the records counter on the second floor. The woman at the counter eyed his suit as she asked him, “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I wondered if I could see the blueprints for my house.”