The Butcher's Granddaughter (7 page)

It seemed Nick had gotten a new job. He was a cook in a galley onboard a boat called the
Azure Mosaic
. She actually called it a “boat.” Apparently he was getting paid very well—bought her a pearl necklace and the new Hyundai that now sat stolen in the parking lot of Big-O Tires.

The next two entries—she wrote every day—brought two interesting bits of news. The first was that she was doing a little art brokering behind her daddy’s back, and was selling some pieces to Cynthia’s interior decorator through the business she felt her father had stolen from her. Nick needed a job, and she mentioned it to the decorator, who got Nick the galley position.

The second thing bothered me a little. As far as I could tell, she was totally clueless as to what went on when Cynthia Ming threw the party. Either Nick didn’t know, or wasn’t filling her in—it wouldn’t be unusual for the Mistress of Ceremonies to keep her staff in the dark. But the staff of anyplace was usually the first to get wind of something. And eventually Denise started to catch on.

By the end of April, she’d been on the boat twice, and was well-received by all perverts on board. There was a very cheery attitude toward child-prostitution on the
Azure Mosaic
—men in tuxedoes, beautiful girls smiling everywhere—and Denise seemed to be worried about the competition. She didn’t want Nick’s fire hydrant to be uncapped by anybody but her. She knew what went on, and referred to the working girls as “the others” or simply “them.” She never referred to any one of them by name, so I assumed she never made it off of “A” Deck. The entry dated May 1 described how the interior decorator had “fucked up” Nick’s cabin.

All told, Denise knew what was going on, but only went on board for love. The kind that doesn’t have an hourly rate.

I had been bent over the diary for only ten minutes, but my neck was stiff with tension, and I stretched it as I pulled out a piece of tracing paper and unfolded it over the diary. Denise’s writing was loopy and juvenile and easy to copy. I went over a couple of critical paragraphs and folded the paper back into my pocket. Rick was going to love this. I stuffed the diary back between the mattresses, making sure to go up to my shoulder, and was struck with the smell of her again, clinging to the bed. She was no prostitute, not smelling like that. I smiled, glad my work was done, and stood up and turned around.

And cracked my nose on the barrel of Bob Waterston’s shotgun.

“Hello, son.”

I didn’t return the greeting. My right nostril was nicked and slowly dripped blood onto my lips. I licked a coppery drop into my mouth and let it mix with the taste of spit that had gone electric with fear.

“Walk over to the door,” Waterston grunted. I moved very slowly toward the hall, the shotgun a quarter-inch from my face. He was just a shadowy lump at the other end of the steel tube that glowed dully in the scant blueness of the room. “Slowly. Next to your shoulder. The light switch.”

I started to lift my right hand, and he hit me on the side of the head with the barrel. “The other shoulder,” he said impatiently. I winced and pushed the switch.

Waterston was wearing a silk paisley-patterned robe over a black silk nightshirt. His hair was almost totally white and set off a tan that was just pre-cancerous. A fairly serious crop of zits as a youngster had given his face a handsome aged ruddiness. The third finger of his left hand, wrapped firmly around the barrel about a foot-and-a-half from my face, had no ring. No wife in the house.

My nose had stopped bleeding, but the smack I’d given it made it numb. Waterston raised the gun slightly and rested the twin barrels on the bridge of my nose. He had one eye shut tight and was squinting down at the bead-sight with the other, as if he might miss from the distance that separated us. That thought brought with it an image of my head turned into a fleshy crimson smear on Denise’s wall, and my groin went numb. I distantly hoped I wasn’t pissing my pants. I forced the image out of my head and concentrated on the single, ice-blue eye peering down the barrel at my forehead.

“You the peeping tom?” he asked.

I said nothing.

“Not talking? I figured. Saw your ass the other night going over my fence, you little pussy. Think my daughter’s pretty do you? Huh?”

He put a little weight against the butt of the gun and pushed my nose cartilage into my skull. I shut my eyes and fought back a whimper. He released the pressure as soon as I had a headache. I opened my eyes. When the red and yellow spots cleared, he was still there, still one-eyed.

My mind raced. What the fuck was the old man doing here? Thirty minutes ago I was stealing his car—there was no way he could have gotten home in that time. He should be just realizing it was gone right now. Had he gotten a ride home with some of his cronies? And just left the car? Did the valets deliver?

I flicked my eyes around the room. Bed. Dresser. Vanity. Waterston. Shotgun. Nothing. Nothing in the whole room to help me. I toyed with the idea of switching the light off again, just sort of leaning against it with my shoulder. A trickle of sweat built up on my brow and dropped into my eye, salty and stinging, but I didn’t close it. I just felt it turn red.

Bob was giving me a lecture on Who I Thought I Was and Did I Think I Could Just Come Into Someone’s Home And Take What I Wanted. I realized I was hyperventilating and held my breath to calm down. If he was going to shoot me, he was a while from doing it. Robert Waterston is the kind of guy who has to get his two cents in.

“...and then I say to the officer, ‘I bet it was some punk kid, trying to sneak a peek at my Denise.’ And look what I got. A punk. Just like I said to the police.” He noticed my eyes darting around and raised the barrels until I was staring directly into them. “Looking for something, son? Trying to get a look at her panties there on the floor? I know, I know,” he went on, mocking me, “it’s tough for you perverts to control yourselves. Even with a gun in your face, you have to get an eyeful. Probably want to smell them, too, huh, sicko? That what you want to do? Is that what you were doing on the floor there when I walked in?”

The gun went back to the bridge of my nose and he paused for an answer. When none came he said, “Come in and get a hard-on over my Denise, will you?” And the click of the trigger-safety releasing echoed through the barrels into my eyes.

I shut them tight, feeling them trying to crawl back into my skull, away from the snuffing heat I would feel for maybe a millisecond. The skin at the base of my balls went tight, and my mind spiraled backwards, chanting
Oh Christ, he’s really going to do it, he’s really GOING TO KILL ME...

And then I was fighting. Not physically—my instinct had me by the throat, telling me that something was up, something was in my favor. It reached through the shrinking hole of reality in my head and interrupted me so strongly that at first I thought someone had literally spoken the word.

Drunk?

My eyes flew open like two sashes with broken springs. The numbness was gone from my nose, and Robert Waterston’s breath was wafting into it, fresh from a conversation with Johnny Walker and a couple of his buddies.

His speech wasn’t slurred, but his eyes were rimmed in red, and he was probably on the tail end of a buzz that was just turning into a headache. Not truly drunk, but possibly, just possibly, fuzzy enough. My mind clung to that hope like a slick steel wire and totally surrendered to instinct.

I opened my mouth, praying to gods I’d never believed in that whatever came out would stop him. I was expecting a scream. What I heard was, “Denise is in serious trouble.”

I blinked. Bob opened his other eye and did the same. Sense took over from instinct. I rocked very slowly back and forth behind the gun. The brass bead-sight followed me, but with an unsure, stuttered movement. Bob took a minute to process what I’d said and then turned my nuts back into ice cubes by saying flatly, “Liar.” He accompanied the statement with a little pressure on the butt of the gun.

I squinted with pain as reason took over the controls from raw sense, and I actually started to think. What would scare him the most?

“Go ahead, Waterston. Smear me. And see what your little lady looks like when she gets home tonight. She’ll need a lot more than make-up to cover up the damage.”

He growled and for a second I was sure I’d pushed it too far. Then the pressure was gone and he said, “Talk.”

“I work for Cynthia. Cynthia Ming,” I said to the twin barrels. “She runs—”

“I know what she runs!” he bellowed. His eyes were steaming with a father’s fear. I laid it on like deck lacquer as I went.

“Good. I’m what’s called a recruiter. I get dirt on the girls so they can be blackmailed once they’re on the boat. Once you work for Cynthia, you
always
work for Cynthia. And if I’m not back on the
Azure Mosaic
by two-thirty, I’m not totally sure Denise will be back here at three.”

“She’s not on that fucking yacht!”

“The hell she isn’t. Watched her walk right onto the gangplank tonight. And not the first night, either.”

The gun had slid from my eyes to my nose to my neck, getting more and more limp in his hands as I went on. I didn’t know where this was going, but didn’t care about anything but survival. One more push.

“You ever think,” I started, “that maybe Denise—” and that was as far as I got.

The gun dropped once more to my sternum, and I brought my right arm up and around in a wide arc, knocking his trigger hand loose and clamping my own onto the barrels just above the stock. He still had a worried-dazed look on his face when I sent my foot deep into the crotch of his silk pajamas. Both hands went to his gut, and he fell forward with a muffled grunt. I shouldered the gun, clicked the safety on, stepped on his neck, and rested the muzzle on the back of his head. Then I reached over and shut off the light.

Trying to kill the nervous tremble in my voice, I said, “Can you hear me yet? I know that fucking smarts.”

He wagged his head.

“Good. Listen. I’m going to leave now. But first I want to kill some of your bad ideas. Don’t call the police. They’ll never catch me. If I get wind that they’re after me, trouble. Use that million-dollar brain of yours. I came once, I can come again. You know I’m not bloodthirsty or I would’ve just dusted you and split. I just came after some information. That’s my business. You understand business, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he groaned.

“I figured. That leads us to the good news. I didn’t find what I came for. Know what that means? It means Cynthia and Denise won’t be doing business. Now or ever. Your daughter’s safe.”

I felt him take a deep breath and relax. A little.

“Now, as one businessman to another, do you see any reason why I’d need to come back here?”

A shake, no.

“Right. You’re gonna stay here for a little while, right? Maybe read some, have a drink. Relax. You’ve been through a lot.” I paused for a moment for no reason.

Then I jerked the gun away but kept my foot on his neck. “One more thing. Just in case you think I’m a thief, too, take a look around after I’m gone. Nothing’s missing.”

I stepped down the hall, Robert Waterston’s labored breathing following me until I dropped the shotgun on his desk in the study, shut the door to the patio, and broke like a maniac for the fence and the parking lot and freedom.

I had pretty much dried off by the time I took the long banking on-ramp from the 405 to the 110 North. The thoughts that had nagged me as I nervously cruised through the streets of Newport were slowly reasoned away. Rick would be pissed at the botch, but so what? Waterston wouldn’t call the cops, I was convinced—I had played the pimp-in-training to the hilt, and the most it would do is get that old whore Cynthia into deeper trouble. He had seen my face, but he’d also been shit-scared and slightly toxed, and I had been soaking wet.

In all, I wasn’t too concerned.

I should have been.

Chapter 4

Los Angeles is not a beautiful place. But the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen was there.

I could feel my circuits overloading as I turned the key in my front door lock. It went too easily. I was so tired I couldn’t remember whether I’d locked it when I left for Corona del Mar. I could still taste and smell the gun oil on my face. My hands shook. I had a headache that was almost visible.

The door was unlocked.

I froze while my heart rate jumped and made my headache worse. Then I unscrewed the porch light bulb enough to snuff it, and eased the door open a crack.

Li was there. Dancing.

Low music was drifting through the room and she moved slowly, delicately, in and out of the shafts of dense purple light leaking in from the high windows. She didn’t seem to notice me step inside and push the door shut. The multiple bracelets she wore and the zippers on her jacket tinkled softly against each other as she flowed, with no real rhythm, slowly back and forth across the floor. Her naked feet made gentle swishing sounds against the bare wood. On a good day she was probably five-feet-one, but her tights-clad legs were long for her body, and the light and shadows seemed to stretch her out into a long, swaying form. She moved into a column of light and spun with agonizing slowness, her back arched, the ebony sheet of her hair soaking up the purple light and releasing it again as a dull blue glow. She came out of the spin and dropped the jacket off one shoulder, and I decided that was as much as I could take standing up.

My hand was an inch from the light switch when she froze it with, “No. It’s so pretty, Bird. Leave it off.”

She lowered into a cross-legged position in one of the shafts of light and pulled the stereo’s remote control from a shadow on the floor. She flicked it at the console and the low, dreamy tones of Philip Glass were replaced by Bryan Ferry crooning about nobody loving him.

“How’d you get in?” I asked, wandering into the kitchen. It was just dark enough that I had to hunt for things by feel.