Unzipped (22 page)

“Is she as hot as she looks on the Net?”

“Laney?”

“Yeah.”

“She takes yoga.”

“No lie?” He sounded a little breathless.

“Can bend in half like a pretzel.”

There was silence again, then, “God damn it, McMullen, if I get busted you’re going down with me.”

18

Fair play is all well and good. But knowing how to kick ’em in the balls can get you out of a jam nine times out of ten.

—Glen McMullen,
when Chrissy came home from third grade in tears

T
HE SKY WAS as black as sin as I sped down the 405. I turned onto Burbank and parked around the corner from Bomstad’s house. It was the perfect position, well away from my ultimate destination, but with a view of the top floor through the foliage. I had all of my espionage gear. A flashlight and dark clothes. Espionage, it seemed, was cheap to fund.

But I sat in my Saturn and waited for my heart to slow down. A dark sedan cruised by. I refused to look at it, sure the driver knew the exact nature of my plans and had Rivera’s number on speed dial.

But finally the car passed and I was left alone. It was now or never. I stepped out of my Saturn and shut the door. The sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead, almost loud enough to drown the frantic beating of my heart. The climb up the slope toward Bomstad’s front gate felt like I was ascending Everest. But finally I was there, panting furtively in front of the black wrought iron. Glancing about, I pressed my face to the bars once again and stared into the darkness, but try as I might, I could see no little red Cyclops staring back at me.

Who would have thought Solberg would be a man of his word? I gripped the bars in both hands and stared harder at the barely visible box.

“Can I help you?”

I almost screamed as I jerked toward the street. A silver BMW idled there as silent as a ghost. A guy in a white polo shirt peered at me from behind the steering wheel.

“Yes.” My answer came out in a pathetic warble. I winced, then went with the flow. “I’m sort of lost.” Even to my own ears I sounded as if I was about to cry. If I still had a modicum of pride, it surely would have made itself felt just about then, but fear had pretty much swallowed up any other sensible emotions. “I was looking for Julie’s house.”

“Julie?”

“Yes. Julie . . .” Crap. “Andrews.” Crap! Crap! Crap! “You don’t . . .” I forced a laugh. The sound was wobbly. I prepared to run. “You don’t happen to know where she lives, do you?”

“Julie Andrews? The actress?” I realized now that he had a slight accent. With my luck he was probably her nephew.

“No. No. Of course not. She’s an . . . accountant.”

“An accountant? In this neighborhood?”

I glanced down the street, hoping for salvation. It didn’t come. “She married into the mob.”

He stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “No. ’Fraid I don’t know any Julie. But tell you what, come have a sit, we’ll take a look round.”

Was he nuts? Okay, I realized he was good looking, obviously rich, and seductively foreign. But I had already crossed paths with good-looking, rich, and . . . Well, okay, Bomstad had been as American as fornication, but he had also had the bad manners to die in my office. A fact I wasn’t soon to forget.

“Thanks anyway,” I said and dug in my pocket for the pepper spray Rivera had given me.

“Well, okay then, suit yourself, luv,” he said and gave me a smile that, under normal circumstances, would have melted my intestines. As it was I just felt like peeing in my pants.

He revved his engine and zoomed off into the night.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against the fence. Down on Burbank Boulevard another pair of headlights turned north. I swore to myself, relinquished the defense spray, and scurried back to the safety of my Saturn.

In my rearview mirror, I watched the car turn east and disappear. I concentrated on my breathing. It didn’t help, so I turned on the AC and tried to stop sweating. Maybe I should have taken yoga with Elaine. Which reminded me, I had to talk to her about Solberg. It couldn’t be put off this time. I owed him big. I glanced idly toward Bomber’s house. Even if I didn’t scrounge up enough nerve to play cat burglar, he had come through with his end of the bargain. Maybe ol’ J.D. wasn’t such a bad egg after all. True, he brayed like a jackass and wore his pubic hair too far north, but he didn’t seem to have any weird attachments to his mother’s vacuum cleaner and he hadn’t once chased me around my desk like . . . But in that moment all thought processes teetered to a halt because there—in Bomstad’s upper window—was a light.

I blinked, then looked again, but it was gone.

Holy crap! Frantically scanning the house, I tried to convince myself I wasn’t insane. I stared until my eyes burned, then, just before they shut down, I saw it again—a flicker of light.

Someone was in Bomstad’s house. And it wasn’t me.

I glanced out my side window, maybe searching for some answers, maybe certain someone had set me up. But it seemed apparent that I had to try to determine who the intruder was.

Mind spinning, I reached up and clicked off my dome light so that it wouldn’t flip on when I opened the door. My hand, I realized, seemed strangely unsteady, but I managed the gargantuan feat. Foresight. I was proud of myself. But when I opened the door, the Saturn blared as if it were being carjacked. I fumbled manically, trying to pull the keys out of the ignition. They tumbled to the floor. A dog barked, jerking my attention to the east, but he was farther away than my frantic mind suggested, so I gathered the keys in spastic fingers, stepped out of the car, and carefully pressed the door closed. I couldn’t have made more noise if I had shot a cannon across Bomstad’s front lawn.

I waited, hearing nothing but the dog and my own heart trying to hammer its way through my ribs.

Between the branches of nearby trees I thought I saw a flicker of light again, but I was pretty sure I was imagining things this time, because it was pink and rising to the treetops. I didn’t think there was really an ogre breathing on my neck, either, but I turned woodenly to check, just the same. Sure enough, no ogre, which left me pretty much without excuses. I was going to have to investigate the house.

My legs felt as ungainly as stilts as I crept across the grass, and it was no simple task to shimmy over the wrought-iron fence. The spikes at the top poked me in the belly and caught at my sweater on the way down. Yeah, I’d worn a sweater. In September, in L.A. I’d needed something black with sleeves and didn’t want to snag my Dior just to keep from going to jail. In retrospect, that might have been a bit shortsighted.

Before I was halfway across the yard, I was sweating like a pig—which is a strange analogy because my cousin, Kevin the pig farmer, had assured me the porcine species doesn’t sweat. But he’d always seemed strangely defensive about his animals and may simply have been . . .

Holy crap! The light was back! I froze like a Popsicle, staring at the house. I was only fifty feet from it now, so I could hardly be mistaken. Although, an instant later it was as dark as Hades again. I couldn’t think over the sound of my own breathing, but a light had been there. I was sure of it. Wasn’t I? But what if I was right? What then?

Then I’d have to figure out who was in there. But how?

An excellent question. Maybe I should call Rivera. Tell him someone had broken into Bomstad’s house. Someone besides me. I winced. A noise scraped, off to my left. I didn’t pass out. Instead, after a moment of petrified immobility, I crept, breath held, off to the right, heart pounding like mad, knees weak.

If someone really had broken into Bomstad’s house, they’d probably gone through the back door or a window. Which meant they must have either known the security system was disabled or had the code or . . .

Something shone on the grass in the moonlight. Was it glass?

I think it was curiosity that pushed me forward. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t courage, and I have a bad feeling about good sense. Good sense, if I had any, was surely urging me to get my ass out of there as fast as my little wooden legs could carry me. But instead I continued to creep along like a demented monkey. I held my flashlight in one hand and my pepper spray in the other, but I was totally unaware of both. Nothing mattered but the light in the window.

Maybe this was a clue, a piece of evidence, a means of extricating myself from the position I found myself in. If I could learn who was in the house, I could surely use that information to—

“Don’t move.”

The voice was right behind me. I squawked like a pigeon and pivoted around, swinging with all my might.

I heard a grunt. Someone grabbed my arm, but I jerked free and swung again, terror clawing my throat. I felt my flashlight strike flesh. My attacker cursed and wrapped his arms tight around my chest. I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. So I did the only thing I possibly could. I bit him.

“Jesus Christ, McMullen!” Rivera growled. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

19

Sanity is highly overrated.

—Whack,
proprietor of Tats “R” Us, just before tattoing a heart on Christina’s left buttock

W
HAT THE FUCK are you doing here?” Even through the haze of terror and adrenaline, I noticed his tone didn’t sound very happy.

“Rivera?” My voice was as breathy as a porn star’s. I would like to say I was disappointed to see him. After all, he was the bane of my existence. And yet, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to bludgeon me with my flashlight and dump my decaying body into the bay.

Which couldn’t necessarily be said about whoever was skulking about in Bomstad’s darkened house.

On the other hand, Rivera
did
take my flashlight. He gripped both my arms, and none too gently, I might add. Maybe I’d sue for that police brutality thing after all. He had no right to—

“Any idea what the penalty is for breaking and entering?” he asked.

I jerked my attention in the direction his had gone. Sure enough, there was broken glass amongst the shrubbery.

“Hey!” I said, righteousness rife in my tone. So what if I had hoped to enter the house in a similar manner? “I didn’t do that.”

“Really?”

“Really!” I tried to pull away. Seems he was stronger. Who would have thought? “There’s someone in there.”

“Have you been drinking, McMullen?”

“There is someone in there!” I repeated, slower now, in consideration for his gender and his occupation.

He leaned closer. It took me a minute to realize he was smelling my breath. I gave him a shove. He teetered back a half a step but that was it. I’d been right about the percentage of his body fat. Nil. If I ever got tired of psychoanalysis I could go into psychic body fat testing.

“I’m telling you . . .” I was hissing now as I glanced toward Bomstad’s house. “I saw a light.”

“Here’s a little pertinent information for you,” he said, ushering me toward the walkway with a hand on my arm, “officers of the law are issued flashlights. It’s standard equipment.”

It took a moment for his words to sink in. “It was you? With the light? It was you?” Holy crap, I’d snuck up on Bomstad’s house only to find Rivera. What were the chances?

He pressed me up against some shrubbery. Little barbs pricked through my sweater. I’d learned shortly after arriving in L.A. that most of its vegetation is engineered to try to eradicate the human species.

“What are you doing here, McMullen?”

My heart rate slowed to a mere gallop and I realized we were standing really close. In fact, my hands had somehow landed on his waist. Maybe I was trying to fend him off. Anyway, even through his shirt I could feel the bunched muscles of his abdomen. It reminded me of my Batman dream, but I think I’d read somewhere that Batman wore Plexiglas armor during the movie. I was pretty sure Rivera’s abs were the real deal.

How long had it been since I’d been so close to that kind of muscle? Years, for sure. Maybe decades. Maybe I never had been. Although my old beau, Luke Harken, had had muscle to spare. Unfortunately, most of it had been firmly packed inside his cranium and—

“Jesus, McMullen! Snap out of it!” Rivera ordered and shook me.

I realized then that I seemed to have slipped into some sort of hypnotic state of shock. I shook my head, disgusted with myself.

“Listen. I saw a light,” I said. “I had no way of knowing you’d be skulking around in there.”

“Police officers don’t skulk.”

I gave him the look I reserved for perverts and liars, which in my line of work included most everyone I met. “I assumed someone had broken into Bomstad’s house,” I said, using my nose voice. “Thus, I—” I realized somewhat belatedly that my explanation might not justify my current whereabouts. I’m not sure if I should blame that tardy logic on hormones or stress. Or both. Both are good.

“So you what?” he asked, his tone deceptively level.

I found his gaze and rethought the idea of him bludgeoning me with my flashlight. “I didn’t know it was you,” I repeated. A mynah bird would have sounded as intelligent. “And I didn’t break the window.”

“Maybe it spontaneously combusted.”

I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was being somewhat facetious. “Be a smart-ass if you like,” I said. “But I didn’t break the window.”

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Back to that. It seemed to be a recurring theme. “Well . . .” I was thinking fast, or trying to, “you wouldn’t let me help with the case.”

He neither argued nor tried to justify his reasons. He merely stared. I hated that.

I drew my hands away, but he didn’t do the same. It would have been nice to believe he just liked touching me, but it could be that he thought I’d zap him with his own defense spray if he let me go. And I have to admit, the thought had crossed my mind.

“So I thought I’d just . . .” I glanced away. It was difficult holding his gaze, even in the dark, although I had absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. I hadn’t killed Bomstad, after all. And if Solberg wanted to disarm the man’s security system . . . But wait a minute. Maybe Rivera had shut it off and Solberg hadn’t come through at all. In which case I didn’t owe him any favors and Elaine wouldn’t hate me for the rest of my natural life. Which would be really nice, because the way things were heading I was going to need friends to visit me in Sing Sing, or wherever third-degree murderers went.