your-pal grin. “Listen, Eddie, I’ve got a plane to catch, so . . .”
Davis pressed the button on the garage-door remote in his hand, and the door started up, grinding and groaning. He tipped his head by way of invitation for Parker to go in. Parker turned a bit sideways, wanting Davis in full view. The guy wasn’t tall, but he was built like a refrigerator.
“So what do you want for this baby?” Parker asked.
“Eight thousand.”
“Holy shit!”
Parker stopped abruptly. Davis went another two steps into the garage before he turned around. The sun hit him in the face and his eyes went shut.
Parker pulled his gun out of the belt holster nestled at the small of his back, and, swinging with both arms, backhanded Davis as hard as he could across the face.
Davis’s head snapped to his right, blood gushing from his already broken nose. He staggered backward, tripping over his own feet, falling. He hit the concrete ass-first, sprawling, arms flailing, the back of his head bouncing off the floor.
Anger and adrenaline pumping, Parker stepped over him, leaned down, stuck the SIG-Sauer in his face.
“Eddie Davis, you’re under arrest for the murder of Eta Fitzgerald. One word out of your fucking mouth and I’ll beat you to death. You would have the right to an attorney, but you killed him too, so you’re shit out of luck. You got that?”
Davis groaned, turned onto his side, coughing, and spat out a mouthful of blood. “Jesus-fucking-Christ!”
Parker gave him a toe in the ribs, and Davis made a sound like a B-movie ninja warrior. “That’s for cursing,” Parker said. “Eta was an upright, churchgoing woman.”
“Who the fuck is Eta?” He sounded like Marlon Brando in
“The mother of four and sole support of her family you cut and left in an alley last night like a sack of garbage, for no reason other than you are a miserable piece-of-shit excuse for a human being. Roll over. On your face.”
Davis groaned, slowly turning onto his elbows and knees. Parker put a foot on his ass and shoved him down.
“What’s going on in there?”
Parker glanced to the side. A shirtless older man who looked like an albino walrus sat at the curb in a golf cart and Bermuda shorts.
“Police busi—”
Parker’s breath went out of him in a sudden whoosh as something hit him hard across the back and ribs. His body twisted away from the pain, and he tripped over Davis’s legs and went down, cracking one kneecap hard on the concrete.
Davis rolled out from under him, struggled to his feet, and hit Parker twice as hard a second time across the back. Parker fell forward into a motorcycle. The bike fell over, hitting a second bike, then a third. They went down like dominoes.
Parker pushed off the bike and went sideways. The length of tailpipe Davis had gotten hold of just missed his head and clanged off a chrome fender.
Parker’s gun was gone, lost in the mess of motorcycle parts on the floor. There was no time to look for it. Parker rolled and came up in a crouch on his feet.
Davis took another vicious swing at him with the pipe, but missed. He looked like a gargoyle now, face contorted, swollen, bleeding, foaming at the mouth. His eyes held the same dead-calm expression as before.
He rushed Parker, raising the pipe over his head. Parker ran backward into the nose of the Town Car, and rolled to the right as Davis brought the pipe crashing down, caving a dent in the hood of the car.
The old guy sat frozen in his cart, mouth agape.
Davis threw the pipe at Parker, got into the car, and gunned the engine. The tires spun and squealed, and the Town Car leapt backward, bashing into the front end of the golf cart, spinning it like a top.
Parker rushed into the garage, found the SIG, and ran back out and down the drive. The old guy had fallen out of his cart and was struggling to his feet. The cart was rolling down the hill on its own.
Limping, cursing, Parker gritted his teeth and ran for his car. With one hand, he caught hold of a roof-support post on a corner of the golf cart, and hopped onto the back end, where the clubs usually rode.
The cart raced downhill. Parker jumped off fifteen feet from his Sebring, and ran hard into the side of it.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” he shouted, tossing the SIG on the passenger’s seat, turning the key in the ignition.
Davis’s Town Car was nearly out of sight, skidding around a curve.
Parker peeled away from the curb and gunned the car down the hill. The golf cart swerved in front of him. He turned the wheel hard left, the back end of the Sebring fishtailing one way, then the other, taking out somebody’s white mailbox and a planter of geraniums.
When he came around the curve, Davis was gone. The road branched off into canyon side streets like streams on a river. Parker spotted no black Town Car going down any of them.
He pulled to the side and called Hollywood Bureau, giving them a description of the car and of Eddie Davis, telling them that he was armed and extremely dangerous.
Eddie Davis. That close, and now he was gone, running. Parker couldn’t know where he’d go. Vermin like Davis had holes everywhere. He would go to ground in one of them, and no telling when he’d come out.
Now he knew the cops were on to him. Maybe he would try to run. But he didn’t have the negatives, and he was obviously willing to risk anything to get them.
The negatives were the key to luring him into a trap. Davis had no way of knowing Parker had the single negative Lenny had stashed.
Parker tried to call Ito to find out if he had developed the negative Lenny Lowell had hung on to for insurance, but he got Ito’s voice mail instead. He left a message for Ito to call him ASAP, and hung up.
He needed to know what—or who—he was up against. Forewarned, forearmed. The clock was ticking for him to close the case on Lenny Lowell, and open a whole new can of worms. As comeback cases went, this one was shaping up to be a doozie. Ironic, Parker thought, that if he was right about the target of Lenny Lowell’s blackmail scheme—and the reason for the blackmail itself—chances were good this case would be his last. In a city fueled by fame and power, this message would be something nobody wanted delivered: the truth.
39
The media encampment outside the courthouse looked like some kind of techno-geek refugee camp. Lights on poles, generators, wire cable snakes running in all directions on the ground, guys in baggy shorts carrying video cameras with network logos, sound guys in headsets, on-air talent dressed to the nines from neck to waist. From the waist down: baggy shorts, sandals, sneakers.
News vans made their own parking lot. Satellite dishes raised up like strange, giant flowers turning their faces to the sun. Vendors sold cold drinks and cappuccinos, pita sandwiches and burritos, ice cream and frozen fruit bars, vintage bowling shirts and “Free Rob Cole” T-shirts.
The print media were the coyotes of the bunch, roaming at large, not tethered to cables, no need for makeup or lights. Photographers with multiple cameras slung around their necks and ball caps on backward roamed the grounds, hunting for an angle that hadn’t been used. Reporters perched here and there, smoking cigarettes, talking shop.
Parker punched Andi Kelly’s number as he approached the scene.
“Andi Kelly.”
“This is so 1994,” Parker complained. “Hasn’t anybody come up with anything new since O.J.? Isn’t there something more exciting to report on?”
“Celeb criminals are hot again, Parker. It’s retro reality TV. All the rage.”
“What’s next? The return of David Lee Roth and the hair bands?”
“The world’s going to hell on a sled. Where are you?”
“Between the guy selling bootleg DVDs of Cole’s television series and the Channel 4 news van. Where are you?”
“On the verge of a nervous breakdown.”
