Los Angeles Noir

He grabbed her arm. “You tell me.”

“Let go.” She jerked free. “So let me get this straight, you’re claiming the money is gone all of a sudden? The money from the accounts you set up, the money from the accounts you created passwords for? That money?” She glared at him, nostrils flaring.

“Oh, I see. Very clever. Make it seem like you’re the innocent here. When it’s perfectly clear you’re trying to pull some shit on me.”

“What about this, asshole. What if you planned this all along, come storming in here pretending you can’t find the Benjamins, and be all outraged and get me sucked in. Then send me off to look for the money and you take off with it. Shit,” she said, disgusted. “Without me giving you the backbone, you’d never have stolen that money. You’d keep being a glorified bookkeeper until you got your gold watch and your once-a-week handjob from your wife.”

“Shut the fuck up. I need to think.” He wanted to beat the truth out of her.

“You shut the fuck up.” She shoved him. “And get out of here. Now that I see what a pussy you really are, I wouldn’t go to the corner liquor store with you.”

He was shaking in anger. “Now you hold on.”

“Get out of her before I call the cops on your useless ass. You probably got all nervous and hit the wrong key, sending our money to some South American dictator’s account.” She laughed hollowly. “How the fuck could I have seen a future with you? You’re pathetic, Roger.”

“You’re not getting rid of me. We’re going to find that money together. This is my only chance, Nanette.”

“You’re unstable.” She moved to the door and held it open. “Leave.”

“I’m not going until I get my money.” He stalked toward her. “My fuckin’ money, understand me, bitch?”

“Oh, okay.” She slapped him hard. “Now get to steppin’. I don’t want to ever see you again. We’re through-get it, motherfuckah?” she yelled. “We’re through! Fuck you, your money, and your sorry little dreams.”

He popped her on the point of her jaw and she rocked back, dazed. He grabbed her arms with both of his hands and shook her. “I want my money!” he screamed.

She lunged forward and bit his ear as he reflexively turned his face away. He yowled in pain and let her go. Nanette ran and grabbed a screwdriver out of a kitchen drawer. “Get the fuck out of here or so help me, Roger, I’ll gut you.” Red washed her teeth and mottled her lips. The lips that all day he’d longed to kiss.

“Look, let’s-”

“Hey!” a voice called from below. “I’ve called the police on you two!” An approaching siren punctuated the warning.

“Get out of here,” Nanette repeated.

“What are you going to tell the cops?”

Her eyes were pitiless. “Get going, Roger.”

He ran from the duplex and ripped away in his car. The downstairs neighbor was out on the lawn, watching Roger go. Blood congealed in his eardrum, and some of it had dripped on his jacket and shirt. His cell phone rang, and he recognized his daughter’s number on the screen.

“Daddy?”

“Janice. Where have you been?”

“Waiting for you and Mom at the house. Aren’t we supposed to go out to dinner with your friends?”

“What?”

“Mom called me last Wednesday and said it would be good if I came down this weekend because it was your fiftieth birthday and she was having a party for you at this fancy restaurant.”

“She…” he began, but didn’t finish. “You didn’t have car trouble?”

“No. Mom told me to be home around 8:30. I got in town earlier and went and saw Ruthie and them, you know. I called her and told her that.”

Roger looked at his watch. It was 9:01. “And your mother’s not there?”

“She isn’t. I called her cell and got her answering message. Are you on your way home?”

“Yes, dear. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” They severed the connection. Roger was heading toward his house but pulled over on Venice and parked. He called their mutual friends. Nothing. Hadn’t seen or heard from Claudia. He called her friends. Again nothing. She was gone. He was sure of it. Took the money he worked so hard to steal. Roger got out of his car, dizzy and disoriented. He retched, vomiting into the gutter.

He sat on the curb, head in his hands, almost in tears. All his planning, his hope, his chance, gone. Claudia must have found out he was having an affair. She’d have searched through his BlackBerry, looking for a name or phone number. The passwords to the accounts were in the PDA. And it wouldn’t have been too hard for her to figure them out, as she’d chided him more than once that he used his mother’s maiden name, his favorite movie, or his father’s nickname way too often.

He sighed, and as if trudging through wet cement, he returned to his car. Driving aimlessly, he realized he wasn’t going home. Roger knew Nanette wouldn’t tell the cops anything since she risked trouble if he was arrested. But that nosy neighbor might have noted his license number. And for all he knew, the law was running his plate now.

He drove, alone and deliberate in his thoughts.

What if Claudia had a boyfriend? Had she run away with some young stud she met at the gym or that class she took at UCLA last year? Had she played him for the fool all along? Nanette’s phone numbers were in his PDA. Claudia was smart, she’d put it together and hadn’t given anything away. She’d waited until he’d amassed enough, and then took it from him like a vandal sacking a village.

He slowed near the 10 freeway and Fairfax Avenue. He hadn’t allowed himself to imagine the depth of the disgust she’d feel once it was known he’d stolen money and run off with another woman. But now he could be the hero. At least he could have that over Claudia.

“Your mother has done us wrong, Janice,” he told her after reaching her at home on one of his cell phones. He’d crawled through the hole in the cyclone fence to get down to Ballona Creek. It was an old tributary of water dating back to the days of the ranchos in this once small pueblo. But like everything else in this city, the creek was walled in with concrete. Ballona ran under the Fairfax Avenue overpasses from the freeway and meandered west for nine miles or so to the Pacific.

“What are you talking about?” his daughter replied. Then he heard a knock and a muffled voice. “Dad, there’s a man at the door saying he’s from the police. What’s going on?”

“Tell him your mother’s run off with another man.” Hell, maybe it was true.

“Dad, what are you-”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. She’ll get hers. I’m going to find her. I’m going to make sure she doesn’t get away with this.” He hung up and smashed both of his cell phones against the concrete walls of the creek. There were ways of tracking you with those things.

Roger started jogging through the shallow water, which barely splashed above his dress shoes. In nearby Culver City, there was a bike path that paralleled Ballona. He and Claudia and Janice had ridden it many times out to Marina del Rey. Tonight it wasn’t for recreation that he would travel it-this was his lifeline. He picked up his pace, arms pumping, legs churning. Ahead, in the dark at the curve of the concrete wall, something disturbed the water. Roger didn’t slow down. Be it a possum or human predator, he didn’t care. He was on a mission. Claudia would not escape him.

In the morning he awoke in the stale motel room with its walls bleached of color and greasy cracked windows. He took the toiletry items out of the black plastic bag from the 7-Eleven. Overhead yet another plane rattled the threadbare room. In the few pieces left of the broken mirror over the rust-stained sink, he studied his face while he lathered.

Wasn’t there more gray in those whiskers today? The bags more pronounced? And wasn’t that some gray edging into his temples? No matter. He had big things to do. Razor poised, having lubricated his stubble for the requisite five minutes, Roger Crumbler considered his shave.

PART IV. THE GOLD