hands. The passenger fired the wadded-up white paper bag into the shrubs around the apartments. They turned up the music. Marimbas. I went with the kid.
He cruised back toward Barrington, then left on San Vicente to Wilshire and the San Diego Freeway, north. I stayed three or four cars back up through the Sepulveda Pass into the valley and onto the Ventura Freeway, east. He took the Woodman exit and headed to Burbank Boulevard where he pulled into an auto parts store, running in like he was in a hurry. I swung the Corvette into the Shell station across the street and stopped by the pay phone. I kept one eye on the parts store, fed money into the phone, and called Joe Pike.
A man’s voice said, “Gun shop.”
“Joe Pike, please.”
Five seconds. Ten, tops. “Pike.”
“It’s warming up. You feel like work?”
I could tell Pike covered the mouthpiece. When he took his hand away the background at his shop was quiet. “What do you want me to do?”
“There’re two Mexicans sitting in a dark blue Chevy Nova at 412 Gorham, just above San Vicente in Brentwood. Bad rust spot on the left rear fender behind the wheel well. I want to know where they go.”
“You want me to clean and dress them after?”
“Just the address.” With Pike you had to be careful. You never knew when he meant it.
I followed my man back down Woodman to the freeway again, up and east until the Universal City exit, then down to the boulevard and climbed almost at once into the hills above Universal Studios. The streets there are old and narrow, built back when hill streets were poured cement and curbed for cars with high, skinny wheels. The houses are pink and yellow and gray and white, stucco and wood, old Spanish and new Ultramodern, little places jammed together on tiny lots, some bare, some shaded with old, gnarled trees and knotted vines. The 914 pulled into a small wood and stone contemporary on the mountain side of the street. I continued past around the curve, then reversed in someone’s drive and parked at the curb.
I took the. 38 out of the glove box and clipped it onto my waistband over my wallet. I got out and pulled on the jacket, then dug around under the seat until I found a roll of nickels. I slipped the nickel roll in my right pocket and walked back to the house.
The 914 was ticking in a little carport dug into the side of the mountain. The flat-roofed house sat on top of the garage and spilled to the right, nestling in an ivy bed as did so many houses in Los Angeles. There was a big plate glass window to the right of the door and a dormer window a little beyond that. The landscaping was uneven and shabby. Dead vines twined with live; lonely Saint Augustine runners purchased in bare spots along the unmaintained slope, outlining just as lonely sprigs of ice plant and cactus. Everything looked dusty: the 914, the carport, the brick steps leading up to the house, the house, the plants, the bugs crawling on the plants. Classy.
I crept up the steps to the door and listened. Murmurs, maybe, but impossible to tell if it was people or TV. I left the stoop and went to the right, creeping along on all fours under the big window and hoping the local rent-a- cops didn’t pick now to cruise by. I raised my head and looked. Living room. Big and empty and open all the way through to the back of the house. There was a kitchen in the back on the left and a freestanding fireplace just to the right of the big window. A shabby couch covered with something that looked like a bedspread stood next to the kind of bookshelves college kids make out of boards and cinder blocks. No books; just a stereo and some records and a big aquarium with green sides and too many plants and green around the water line. In the back, off the kitchen, there was a round dining table with spindly legs and two chairs. Newspaper sections were spread across the table, pinned there by a glass, a quarter filled with something I couldn’t identify. I was staring at the glass when Kimberly Marsh walked out of the kitchen and into the living room without a stitch of clothes. When she saw me she said, “Hey!” so loud I could hear her through the glass.
I waved at her and smiled. Then the front door opened and the Son of Kong appeared.
14
Up close, he was shorter than I had guessed, but his thighs and calves were thicker than in the picture and there was maybe a little more muscle across his chest. He’d changed clothes. His shirt was off, and he was wearing a pair of red gym shorts, so old and faded I couldn’t make out the name of the school. He was barefoot. There was a four-inch crescent-shaped scar on the front of his left shoulder and two long ugly zipper scars bracketing his left knee. The girl appeared in the doorway behind him, holding a sheet around herself. There were stains on the sheet. I said, “Hi, Kimberly. My name’s Elvis Cole. I want to talk to you about Morton Lang.”
She said, “Larry.”
Larry flicked his fingers back toward the house without taking his eyes off me. “Go pack. I’ll take care of this.” Larry’s voice had a whiny quality, as if he were a rich kid from a small town who’d been Mister Everything in school and was spoiled by it.
I ignored him. “I’m a private investigator, Kimberly. Morton Lang is dead.”
“Dead,” she said.
I nodded. If she was ready to collapse with grief, it didn’t show. “Yeah. We need to talk about it.”
Larry gestured to the house again. “Go on, Kimmie.” Kimmie. Okay, Jody. Let’s go, Buffy. He sort of nodded to himself, making a big deal out of sizing me up. “I got this guy by forty pounds. He’s mine.”
I said, “Larry, you wanna be dominant male, that’s okay by me. But it’s important that Kimberly and I talk about this.”
He shook his head. “Beat it, asshole.”
I pushed my jacket back so he could see the gun. “This ain’t like playing football, boy.”
He blinked, and the hard lines around his eyes softened, making him look even younger, then he yelled and came at me, leading with his face like a lot of ballplayers do. It only took him two hard strides to get to me, but moving so fast on the crumbly slope, his footing was weak and he was off-balance. I took one step uphill, planted, then hit him as hard as I could with the roll of nickels, getting some umph into it from my hips and carrying it up through my shoulder. His nose burst in a red and pink spray and he folded, stumbling and sliding downhill before the ivy and ice plants snagged him. He flopped around for a while, then grabbed his face and moaned. “Come on, Kimmie,” I said, “help me get him inside.”
We put him on the couch with his head back over the arm and gave him ice wrapped in a wet towel to hold on his face, then she went into the back to dress. While she was gone I filled a small pot with water, cracked in some ice cubes, and brought it to the dining room table to soak my hand. Larry stirred and looked at me out the corners of his eyes, trying not to bend his head much. “You hit me with something.” Sort of accusatory, like, You cheated.
Kimberly came back wearing a faded pair of cut-off jeans and a black POLTERGEIST tee shirt cut just below her breasts so her belly was exposed. Her body was lean and firm but she didn’t look as good as the 8? 10. Take away the lights and the makeup and the pose, her nose had an uncomplimentary bend to it and her eyes said nothing. Even with the tan and the dimple in her chin, she looked puffy and worn. Life in the fast lane.
I said, “Why are two Mexicans sitting on your apartment and what does that have to do with Morton Lang?”
She glanced sort of vaguely at Larry, who stirred on the couch, then struggled up and gave me the eye. I took out the Dan Wesson. “If you come off that couch,” I said, “I’ll shoot you in the chest.”
He stayed where he was, both hands holding the red-splotched towel to his face. Kimberly positioned herself between me and the kitchen door, thumbs hooked down in the top of her shorts. Posing. She said, “Are you the police?’
I put the gun on the table, took out the photostat of my license with my dry hand and held it up. I said, “Think back five minutes, when we were outside, what I said.” Beneath the smell of kitchen grease and fishbowl was the burned tar scent of marijuana and sandalwood. And maybe the metallic after-smell that ether leaves from freebasing.
She didn’t look at the license. “Oh, yeah, private investigator.”
“Right. That means I don’t have to be nice. I don’t have to read rights. I don’t have to wait for your lawyer. I
