himself a cup of coffee and stared at me for a while. “You think Lang took the dope?”
I said, “I think Mort’s lousy for it. I see him for the patsy. It’s either inside or it’s Garrett Rice or it’s both. I’m thinking Duran’s guys would be smarter than to try to screw the old man, so that puts it on Rice.”
Poitras nodded. “We been trying to find him.”
“Aha.” My voice was loud.
Poitras looked at me. He didn’t like what he saw a whole lot. “We talked with your friend Kimberly Marsh. Her boyfriend looked like he’d had a little trouble.”
“Clumsy, that guy.” It was getting tough to stand up straight, but I was doing okay.
Poitras said, “You think she had anything to do with it?”
“She’d go for it,” I said. “Only she had no way to get away with it. Party like that, she’d be dressed sexy, showing as much skin as she could, no big pockets, no big purse, no way to hide four and a half pounds of dust.”
He tapped his belt some more. “So now Duran has the boy.”
I took more of the scotch and looked across the dining area out the glass doors. A police helicopter was pulling a tight orbit somewhere over Hollywood, its big spot tracking something on the ground.
Poitras said, “You asked me how much weight Duran could carry, remember? That was when I asked you if this had anything to do with Morton Lang, and you lied?”
I looked at him. He was angry. He was also out of focus.
“We’ve got files since 1964 connecting Duran to the Rudy Gambino family, operating out of Phoenix and Los Angeles,” he said. “He’s what the feds call a clean associate. Duran won’t set up a dope deal or muscle into a business, but he invests through a guy like Gambino. The feds have been trying to bust Duran for years, only they can’t because he keeps himself clean. They’ve got him placed as an investor with dope up from Colombia, with hotel kickbacks in Phoenix and Tucson. He owns a couple of banks in Mexico City and he’s on the board of a bank in New Orleans. Gambino launders his Gulf Coast pornography take through Duran’s New Orleans bank and gives Duran a cut. It goes on like that. This give you some idea what kind of weight he can handle?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Poitras walked away from me, back into the living room. “Mrs. Lang, who was the man who came and took your son?”
She said, “I don’t think they called him by name. He spoke to the other men in Spanish, then he told Perry they were leaving. He said that in English with a different accent. It wasn’t Spanish.”
“That would be the Eskimo,” I said.
Poitras said to her, “Did you see anyone who might’ve been Domingo Duran, or did any of the men in the house refer to him?”
She looked at me with a little bit of the fear back in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“He isn’t liking it. He’s coming in late in the game and we’ve got bad cards.”
“You got no cards at all.” Poitras looked big and grim and ominous, like the Michelin Man with a bad headache. He said, “You should’ve put me in on this as soon as you suspected, Elvis.”
Ellen Lang said, “What’re you talking about? What’s wrong?” The first bright tinge of panic.
I said, “What’s wrong is that Duran can beat what we have. He’s kept himself away from it except for me and he can beat my story easy enough if people in the right place are willing to say the wrong thing. They will be. My statement gives the cops probable cause to go in to Duran’s, but Duran won’t have Perry in his home. He’ll deny everything, and all we’ve done is jeopardize Perry with nothing but a guy named Sanchez to show for it.” It came out harder than I liked, but I was angry with Poitras and too drunk to handle it.
Lou said, “That’s about it.”
Ellen Lang got white and the corner of her mouth with the red mark began to tremble. I put my hand over hers and squeezed. Her jaw clenched and the trembling stopped. “I’m all right,” she said.
The phone rang and Poitras went back into the kitchen for it. I poured some of the Chivas into Ellen’s coffee cup and put it in her hand. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. “Trust me. It’ll work out.” I gave her my everything-under- control smile. She didn’t look convinced. Maybe it’s tough for a drunk to look convincing. I saw the Eskimo put a size 18 hand on the boy’s shoulder. I saw them walk out to the long black limo. I saw the limo disappearing into the high desert hills. I saw Domingo Duran, jabbing his sword toward the hills, saying Then other men will come, and put your body there, where you will not be found.
I spilled another inch of Chivas into my glass, then went into the kitchen so Ellen Lang couldn’t see me drink it. Poitras was talking in that low mumble cops use that only other cops can hear and understand. After a while he hung up and said, “Okay. You left two in the house, like you thought. Fat guy in the hall and another one in the living room. The house is listed to a man named Louis Foley. The neighbors up there say Foley moved to Seattle two months ago and that the house has been up for sale. Your guys probably just pulled up the sign and cracked the lock box.”
“That’s great. They’ll promote you to Lieutenant along with Baishe for this kinda work.”
He looked at me. “You’re pushing it, Hound Dog.”
“And you’re acting like an asshole with that woman in there. She’s been through hell and all you got to say is a lot of bullshit about how I didn’t call you in and how we got nothing. Negative bullshit that she doesn’t need to deal with. She’s missing a child, Poitras. She’s lost her husband.”
I was very close to him. His big face was calm. He said, “Take a step back, Elvis.”
It was quiet in the kitchen with just his breathing and my breathing and the hum of the electric clock over the sink. The cat door clacked and the cat walked in. Staring at Poitras, I couldn’t see him but I heard him growl, low and deep in his chest at finding a stranger in the kitchen. I heard the snick-snick of claws on the floor, then the crunch of hard food.
Poitras said softly, “You’re drunk, man.”
I nodded.
He said, “You found the lady and you went in and the boy wasn’t there. You pulled the trigger. I know you, I know it’s because you had to. You wouldn’t have played it that way if you’d had a choice. But there weren’t any choices. It was lousy that the kid wasn’t there. You didn’t lose the kid. He just wasn’t there to be had.”
I felt my eyes grow hot. I took more of the Chivas.
He made his voice quieter. “You always get in too deep, don’t you? Always get too close to the client. Fall a little bit in love.”
“Go to hell.”
Poitras took the glass out of my hands and emptied it in the sink. He went out into the living room, bent over Ellen Lang, and spoke in that cop mumble. After a while she nodded and gave him a tiny smile. The cat walked over and sat by my feet. Snick-snick-snick. He stared up at me and purred. Sometimes a little love can be important.
Poitras came back and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed.
“Thanks,” I said.
He nodded. “Even drunk you make a point.”
I put on a fresh pot of coffee while Poitras made more phone calls, most local but at least one up to Sacramento. Between the calls we went through it again, and this time Poitras took notes. When the coffee was ready I poured fresh cups and brought one out to Ellen Lang. She had fallen asleep with the old cup in her hand. I went up to the loft, turned down the bed, then went back down. Ellen woke when I touched her arm, then followed me up and climbed into the bed still wearing the robe and the socks. She curled into a ball on her side, knees up, hands together under her chin. Fetal position, only with her eyes open. Large, liquid Bambi eyes. Something stirred in the empty part of my stomach, the part the scotch didn’t fill.
“I’m scared,” she said.
“Don’t be,” I said. “I never fail.”
She looked at me and then she fell back to sleep.
I went downstairs and found Pike standing in the entry. Poitras was in the dining area, the coiled phone cord stretched taut from his coming out of the kitchen to see who had walked in. Poitras’ gun was in his right hand hanging loose at his side. He stared at Pike a couple seconds, then went back into the kitchen to get off the phone.
Pike said, “You okay?” He was wearing a cammie Marine Corps field jacket.
