Sanchez shook his head. “The patron has guests. Important people.” Sweat on his forehead mixed with the drizzle.
“If he’s got guests,” I said, “he won’t want a bunch of pugs standing around his living room. There’s twelve here. How many soldiers can he have?”
Pike’s mouth twitched again. “Didn’t somebody say that about the Viet Cong?”
The three of us started back up the hill. By the time we made the Jeep, the drizzle had evolved back into rain-heavy, gravid drops that beat at you, and thudded into your head with a sound I imagined to be like that of the hooves of bulls, pounding damp earth, earth damp with blood.
36
The Cherokee was thick with the smell of wet clothes and mud and sweat and fear. We eased down off the mountain under the canopy of rain, Ellen under the dash up front, me and Sanchez squeezed onto the rear floorboard, Pike driving. I’d wrapped Sanchez’s wrists behind his back with duct tape. I’d once kept a car running for years, held together by duct tape. There’s nothing like it. I put the 9mm between Sanchez’s legs and told him if he made a sound he could kiss them good-bye.
When the road finally leveled out down by the tunnel, Pike said, “Uh-oh, the Eskimo just jumped out and is waving at us.” I shoved the gun harder into Sanchez’s crotch and felt the drop-stick feeling you get from adrenaline rush. Then Pike said, “Ha ha. Just kidding.”
That Pike.
The Cherokee moved steadily forward for several minutes, then slowed and Pike said, “We’re out of the park. You can get up.”
“Is this another joke?”
“Trust me.”
We turned left into the heavy lunch-hour traffic on Los Feliz. When we were up in the seats, I stripped the tape from Sanchez’s wrists and rebound them, taking time to make sure the job was done right. Ellen watched Sanchez as I did it, her face empty. Maybe she was studying to be like Pike.
She said, “What did you do to my son to make him scream like that?”
Sanchez looked at me. He’d probably never seen her face. Just a woman with a bag for a head.
“She’s the boy’s mother,” I said.
Sanchez shook his head.
Ellen continued to stare at him as we eased to a stop at a traffic light. The pounding rain had slacked to a misty drizzle. A black kid in a big yellow Ryder truck pulled up next to us with his radio blasting out Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D Minor. Probably trying to found a new stereotype. Pike took a sandwich out of the bag under Ellen Lang’s seat, ham and white bread, and ate.
Ellen lifted the Dan Wesson and pointed it at Sanchez’s face. “Are you the one who murdered my husband?”
Sanchez straightened. I didn’t move. Pike took another bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed. His lenses were blank in the rearview mirror. Sanchez said, “I swear to God I know nothing.”
Ellen looked at me. “I could kill him.” Her voice was calm and steady.
“I know.”
The. 38’s muzzle didn’t waver. Pike was right. She had a quiet body. She said, “But we might need him to get Perry.”
“Unh-huh.”
She lowered the. 38. Something like a smile pinched the corners of her mouth. She turned around and sat forward, resting the gun in her lap. Joe reached across and patted her leg.
I said, “We should drop these two off somewhere.”
Pike said, “Where? Your Eskimos probably tapping his watch right now. Maybe they’ve already found the body.”
“This isn’t going to be easy,” I said. “It might go wrong.” Pike shrugged. “She can handle it. Can’t you?”
“Yes,” Ellen said. “Let’s get Perry.”
Five minutes later, we came to the massive mortared wall, followed it up past the gate, turned around at the side street, then drove back down. We parked the Cherokee off the road about a block from the corner of Duran’s estate. Pike got out, said, ‘C’mere, you,” and pulled Sanchez out into the street. Pike turned him around, then hit him behind the right ear with the flat of his pistol. Sanchez smacked against the Cherokee and collasped. Pike hoisted him into the rear seat again, then dug out the duct tape and put strips over his mouth and eyes, and bound his ankles.
I helped Ellen into the driver’s seat, then closed the door and spoke to her through the open window. “If anyone comes, get out of here and go for the cops. If they stand in front of the car, run over them. If you hear shots, go for the cops. If Sanchez tries to make trouble, shoot him. When you see us coming, start up and be ready to go.”
“All right.”
Pike slammed the rear door, then came around and looked at Ellen. He looked at her the way you examine something that you don’t want to make a mistake about. “There’s going to be killing,” he said.
She nodded. “I know.”
“You might have to do some.”
Another nod.
“You got a lipstick, something?”
She shook her head.
“Look in the glove box.”
Ellen bent across the seat. Sanchez moaned and shifted in the back of the Jeep. “Joe,” I said.
Ellen leaned back into the window. She had a brown plastic tube. Estee Lauder Scarlet Haze. Pike ran the color out, then drew a bright red line down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose and two parallel lines across each cheek under his eyes.
“You’re getting crazy on me, Joe,” I said.
She watched him without a word, and she held steady when he did the same with her. “Not crazy,” he said. “She’s going to want to forget, so reality ends now. It’s easy to forget the unreal. In a year, in five, she thinks of this, it’s all the more absurd.”
“You two look silly,” I said.
Ellen Lang twisted the sideview mirror so she could see herself, first one side, then the other. No smile, now. Just consideration.
Nobody said good-bye or I’ll be seeing you or keep a stiff upper lip. When Sanchez was secure and the doors were closed and locked, Pike and I trotted back up the hill toward Duran’s, me carrying the 9mm loosely in my hand, Pike the HK.
When we came to the estate, we turned onto the side street and followed the wall until we came to an ancient olive tree, grown gnarled and crooked with huge limbs twisting up and over. Pike said, “You remember what I said about the layout?”
“You look dumb with that lipstick on.”
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Just past the front knoll is the motor court. Main house with two levels. Guest house in the rear. Pool and poolhouse. Tennis court to the northeast of the pool.”
He nodded. Pike went up first. I handed up the HK, stuck the 9mm in my belt and followed. Water from the rain-heavy leaves showered down on us every time the tree shook. When we dropped down, I thought we were behind the Mexico City Hilton, but Pike said no, it was only the guest house, the main residence was larger. We followed the perimeter of the guest house toward the rear of the estate and came out by a small stand of newly planted magnolia trees. Three women and four men were standing around a sheltered brick barbeque off the poolhouse, cooking hamburgers. They were wearing sweaters and long pants and one of the men wore a hat. It
