“Jesus, Jimmy. These are bears that got shot a hundred and fifty years ago.”
“Places are what they are. Just because some people came and shot all the bears and changed the canyon into an unofficial freeway doesn’t make it any less bear country.”
They came out of the shade of the canyon into the bright glare of Sunset and headed west toward the clubs where they had met the two girls who knew Joe Carver. “Keep your eyes open,” said Jerry. “We’re getting into the part of town where Carver used to go—Carver country. We could easily stumble on the bastard and end this whole problem. He won’t be wearing a mask today.”
“We’d be better off if he was wearing one.”
“What?”
“Well, neither of us has really seen Carver.”
“I saw him from a distance the night he was chucking two-ton Hummers at us with a crane.”
“You wouldn’t recognize him, though.”
“Yeah. So?”
“I was just thinking. A mask makes you stand out. So at the bank, Carver must have known everybody there would know it was him. The mask says, ‘I’m Joe Carver and I’m robbing you.’ So why wear a mask at all?”
“How the hell do I know what that deranged shitweasel might have been thinking when he went out to pull an armed robbery? He was with this madwoman who opened fire on us. Maybe he didn’t want her to see his face. Ever think of that?”
“Jerry, we’ve both met a lot of peculiar girls over the years. Did you ever meet any who would go anywhere with a man without ever seeing his face?”
“I don’t know. There are girls who will talk to somebody online and then agree to meet him someplace without seeing him first. What about them?”
“Think he met her online and said, ‘I love long walks by the beach, candlelit dinners, and discharging firearms at Jerry Gaffney’s fat Irish ass’?”
“This isn’t about me,” Jerry said. “It’s about Manco Kapak. Carver has it stuck in his head that Kapak is his enemy, and he’s concentrating on getting him in every way possible.”
“I don’t know. It just seems to me that it doesn’t make sense that this guy in the mask is Carver. He let Kapak see his face when he broke in, and that was to prove he wasn’t the one who robbed him the first time. Why wear a mask now?”
“Jimmy, by now you must have guessed that I can’t explain to you how this guy’s fucked-up mind works. He just does what he does.”
“That’s your excuse for not wanting to look at things too closely.”
“It doesn’t matter if it is or it’s something else. We’ve got a really simple thing here. We work for a guy, and he wants us to find out whether those girls know anything new about Carver. We find them and ask what they know. We’re not getting paid to persuade our boss that what he asked for isn’t what he wants. We’re getting paid to do what he asked, even if it’s pointless, like moving bricks from one pile to another and back.”
“This isn’t moving bricks. It’s killing a guy. I think it would be smart to figure out if he’s really the right guy. Otherwise, we take on a lot of risk and might have to go out all over again and kill somebody else.”
Jerry shrugged. “That’s what we do. And if we have to do it twice, he’ll have to keep us on the payroll that much longer.”
“There’s the club up there. That’s where we found her.”
“I don’t think she’ll be there this time of day. It’s not even noon. But pull over anyway, and I’ll go check it out.” Jimmy glided to the curb and Jerry jumped out and trotted to the front door of the club. Jimmy sat for a few minutes, staring at the club and reflecting on how bad a building painted black looked on a bright summer morning.
Jerry came out and got into the passenger seat. “Not there, of course. I know she works in a car place during the day. It’s not far from here.”
Jimmy pulled away from the curb into traffic. “What does she do in a car place?”
“Sells cars.”
“Yeah? What kind?”
“Toyotas, mostly.”
“She know a lot about cars?”
“I don’t know. I suppose she probably has to know something. I mean, people ask questions before they shell out for anything as big as a car. If you don’t know the answers, they’ll go to another lot.”
“So where are we going?”
“I’m checking it out.” He fiddled with his iPhone, poking the screen with his finger, turning it and tweaking it to enlarge the display, and staring at it intently. “Got it on the map. Her Toyota place is down La Cienega not more than ten minutes south of here.” He held the phone up to show Jimmy. “See that red dot?”
“Get that out of my face. I’m trying to drive.” But he couldn’t help glancing at it. “There are dozens of red dots on that map.”
Jerry pulled it back and studied it. “But only one is her red dot. Turn and go west on Santa Monica Boulevard, left on La Cienega, and keep going until we’re there.”
They inched along in traffic for twenty minutes before they freed themselves from the congestion. They were driving through the sudden range of strangely shaped hills south of the city that sprouted oil wells, and then in the flatlands that must have been swamp before the airport was put in. The businesses by the road were all big— plazas, carpet warehouses, car lots. Then they reached the Toyota dealership.
Jimmy swung his car into the entrance, found the visitors’ parking lot, and parked. They got out and walked toward the showrooms. When they were only halfway there, a trim man in his thirties wearing the pants from a dark suit and a white shirt and red tie blocked their way. “Hello, gentlemen. What can I show you today?”
“Not sure,” Jerry said. He glanced at his brother, then at the long aisles of shiny new automobiles in twenty shapes and sizes and a dozen colors. “You’ve got a lot of cars.”
Jimmy said, “Is this the lot where Sandy Belknap works?”
“Sandy … Belknap?” He looked as though he were trying to make out the shape of a distant object in a dense fog. The Gaffney brothers silently agreed that the man was a terrible salesman, that Sandy Belknap did work there, but that he really wasn’t interested in letting her get a sale he wanted.
Jerry stepped into the space in front of the man’s eyes. “Yeah. You know. Twenty-five, about five feet five with long blond hair, the only woman car salesman on this lot, and probably one of three you’ve ever met?”
The man’s body took a step backward without his volition, and his mouth began to smile, but not his eyes. “Oh, I know who you mean. Let me see if she’s here this afternoon. Maybe she’ll be free to help us find the right deal for you.”
As soon as he had enough room, he turned and began to walk quickly toward the showroom.
Jimmy said, “I don’t think you had to scare the shit out of him.”
“He’s going to get her. He isn’t standing here wasting our time and making us crazy with his pitch for a car we don’t want.”
“I don’t want to look like a pair of thugs. We should look like regular, sane people, and see if we can get to talk to Sandy.”
“Look what he found.” Jerry nodded in the direction of the showroom door.
Sandy wore a blue summer dress with straps that left her smooth, tanned shoulders bare, and as she came closer they could see a pair of blue stud earrings with small sapphires that made her eyes look bluer. She seemed to have recognized them through the big showroom window, so when she reached them she gave each of them a quick hug and an air-kiss. “Hi, guys.” She looked at Jimmy. “It’s Jeremy, right? And you’re—”
“I’m Jimmy and he’s Jerry.”
“Close. How have you been?”
It was clear to the Gaffney brothers that their first meeting with her was not coming out of her prodigious memory as clearly as she wished. “We’re fine,” said Jimmy. He stepped closer to her, shouldering Jerry out of the way, and took her arm gently. “I’m a little nervous about maybe wasting your time, because I’m not sure whether a Toyota is what I want.”
She looked up at him and gave her professional smile. “Don’t worry, Jimmy. No pressure. I’m only here to show you what we have and answer questions. Of course, I think that once you see what we’ve got, you’ll be
