“What’s wrong?” said Salinas.
But she looked at Kapak. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kapak. They want you to go with them to see Mr. Rogoso.”
Salinas stood completely still and watched Kapak, but Kapak sighed. “Ruben, you’ll need to count the take for the night and fill out the deposit slip. Don’t put in a date. Leave that blank. Drive it up to Siren and give it to Voinovich, and he’ll put it in the safe. I guess you’d better call the office at Temptress and tell them to do the same thing. I’d like all the money locked in the safe at Siren tonight.”
“You’re not actually going with those girls, are you?”
“Rogoso wants to talk to me. Maybe he’ll tell me something I need to know.” He turned to the blond woman. “Where do these two want to meet me?”
“In the back of the building by your car.”
“All right.”
Salinas frowned. “Aren’t you a little … worried?”
“No,” he said. “Just take care of the money, and things will be fine.” He turned and went out through the security office and into the noise of the club. It was after midnight now, and the crowd was as big and active as it would be tonight.
He had lied about not being worried. Rogoso was a savage. He was a man without any sense of how a human being was supposed to behave. A couple of years ago, he’d had his first difference of opinion with him. Rogoso had sent a delivery of money to be mixed in with Kapak’s nightly take, and when Kapak had opened the bag, he had found blood had soaked into the top thirty or forty bills in each stack and dried. Kapak had met with Rogoso and returned the stained bills to him.
Rogoso looked down at the pile of reddish-brown paper, some of the bills stuck together and some not. “It’s just a little blood. You’re supposed to be the money launderer, aren’t you? Wash them.”
Kapak sat quietly without moving for a few seconds. “There’s no such thing anymore as just blood. It’s
“Could be.” Rogoso appeared bored and uninterested.
“I’ve already deposited all the bills that were clean in the bank, but not these. If this makes you short for the week, I can help you out. And I’ve already made out the check for the rest.” He took it out of his coat pocket and held it out to Rogoso.
Rogoso reached out and took it, then tore it up. “Don’t act like I’m some small-time guy. I can make my payrolls.”
“Do I need to know whose money this was?”
“He was my brother-in-law.”
Kapak had asked no more questions. He had simply passed over the topic and taken the first opportunity to go home.
Kapak knew he was being watched, so as he walked through the club past the surging crowd, he looked up at Takito the DJ in his glass booth and waved, and Takito waved both his arms and grinned. Takito was an almost unnaturally skinny Japanese man of undeterminable age. Each night he took off his shirt to reveal his stringy muscles and the impression of bones, tied a headband around his forehead, and began to play a selection of music that the customers seemed to think could not be heard anywhere else, all the while dancing behind the glass and shouting down at the customers. Takito already had enough notoriety to get lots of other jobs at after-hours clubs and parties, so he probably would be moving on before too long. For this moment—these few seconds—he and Kapak were useful to each other. Takito looked good, and Kapak looked brave.
Kapak stepped out the front entrance into the line of young people waiting to be admitted and made his way around to the back. The two girls were leaning against the hood of his car, waiting and smoking cigarettes.
He pushed the remote control on his key chain, and the buttons popped up and the door locks opened. The two girls dropped their cigarettes on the asphalt, opened the rear doors, and got in, so Kapak had to sit alone in front like a chauffeur. “All right,” he said. “Where are we going?”
The one over his left shoulder said, “We have to go the long way and make some turns to be sure your people aren’t following us. Okay?”
“I guess it’s all right, but I don’t want to be out all night, because I have things to do. You tell me where to turn, and I’ll do it.”
“Left up at the light.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror to find her. She was looking straight ahead, but the girl beside her was on her knees on the seat staring out the rear window, watching the traffic behind them. The taller girl had him make three turns in rapid succession, then told him to head west.
“Are my people following us, Maria?”
“My name is Ariana, not Maria.”
“Well, hello, Ariana. People call me Manco.”
“We know who you are, Manco,” she said irritably. “We came to pick you up.”
“Oh,” he said. “That means you two like me, doesn’t it? Do I make your hearts beat faster? Do you get butterflies in your stomachs when you see me?”
The two girls laughed, and then the other one said, “Stop making fun of us.”
“Oh!” he said. “What voice is that? Ariana, aren’t we alone?”
“You know we’re not. That was Irena.”
“Is Irena your imaginary friend? A lot of children have imaginary friends.”
“No, I’m not her imaginary friend,” Irena said. “I’m just as real as she is and more real than you are.”
Kapak took his hands off the wheel, pretended to knock his right fist on his head, but made the loud rapping noise by tapping the dashboard with his left. “Hear that? It seemed real to me. How could you be more real than I am?”
“Nobody’s taking me to see Rogoso. Pretty soon you could be a ghost.”
“Irena!” said Ariana. “That’s not funny.”
“Are you both afraid of Rogoso?”
“Yes.”
“None of the people who work for me are afraid.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I’m just making conversation,” said Kapak. “A lot of the time that means comparing one thing with another, or talking about the way things could be if they weren’t the way they are. How far do we have to go to find Rogoso? Remember, I said I have some other things to do tonight.”
“He’s at the beach.”
“What beach?”
“You know, the beach. Malibu.”
“That’s quite a drive.”
“Irena! We weren’t supposed to tell him that ahead of time.”
“Oh, who cares?”
“What if he decides he doesn’t want to drive out there? Rogoso will have Alvin and Chuy beat the shit out of us. At least.”
“Oh my God. You have a gun. Nothing has to happen that you don’t want,” Irena said.
“It’s not very smart to say that either.”
“Well, it’s true.” Irena sat facing forward. “Manco. Drive west to PCH and go north. Ariana will tell you where to stop. Okay?”
Manco shrugged. “I guess it’ll be okay. I hope you were kidding about me being a ghost, though. I don’t think I’d like that much.”
“She was kidding.”
Kapak drove toward Santa Monica, and when he got there he took the exit down the incline onto Pacific Coast Highway. To his right was the high bluff and to the left was the ocean, shining black at this time of night. “See the moon?” he said.
He heard the two moving around to see it. “Beautiful,” said Ariana. “I love to see it shining on the ocean like that.” Almost immediately after she said it, the first of the houses cropped up on the left. After that, for a time the
