window. Then the blond boyo at the wheel slid on up Franklin and turned right on Outpost, into a residential area of tree-hung streets, big fenced yards, and lots of privacy.
If he'd looked back he would have spotted me easily, but he was busy. He needed all this privacy in order to deliver a to-go order to his nose, and that plus the demands of navigating the curves kept him fully occupied.
I reached over and popped open Alice's copious glove compartment. First I took out a pair of tortoiseshell glasses I'd found in a parking lot. They were mended over the bridge of the nose with white surgical adhesive. My ex-girlfriend, Eleanor Chan, said they made me look like Jerry Lewis. I slipped them on, refocused through the distortion of the lenses, and then reached deep into the glove compartment to pull out a small flat-black automatic with a big, very black hole at the end of its barrel. I dropped it into the pocket of my windbreaker and waited for the right curve to come along.
We hit it as we went back downhill. On either side of the street were high walls, protecting the folks behind them from exposure to all us drive-by riffraff. Pepper trees trailed their tendrils at car-top level, further reducing the visibility. As the white Caddy went into the curve I punched Alice's accelerator to the floor and rear-ended the pimp's car at about thirty miles an hour.
The whore's man was a terrible driver. He did everything wrong, hitting the brakes and crimping the wheel in the opposite direction. The car skewed around, out of control, and the front-left wheel jumped the curb. One second later, the Cadillac was half in the road and half on the sidewalk, and I was already out and running toward it, pushing my voice up into an unthreatening music-hall tenor.
'Oh, my golly, I'm so sorry, oh, Jesus, this is terrible, are you hurt? I don't know what happened, the car just seemed to jump, and all of a sudden there we were, colliding like that…'
The glasses had slipped partway down the bridge of my nose. I shoved them back up and kept coming. He'd opened the driver's door by now, and I saw the knife gleam in his hand.
'You fuckin' jackoff,' he said. 'That's my fucking spare wire wheel back there.' He put the knife hand behind him and started to climb out.
'Oh, I know it,' I said, 'don't look, it's terrible, that's the trouble with gold automobiles; they're so soft.' He had one leg out now, still holding the knife behind him, and I reached out my left hand to help him.
'But what's important,' I babbled, 'is no loss of life and limb. Are your limbs all right?' He looked at my extended left hand as though he was going to spit on it, and I pulled my right from my jacket pocket and touched the gun to a spot midway between his eyes. 'Say anything at all,' I said, 'and I'll put a picture window in the back of your head. Now, take your right hand out from behind you very slowly, and it had better be empty.'
He was cross-eyed looking at the gun. He licked his skinny little lips and started to say something. I poked him between the eyebrows with the gun barrel, hard, and he thought better of it. When the hand came up it came up open. There was nothing in it.
'Good boy,' I said. 'All it would take for me to kill you would be the wrong syllable. Since you don't know what the right syllable is, just don't say anything. Now, put your right hand on top of the steering wheel and keep it there until I tell you to move it.'
He did as he was told. His eyes kept flicking from the gun to me and back again. A car went by without slowing, obeying the First Urban Commandment: Don't Get Involved.
'Okay,' I said. 'I want all the money, and I mean every last cent. Use your left hand, keep the right on the wheel, don't even twitch it. I saw where you put it, so just reach very, very carefully into your upper-left-hand pocket and pull it out.'
His mouth knotted into a hard, ugly little line and the knuckles of the hand on the steering wheel were bone-white and bloodless, but he did as he was told, twisting his left hand awkwardly to reach the wad.
'Big man,' I said. My throat felt like it was paved with gravel. 'Big man who likes to turn the little girls out, put them on the street so you can drive your big white car and fill up your big white nose. Does it bother you that the little girls are going to die? Does anything bother you?'
His lips parted. I prodded him with the gun again. His pale, mean little eyes watered. 'Ah-ah,' I said. 'Careful. Now, hand me the money.'
There was a lot of it. I wedged it down into the pocket of my windbreaker and then looked up and down the street. Nobody was coming. 'Okay,' I said cheerfully, 'close your eyes and open your mouth.'
He was so surprised he forgot he wasn't supposed to say anything. 'Huh?' he said.
'You heard me. Didn't you ever play this when you were a little kid? Close your eyes and open your mouth.'
He looked at me like I was deranged, but he did it. Uncontrollably, one eye flickered open and then shut again.
'Now, now, no peeking. And come on, you can open your mouth wider than that.'
His eyes were clamped shut and his mouth gaped open, revealing broken yellow teeth. He looked like a bottle-opener. 'Now say 'Aaaaahhh,' ' I said.
'Aaaaahhhhh,' he said.
'That's the wrong syllable,' I said. I slammed him full in the face with the gun butt. Blood spurted from his nose and his eyes popped open, rolling crazily. 'Nobody said life was fair,' I told him, cracking him dead-center in the forehead. He slapped both hands over his face and I shoved violently at his near shoulder, toppling him sideways onto the seat. He was making a high-pitched, wavering sound.
'Big man,' I said, picking up the knife. 'You stay right there and bleed on your upholstery. If I see your head above the back of the seat before I leave, I'll put a permanent dimple in it. Got it?'
He kept keening, face in hands. The big man had wet himself.
I closed the door and went to the back of the car. He kept the knife sharp for the little girls; it only took me about thirty seconds to slash both his rear tires. I left the Caddy sagging despondently, its tailpipe touching the asphalt, and pointed Alice downhill. Before I reached Franklin, I'd tossed the automatic and the knife into the glove compartment and snapped it shut. I drove very safely; the LAPD is touchy about guns and knives.
She was where I'd left her, but now she was sitting on the curb. She had one arm around her knees and the other on Dulcita's head. When I stopped the car she didn't even look up.
I got out and touched her shoulder. 'Thirty-three hundred bucks,' I said. 'Buy some perfume.' I held the money out to her.
For a moment she didn't recognize me. I'd forgotten about the glasses. I took them off and put them into my jacket pocket, and her eyes traveled from my face to the money. Her face turned ashen.
'You din't,' she said.
'I sure did.'
'Oh, my gosh. He always searches me when he picks me up. He'll kill me.'
'He'll kill you a number of times. I also broke his face and slashed his tires. He's not going to be in a good mood.'
'What am I s'posed to do?' There was an edge of panic in her voice, and she looked up and down the street as if she expected him to appear, tires squealing and knife in hand, to julienne us both right there on the sidewalk.
'Here's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to take a cab to the bus station and buy a ticket for someplace nice, like San Antonio. He'll find you anyplace you go in L.A. Get a job in a dry cleaner's or something. Send some money to your mom. Say thirty novenas. Do anything you like, but get out of the Life and get out of here.'
'Sure,' she said hopelessly, looking up at me. She hadn't reached out for the money.
'Sugar,' I said, 'he's got wet pants, a broken nose, and two flat tires, but he's going to show up sooner or later. If I were you, I'd be heading east in something fast when he does. Anyway, you need a little fresh air.'
She reached up lifelessly and I put the money in her hand. As I did it I saw the scars, some of them old, some new and still scabbed, on the inside of her arm. The sun went behind a cloud. Now we both knew she wasn't going anyplace.
I squatted down next to her. Dulcita gave me a tentative growl. 'Okay,' I said. I was the oldest man in the world. 'I left him on the street just west of Outpost, about five blocks above Franklin. Take the money back to him and be a hero. Tell him I'm a creep who saw him drag you down the street and decided to act like Superman. He'll be there for a while.'
She fumbled with her purse and stuffed the money into it. 'Leave me alone,' she said. 'I'll get a cab.'
