“Sure, sure,” Morris said without looking around at me. “I'll call you when I figure it out. Maybe tomorrow sometime.”
I stood up, and Jessica stood next to me, yawning. “Don't bother leaving your number,” Morris said. “I'll get it from Jessica when I need it.” He darted an anxious look at her and then turned back to the screen. He was clacking away at the keys when we left the room.
“Nice guy,” I said as I started the car.
“You and my mother,” Jessica said. “He'd be great if his voice didn't break windows. He makes me feel like I'm singing bass.”
“Women,” I said. “Lift up, would you?”
She hoisted her bottom from the seat and I grabbed the army blanket she'd been sitting on and threw it into the back. I'd brought it down from the house when I left. I planned to use it later in the evening.
“What's that for?” Jessica asked, looking back at it.
“It's an army blanket,” I said, shifting into reverse. “I'm thinking about joining the army.”
“Are you going somewhere?” She settled back down into the seat as Alice's headlights illuminated the driveway.
“Yes,” I said.
“Something to do with all this?”
“Yes.”
“Can I go?”
“No.” We turned right onto Old Canyon.
“Why?”
“It might be dangerous.”
“Okay,” she said sweetly. “So you like old Morris, do you?”
“He likes you.”
“He likes anything that can wear a dress without getting arrested.”
“He's got a good head.”
“Except for the point.”
We pulled into her driveway in silence. She kissed me demurely on the cheek and said, “You'll call when I can do something, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“I think Dad and Mom would like to see you for a few minutes.”
“Fine,” I said, killing the motor. I probably couldn't accomplish anything for an hour or so anyway.
I followed her into the house and she told Annie and Wyatt where we'd been and went up the stairs. “I've got to work on my math,” she said.
Annie watched her go, openmouthed. “I don't believe it,” she said, when Jessica was gone.
“Maybe it's Morris’ influence,” I said.
They didn't particularly want to see me, but we talked for a while anyway, and then I went out and started Alice up and headed for the great department store of flesh called Hollywood.
17
I know now that what I meant to do that night was a mistake. I suppose I even knew it then, as I got off the freeway and headed north on La Cienega.
I told myself that I wanted information. I told myself that it couldn't hurt Aimee. I told myself that I didn't want to lose four days while Mrs. Sorrell was waiting for the results of her useless ransom payment. I told myself a lot of things and they were all bullshit. I didn't really want information. I wanted revenge.
What I was relying on was fear. I figured I was mad enough to make someone really afraid, and I figured that he was already afraid. Add the two up, I thought, waiting for a red light to turn green, and he'd keep his mouth shut and behave. I was wrong.
Because I was wrong, somebody got killed.
Half a block east of Jack's, Junko stood on the curb and trolled the traffic in a little white middie blouse like the ones Japanese schoolgirls wear. She had a wad of chewing gum in her cheek. She'd chosen this corner, I figured, because of the pay phone. I was parked across the street when the first John picked her up. She was cute enough that it didn't take long. As I'd guessed she'd do, when she finished leaning in through the car window and outlining her deal, she went to the pay phone-the one I'd used when I'd talked to Tabitha and her friend-and dialed a number. She said two or three words, hung up, and got into the car. Now Mr. Wonderful knew she was employed. Groceries tomorrow.
Almost exactly thirty minutes later she was back, smoothing her blouse and running her fingers through her hair. She bought a Pepsi at Jack's, like any kid, and resumed her stance at the curb. By then I was checking my rearview mirror every few seconds, but I was wasting my time. The change was still too small to bother about.
Junko got into two more cars while I sat there growing progressively more irritable. He had to come sooner or later. It wasn't smart to leave your walking meat on the street with too much money. Somebody might take it away from her. Or, less likely, she might figure she finally had enough in her purse to go home to Mommy. I wondered briefly about Mommy.
It was almost eleven when he showed up. He cruised to the curb, concentrated cool, in a vintage ’67 Chevy convertible with the top up against the weather. Junko handed the money in through the window and went back to eyeing the traffic.
If it hadn't been for the old Chevy's distinctive vertical taillights, I would have lost him. He passed Jack's, weaving in and out of traffic, swung up onto Franklin, and then cut left toward Sunset. I ran a light to keep up with him and then followed him onto Sunset, heading west, and then south onto a nothing little street called Sierra Bonita. I killed the lights as he made the turn so he wouldn't spot me. He pulled in to the curb halfway down the block, in front of the last of the old double-decker apartment houses, now flanked by four-story stucco affairs with balconies that were edged by waist-high hollow pipe railings that looked like the railings on an ocean liner. All that was missing were the life preservers. They wouldn't have worked in Hollywood anyway.
His car sat there at the curb, still dark, so he hadn't cracked open either of the doors. I took a repulsive- looking little.32 automatic, eight shots, out of the glove compartment and climbed out the door on the passenger side. I didn't have to worry about Alice's interior light: it had burned out decades ago.
I landed on my knees on the parking strip, feeling dried grass and weeds crackle underneath me. There was also an empty tin can, which collapsed with a squelching sound. Someone had thoughtfully parked a van behind the man's car, so I could stand up as I passed behind it. A carload of black kids careened by, Prince blaring from the radio. They shouted something at me in Urban Black. I used the noise as cover as I came up behind his left-rear fender.
I waited. I heard a sharp sniffing noise through the open window on the driver's side of his car. In another thirty seconds or so I heard the beginning of another sniff. I was at his window before it was over.
“Don't breathe,” I said, sticking the barrel of the gun up his left nostril. “Not in, not out. Otherwise, this thing might go off.”
“Yurk,” he said, glancing frantically up at me. The knife scar at the corner of his mouth twitched, a thin white line with a life of its own. He was holding a girl's pocket mirror just below his chin, and on it was a generous quantity of white powder. I leaned forward and blew the powder off the mirror. It settled, like the snow in one of those water-filled balls you shake up, onto the front of his greasy jeans.
“Remember me?” I said, pushing the gun another centimeter into his nostril. He started to shake his head, but I shoved the gun barrel a little further and he began to nod. “I thought so.” I looked past him at the old two- story building. “This is where you live?”
He started to shake his head again and thought better of it. Very carefully he nodded.
