“Good,” I said. “We're going in. Get out slowly and sweetly. Pretend your mother's watching and you want her to be proud of you.” I opened the door and pulled the gun back, aiming at his left eye. He climbed out very slowly, staring into the barrel of the gun like a man who sees his future unfolding before him and doesn't like the look of it.
When he was standing, I took his arm, pushed the gun into his neck, and turned him gently toward the curb.
“Sure hope you cleaned the house,” I said. “I get real edgy when things aren't just right.” He caught the toe of his shoe on the edge of the curb and stumbled slightly.
“Look out for the dog-doo,” I said. When he looked down, I reversed the gun and slammed him with the handle, just beneath the base of the skull. His legs collapsed beneath him and his forehead cracked on the sidewalk with a pleasing sound. Just to make sure, I clipped him again with the handle of the gun. He let out a wet little sigh and his legs twitched.
I tucked my fingers under his thick leather belt and lifted him, and he folded at the waist, knees and elbows dragging on the sidewalk. I hauled him like a badly packed garment bag up the block to Alice.
There she was, looking even dirtier than usual in the blue glare of the streetlights. I dropped Prince Charming on the grass in the parking strip, opened the back door, and yanked on the edge of the army blanket. A human being rose up from the floor of the car. I almost put a bullet through it.
“Hi,” Jessica said. “Where are we?”
I leaned my forehead against Alice's roof and listened to my pulse pounding in my ears. “You
“You can't talk to me like that,” she said indignantly.
“You're in Hollywood,” I said, straightening up and trying to catch my breath. “The next bus home is leaving in about ten seconds. Up there.” I gestured with the gun toward Sunset.
“Who's the basket case?” she asked.
“He's a guy who likes to use knives on little girls. How did you get here, anyway?”
“I went upstairs and then came down the back way and got into your car,” she said, looking at the pimp with the kind of fascination most of us save for scorpions and tarantulas. The pimp moaned and started to move. “Um,” Jessica said uncertainly, backing up.
“The tape on the seat,” I said. “Give it to me.”
She felt around for a moment and then handed me a roll of electrician's tape. I took it, put the gun on Alice's roof, and bent down over the pimp, who had begun to turn his head from side to side. I yanked his hands behind him and taped his wrists together. I taped them tightly enough to cause gangrene.
“Do you do this a lot?” she asked, watching.
“You're lucky I'm not doing it to you.”
“You're weirder than Blister. I don't really have to take the bus home, do I? Daddy says it's dangerous.”
I almost laughed. “No. But you ever do this again, and I'll have the goddamn bus run over you. Also, you're explaining this to your parents.”
“That's another day,” she said with the nearsighted assurance of youth. I was getting heartily sick of youth.
“Get out. Bring the blanket with you. No, no, on the other side. Come on, make it quick. He won't be out forever.”
Grumbling, she climbed out and came around to my side, dragging the blanket behind her. I lifted the pimp by his belt and heaved him into the back seat. He emitted a reflexive sigh as his midsection hit the edge of the seat. Lifting my right leg, I kicked him down onto the floor behind the front seat. He was on his stomach, hands taped behind him. I gave him a once-over, feeling like I'd forgotten something, and then tossed the blanket over him.
“Let's go,” I said. “Into the front seat.”
Alice started with unusual self-assurance, and we made a U-turn back onto Sunset. At Highland I turned left, heading up toward the reservoir.
“He's a bad guy, huh?” Jessica was as high as a kite, loving every moment of it.
“He's the lowest form of life since the slime molds,” I said. “Have you ever cleaned out the refrigerator and found stuff with green, smelly hair growing all over it, and it dissolved in your fingers when you picked it up?”
“Yuck,” she said. “Yes. Mommy made me do it the second time I went out with Blister.”
“Well,” I said, steering left, “on the Great Chain of Being, he's two steps below that.”
“Just above yellow snow,” she said.
“Right about there.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“You're going to stay in the car,” I said. “I'm going to have a campfire.”
“I was a Campfire Girl.”
“You're still going to stay in the car.”
“What kind of a campfire?”
“You'll see.”
We'd made a right off Cahuenga when I smelled something. It could have been Alice's brakes, but I hadn't braked lately. I'd worked most of the way through the litany of automotive malfunctions before I realized what it was. At the same time, I realized what I'd forgotten.
“Oh, balls,” I said, pulling over. We were on a quiet little winding street. “Damn you, Jessica.”
“Damn me? I didn't do anything.”
“You're here,” I said, getting out. “If you hadn't been here I'd have remembered to tape his goddamned fingers.” I ran around to the passenger side, threw the door open, and yanked back the blanket. The pimp glared at me over his shoulder. He'd worked the little butane torch out of his pocket and was holding it to the tape at his wrists. What I'd smelled was burning tape and singed blanket.
“Ah-ah,” I said, taking the little blowtorch from his hands. “Creativity is not always rewarded. Mustn't use up the gas. I've got plans for it.” I got the tape and passed it around his fingers and his thumbs for insurance. Then I rifled his pockets and came up with a couple hundred dollars-Junko's take for the evening-and his switchblade.
“Much better,” I said, slamming the door on his feet. The door swung back open, and he moaned. “Pull the feet in or lose them,” I said. He pulled them in, and I slammed the door again.
Five minutes later, we were there.
At that late hour, the reservoir was the picture of placidity. Moonlight gleamed from its surface, and no joggers plodded around it, chasing the waistlines of their youth. Except for the electrical carpet of L.A., spread out and glittering between us and the ocean, we might have been in the Donner Pass.
“Remember the Donner party?” I said, hauling the pimp out of the car by his belt. His elbows cracked against the ground and he made a mushy sound. “I didn't think so. Guys like you have no frame of reference. The Donner party ran out of mules or horses or whatever pulled their wagon train in a pass some miles northeast of here. Then the snows came.” I dragged him up against an oak tree, substantial but not too thick, and slammed his back against it. He grunted.
“Jessica,” I called, “the battery cables. They're in the trunk. Use the ignition key and bring them here.” To pass the time I slapped his face a couple of times. “After a while, the people in the Donner party did the only thing they could do,” I said. “They ate each other.”
“Big fucking deal,” he said. His forehead was bleeding where it had hit the pavement, and it hadn't done his disposition any good. He was still nobody you'd like to be seated next to at dinner.
“It was to the Donner party,” I said. Jessica brought the cables and I wound them around his chest and waist and passed them around the oak. He took a halfhearted kick at me, but his heart wasn't in it. He knew it wasn't going to do him any good. “You see,” I said, “they didn't have any matches. They had to eat each other raw. Imagine the emotional trauma it must have caused. In the twentieth century it would have kept a squadron of psychiatrists fat for years.”
“Fuck you,” he said. The sliced side of his mouth twitched in the moonlight.
“Hey, this is serious,” I said, tying a double square knot. “For you, anyway. She and I are going home when it's over. You're not.”
“What do you think you're doing?”
“Well,” I said, “for one thing, I'm getting even. But we've got another agenda here as well. At an earlier point
