“I got some new shampoo.” Sadie stepped into the shower. “Close your eyes.” He did and she poured a healthy amount onto his hair, then massaged his scalp, making lather.
“Feels good,” he said. No one had ever done that for him. He’d showered with women after sex in the past, but always before it had been in a motel and it had been get in the shower, get clean and get out-out of the shower, out of the motel room. Sadie couldn’t leave, this was her home and she wasn’t showing any signs of wanting him to go.
Finished with his hair, she poured some shampoo onto her hand and started up between his legs. This was a definite first and he was hard in a heartbeat. Then she was on her knees and took him in her mouth. He moaned with the pleasure of it. He ran his hands through her hair, fought against release, but after a few minutes he was unable to control it and he let go.
“Ummm,” she gurgled.
Then she was on her feet and into his arms, kissing him. He tasted himself on her lips and it tasted good. He was hard again. She laughed as he pushed into her.
Afterwards, over breakfast of coffee and toast, he asked her if he could borrow her car for the day. “I have to follow someone and they might recognize my van.”
“Not the cop who shot you?”
“That’s the one,” Horace said.
“You’re going to be careful,” she said.
“After last night, you bet.”
They traded keys and Horace took her beat up Toyota to Huntington Beach. He wanted to get the business with the Kenyon-Nesbitt woman over with. He needed the money Striker promised for Ma’s medical bills, that was true, but now he had something else to live for, some kind of life to look forward to.
Maggie pulled off the bedspread, rolled out of bed. She took off the pajamas she’d found in Margo’s bureau and headed toward the bathroom, ignoring her image in the full length mirror on the closet door as she passed. She didn’t need confirmation to know she looked as worn out as she felt. There might be bags under her eyes, but she didn’t have to see them.
After she’d showered and changed into a pair of the Levi’s and a sweatshirt she’d heisted from Nick’s apartment, she went to the living room, where she found Gordon sitting on the sofa, reading the Los Angeles Times. He lowered the paper as she came into the room.
“It’s a new day,” he said. “I’ve made coffee.”
“You look like you’re about to give me the third degree.” She saw a steaming cup on the coffee table. She picked it up, smelled the aroma. It was just what she needed.
“I am. You told me most of it last night, but now I want to hear it again. I want you to take it slow, leave nothing out, no matter how insignificant you think it is.”
She sat in one of the rattan chairs, sipped at the coffee, then started to talk. She told him everything, from when she ran into Nighthyde in the Safeway, to when she faced down the gangbangers last night in the warehouse complex.
“Now you know everything I do,” she said when she’d finished.
“So,” he said, “the Chicano cop Alvarez gets a long sought after transfer to London. The next day Norton’s mother commits suicide in Catalina and he quits the Frankie Fujimori case.” Gordon spoke in a quiet voice. “Two cops taken off the case. It’s almost as if somebody wanted it to fall through the cracks.”
“Maybe you could look at it that way,” Maggie said. “But even with Norton and Alvarez gone, it wouldn’t fall thorough the cracks, as you say. Norton was going to give the case to someone who would follow up on it. A Lt. Wolfe.”
“Wolfe?” Gordon got up, went to the kitchen.
“What?” Maggie said, following.
“I had a late cup of coffee with him the night before last. He’s the cop in charge of solving your murder.” He told her about how he was one of the first on the scene when Margo’s body was discovered and about his conversation with the detective.
The phone was wall mounted, next to the refrigerator. Gordon picked it up. “Wolfe gave me his home number and said to call anytime.” Gordon pushed buttons. “Hello, my name is Gordon Takoda. Can I speak to Lt. Wolfe?” he said into the phone. Then, after a few seconds, “I’m so sorry, I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. Please give him my condolences.” He hung up.
“That was his mother.” Gordon was barely breathing. “Lt. Wolfe and his wife were separated. Marriage problems, that’s what she said.”
“Go on.”
“Last night his two-year-old son somehow climbed out on the balcony at the Oceanview Towers where he was living with his mother. He supposedly climbed the rail and fell seventeen stories to his death. It happened sometime around midnight. The boy’s screams on the way down woke the neighbors. They woke the mother. She took her life before the police arrived. Shot herself.”
“Oh, my God.” She followed him back to the living room, sat in one of the rattan chairs.
“After losing his wife and son, I doubt he’ll be doing much police work.” Gordon sat in the other. Then, “It’s too much coincidence. Someone wants the police off the Fujimori case, somebody with a lot of connections.”
“They’ll just give it to someone else.” Maggie gripped her hands together, squeezed tightly. “That’s what Norton said.”
“What else did he say?” Gordon was looking at her with an intense look she’d never seen before.
“He said it would be given a low priority. As far as they’re concerned, Frankie Fujimori got what was coming to him. Wolfe would’ve tried to sort it out, but no one else will. He was clear about that.”
“It’s incredible,” Gordon said. “Somebody wants a detective taken off a case, so he kills a family member and the cop takes time off. Not once, but twice, if it works with Wolfe.”
“We don’t know for sure that’s what happened.” Maggie didn’t want to believe what she was hearing. “Besides, they couldn’t be sure it would work. And even if Norton or Wolfe took leave, they might come back and pick up where they left off.”
“Maybe, but probably not,” he said. “People get murdered all the time. A homicide detective takes a couple weeks away from his desk and a whole new batch of murders are waiting for him when he gets back.”
“But it’s so uncertain, why not just kill the cops if you want them off the case?” Maggie said.
“Killing cops is a big no no,” Gordon said. “Police get very upset about that. But an old woman commits suicide, who knows why, maybe she was depressed. A kid falls off a balcony, a tragic accident. His mother kills herself, more tragedy. But not crimes, nothing for the police to look into.”
“This is crazy talk,” Maggie said. “You’re making this sound like some kind of conspiracy or something.”
“It sounds like one to me,” he said.
“Come on, listen to yourself. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen!”
“I spent twenty years in the FBI and I’m here to say that it has and it does,” Gordon said.
Maggie didn’t answer.
“I spent a good part of my life wondering who killed Kennedy,” he went on. “I believe in conspiracies.”
“I don’t. I can’t,” she whispered.
“Maggie,” he said, “you were followed from the store, chased on the beach, followed from the police station by the black BMW, your car was run into the bay, this Nighthyde character came at you with a gun and the black BMW came after us again last night. Add all that to the fact Margo was killed and her body dumped behind a bar you’d left only a couple hours before and that ought to tell you the person after you is a little more connected than some crazy who walked into a convenience store and blew away a little shit like Frankie Fujimori.”
He got out of the chair, stood over her.
“And you put all that together with the one cop’s transfer and the bad things that happened to the families of the other two and you have a serious looking conspiracy.”
“Then we should call the FBI,” Maggie said. “They’d put a stop to this right away.”
“Yes, they would,” Gordon said. “If they believed you.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“Who’d go to the FBI, Maggie Nesbitt or Margo Kenyon?” he said.
