Blues in the Night (6 page)

Lacotta approached warily to take the gun and slip it into his pocket. He led Mace by the arm to the parked car. He said, ‘Still got your temper, I see.'

‘Seems like,' Mace said, though it had not manifested itself in years. There'd been one time, during his first week at Pelican Bay. But not in the next seven years on the yard there. And not in flare-ups in the meanest bars a man could find in Cajun Louisiana. Just two days back in LA and he'd gone off. What did that tell him?

Mace got into the car.

As they drove away, he asked Lacotta. ‘You hurt?'

‘Naw. Maybe some burns on the suit, which is goin' direct to Goodwill.' Lacotta grinned, then started laughing. Soon he was laughing so hard tears appeared at the corner of his eyes. ‘I told you not to give that fuck the dollar, didn't I?' he said between bursts of nervous laughter.

NINE

S
tanding in front of The Florian, Mace watched Lacotta's Mercedes glide away heading for the Strip. After the encounter with the gunman in the park, he realized he was operating at about eighty percent of normal, but his reflexes were off enough to make him feel uncomfortable. The midday warmth had his clothes sticking to his body. If he were home, he could strip and dive into the bayou to cool off and clear his head. He thought about the Florian pool. Swimming trunks hadn't been at the top of his packing list. He supposed it wouldn't be that hard to find a pair for sale in LA.

His mind was on the therapeutic effect of a mile-long swim as he passed the entrance to the Florian's parking garage. Which may be why he didn't hear the clicks right from the jump. He was almost to the iron gate leading to the pool when he noticed the sound.

He did an about-face, scanning the area.

Nothing. No motion. No sound.

He took another couple of steps toward the pool gate.

This time, he was waiting for the click and was able to get a directional fix on it. There were only three vehicles parked in that section of the garage. The Jag sedan and the Lexus RX were sealed up tight. The grape-colored Cherokee with a bashed in front right fender had its windows rolled down.

Mace double-timed it into the garage and the Cherokee to find a panicked man stretched out across its front seats on his back, clutching a camera to his chest. The car was a mess of fast food containers, plastic pop bottles, rumpled clothes. The man was in his forties. Bald. His nervous eyes were tiny and slightly slanted. They, his off-white color, roman nose and high cheekbones suggested an ethnic mix too complex for Mace to sort out, even if it mattered. He was wearing faded brown cargo shorts and a yellow T-shirt emblazoned with the question: ‘Who Directed WILD SEX IN THE COUNTRY?'

Seeing Mace at the passenger window, he tried to slide under the steering wheel.

Mace yanked the door open, grabbed one sandaled foot and dragged the man out of the vehicle. The man's head hit the side of the car and the garage's cement floor, but he held the camera protectively.

Mace pried it from his fingers.

‘Th-that's my property,' he whined. ‘Shit, I think I chipped a tooth. And my fucking head . . . I'm gonna sue your fucking ass.'

Mace ignored him. He was trying to make some sense of the camera.

‘Be careful, goddamnit,' the man said as he got to his feet, using the car to steady himself. ‘That's eight grand you're holding.'

‘How do I get the film out?' Mace asked.

‘The . . . film?' The man looked like he didn't know if he should laugh or cry. ‘There's no film.'

‘What'd you do with it?' Mace asked, stepping toward him.

The man backed up, bumping against the Cherokee. ‘There's no film,' he screamed at Mace. ‘It's a digital . . . an EOS-1D. Top of the line.'

Mace looked from him to the camera. ‘The photos are on a disc or what?' he asked.

‘A Fat32 memory card.' He reached out a hand. ‘I can show—'

‘No. Tell me.'

‘OK.' He talked Mace through the camera's image playback set-up. ‘Hit that button,' he said, ‘the photo can be magnified as much as twenty-five times. At eleven point one megapixels, you can—'

‘These six shots of me all you took?'

The man hesitated, then said, ‘No. I took twelve, total.'

‘How do I get rid of them?'

‘Key that command.'

‘This one? “Erase all?”'

‘Oh, Jesus, no. I got over fifty shots in there. Even some of Gaga without the wig. Please. Just delete the snaps I took of you.'

Mace started on that, going one at a time, to make sure.

‘I can never figure you fuckers out. It's all publicity, man. I don't get why guys like you and Clooney try to take my fucking head off. I don't get in your face like some. I respect your space. Still, you guys throw shit at me. Hit me. Bounce my head on concrete. I can't even get health insurance any more . . .'

Mace was barely listening to the guy. When he was finished deleting his photos, he handed over the camera.

The man took it eagerly, cuddling it like it was a favorite pet. ‘You guys think we're all lowlifes, right? Bottom feeders. Fuck you. We make you guys.'

Mace didn't know what the hell the man was going on about. ‘Who told you to take my picture?'

There was an aluminum case open on the Cherokee's back seat with two cameras nestled in foam rubber pockets. The photographer placed the EOS-1D in the remaining pocket. ‘Told me? Nobody told me. It's just what I do.'

Mace saw that the question asked on the front of the man's T-shirt was answered on the back. ‘I DID.' He grabbed the man's shoulder and spun him around.

‘C'mon, buddy. Leave me alone, for Christ's sake. You got what you wanted.'

‘Who told you to take my picture?'

The man looked genuinely puzzled. His free hand moved toward his pants pocket. Mace stopped it.

‘What's your fucking problem?' the man whined, trying to release his wrist from Mace's grip. ‘I just wanna give you my card. OK? Just my fucking card.'

Mace released his wrist.

Slowly, he removed a worn, overloaded wallet from his pocket. He fished a bright yellow card from it that he handed to Mace. ‘I'm Simon S. Symon. Like it says there. Proprietor of ShootOnSite. That's me. I take candid pictures of celebrities.'

‘This is supposed to make me like you more?' Mace said. ‘Who told you to take my picture?'

‘Listen to Mister Me. Like you're the reason I'm here.'

‘Talk straight.'

‘The night man at the Florian's an old bud, so he phones me real late to tell me some guest just blew through the lobby with Deidre Lindstrom. They're stoned. Feelin' each other up, almos' goin' down on each other right there in the lobby.

‘So I grab a few hours of snooze and here I am. A shot of Deidre looking hungover will be worth maybe two grand, three. But the guest, some kinda TV exec from back East, ain't a guy. Now that hikes the price of the photo considerably. That's the guest's Audi across the aisle. They gotta show up sooner or—'

‘You took pictures of
me
,' Mace said. ‘Why?'

‘You're somebody, right? Got that don't-fuck-with-me look. To me that says photo op. My guess is TV, right? I can't keep track of everybody on the box, what with cable and all. But you TV pricks are the toughest to get along with. And we make you guys.'

Mace stared at Simon S. Symon, trying to decide if it was worth knocking him around a little to make sure he wasn't bullshitting. The sound of heels clicking on concrete made the decision suddenly moot.

Mace glimpsed someone at the far end of the garage.

Simon S. Symon had already grabbed his camera.

But it wasn't Deidre Lindstrom and her lesbian exec from back East. It was Angela Lowell, dressed for summer in tight white slacks and a black silk blouse.

Mace moved between the Cherokee and the SUV. ‘Fifty bucks for a couple of good clear prints of her,' he whispered to the paparazzi.

‘No prob,' Symon said.

‘I gotta run. Pick up at the address on your card?'

‘Yeah,' Symon said, busy getting Angela in his frame.

Mace headed toward his leased Camry Hybrid, hopping over car bumpers to avoid Angela's line of sight. He was sliding under the steering wheel by the time she drove past.

Backing the Camry from its stall he saw Wylie running full out from the stairwell carrying a small laptop. ‘I got her,' Mace shouted to the boy.

‘What about this?' Wylie held up the laptop.

‘I don't need it.' In point of fact, he had no idea how the tracking device hidden in the Mustang's trunk worked.

As he drove past the Cherokee, he was annoyed to see Symon aiming his camera at Wylie.

TEN

A
ngela Lowell couldn't
find a coin for the meter.

Sitting several parked cars back on Melrose Avenue, in a loading zone, Mace watched her root through her handbag, then duck back into the yellow Mustang, probably to rifle the glove compartment. Finally, she gave up the search and decided to risk the ticket.

She literally ran into a shop with the enigmatic name of Slick.

Unless she returned to feed the meter, indicating she would be spending some time there, he wouldn't bother following her inside.

From his angle he couldn't see anything on the storefront to indicate what sort of goods or service Slick provided. Its Spartan display window offered few clues. Just a white plastic tree on Astroturf. Colorful little squiggly things were hanging from the tree's otherwise bare branches. Mace counted three customers, male, going into the store before Angela emerged with a package the size of a large book under her arm. She tossed it casually into the rear of the Mustang and slid behind the wheel.

He let her enter the traffic flow along Melrose before nosing the Camry out. As he drove past Slick's window, he discovered that the squiggly things hanging from the tree were contraceptives.

Angela's next stop was on Hollywood Boulevard. Triple Tech, an ultra-contemporary aluminum Quonset hut, with a chrome and neon facade as understated as a slot machine and about as appealing. She found a parking space directly in front.

Mace backed into the only other open slot, eight or nine cars down. Facing the street, he was able to watch the Mustang and Triple Tech's front door in the Camry's rear-view. This time, it took no imagination to figure out what the place was peddling: computer games and other electronic crap.

In less than five minutes, she emerged with a small bag of what he presumed were expensive non-essentials. She surprised him by walking away from the Mustang, heading for a flash clothes store named Cruise Line. In its window, two male manikins, dressed in yachting gear, lay spooning on a wooden deck chair, while a third, wearing a US Navy officer's cap and a thong stood at a ship's wheel with a martini glass in one hand.

Returning to the Mustang with arms full of merchandise, Angela took her shopping expedition to Honeymoon Way, an unassuming semi-commercial street between Sunset and Hollywood Boulevard. She parked at an old, brick building that housed two presumably separate enterprises, the Honeymoon Drug Store and Schlesinger's Gun Shop.

Mace was growing restless. His watch told him he'd been following her for nearly an hour and it seemed to have been a waste of time. As far as he could tell, the woman was just shopping. As he watched her stride into the drug store, her body language gave no suggestion of anything out of the ordinary.

But the store was another matter. Its lighted display window featured an assortment of aloe lotion bottles in front of a cardboard diorama depicting a woman slathering her naked, lobster-red sunburned back with the stuff. An innocuous-seeming display. But it blocked a view of the shop's interior. As did the frosted glass panels of its old-fashioned wooden front doors.

It was as if Angela Lowell had walked into a dark cloud and faded away.

The set-up seemed . . . suspicious. He supposed the cloudy glass may have been used to ward off direct sunlight. But the dark green awning that covered both doors and display window should have taken care of that. Was there a reason they were hiding the interior of the drug store?

Was this assignment fucking up his head? He was afraid he knew the answer to that one.

He concentrated on the opaque glass panels, saw or imagined vague shadowy motion in the store. Finally, he took a deep breath, exhaled, shook his head and got out of the car.

An old-fashioned bell tinkled as he entered the Honeymoon Drug Store. The place was a throwback to the days before chain superstores. Black and white tile floor, high ceiling, wood and glass counters. Boxes and bottles neatly shelved against the walls. There was even a small soda fountain, dark and unused. At the rear of the room a middle-aged druggist in a crisp white coat was talking to a boy wearing cargo pants and a Lakers T. The boy was carrying a skateboard under one arm. A few elderly Hispanic women were studying a cosmetic display to his left.

It reminded Mace a little of the drug store his father had used, where he had spent so much time on medication runs during the old man's last days. In spite of the association, he'd liked that store. And he would have liked this one, except for one thing. Angela Lowell wasn't in it.

Mace moved to a postcard rack. Idly pawing an assortment of glossy ultra-ugly photos of LA by day and night, he scanned the store, convincing himself that she wasn't behind a counter or display.

Puzzled and annoyed, he exited the store. He turned to give it one last look, took a backward step and bumped into someone.

It was Angela Lowell, hurrying to her car. She seemed angry.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘It helps if you look where you're going,' she said, continuing on to the Mustang.

Feeling like a fucking idiot, Mace stood there watching her get into the car. Finally, he pried his feet from the sidewalk and went back to work.