Dangerous Games (17 page)

“Hmm,” she said. “Looks good.”

“It's been four years,” he said. “It needs to be fixed up from all the weather and shit.”

Not too surprising when you paint a mural in a storm drain, she thought.

“Look, Lady.” He held out for her inspection one black shoe, highly polished, with a white crucifix painted on the toe. “I loved my grandma, and she died just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “The cross is for her. Death comes in a minute.
Así es la vida.
”

Gloria Ramirez took a long swig of his untouched Coke and pushed it into his hand.

“I threw away the gun. I don't know how it happened.”

Of course, what he had disposed of was incriminating evidence, and he could well have bought two more by now. But maybe, just maybe, he was doing his best to be part of the one percent.

They watched the busy scene, holding hands, as the ambulance crew and sheriffs' deputies roped Levine up the hillside in a ragged collaboration. He was strapped to a wooden backboard and riding in a metal sled. It was all lit by the headlights from all the vehicles sideways on Highline. A big wrecker was in a turnout just off the road, a beefy-looking operator walking backward downhill unreeling the cable from a big winch.

“I wonder why he took off so fast like that.”

“Levine was a big-time saps for pow'ful cars.”

People were standing out on the hilltop decks of the other houses scattered around, watching and talking, some with large binoculars. An immensely fat woman in a muumuu chattered away on a cell phone at the nearest house, as if describing what she saw to a friend. The hot wind had picked up again and blew her voice away.

One of the deputies now sauntered purposefully toward Luisa and Terror.

“I'd like a word with you two.”

“Yes, sor, officer. Poor Mr. Levine rent dis house hyere. We guests.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Luisa asked.

“He'll live, but he'll never play the guitar.”

“What you say?”

“His left hand is a holy mess. You say his name is Levine?” He had a small notebook flipped open. “First name?”

“Mister,” Terror answered.

The deputy's eyes lifted sleepily to him. “And you, what do you go by?”

“Trevor Whiteside Pennycooke, Esquire. Blessed is the name of the Lord God Jah, Ras Tafari, and blessed is he who comes in the name of Jah, His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie the First, and let the name of His glory be blessed.”

“Is that all part of your name, Trevor, esquire?”

“No, sor.”

“Fifty-one-fifty,” the deputy muttered. “No humans involved.”

Dear Diary,

Poor Laveen had a bad car accident tonight with Trev & me watching. He will be okay they say. They got the car up & somebody said a wheel came off which is very strange. Its an expensive car. Trev says we must wait here. That is OK with me. I dont miss anything or anyone from before. But I think none of the books prepared me for tru love. Trev is one protector who does the job right. Too bad he couldn't protect Mr. Laveen though. We are both sad about it.

SIXTEEN

A Likkle Respek

“You don't look so good,” she said. “You looked better this morning.”

It was after midnight. Jack Liffey had spent the rest of his day and evening following up several dead-end leads, searching for Terror Pennycooke. Gloria was still up, hunched forward at the kitchen table nursing her insomnia with a mug of hot chocolate and leafing through Curtis's
The North American Indian.
It was his, but she'd lit up the minute she'd seen it, and she spent hours looking at the old photographs.

She offered him some hot chocolate but he just sat.

“I was tied up for a while,” he said. He looked at the photo she had opened to—it was her favorite, called the Cahuilla woman. “She does look a bit like you.”

Her eyes lifted. “You were tied up? What does that mean? And what was that all about when we got cut off?”

“It was that kid you saw running out of the house in Malibu. He got the drop on me, but I talked him down after a while.”

“You really live on the edge.”

“I don't try to. Sometimes, it's just take it or leave it, you know.”

“In the department, we try to lower the odds of that stuff. Partners, preparation, backup. You could at least let me know what's up ahead of time.”

“Is it me disturbing your sleep?”

She sighed. “I don't know, J. I hope not.”

J. was new. She'd never called him that before. She seemed to be in an odd mood, ready to try about anything. “Can I put on Miles?” he asked.

“Softly. It's a bit jangly.”

He started up
Birth of the Cool
but kept it faint.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “You need relaxing. Back rub? Go down on you? Caress you all over?”

She looked at him affectionately. “Nice offers.”

He smiled back. Things were looking up.

But then her grin faded, and she said, “The problem is, there's just too much information for one night. Tied up, for god's sake. Sometimes you're so innocent, Jack. But not in a way I can admire. I mean I can, but it's hard sometimes.”

He came around behind her and let his hands slide gently around her neck, inside the bathrobe. She shut her eyes and leaned back against him. “That does feel good. Mmm. I've got to protect myself, too. I didn't think anybody could stir me up again so bad as you do.”

The problem with her crisis, he thought, was that it filled the whole house and left no room for his. He was little more than a year past what a hack therapist had called a near nervous breakdown—though all he'd really done was shed a few tears without warning a few times. Whatever it had been, he was pretty sure he'd gotten past the critical juncture now. Still, a surge of emotion came back to waylay him unexpectedly and make him feel suddenly fragile and beleaguered. The difference was that these days he was back to the point where he could drag those feelings into that space far inside him where he hid away all the residue that he'd fucked up in his life, or lost, or what just hadn't worked out.

“I don't mean to mix you up, Glor.”

“I wish I could pray,” she said. “I grew up praying.”

“What would you pray for?”

“Maybe to stop needing so much. Needing you, needing respect at work, and needing to know who I am. Needing to be clear.”

“What's clear?”

“I don't know. But it's not this horrible empty silence inside me. It's not this sense of exile I carry around.”

“Do you really think of living in L.A. as exile?” He wanted to let the question of silence go, since it scared him.

“How could it not be exile, Jack? I'm cut off and cut loose. This is L.A., and it's where my body lives, but my spirit's in Owens. I've known that … always. I just didn't know I knew it.”

“I think people put too much weight on genes,” he said. His hands slid down to rest on her breasts, rubbing softly, and he could feel her nipples swell as he caressed. “If I bought all that, I'd be in some pub in Cork, blarneying and drinking whiskey. You have no idea how little being an Irishman interests me.”

She said softly, “Make love to me, Jack. That's what interests me right now.”

It wasn't until the morning that he found Thumb's essay on the kitchen counter. Too much had distracted them the night before for her to mention it. He knew what it was immediately and read it twice over his morning coffee.

There was trouble in Texas and Texas was independent away from Mexico in 1836,
it started anew. He remembered insisting that Thumb include at least two dates, two names and two battles, and there they all were so he was improving. The grammar and logic still left a lot to be desired, but it was better than draft one. He put a circled 2 up in the corner. Way to go, Thumb, he thought. Maybe you'll get somewhere yet.

After nine, generally a respectable hour in L.A., he drove to see his friend Art Castro, at his office in the Rosewood Detective Agency in the Bradbury Building downtown. It was just a short jaunt from Boyle Heights, across the river and the vast Santa Fe rail yards on one of L.A.'s magnificent viaduct bridges with its deco details and elegant streetlamps.

Halfway across the bridge he had to slow to a crawl for three wizened old Latino men who were crawling across the bridge on their knees, going westward, each dragging a charred piece of wood that might have fit together to make a crucifix. When the oncoming lane was clear, he went around them. In his mirror, he saw they wore guayaberas and straw hats, and the object of their pilgrimage was still a mystery—but he preferred it that way. Too much religious information only cluttered up the space you had available for intangibles.

He took the rattly cage elevator up to the sixth floor. Art Castro's status within Rosewood was, as always, apparent from the size and elevation of his office. A few years back, he had messed up badly—something to do with helping Jack Liffey in fact—and had ended up in a broom closet annex. Now he was back with the marble flooring and two full windows facing east.

Art actually stood up and forced Jack to do a complicated old sixties handshake, with a lot of tugging and banging fists. “Knowledge is power,” Art Castro said.

“Money is power now.”

Art chuckled and sat again, put his feet back up on an open drawer. In the corner was a strange hamster run with a double loop of tubing above it, but Jack Liffey ignored it.

“I need to ask you something—why else would I be here?”

“You can ask anything, Jack. It's good to see you. I may not be able to answer, that's all.”

“G. Dan Hunt. The old guy the studios used to use as their cleanup man when movie stars barfed on themselves in public, or some reporter was threatening to write that Rock Hudson liked guys. He's the son of the Dan Hunt who was around in the grand old days of Mickey Cohen and Jimmy ‘the Weasel' Frattiano.”

“I know G. Dan.”

“Where is he these days? He isn't in the phone book.”

“Retired, where they all go. Some big condo on a golf course in Palm Springs or Rancho Mirage. You sure you want to stir him up? He's not a pleasant guy.”

“He used to use a Jamaican for the heavy stuff, and the Jamaican is back.”

“Not Terror Pennycooke?”

“The very Pennycooke.”

“You had a run-in with him, didn't you?”

“Yeah, and he seems to be back. It's a job I took on for Gloria, a family thing, and I'd like to see this young relative of hers turn up safe and sound. Terror's involved somehow. Anyway, G. Dan probably knows where he is.”

There was a sudden scurrying rattle from the hamster cage, and Jack Liffey looked around. “What's this shit?”

Art Castro sighed. “The boss's son, senior VP, says everybody here's got to commit to interspecies association. Man, don't ask me any more than that.”

Jack Liffey held up two palms. “Can you get me G. Dan's address?”

“Yeah, Jack, sure. How about you do
me
a favor some day?”

Jack pursed his lips. “So I owe you big time—that's what you want me to say?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Dis guy, him my true bredren, same mother, I tink same father, too. Him step it to Englun when I-an-I 12 and we write letters every week and, y'naow, it was always Glenwood who tole me what's what an' tings like. Dese letter real funny an wise. Him get in college for enginyeer.”

She could tell he was really proud of his brother, and that made her happy. She placed a high value on family feelings, never having experienced them herself. They had driven from the Malibu Hills to the Valley in the ancient Buick he had found in the garage and hotwired.

Now they were walking along Ventura Boulevard, past the falafel stands and dress shops, with their arms around each other, drawing surreptitious stares. She was surprised how oblivious he was to the gawking.

As Trevor talked happily of his brother's letters home, Luisa Wilson's head turned casually, as if watching the traffic, but she was actually following two stocky matrons with shopping bags, and she caught their disapproving eyes on her as they passed. One whispered to the other with pursed lips. Of course, she thought, home in Owens, there would be an even bigger sensation at the very sight of Trevor, with his chartreuse plaid silk shirt and tricolor knit cap. She hugged him back around the waist as his hand rubbed and squeezed her shoulder. She had a real boyfriend.

Gradually, Trevor let her know that much of what his brother had written home for two years had been lies and self-delusion, and his life on the dole in Britain had been no picnic at all.

“Aw, that's awful,” she said.

Three teenaged boys in ski sweaters and penny loafers split to go round them on both sides, and they made faces just as they passed behind them. This time, without warning, Terror Pennycooke reached behind and grabbed the neck of a white ski sweater with reindeer on it and yanked the last boy to a stop. “Who you make dat face at, fuckbwoy? You tink I should stay ‘way from white girls?”

“No
sir
.” There was real panic in the boy's face. “I'm sorry,
sir.
”

The other boys turned back and made half an attempt at striking challenging poses.

Terror Pennycooke made a sucking sound between his front teeth that Luisa Wilson had never heard before, but she knew immediately it was pure contempt. With one powerful shove, he threw the boy he was holding into the others, and they all reeled and then ran. A half dozen men nearby watched as if they might have been on the verge of intervening.

“Let's go, Trev.”

“I not afraid of dem nor you baldheads neither.”

The other men turned away or pretended not to notice. “You're scary,” she whispered.

“For you dis man always be protection.”

They walked on, and the mood on the street seemed to have changed. A man in a gray suit smiled and gave them a peace sign.

“We at da place,” he said.

He led her upstairs, following the address he had on a slip of paper. On the first glass door it said, ambiguously, Van Nuys Business Office, and there were a number of decals offering services including Discreet Forwarding, and Notary Public. Inside, there was a single small desk where a girl with spiked up purple hair and a lot of piercings was filing her nails.

“We seek for the gem'mun who make Dangerous Games,” Terror Pennycooke said, confidently.

She raised her eyebrows and pointed at a wall of small post office boxes. “They live in one of those, man. They're about two inches tall and very quiet.”

“Huh.”

She set down the nail file. “This is a mail drop, bro'. Send them a letter. That's how it works.”

“I see? They got a place, a real place somewhere?”

“I wouldn't know.”

Terror took a memo pad off her desk and, sitting on a bench along one wall, slowly and laboriously wrote his name, his cell phone number and an offer to do big-time business with
Dangerous Games.

“Look, man, I can't get into the boxes to leave something,” the girl said. “Really. The address is over the door. Get an envelope and a stamp, write that address on the envelope and drop it in a mailbox.”

He held her eyes a long time. “Dis de program, dawta. When man step through that door and him put the mail in dese boxes, you tell him put dis hyere message in Dangerous Games box or I come back and fi real I fuck up dis place bad and you in it crucial.”

She offered him an anxious smile. “Yes, sir. I guess I can do that.” “Thank you, sistah. Alls we need between us is a likkle respek.”