Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice (8 page)

Four rundown seagulls, even worse off than the ones which sometimes flew over Jill’s Bel Air home, flapped and awked down to dance on the ornate wooden trim over the porch.

“What?” The black man twisted himself out from under the Mustang hood.

“Good afternoon.” Easy continued moving toward the front steps of the mansion.

“What do you want, Jim?”

“Gladys Waugh wants to see me. I’m John Easy.”

“Naw.” The black man shook his head, jabbing the wrench at the air.

Easy’s foot hit the lowest wood step of the porch.

“Naw, she doesn’t have any desire in the world to see you, Jim.” The black man dropped a hand on Easy’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. I went and got a big glob of grease on your handsome coat.”

“That’s okay,” said Easy, stepping up free of his grip. “The last guys I tangled with walked on my coat and then shredded it up. A glob of grease is nothing.”

“How about a boot in the ass, Jim?”

Easy turned. Without saying anything further he hit the Negro twice just below the sternum.

“Oof.” The black man went bicycling backwards and ended up on one knee down in the weeds. “That’s a son-of-a-bitch thing to do, Jim.” He chopped the wrench once sideways in the air as he rose up off the ground.

“Ram, stop it now,” cautioned someone from the big house.

Ram watched Easy for a second, shrugged, and returned to the Mustang. He hit the engine hard again.

“Three hundred years of slavery have made Ram belligerent,” said the vast woman in the doorway.

“You should give him some time off.” Easy climbed the rest of the steps to shake hands with the great fat woman waiting there.

“I’m Gladys Waugh,” she said. She was milk-colored, weighing three hundred pounds. Her dress was a loose floor-length mother hubbard as black as her house. Around her thick neck hung a silver chain with a pendant of the Egyptian symbol known as the Eye of Osiris. She rubbed at the silver emblem, which was sunk in the gully between her two enormous unrestrained breasts. “You are John Easy?”

“Yep. You have something to sell me?”

Gladys Waugh smiled and for a moment her tiny red mouth disappeared into the milky fat of her huge cheeks. “Do you know, I have expected you for over a month, Mr. Easy. Certain signs, certain very significant signs, told me you would make this pilgrimage to my coven. I don’t suppose you know how to read the entrails of chickens.”

“I read mostly non-fiction.” Easy stepped into the mansion’s hallway as the enormous witch backed to let him enter.

Gladys Waugh sucked her little mouth away out of sight again, snorting. “The entrails even predicted you would be a wise-ass.”

In the parlor to the right of the dismal hallway a pretty Chinese girl wearing only a pair of panties with Tuesday embroidered all over them was fooling with a guitar which had three strings too few. A black candle was stuck atop a plaster skull resting on the sooty mantelpiece.

“Go and meditate somewheres else, Elizabeth,” ordered the witch. “I don’t feel like schlumping all the way up to my eyrie to commune with Mr. Easy.”

The girl thumped her narrow buttocks once on the bare unpolished wood floor, in mild anger, before she hopped up and carried the guitar away. “Holy Moloch,” she muttered going away.

“I sense you seek information from me, Mr. Easy.” The enormous woman dropped herself on a square hard tan couch beneath the clouded bow window.

When the after-shocks had ceased Easy said, “I bet you learned that from the entrails of a telephone.”

“One of my lesser disciples has indeed communicated with me,” admitted Gladys Waugh. She forced a giant puffy hand down her front and extracted a box of Tiparillo cigars. Lighting up with a match from a pewter cup on the off-kilter coffee table, she said, “You’re looking for Joanna Feyer, also known as Joan St. John.”

“You know where she is,” said Easy.

Puffing out smoke, the witch said, “Ever since I was a slip of a girl I’ve had exceptional powers, Mr. Easy. By long dedicated years of studying the black arts I have amplified those powers.”

Easy stepped over a Coke bottle holding a half-dozen bedraggled peacock feathers and sat on an orange crate across the room from the witch. “It’s important that I find Joanna soon.”

“Viewing the puny events of man from cosmic heights eliminates much of the urgency we tend to feel, Mr. Easy.” She shifted her weight and the couch thwanged. “How much is it worth to you to locate this particular girl?”

Easy said, “Fifty bucks.”

Gladys Waugh laughed. Smoke popped out of her wide nostrils in tiny puffs. Her little mouth disappeared while she rocked on her seat. “Joanna is an exceptionally lovely young woman, Mr. Easy. Surely, surely she is worth more than fifty dollars.”

“The cops can maybe get the information out of you for nothing.”

“Bullshit,” replied the enormous witch. “It would be religious persecution if they tried to roust me.” Her mouth emerged to suck the end of the thin little cigar. “By Belphegor, Mr. Easy, I must have at least one hundred.”

“Seventy-five.”

Gladys Waugh’s gigantic head jiggled negatively from left to right. “One hundred.”

Easy fingered five $20 bills out of his wallet. “Okay, where is she?”

Beckoning the money, the witch answered, “Mexico.”

“So I’ve heard. Where in Mexico?”

“Let’s have the cash in front.”

Easy dealt the bills into her wide puffy palm, Gladys Waugh’s fingers closed, hiding the cash completely. “Joanna took off from here Saturday afternoon with a young kid, an artist so he says. Joanna’s been playing around with him since she started attending an occasional black mass here.” She laughed, snorting out smoke. “Great Baal has no objection to a little grab-ass during his services.”

“What’s the guy’s name and where did he and Joanna head?”

“His name is Santos,” said the witch. “Gerry Santos. I have the impression Joanna has a few hundred bucks and that was enough to convince Santos they could shack up down Mexico way for a while.”

“Where?”

“Santos has a buddy who rents a place down there. They figured to stay there awhile before getting a little adobe love nest of their own.”

“Where?”

“In a little town called Choza,” said Gladys Waugh. “Know where that is?”

“I can look it up.”

“I’ll save you the trouble. I was doing some painting in Mexico before I got plugged into the black arts. Choza’s something like ten miles inland from Guaymas, in from the Gulf of California. You can cross at Mexicali and get over on Route 15. You should be able to drive it in less than a day. You’ve probably got a nice tough sports car and can do it in less.”

“It’s the toughest Volkswagen money can buy.”

“How in the name of Belial can you fit that frame of yours in a VW?”

“You have to hunker some.”

“Great Baal, it doesn’t look like I’m going to go touring with you. We’d capsize the little bugger,” said Gladys. “This friend of Santos’ is named Gabe Hickey. His place is on the Calle Descenso.”

Nodding, Easy said, “Did Joanna tell you why she was running?”

“No, but I didn’t have to consult my mandragore root to know,” replied the enormous witch. “When somebody got rid of the guy she was bedding down with Joanna made the logical assumption San Ignacio was no longer a safe vicinity for her.”

“Is she afraid of getting killed herself?”

“She’s just plain flat-out afraid,” said Gladys Waugh.

Easy made his way to the doorless doorway. “Has anyone else asked you where Joanna went?”

“Net Mowatt.”

“Besides him.”

“No one,” she assured him.

“It might be better for Joanna if you didn’t tell anyone else about Mexico.”

“Another hundred will assure that.”

“The other guys who’re looking for her probably want to kill her.”

Gladys Waugh dropped her cigar butt to the bare floor and crushed it with a gigantic foot. “Oh, this is a humanitarian good work sort of thing, is it? That’s different. Fifty dollars.”

After watching the warped window make rainbow patterns on the fat woman’s great white face, Easy said, “Okay, here’s another fifty.”

“May Astaroth look kindly on you,” laughed Gladys Waugh, engulfing the five $10 bills in her great hand. “Give my best to Joanna when you see her, Mr. Easy.”

The Mustang was still yawning open out in the weeds. The black Ram was not there.

Sitting in his VW Easy wrote, “Expenses: Bribe to Gladys Waugh—$150,” on a file card. Then he started the car and headed south for Mexico.

E
ASY WAS SITTING ON
the California side of the border. The air-conditioning system blew a chill wind through the small plastic restaurant, fluttering the paper napkin beneath the silverware and even causing the red plastic placemat to now and then make a clacking flap. From two lopsided loudspeakers perched on the beams of the pseudoarbor above the booths came distant-sounding bullfight music.

The frail Mexican waiter, in a faintly blue white suit, said, “We’re all out of quesadillas, señor. How about arroz con higaditos de polio? That’s rice with …”

Easy shook his head. “I’ll take the chile rellenos.”

“I can go look and see if we have any left,” said the sad frail man. “If you take the chicken livers, though, I can give you a special price.”

“Nope,” said Easy.

“I’ll go see what the kitchen says.”

While the frail white-suited man walked sadly away and through the kitchen doorway, which was shielded by a curtain of bright plastic beads, Easy got up and crossed to the wall phone. Green plastic grape leaves twined down from the pseudoarbor and fluttered against the side of the black instrument. Easy dropped in a dime, then made a credit-card call to Los Angeles.

“Hello,” answered Jill.

“Hi,” said Easy. From here he could see a small portion of hot late afternoon street through the high narrow window of the restaurant. “I’m about to leave the country and lead a simple idyllic life. So I thought I ought to let you know.”

“Oh, so?” said Jill. “Where are you?”

“Calexico.”

“Is Joanna there?”

“She should be down in Mexico,” answered Easy. “About five hundred miles from where I am now.”

“Where exactly? Jim’ll want to know.”

The thin waiter appeared at Easy’s side, shaking his head sadly, saying softly, “No more rellenos, señor.”

“Bring me a beer and I’ll think of something else.” To Jill he said, “I don’t want Benning to know anything specific yet. After I find his wife I can tell him where she was. I think too many people are looking for her.”

The girl said, “About that car last night, John.”

“The one that followed Benning over to your house. What about it?”

“It was a dark Camaro, didn’t you say?”

“Yeah, have you seen it again?”

“I think maybe so,” said Jill. “Early this afternoon when I came back from shopping down in Beverly Hills. I’m pretty certain it went by after I pulled into the drive. It went on by and stopped down the block quite awhile before it left.”

“Has it been back since?”

“I don’t think so, but then I haven’t kept an eye to the peephole.”

“Okay, look,” Easy told her, “call Nan at my office and tell her to get one of the guys we use sometimes. I want him to watch you until I get back.”

“I’m not that fragile,” said Jill. “I don’t need a guard just because I maybe saw a car that drove by here before. I didn’t mean to unsettle you.”

“Do it,” said Easy.

After a few seconds Jill, said, “All right. I’ll phone Nan. I really don’t think I’m involved in this too much. Do you?”

Easy said, “Anything else happening?”

“Jim’s called a few times. I get the impression he thinks my high opinion of you has a carnal basis. You sure you don’t want me to let him know you’re close to finding Joanna?”

“I’m sure. Don’t.”

“I saw Hagopian in Martindale’s. He was buying a copy of a book on how to improve your tennis. He said to tell you he’s got another fender back. Is his Jaguar missing again?”

“All but two fenders.”

“We don’t have anymore Carta Blanca,” said the sad waiter. “Would you settle for Budweiser, señor?”

“Sure,” answered Easy.

“Where are you, a saloon?” asked Jill.

“A restaurant. I’m having, possibly, an early dinner.”

“Well, I’ll miss you tonight,” said Jill. “I’ve started thinking of you as a permanent fixture.”

“Interior decorators keep telling me the same thing,” said Easy. “Okay, now hang up and call Nan.”

“I love you,” said Jill. “I don’t suppose you’re in a position where you can say that.”

“Sure, I love you,” said Easy, grinning into the phone. “I’ll see you in a day or so. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

“They found a couple of rellenos, señor. The last two. Do you still wish them?”

Easy hung up the phone. He agreed to the rellenos. A half-hour later he was in Mexico.

T
HERE WAS A CLEAR
dry quietness on the early morning street. The moderate-size town of Choza ended just beyond the small house on Calle Descenso which Gabe Hickey was renting. A few hundred yards away, across a flat black two-lane roadway, stretched fields of dry cornstalks. Hickey’s house was a small three or four-room adobe set back from the narrow street. The earthen brick house was painted a thin yellow and had a slanting tile roof, dusty and brittle-looking. Small square tiles of a pale sea color had long ago been set into roughly circular patterns on the front face of the building. Most of these ocean-hued tiles were fallen away and the meaning of the complex design was lost. At the edge of the small house’s dusty lot a fat dog, about the same shade as the pale yellow adobe, was squatting in defecation.

Easy moved on by the yellow dog, walking beneath tall shrubby walnut trees. Scattered across Hickey’s dusty yard were a dozen cocoa-colored doves. They ticked across the soft dirt, pecking at it. Waist-high prickly weeds grew in sparse clumps. A few of the doves fluttered a foot or two into the air and resettled when Easy passed by. He glanced down at them.

Easy noticed a series of odd tracks crosshatching the soft dirt of the yard. They looked something like the trail left by a bicycle, except they seemed to run in parallel sets. Two narrow wheel ruts a foot and a half apart. They were all over the path and in parts of the yard, some nearly wiped away by time, others fresh and clear. He followed a fresh set up to the whitewashed door and knocked.