Caravan of Thieves (15 page)

I
was as blind in this caravan as I was in the last, burrowing without knowing the direction. Coffee and gas in Blythe, California, classic oasis and most inauspicious gateway: the unmarked green door that lets you into the biggest, wildest club in the world. I was hoping that as my followers avoided being seen by each other, I might spot one or two, but no luck. On past Indio and the first in the chain of golf courses that take you all the way to the ocean. How excited the first pioneers must have been to come through Death Valley and sight the first flag hanging limp against its stick. Thousand Palms, Palm Springs, and not long after Banning I turned north on 210 for a short stretch before cutting off on State 330 toward Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead. The desert grew grayer, speckled with shrubs, until the road wound around and climbed enough to find the pines. One car kept appearing in my rearview mirror. I assumed it was Shaw. I turned onto Route 18, switchbacking all the way to Big Bear.

I parked before reaching the mall, where all the followers would have an easy time watching my movements. I stopped in a small
market and asked the clerk if he knew Gloria Waters, mentioning that she had a butterfly tattoo on the underside of each wrist. I asked for the manager so he could say no, too. I made up a name, Ron Wilson, and asked about him, too, so that when they were quizzed later, they could help McColl waste some time. All that, the butterflies included, was fantasy. Kate McFarlane was never mentioned. Under the arch and into the village mall, I was on my way toward the jewelry store for more meaningless questions when I saw the tattoo parlor and detoured there. Same questions. I returned to the car and drove down the road to the Boathouse Fish Company, same routine. Willy’s Tavern.

From there I strolled over to Schmidt’s Bakery. A thin woman, about five foot three, sat along the right wall opposite the display case, sipping a coffee with difficulty because her hand shook when she lifted the cup. Her hair was short and gray. She was forty-six years old. Her name was Loretta Sexton. I kept my back to her while I asked my questions, loud enough for her to hear. I knew she would be looking at me when I turned. I met her eyes and shook my head slightly. She understood and turned her attention back to her coffee.

Outside I paused to look around as if considering whether it was worth inquiring at more stores. Mostly I just felt happy to have found Loretta, happy she was still alive. I knew I could rely on her when the time came. And I wanted her to know I would be coming.

It was four p.m. If I rushed down the mountain, I could hit the worst of Los Angeles traffic, which would help percolate everyone’s impatience and frustration. I wanted them aware of each other, jockeying for position, distracted. I made a few extra freeway exits and entrances so they had to work a little harder because my route did not make sense. I parked in a lot off Hollywood
Boulevard just after six thirty. The street was already crowded: tourists from around the world and around the country there to see the pavement and the facades, tourists from around town there for the clubs, and the locals working the way locals would anywhere they could find a crowd.

Lush Life is a dive bar on Hollywood Boulevard. The last time I was there, maybe five years earlier, it was filled with bikers and only bikers. Only two bikes were parked outside this time. Now punctured punks and goths and hipsters inhabited the same grimy, burgundy Naugahyde stools and booths. Fake color stripes in hair, genuine black clothing, and pale skin comprised the regulation uniform, along with piercings and tattoos designating a secret rank which I could never penetrate. The transformation at the Lush Life suited me just fine. I could still feel hostility and paranoia when I sat down at the bar, but I guessed these patrons would be less nasty than the bikers were when the mood struck them. The ugliness of the goths’ appearance is complete and deliberate, aggressively off-putting. I respected them for it. Goths reacted to my respect with suspicion, which made me respect them more.

The bartender was the same guy from years ago, shaved head, thick forearms covered with a dense, colorful pattern, two earrings. A small statue of Popeye with designs drawn on his forearms similar to those on the bartender’s forearms stood beside the vodka bottles next to the mirror behind the bar. I ordered a Bud and sipped slowly for a while. A few stools away sat another shaved-headed guy, about thirty, with two young girls, too young to be in a bar, all gotten up in their best black. Outside, in back, was a patio for smoking that looked like it held a few patrons. I did not go back there.

The bartender did not have much to do yet besides chat with the waitress, who looked like her sadness would outduel her frailty in keeping her from making it through the night. When I ordered a second Bud, I asked him, “You get your arms done locally?”

“Down on Highland, about two blocks,” he said.

“Who would I see?”

“Titus is the man. Three dollars.”

I laid down three dollars, then added a hundred. “Did Titus have a woman working for him, Gloria Waters?” I said. “She’d be late forties, early fifties by now.”

“He had a few women there. Only one I remember about that age. I think her name was Jessie,” he said.

“Could you describe her?”

“Could you?” He pushed the hundred back toward me. “I don’t know what the game is, pal.”

“Butterfly tattoos inside each wrist.” The bartender just stared at me. “Someone is going to come in here in a while and ask you what I’ve been asking about. I’d like you to tell him the truth,” I said. I pushed the bill back at him. “Please buy them a round. I’m going to ask them the same questions.” I pointed to the trio down the bar. The bartender took the bill and served the drinks.

I walked over and introduced myself and asked about tattoos and Gloria Waters. They all knew Titus, and the girls struggled to remember someone else’s name there. “I think it was Shelly,” said the one with the pink streak in her hair. “Not Shelly, something just like it. Sarah, Samantha, Julie, Jody? Maybe it was Gloria,” said the one with blue and pink and blond streaks.

The guy said, “Why don’t you just go over there?”

“I’m waiting for someone.” I went back to my stool and made my beer last another twenty minutes. Then Blondie walked in with Toothless. I finished my beer and smiled at Blondie and walked out. He followed me, Toothless staying behind to grill the bartender and patrons. He wouldn’t appreciate their attitude and I started to doubt he would be able to discern that they were telling the truth. Blondie grabbed my shoulder. “You were in there a long time,” he said.

“The beers are cheap and I was thirsty.” I kept walking, turned onto Highland. He moved with me and grabbed again, firmer, and turned me toward him.

“We’re getting tired of the runaround. This is taking too long.”

I started walking again. “First, if you touch me again, we’re going to fight again. Right here. And that will bring cops and this will take a lot longer. Second, if you come into any establishment where I’m asking questions, I’m going to walk out and stop asking questions and this will take forever. Now fall back and follow me like a good boy.” I made sure to stare into his eyes and smile to infuriate him more.

By the time I reached the tattoo parlor, Blondie had dropped from sight.

The music wasn’t loud, but it seemed to come from every corner of the small storefront area, which was plastered with designs from the floorboards up to and including the ceiling. I couldn’t see any pattern to the placement, any categories, but I did not spend a lot of time looking. Two reclining chairs flanked the counter, with stools next to them. A thin man in his fifties appeared from a back room. His short hair was gray and so were his eyes. He wore a black T-shirt and black jeans. Flames covered his neck giving the
impression of a high, starched collar. He waited patiently for me to stop looking around and to speak first.

“I’m looking for Titus.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on mine. I broke with his gaze and looked outside before I spoke again. I didn’t see any of the followers. I met his eyes again and decided Titus would react best to the truth.

“I need minor surgery. You can name your price. It’ll take about ten minutes.” He still did not speak, so I went on. “There’s a transmitter sewn into my right shoulder blade. I’d like to have it removed. If we wait too long, there’s a chance they’ll come in here to see what’s going on. Either way, there’s a chance they’ll come in after I’m gone. I’d rather you didn’t tell them about the procedure.”

“What should I tell them?” he asked.

“That I was asking for Gloria Waters, a middle-aged woman with tattoos on both wrists.”

“And do I know her?”

“Better if you don’t. But that’s up to you.”

Titus did a lot of thinking, none of it out loud. Finally, he said, “Come in back.”

I moved around the counter and through a curtain. Titus held open a door and we entered a small room where he did piercings. “Take off your shirt,” he said.

I did that and turned my back to him. He moved his fingers gently across the incision, then pushed a bit harder below it to see if the thing moved. He motioned for me to sit.

“Do you want an anesthetic?”

“I’d rather not,” I said.

I sat down with my back to him and he took a little while
preparing. He swabbed the spot for a minute. Then he showed me the knife he was going to use. Wordlessly. He slipped on gloves and started to cut and a buzzer sounded: the front door. He looked at me and I looked toward the front. He handed me the scalpel and went out. I could feel a trickle of blood seeping down my back.

“We just wanted to see how much it was? How much for just a little tattoo on our ankles, y’know, a heart or something?” It was a girl’s voice, giggly.

Titus said, “One hundred dollars each. Plus tax.” Silence. It was easy to imagine the two girls looking at each other, neither wanting to be the first to declare her preference. Then the buzzer sounded and Titus returned. He picked up a piece of gauze to sop up the blood, then he looked at me with a question in his eyes.

I said, “I don’t think so. They know where I am because of the tracker. They’d wait before they got suspicious.”

He took the scalpel from me and returned to the task at hand. It took a few seconds for him to complete the cut. He grabbed the transmitter with tweezers and dropped it in a shallow bowl. Round and flat, it was the size of a watch battery.

“I’ll need that.”

He went about his business sopping up the blood, then tearing open a new needle and sewing me up. When he was done, he swabbed it with disinfectant again. He rinsed off the transmitter and handed it to me.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing. That was fun.”

Fun? I should have guessed. I took three hundred dollars from my wallet and laid it on the table. He held up one finger to ask me to wait. From a closet, he pulled a large sketch pad from an easel. He
flipped some pages until he found the one he wanted to show me. “Take a look.”

A businessman stood in front of his closet in a dress shirt, collar open, mouth open, getting ready for the day. His mouth was dark and empty inside. Lined up along the right side of the bar were tongues instead of ties. His hand reached out to make his selection for the day.

There was not much to say and no good way to say it, which was the way Titus wanted it. We studied each other’s eyes for about a minute. I grabbed him and gave him a hug and walked out.

McColl was sitting in the driver’s seat of the jeep. Blondie and Toothless fell in on either side of me as I got near. They escorted me into the passenger seat and melted away. McColl had his own key.

“Which way?”

I told him to drive west on Sunset. He was wearing sunglasses and in the initial silence, the one meant to establish that he would talk when it suited him, I bet myself about how long I would have to wait before he turned to me and took off the sunglasses and gave me the benefit of the full stare. Near Sunset and La Brea, he said: “The money is not for me. I want to make that clear. I have no interest in money. Never have. Wouldn’t have joined the Army if I did. I’m interested in service to a cause.”

I thought the glasses were coming off, but not yet.

“It must have occurred to you that all attempts to lose us are futile,” he said.

“I haven’t tried to lose you.” I made an elaborate effort to turn in my seat to check if the others were following. They were.

“I think we’re taking the wrong approach to this. It’s inefficient. We should be working together.”

“It will be more efficient if you call off your dogs and let me get on with the search.”

He didn’t answer until we came to a red light. He turned to me for the big moment. Off came the glasses, leaving only the strange light-blue eyes. “Join us. You were meant to be part of our group. We have a mission that I’m certain you would embrace. And your skills and ability will be big assets to us. I know you were not close to your father, and I hope you can understand that he was impeding the mission. That could not be tolerated. I think you can understand that. He was a casualty. I’m sorry for that, but there was no other way. Join us.”