Crashed (34 page)

“Are you sure he’s alone in there?”

“He’s not,” Louie said. “There’s a very nice-looking lady in, I’d say, her middle fifties, got that kind of face says she bakes a really good apple pie and the kind of waistline says she eats a lot of it. But nobody else.”

“I don’t know,” I said. The card was nice, but it wanted to be a darker green. “Maybe I’m wrong.”

“Call the
LA Times
,” Louie said. “We can probably make the morning edition.”

“Give it another hour. She’s been depending on him for her dope supply. She’s going to come down from those three shots sooner or later, and I’d guess she’ll call him.” I tweaked the color and added a drop shadow to the company’s name. Drop shadows provide substance. Pushed
print
.

“Sure,” Louie said. “Another hour. Why not? It’s not like this is the only life I’m gonna get.” He hung up.

The card popped out and said Hi, and it was fine. Might have been better if it had been engraved, or professionally heat-transferred so the letters were raised, but it would work. It’s not like the guy who was going to look at it was a career printer. I printed five more so I had a convincing little stack and slipped them in my wallet. They said
Wyatt Gwyon
on them, and they announced that I was Regional Manager, a useful, all-purpose, essentially meaningless title. They matched the name on the bad driver’s license, and once I put on the stupid wig, I’d match the picture on the bad driver’s license, too.

I rummaged through the valise and pulled out the bare minimum. Carrying a bag didn’t seem appropriate, since I was going to have to get past a security guard. I’d seen the lock, so I knew what kind of picks it would take. The filing cabinets were nothing to worry about; I hadn’t paid attention to them, but there are only four or five manufacturers who sell widely, and the locks they use are pretty much just there for show. I could probably open most of them with a pipe cleaner.

Video surveillance was an open question because I hadn’t been looking for it when I was there, but I’d learned my lesson at Rabbits’s house, so I brought along a ski mask. Tonight, both sides of my profile were the dark side of the moon.

Thirty-five minutes later
I was pulling into the office building’s
underground garage, my adrenaline building to a nice natural high, when the phone rang and Louie said, “He’s moving.”

“Which way?”

“Toward the Hollywood Freeway. If you want a professional guess, he’s either going into town or else he realized he’s out of vodka.”

“He doesn’t drink vodka.” I hung a wide U, cutting through the empty parking spaces. There were only five or six cars in a garage that had been built to hold maybe sixty.

“Well,” Louie said, “there you are.”

“There I am what?”

“He’s on the onramp.”

“Here I come,” I said, hitting a speed bump on the way out. I turned right onto Ventura. “You guys are about three miles north of me, so I’ll be ahead of you as we head into town. Stay on the phone, okay? You’ve got to keep me clued so I don’t overshoot.”

“As a professional driver and everything,” Louie said, “let me make a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Stop the fuckin’ car. Take some deep breaths. Get a burger in a drive-through. What’s your nearest onramp?”

“Woodman.”

“I’ll call you when we pass Van Nuys Boulevard. You take your time, don’t drive like a crazy person, and you’ll be right behind us. That way we can do this right.”

“Got it.” I was too nervous to be hungry, but I idled along Ventura, much as Ellie Wynn had done a few hours earlier, and got the same audible wishes for peace and joy from the cars behind me. I made the left onto Woodman just as the phone rang again and Louie said, “Just passing Van Nuys.”

“I’m with you.” And, in fact, I was. As I pulled from the top of the ramp into the right-hand lane, Doc’s car whizzed past. Louie was four cars back, in a 1997 Oldsmobile that badly
needed waxing. I caught a glimpse of the cherry-red coal on his cigar, and then I was behind him.

Straight on into town, doing about sixty all the way. Off at Highland and down past the Hollywood bowl, then across Hollywood Boulevard, freak city at this time of night. Two more turns and we’d be at the Camelot Arms, and I wondered whether Thistle had come back home after all, seen the wreckage, and called Doc for a little something to adjust her mood. But Doc slid on past Romaine and dropped south toward Santa Monica Boulevard before making a left into a little area of stucco boxes built in the thirties and forties and originally put on the market at about $5000. Another left took him, and us, back up toward the Camelot Arms. I was beginning to think Doc had accidentally overshot when he pulled the car to the curb and got out.

He stood behind his car, hands on hips, looking back at us. I passed Louie and pulled up next to Doc. He leaned in through the open passenger window and said, “Quite a coincidence.”

“Seven million people in this city,” I said, “and here we are. If that don’t beat all.”

He nodded. “Would you like to explain your thinking?”

“I was busy. I had Louie—that’s Louie, back there in the Detroit dinosaur—stay with you in case Thistle called you to do a delivery. I’d like to find her, make sure she’s okay.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to ask me to call you if I heard from Thistle.”

“You want the polite answer or the honest one?”

“I think the honest one,” he said. “See whether I’ve got the
cojones
to handle learning I’m not trusted.”

“I’ve figured out a lot of stuff today,” I said. “And the more I figure out, the less I know about what’s actually happening. I know some of the
whos
of what’s going on, but I’m weak on the whys. And I’ve made a personal commitment about Thistle, which makes it a little trickier to know who’s actually on my side.”

“What commitment is that?”

“Well, that’s a problem. Since I’m not really sure who’s dancing with whom, so to speak.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Doc said. “Look at me. I’m a doctor. I fucking
radiate
moral fiber. If you think what you’re doing is the right thing, I’m probably on your side. In fact, how about this: I’ll
tell
you what you’re doing. You’re not going to let Thistle make this movie. Is that right?”

I said, “Yeah.”

Doc stuck a hand through the window. “Shake,” he said. “I’m
also
not going to let Thistle make this movie. Now why don’t you park that thing and let’s see whether we can’t find out where she is.”

“She hasn’t called,”
he said as I followed him along a cracked-concrete driveway past a dilapidated little frame house, its windows thankfully dark, heading for what had originally been a garage. The driveway was an example of the old design made up of two narrow, parallel strips of concrete, one for each tire, created for much better drivers than I. Grass had probably been planted between the concrete tracks several neighborhood demographic changes ago, but it had long since given way to hip-high weeds, which I was knocking down with a certain amount of negligent brio as we went. “Of course,” he added, “she hasn’t got a phone.”

“What’s here?” I asked.

“Friends.”

“Didn’t know she had any.”

“Counting you and me, I can think of four,” Doc said. “The other two live here.”

He led me around to the right of the garage. In the center of the wall was a crappy-looking door, warped, blistered wood and four panes of glass, which had been painted an opaque color that looked like Wedgewood blue, with a lot of gray in it. Doc
waved me to the left-hand side of the door, put a finger to his lips, and knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again, in a pattern this time: three fast, two slow, then two fast. A moment later, a high female voice said, “Who?”

Doc said, “Doc.”

“Hold on,” said the female voice, and in a few seconds the door opened. “I brought a friend,” Doc said, and I came around the edge of the door, just in time to see it start to slam closed. I got a foot wedged in there, and looked down at the eight- or nine-year-old whom I’d chased out of the Camelot Arms that afternoon.

Up close, she was even smaller than I’d thought. She had fine, flyaway blond hair that had been chopped into some semblance of an intentional haircut, a high, narrow nose, and wide, very startled blue eyes, which were staring up at me as though Charles the Child-Eater had just materialized in front of her.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m a friend of Thistle’s.”

“Uh-
uh
,” she said. “You liar. You’re working for that, that—”

“No,” I said. “I was, but now I’m not. Look, do you think Doc would bring me here if I wasn’t Thistle’s friend?”

“If you told him a bunch of lies,” she said.

“Who is it?” another voice said from inside.

“The big bad guy,” the little one said. “He’s with Doc.”

“Well,” said the other voice, “there’s no way to keep him out. If he leans on the door it’ll probably fall over.”

The little one’s face twisted as she pulled her mouth to one side, as though it was chasing her left ear. “I don’t like it, though,” she said for the record. She stepped back and let Doc push the door open.

“Junior,” Doc said, “this is Wendy.” He knelt down so they were eye to eye. We hadn’t yet taken a step over the threshold. “Wendy, this big clown is named Junior, and he’s not as dumb as he looks.”

Wendy said, “He couldn’t be.”

“May we come in?” Doc asked.

“Jennie said it was okay,” Wendy said.

“Is it okay with
you
?”

The mouth twisted again as she considered the question. “I guess,” she finally said.

“Wait,” Doc said. “Have you girls eaten?”

Wendy didn’t say anything, but her tongue flicked her upper lip. I could have counted to ten by the time the other one, Jennie, said from wherever she was, “No.”

“Come on, then,” Doc said, standing up. “We’ll let the big ugly guy buy.”

Jennie came around from behind the door with a cast-iron frying pan in both hands, gave me a quick but thorough look, and said, “This was for hitting, not cooking.”

Five minutes later
, we were sitting in the nearest McDonald’s, which had come in first, second, and third on the list of places the girls wanted to go. Before we left I’d seen the inside of the garage apartment, a single room of absolutely astonishing messiness: clothes, shoes, boxes, and cooking implements everywhere, whole odd lots of stuff piled in corners. The basic organizational principle seemed to be,
if this won’t tip the stack over, put it on top
.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked as Jennie bit into the first of the two quarter-pounders in front of her.

Jennie was chewing, so Wendy said, “She went shopping.”

“When?” I asked.

Wendy said, “February.”

Doc kicked me under the table, but I asked anyway. “So you’re all alone?”

“Not zhe firsht time,” Jennie said around three or four ounces of meat.

“Mommy likes boys,” Wendy said.

“Men,” Jennie corrected her. She considered the burger, looking for the next point of attack.

“And we don’t like the men Mommy likes,” Wendy said. She picked up a fry and nibbled the tip. “So Mommy takes them someplace.”

“They’re doing fine,” Doc said, giving me a Meaningful Look. “A lot better than they’d be doing if those pinheads in Child Protective Services got involved.” He pushed Wendy’s burger a tactful half an inch toward her. “They’re together, for one thing.”

“I’ll eat it later,” Wendy said, looking at the burger.

“No, you won’t,” Doc said. “You’ll eat it now, and later you can eat the one we’ll buy to go.”

Wendy said, “A whole nother one?”

“Or two,” Doc said. “Maybe two for each of you. Junior’s got lots of money, don’t you, Junior?”

“I can hardly walk, my pockets are so full.”

Wendy said, “Maybe your pants will fall down,” and laughed, and Jennie joined in, sneaking one of her sister’s fries during the general merriment.

“Where do you get all your money?” Jennie said once sobriety had been restored. “We can hardly get enough for macaroni and cheese.”

Wendy said, “And we don’t even
like
macaroni and cheese.”

“I steal it,” I said. “I’m a burglar.”

“Nuh-uh,” Wendy said. Then she said, “Are you?”

“How old are you?” I asked Jennie.

“Fifteen.” Wendy’s head came around, and Jennie said, “Almost.”

“I started when I was your age,” I said. “I broke into my first house when I was fourteen.”

Wendy was looking at me uneasily. “What did you steal?”

“Nothing. I did it to get even with the guy next door. You know anybody who’s only happy when somebody else is miserable?”

“Come on,” Jennie said. “We live in Hollywood.”

“Right. Well, Mr. Potts was like that. And the summer I was fourteen, Mr. Potts made himself happy by opening the gate to our back yard and letting my dog out, and then calling animal control. The fifth or sixth time he did it, I decided to send him a message. I put a set of tools together and then waited one morning until he’d left for work. Then I let myself in through a back window—”

“Weren’t you scared?” Wendy asked.

“Are you guys scared living alone?”

“No.”

“Okay. You’re good at living on your own. I’m good—I was good even then—at breaking into houses.”

“What did you do to him?” Jennie asked, her chin on her hand while her other hand fished another of her sister’s fries off the plate.

“A bunch of things. I put cayenne pepper in his jar of cinnamon and sand in his salt shaker. Ajax cleanser in his sugar bowl. Some cat poop into the Tupperware containers in his refrigerator.”

Wendy said, “Ick” and slapped her sister’s hand, which was once again straying toward the fries.

“And I used Superglue to seal every one of the little holes in the burners on his stove. And since I had the Superglue in my hand, I glued the TV remote to the coffee table.”

“Facing which way?” Jenny immediately asked.

“Away from the screen, of course.”

“Was the coffee table heavy?” Jenny was displaying some unexpected talent.