K is for Killer (30 page)

I pressed my fingers against my eyes and rubbed my face. I ran my hands through my hair, realizing that for once—because of Danielle's cutting skills—every strand wasn't standing straight up on end. I gathered my resources
and let out a big breath, willing myself back to wakefulness. I pushed myself to my feet and brushed some of the wrinkles out of my turtleneck. One thing about casual dressing, you always look about the same. Even sleeping in a pair of blue jeans doesn't have much effect. From the corridor, we used the house phone to call into the ICU nurses' station. Cheney handled the formalities and got us both buzzed in.

“Am I supposed to have a badge?” I murmured to him as we moved down the corridor.

“Don't worry about it. I told 'em you're working under-cover as a bag lady.”

I gave him a little push.

We waited outside Danielle's room, watching through the glass window while a nurse checked her blood pressure and adjusted the drip on her IV. Like the layout in the cardiac care unit, these rooms formed a U shape around the nurses' station, patients clearly visible for constant monitoring. Cheney had chatted with the doctor, and he conveyed the gist of her current situation. “He took her spleen out. Orthopedic surgeon did most of the work, as it turns out. Set her jaw, set her collarbone, taped her ribs. She had two broken fingers, a lot of bruising. She should be all right, but it's going to take a while. The cut on her scalp turned out to be the least of it. Mild concussion, lots of blood. I've done that myself. Bang your head on the medicine cabinet, it looks like you're bleeding to death.”

The nurse straightened Danielle's covers and came out of the room. “Two minutes,” she said, lifted fingers forming a V.

We stood side by side, in silence, looking down at her like parents taking in the sight of a newborn baby. Hard to believe she belonged to us. She was nearly unrecognizable:
her eyes blackened, jaw puffy, her nose packed and taped. One splinted hand lay outside the covers. All of her bright red acrylic nails had popped off or broken, and it made her poor swollen fingers look bloody at the tips. The rest of her was scarcely more than a child-size mound. She was drifting in and out, never sufficiently alert to be aware of us. She seemed diminished by machinery, but there was something reassuring about all the personnel and equipment. As battered as she was, this was where she needed to be.

Leaving ICU, Cheney put his arm around my shoulders. “You okay?”

I leaned my head against him briefly. “I'm fine. How about you?”

“Doing okay,” he said. He pressed the down arrow for the elevator. “I had the doctor leave orders. They won't give out any information about her condition, and no one gets in.”

“You think the guy would come back?”

“It looks like he tried to kill her once. Who knows how serious he is about finishing the job?”

“I feel guilty. Like this is somehow connected to Lorna's death,” I said.

“You want to fill me in?”

“On what?” The elevators opened. We stepped in and Cheney pressed 1. We began to descend.

“The piece you haven't told me. You're holding something back, are you not?” His tone was light, but his gaze was intent.

“I guess I am,” I said. I gave a quick sketch of my conversation in the limousine with the Los Angeles attorney and his sidekicks. As we emerged from the elevator, I said, “You have any idea who the guy could be? He said he represented
someone else, but he might have been talking about himself.”

“I can ask around. I know those guys come up here for R and R. Give me the phone number and I'll check it out.”

“I'd rather not,” I said. “The less I know, the better. Are they running prostitutes up here?”

“Maybe something minor. Nothing big time. They probably control local action, but that may not mean much more than skimming off the profits. Leave the nuts and bolts to the guys under them.”

Cheney had parked on a side street closer to the front entrance than the emergency room. We reached the lobby. The gift shop and the coffee shop were both closed, shadowy interiors visible through plate-glass windows. At the main desk, a man was engaged in an agitated conversation with the patient information clerk. Cheney's manner underwent a change, his posture shifting into cop mode. His expression became implacable, and his walk took on a hint of swagger. In one smooth motion he'd flipped his badge toward the clerk, his gaze pinned on the fellow giving her such grief. “Hello, Lester. You want to step over here? We can have a chat,” he said.

Lester Dudley modified his own behavior correspondingly. He lost his bullying manner and smiled ingratiatingly. “Hey, Phillips. Nice to see you. Thought I caught sight of you earlier, down around Danielle's place. You hear what happened?”

“That's what I'm doing here, otherwise you wouldn't see me. This's my night off. I was home watching TV when the dispatcher rang through.”

“Not alone, I hope. I hate to see a guy like you lonely. Offer still stands, day or night, male or female. Anything you got a taste for, Lester Dudley provides. . . .”

“You pandering, Lester?”

“I was just teasing, Phillips. Jesus, can't a guy make a little joke? I know the law as well as you do, probably better, if it comes right down to it.”

Lester Dudley didn't suit my mental image of a pimp. From a distance he had looked like a surly adolescent, too young to be admitted to an R-rated movie without a parent or guardian. Up close I had to place him in his early forties, a flyweight, maybe five four. His hair was dark and straight, slicked back away from his face. He had small eyes, a big nose, and a slightly receding chin. His neck was thin, making his head look like a turnip.

Cheney didn't bother to introduce us, but Lester seemed aware of me, blinking at me slyly like an earth-burrowing creature suddenly hauled into daylight. He wore kids' clothes: a long-sleeved cotton knit T-shirt with horizontal stripes, blue jeans, denim jacket, and Keds. He had his arms crossed, hands tucked into his armpits. His watch was a Breitling, probably a fake, riddled with dials, and far too big for his wrist. It looked more like something he might have acquired sending off box tops. “So how's Danielle doing? I couldn't get a straight answer from the broad at the desk.”

Cheney's pager went off. He checked the number on the face of it. “Shit. . . . I'll be right back,” he murmured.

Lester seemed to bounce on his heels, ill at ease, staring after Cheney as he moved over to the desk.

I thought I ought to break the ice. “You're Danielle's personal manager?”

“That's right. Lester Dudley,” he said, holding out his hand.

I shook hands with him despite my reluctance to make physical contact. “Kinsey Millhone,” I said. “I'm a friend of
hers.” When you need information, you can't afford to let personal repugnance stand in your way.

He was saying, “Clerk's giving me a hard time, wouldn't give me information even after I explained who I was. Probably one of those women's liberation types.”

“No doubt.”

“How's she doing? Poor kid. I heard she really got the shit kicked out of her. Some crackaholic probably did it. They're mean sonsa bitches.”

“The doctor left before I had a chance to talk to him,” I said. “Maybe the clerk was under orders not to give out information.”

“Hey, not her. She was having way too much fun. Enjoying herself at my expense. Not that it bothers me. I'm always taking flak from these women's libber types. Can you believe they're still around? I thought they gave it up by now, but no such luck. Here just last week, this bunch of ball busters? Came down on me like a ton of bricks, claimed I was engaged in white slavery. Do you believe that? What a crock. How can they be talking about white slavery when half my girls are black?”

“You're being too literal. I think you miss the point,” I said.

“Here's the point,” he said. “These girls make good money. We're talking big bucks, megadollars. Where these girls going to get employment opportunities like this? They got no education. Half of 'em's got IQs in double digits. You don't hear
them
whining. Do they complain? No way. They're living like queens. I'll tell you something else. This bunch of ball busters isn't offering a damn thing. No jobs, no training, not even public assistance. How concerned could they be? These girls have to earn a living. You want to hear what I told 'em? I said, ‘Ladies, this is
business.
I don't create the market. It's supply and demand.' Girls provide goods and services, and that's all it is. You  think they care? You know what it's about? Sexual repression. Male-bashing bunch of fuzz-bumpers. They hate guys, hate to see anyone get their jollies with the opposite sex. . . .”

“Or,” said I, “they might object to the idea of anyone exploiting young girls. Just a wild guess on my part.”

“Well, if that's their position, what's the beef?” he asked. “I feel the same way as them. But they treat me like the enemy, that's what I don't get. My girls are clean and well protected, and that's the truth.”

“
Danielle
was well protected?”

“Of course not,” he said, exasperated that I was being so dense. “She shoulda listened to me. I told her, ‘Don't take guys home.' I told her, ‘Don't do a guy without I'm outside the door.' That's my job. This is how I earn my percentage. I drive her when she goes on appointments. No crazy's going to lay a hand on her if she's got an escort, for cripe's sake. She don't call, I can't help. It's as simple as that.”

“Maybe it's time she got out of the life,” I said.

“That what she's saying, and I go, ‘Hey, that's up to you.' Nobody forces my girls to stay in. She wants out, that's her business. I'd have to ask how she's going to earn a living . . .” He let that one trail, his voice tinged with skepticism.

“Meaning what? I'm not following.”

“I'm just trying to picture her working in a department store, waitressing, something like that. Minimum-wage-type job. Beat-up like that, it'd be tough, of course, but as long as she don't mind coming down in the world, who am I to object? You got scars on your face, might be a trick to get employment.”

“Nobody's said anything about facial scars,” I said. “Where'd you get that idea?”

“Oh. Well, I just assumed. Word on the street is she got busted up bad. Naturally, I thought, you know, some unfortunate facial involvement. It's a pity, of course, but a lot of guys try to do that, interfere with a poor girl's ability to make a living, undercut their confidence, and shit like that.”

Cheney reappeared, his gaze shifting with curiosity from Lester's face to mine. “Everything okay?”

“Sure, fine,” I said tersely.

“We're just talking business,” Lester said. “I never did hear how Danielle is. She going to be all right?”

“Time to go,” Cheney said to him. “We'll walk you out to your car.”

“Hey, sure thing. Where they got her, up in orthopedics? I could send some flowers'f I knew. Someone told me her jaw's broke. Probably some coked-up lunatic.”

“Skip the flowers. We're not giving out information. Doctor's orders,” Cheney said.

“Pretty smart. I was going to suggest that myself. Keeps her safe from the wrong types.”

I said, “Too late for that,” but the irony escaped him.

Once we reached the street in front of St. Terry's, we did a parting round of handshakes as though we'd just had a business meeting. The minute Lester's back was turned, I wiped my hand on my jeans. Cheney and I waited on the sidewalk until we saw him drive away.

I
t was close to four in the morning as Cheney's little red Mazda droned through the darkened streets. With the top down, the wind whipped across my face. I leaned my head back and watched the sky race by. On the mountain side of the city, the shadowy foothills were strung with necklaces of streetlights as twinkling as bulbs on a Christmas tree. In the houses we passed, I could see an occasional house light wink on as early morning workers plugged in the coffee and staggered to the shower.

“Too cold for you?”

“This is fine,” I said. “Lester seemed to know a lot about Danielle's beating. You think he did it?”

“Not if he wanted her to work,” Cheney said.

The sky at that hour is a plain, unbroken gray shading down to the black of trees. Dew saturates the grass. Sometimes you can hear the spritzing of the rainbirds, computers programmed to water lawns before the sun has fully risen. If the cycle of low rainfall persisted as it had in the past, water usage would be restricted and all the lush grass would die. During the last drought, many home owners
had been reduced to spraying their yards with dense green paint.

On Cabana Boulevard, a kid on a skateboard careened along the darkened sidewalk. It occurred to me that I'd been waiting to see the Juggler, the man on the bike, with his taillight and pumping feet. He was beginning to represent some capricious force at work, elfin and evil, some figment of my imagination dancing along ahead of me like the answer to a riddle. Wherever I went, he'd eventually appear, always headed somewhere in a hurry, never quite arriving at his destination.

Cheney had slowed, leaning forward to check the skateboarder as we passed him. Cheney raised a hand in greeting, and the kid waved back.

“Who's that?” I asked.

“Works night maintenance at a convalescent home. He had his driver's license pulled on a DUI. Actually, he's a good kid,” he said. Moments later he turned into Danielle's alley, where my car was still parked. He pulled in behind the VW, shifting into neutral to minimize the rumble of his engine. “How's your day looking? Will you have time to sleep?”

“I hope so. I'm really bushed,” I said. “Are you going to work?”