Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice (12 page)

“You’re sure Joanna was the one who told them where to find that, blackmail junk?”

“Yep.” Easy had shaved and taken a shower. He was wearing the top half of a suit of red striped pajamas. He hadn’t slept yet. It was noon.

“Why?” Jill moved into the white room. “You don’t think she could have thought you’d already have picked up the stuff, that you’d have been gone by the time this Troxa man got there?”

“No, I don’t think that.” Easy drank some of his boiling hot coffee. “I think she set me up.”

Jill said, “She’s very contradictory.”

“You could say that about her, yes.”

“What’s going to happen now?”

“I haven’t consulted any entrails or mandragore roots,” said Easy. “However, I would venture to predict that the shit is going to hit the fan.”

“I know that. Once you turned the blackmail material over to your contact in the District Attorney’s office and told the San Amaro police to come and get that Rudy, that was inevitable. I mean about Joanna, what’s going to happen to her?”

Easy shrugged. “Benning claims everything is going to come up fine.”

“You had to tell people about her, didn’t you?”

“Some,” said Easy. “She’s involved in several parts of the mess.”

“They’ll need a lawyer, huh?”

“At least one good one.”

Jill was behind him now, massaging his neck. “Maybe all this, the trauma or whatever, will have a positive effect on Joanna.”

“Maybe she’ll be struck by lightning and gain super powers or maybe she’ll win the Irish Sweepstakes and retire to an island in Spain,” said Easy. “Most things, though, the kind of things Benning and Joanna say they want, you have to work at.”

Jill continued to stroke his neck. “Would you like to go to bed now?”

“Yeah.”

“Alone?”

Easy thought about it. “No,” he said.

H
AGOPIAN WAS SOPPING WET
. He stood, shifting from one soggy foot to the other, on the newspaper pages Nan had spread out in Easy’s office. Rubbing paper towels over his black, tightly curling hair, he said, “I wasn’t expecting rain today.”

“What did you drive over here in?” asked Easy from behind his desk.

“Jem borrowed an old Chevy convertible from a tennis ball salesman she knows and she’s lending it to me.”

“You should keep the top up,” suggested Easy.

“I thought of that,” said the hawk-nosed writer. “I even discussed it with Jem. I pointed out that should the disc jockey I rely on for five minutes of news and weather each morning be anything less than infallible, I might get wet driving around in a convertible with no top.”

“She lost the top of this car, too?”

“Not too, John. It’s the bottom of my car she lost,” corrected Hagopian, who was still vigorously toweling his head. “As I understand it she went under something while driving this tennis ball salesman’s car and the top was torn off.”

“Under what?” asked Nan, handing Hagopian a bottle of aspirin.

“Something pretty low, I’m not sure what.”

“Take a few of those,” said Nan. “Lots of people will tell you aspirin has no effect in fighting possible infections, but I think it’s better than vitamin C.” She gave the air-conditioner knobs a few careful turns and left the room.

Hagopian said, “I see by the papers the last couple days that San Ignacio is falling apart. Was that Lt. Alvin the cop you talked to over there?”

“He was, yeah.”

“It’s funny,” said Hagopian. “Lots of guys who work with guns all their lives end up shooting themselves.”

Easy said, “I didn’t read through anything like all of what was in that drawer, only enough to be sure it was what all the frumus was about. There must have been quite a bit about Alvin in there.”

Hagopian decided to take off the wet tennis sweater he was wearing. He paced around in his T-shirt, keeping on the spread of newspaper pages. “I haven’t seen much mention of Joanna in all this so far.”

“I don’t think anybody has decided what they’re going to do about her yet. So far she’s a minor character.”

“The mayor of San Ignacio made some nice denials,” said Hagopian. He spread newspaper on the sofa and sat. “To me, though, a guy with more than two chins is never quite convincing when he says he hasn’t been dipping in the till.” Bending, he began to struggle with the wet laces of his shoes. “Sam ‘The Barber’ Troxa is rumored to be in some distant land.”

“That makes Joanna’s chances a little better.”

“Have you talked to her yet about how come Troxa’s boy got to the yacht club prior to you?”

“I don’t think I will,” said Easy. “I sent Benning a complete report of what I did on the case and what I found out, cleaned up some. I sent him an itemized list of expenses. If he pays the bill in a reasonable time I don’t even have to contact him again.”

Hagopian got one shoe off and tipped water out of it. “You didn’t empathize with anyone too much on this case, John.”

“For a few hours I did,” said Easy. “On that drive back from Mexico with Joanna. I let myself think she really was going to come back and change, work at changing.”

“People don’t always have control,” said Hagopian. “Look at how many times I’ve resolved never to loan any car of mine to any girl, be she big-titted or small.” He struggled with the shoe on his right foot. “What about all the bloody doings in Mexico? No repercussions yet?”

“A cautious check,” said Easy, “indicates no hood and no dead body were discovered by anyone at that place Joanna rented in Segado. The guy I left got loose and cleaned up things. I imagine Gerry Santos, and his car, are in some remote ravine somewhere.”

You haven’t got much respect for Christian burial practices.”

“I found out from Gladys Waugh Santos didn’t have any close relatives.”

“You didn’t know that when you left him down were.”

“No,” Easy admitted.

Hagopian had both shoes off now and was studying his wet socks. “Joanna was using two or three names,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“You ever find out why?”

“No more than you did,” answered Easy. “She told me, on the drive back, it was a game she liked to play.”

Removing the socks and wringing them out over the
Los Angeles Times,
Hagopian said, “People play wacky games in these parts. I’ve been wondering if there isn’t some new kind of wackiness virus, something that the screwed-up air around LA causes to form. The wackiness strain, first it takes over greater Los Angeles and then it slowly creeps across the country. I myself am immune to it, but that’s no help if everyone else comes down with it. The government ought to put more into wackiness research. By …”

The phone rang. Easy answered and Nan said, “Can you talk to Jim Benning?”

Easy frowned. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good morning, Mr. Easy,” said Benning. “I wanted to apologize about the other day. I’d been up most of the night and all, you know. I’m sorry.”

Easy gave an acknowledging grunt.

“I may have given you the idea,” Benning continued, “I didn’t have much faith in you. That’s certainly not the case, especially after I read the report you sent. You did a lot of good work on our behalf, Mr. Easy, and I appreciate it. Very much. The report was very well written.”

“My secretary always polishes them.”

After a silence Benning said, “I think I may need you again, Mr. Easy.”

“What for?”

“She hasn’t come back,” said Benning. “Not since the morning you left her off.”

“What does Dr. Jacobs say?”

“I can’t get hold of him. His answering service says he’s out of town. Jesus, I don’t know. I thought it was all over, all settled and going to be great. Look, Mr. Easy, I want to hire you again. I want you to find Joanna.”

Easy looked away from the phone. He took a slow breath in, then let it out. He shook his head. “I don’t want to work on this anymore.”

“Jesus, I need you to help me. You’ve got to find Joanna.”

“I found her once. I don’t want to do it twice.”

“Yes, but …”

Easy hung up.

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copyright © 1973 by Ron Goulart

cover design by Taylor Cloonan

978-1-4532-7777-5

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