City of War (31 page)

I asked the driver, a burly guy named Buck who had Brooklyn written all over him, if he had the socks, and he handed me a brown paper bag. I opened it and found a Beretta 9mm. I’d have preferred something smaller, but at least D. J. hadn’t sent a Magnum.

Archer looked at the gun but made no comment and went back to her sandwich. I gave Buck the Princeton Street address. Then I dialed Benny Joe. I was pissed at myself for not having done this before, especially after my conversation with Marta Videz, but better late than never.

The phone rang for easily three minutes before he picked up. He sounded half-asleep. “What the fuck time is it?”

“How you doing with those negatives?”

“Guy was a helluva shooter. Had a real fuckin’ eye. I’ll have something for you tomorrow.”

“Forget it.”

“What the fuck! You got any idea how many hours I put in!”

“You can have the Babe Ruth pictures for your trouble.”

“You fuckin’ shittin’ me?”

“Nope, consider them yours.”

“Tell that rat fuck Praxis, okay?”

“Okay. Now here’s what I need, and you don’t have to do anything but exercise that brain of yours. You awake?”

“Wait’ll I open a beer.”

I heard rummaging, then a can being opened and its contents being gulped. Finally, Benny Joe said, “Bedroom fridge. What a fuckin’ country. Okay, shoot.”

“Where would a woman hide photographs?”

“This is like some kind of fuckin’ joke, right? Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me.”

“I’m serious. They would be important enough that they might get her killed.”

“In her snatch. How the fuck should I know?”

“Stand up.”

“What?”

“Get the fuck out of bed.”

I heard groaning sounds and a loud burp. “Okay, asshole, I’m up.”

“Now walk around the room. Get the blood flowing.” I waited a few seconds. “You moving yet?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Now listen to me. You’re a genius with all things photographic. That means you think differently when it comes to cameras and film. If you were half as good at poker as you are at pictures, you’d know exactly what a civilian had when he bet out.”

“Jesus, what I do ain’t a fuckin’ game.”

“Oh, it’s not? Then why does the government keep trying to get you to come back? And why are all those assassination photos hanging on your walls? Because guys like you would
stop in the middle of getting laid if an idea came to you that would beat one of your competitors at some bullshit thing no one else would even notice. You’re the ultimate competitor, Benny Joe. So kick Lee Harvey out of your fucking head for a few minutes, and put those cells to work on the problem.”

There was silence.

“Okay, what were her hobbies?”

“Art, same as her business.”

“This is about that fuckin’ broad who got killed, isn’t it?”

“Forget that. Focus.”

“Left- or right-handed?”

I had to think for a moment. She smoked and ate mostly with her left hand. “Left,” I guessed.

“Age? No, forget that. It only matters that she was a broad. Car?”

“Mustang. GT. Silver.”

“House or apartment?”

“House.”

“Favorite movie?”

Favorite movie? What the…? “We watched
Papillon
once.”

Benny Joe groaned. “Jesus Christ, Rail, just about everybody with a pulse has had to watch
Papillon
with you. You’re gonna show McQueen to a broad, it’s gotta be fuckin’
Thomas Crown
.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ll try to remember that. I don’t know what her favorite movie was.”

“You’re sure not making this any fuckin’ easier. Next time you’re going to get shot up with some chick, ask some fuckin’ questions beforehand, asshole. Okay, give me something personal. Something she might not have told anyone else.”

I thought about how she liked to have her nipples worked, but I didn’t think that was what he had in mind. And I didn’t need another lecture about how I was doing that wrong. Then it came to me. “She was probably molested by her father.”

“Jesus Christ. Why the fuck didn’t you say that before?”

“Explain.”

“Pictures aren’t like jewels. You don’t put them in a safe-deposit box and trot them out for parties. They’re fuckin’ personal, man. You need to have them close—so you can look at them whenever you need a fix. And if they’re important enough to fuckin’ hide, then they’ve got to be someplace you think is safe—even if it’s not. Like me and my fuckin’ hole in the yard.”

I understood. “So her bedroom is out.”

“Right, it’s where her father would have come to her. The whole house is fuckin’ out if it’s the one she lived in with him. It wouldn’t matter if he was dead a thousand fuckin’ years. He’d still be there.”

Suddenly, it came to me. “Cactus,” I said out loud.

“I thought you just said cactus,” said Benny Joe.

“I did. And you
are
a genius. You’ve earned the right to go back to bed.”

“Nah, I just opened a fuckin’ beer, remember?”

As we drove toward Princeton Street, I asked Archer about the greenhouse in the backyard.

“It was my mother’s,” she said. “Everything she touched died, but that didn’t stop her. Went through her tulip phase, then orchids, the works. I finally figured out that it didn’t matter if anything grew or not. It filled time.”

“What about Kim?”

She thought for a moment. “As soon as she and Truman moved in, Kim was out there puttering around. I don’t remember what she grew, but Bess said everything green loved her.”

“What about cactus?”

Archer looked at me. “I saw that stuff in the yard, but Kim must have put it in later. Growing up, it was all hedges and flowers.”

Buck let us out in front, and I told him to get a cup of coffee and come back in an hour. I didn’t want him sitting there in seven miles of black steel.

Archer stood behind me as I pushed open the greenhouse door. She looked at the wilderness of needles. “Jesus Christ, a cactus Amazon. What was she doing with all this shit? There used to be just a couple of boxes of dead daisies and a million fucking spiders. Willy City.”

I knelt down where two massive organ-pipe cactus in identical pots pressed against each other. At least eight feet tall and with spines reaching out six inches, they looked lethal. But something was different about them. Everywhere else, smaller bunches of cactus had been shoved into the spaces between the larger ones, creating a solid curtain of green. Here, that hadn’t been done.

I noticed that twelve inches of spines had been clipped off one of the stalks. Same with the adjacent one, leaving a clearance the width of my hand. On a hunch, I reached through. Nothing. Gingerly, I extended my arm and reached from side to side as far as I could, half-expecting to be impaled, but all I hit was more empty space.

Pulling back my arm, I rocked one of the organ-pipe pots back and forth until I had widened the gap a couple of feet. Squinting into the darkness beyond, I could see a narrow passageway. I turned to Archer. “In the kitchen cabinet next to the water glasses, there’s a flashlight.”

A few moments later, Archer was back with a small halogen Maglite. As she handed it to me, I noticed brown dirt in the grooves of the grip, and I had a feeling it wasn’t the first time it had been out here.

With the Maglite between my teeth as a headlight, I wriggled on my hands and knees between the two large cactus. I was a lot bigger than Kim, and my sides and back brushed against the sentry plants, making the going painful.

About five feet in, I was no longer crawling on the bare plank floor but instead on carpet remnants, carefully cut and tacked down.

“Where the hell are you?” Archer called. “I can’t see anything.”

I thought back to that first night with Kim.
I think ev
eryone should have a completely unexpected place in their home, don’t you?

“Ali Baba’s cave,” I answered.

“What?”

“Where Kim came to get away from her father.”

The tunnel wound around and through the plants, but because each had had its spines clipped off high enough for passage, I was able to avoid most of the hazards as long as I stayed low. Finally, I saw an open area ahead, and I guessed I was near the far corner of the greenhouse, where the thorny creeper overhead made the place almost completely dark.

I don’t think anyone could have prepared me for what I saw next. Reflecting back at me in the glow of the flashlight were the whites of hundreds of eyes. It took me a few seconds to realize they were dolls. In all shapes and sizes, some new, most old and well-worn, lined up row after row on makeshift brick and plank shelves that reached up at least five feet.

The space wasn’t high enough for me to stand, but I could crouch without too much discomfort, and I found two thin, battery-operated lights shaped like candles. They’d probably been pilfered from Bess’s Christmas decorations years ago. The first one was dead, but the second came on and lit the area well enough for me to turn off the flashlight.

I heard Archer. “Hey, I see light over there. I sure hope it’s you, because if not, I’m outta here.”

“You want to come in?” I called back.

“Not a chance. I’ll live it on the replay.”

I took in the rest of Kim’s furnishings. A stack of children’s Golden Books, some doll furniture, an air mattress, two pillows, a blanket, a small picnic cooler and a cigar box of costume jewelry. There was dust, but not a lot. It hadn’t been that long since she’d been here.

Kim had created a safe place the only way she’d known how, and I wondered how many nights she’d crouched out here in the dark while Truman York prowled the house in
a sexual rage. Spiders, mice and cactus had been a lot less threatening than her father. And like Benny Joe had said, even dead, he was still there. And I’d been rough on her because she hadn’t told me the complete truth the first time I’d asked. Even though I hadn’t known, I still felt small.

I looked at the rows of dolls and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Kim. I can’t make it right, but maybe I can make it even.”

Some of the dolls were almost in tatters. She’d rescued them and brought them here to be safe for the rest of their lives. Just like she’d wished someone had rescued her. It felt like a violation to even touch them, but I had no other choice.

I started down the rows, picking each one up, checking it, then putting it back. Moments later I found the camera behind one of the dolls. I opened it, but the memory card slot was empty. I put it back where I’d found it. Give or take one Olympus, the Getty would survive.

Then, something on one of the lower shelves caught my eye. Sandwiched in between the dolls was a single, planted cactus. I pulled it forward and saw, around its stem, a tiny brass tag that read, HUG ME—I’M LONELY, just like the one Abernathy had sent home from her office.

Using the blanket to keep from getting stuck, I pulled the plant gently out of its pot and set it aside. Then I probed the dirt with my fingers. At the bottom was a small Ziploc containing a smooth silver object slightly smaller than a Bic lighter.

A computer flash drive.

I put it in my pocket and replanted the cactus. Then I took one more look around, switched off the candle-shaped light and went back out the way I’d come.

I told Archer about the cactus womb Kim had created and about the rescued dolls. You didn’t have to have a degree in psychology to put it together. I saw her lip begin to tremble, and she turned away. “That poor child.”

I needed to go in the house to get Kim’s computer. Archer
said she’d wait in the car. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to go back in there for a while,” she said.

As Buck drove us to Santa Monica Airport, I put the flash drive in the laptop. It contained two items, a slideshow and a text document.

I opened the document first.

26

The Flash Drive