Eve's Men (19 page)

With that, she had sidled back into the house and left Charley standing there like a rejected encyclopedia salesman. Back in his car, he checked the map again and judged the second address to be about five miles west, in the Northridge area, also in the Valley. When he got there, however, it wasn’t a house he found but a shopping center, and not a very new one at that.

The drive from Northridge to Venice, where the third person on the list supposedly lived—and where Brian’s condo was—took Charley almost an hour, which made him grateful that his rented Thunderbird had a decent air conditioner. Though he knew it beggared belief, the freeways seemed even more jammed than they had been on his last visit to L.A. a decade earlier, when he, Donna, and Jason had spent ten days touring the California coast, from San Francisco to San Diego. It was a vacation Charley did not remember with fondness. Jason had been relentlessly sulky and Donna had been tireless, dragging the two of them to every tourist site on the map. Charley had endured it stoically, knowing that it would be not only his first touring vacation but also his last.

Before trying the third name on the list, he drove slowly past Brian’s condo and wasn’t surprised to see that it was under surveillance by two shirtsleeved cops sitting in an unmarked car three doors down, baking in the scant shade of an almost leafless tree. It was the canal part of Venice, a wasteland of row bungalows and duplexes facing narrow, concrete-lined streams laid out like the irrigation rows in a cornfield. The trees bordering the canals were so few and so desiccated Charley surmised that it was either the salt air or the local ethos—a pharmacological bohemia—that was killing them.

The address of the third person on the list, Waldo Trask, led Charley to a tire repair shop located only a few blocks from the ocean. Charley surmised that there was a loft or apartment above, so he went up the side stairs and rang the bell. Inside, he could hear a radio or stereo playing a Melissa Etheridge song loud enough to be heard over the tire shop’s power wrench, whose recurrent howl virtually shook the building. In time, the door opened and a lean, perspiring woman with spiky dark hair and cold eyes stood looking down at Charley two stairs below. She was wearing Speedo trunks and a heavy sweatshirt that proclaimed her politics: I’m a Fucking Queer.

“Yeah?” she said.

“I’m looking for Waldo Trask.”

“He ain’t here.”

“When do you expect him?”

“I don’t. An hour, maybe two. Why? What’s your business?”

“It’s with him.”

“Oh really?” She didn’t like that very much. “Well, like I said, he ain’t here.” With that, she slammed the door in Charley’s face.

“I can believe it,” Charley muttered, reflecting on her sweatshirt’s slogan as he went back down the stairs.

Having at least an hour to kill, he left the car where it was and walked over to Venice’s famed ocean walk, another of the tourist spots Donna had insisted that the three of them experience. Located between the beach and an eclectic assortment of buildings—houses, cottages, businesses—the ocean walk was a broad, mile-long blacktop that appeared to be home to a permanent population of eccentrics, exhibitionists, and lost souls of every stripe. Indeed, it seemed almost as if the tide along that stretch of coastline ran the wrong way, washing up the flotsam of the country, not the sea.

As before, there were the usual drunks and bodybuilders and mimes, these last a breed that Charley felt deserved public flogging whenever and wherever they appeared. Fortunately there were also the sexy young Rollerbladers in bikinis, happily zipping along, leaving in their wake an epidemic of unrequited lust. Despite these representatives of the past, however, Charley could see that the ocean walk had changed considerably, and for the worse. Unlike before, there were now countless beggars and homeless families and lost children cadging cigarettes, food, change, whatever they could get. An easy touch, Charley was soon out of change, as well as dollars and fives, so he made his way back to the car and went looking for a McDonald’s.

Ninety minutes after he’d had the door slammed in his face, he was back at Trask’s. And this time it was not the mild-mannered lesbian who answered the door but a huge black man with a shaved head, an eyepatch, a missing ear, and a stainless steel clamp where his right hand should have been. Judging by the way he moved, Charley figured that his right leg was prosthetic as well.

Charley introduced himself, and the man shook his hand, his left hand.

“Waldo Trask,” he said. “Come on in.”

Charley followed him across the loft to a living room area: a sofa and chairs ranged around a large screen TV near the front windows. There was also a workout area with Nautilus equipment, treadmills, and a punching bag, as well as a kitchen area, a curtained-off bedroom, and an artist’s studio, a place where someone had painted expressionistic pictures of very muscular women striking threatening poses. Charley didn’t have to wonder who the painter was, though she was not in evidence at the moment.

Without asking, Trask got two cans of beer out of the refrigerator and gave one to Charley.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Stuntman must be be a real dangerous profession.”

Charley smiled slightly. “The thought did cross my mind.”

Sitting, Trask lifted his false leg and dropped it heavily onto an ottoman. “The joke is none of it happened as a stuntman—just riding home on my Harley. This semi appears out of nowhere, and I take the bike down, hoping to slide on under. Only at that same moment the fuckin driver slams on the brakes and swerves to miss me. As a result, I catch nine of his eighteen wheels. That was my last stunt, believe me.”

“Does Brian know about this?”

Trask shook his massive head. “I don’t think so. We been out of touch these last few years.”

“When I see him again I’ll tell him.”

Trask made no response to that. And for a time he just sat there like a great mound of flesh. Undoubtedly a large, muscular man to begin with, he was now well over three hundred pounds, much of it fat.

“I take it this is about what Brian’s done,” he said. “All that shit on TV.”

“That’s right. I want to find him before the police do. I want him to give himself up. It’ll go easier on him if he does.”

Trask shook his head. “Well, like I said, we ain’t been in touch for years. But Brian Poole, man, I’d do anything I could to help him. Five, six years ago I was scraping bottom—all the booze and coke I could glom onto—and he took me in, no questions asked. I owe him.”

“Can you think of any other place he might be staying? Maybe some old girlfriend’s?”

“What if he don’t wanna turn himself in?”

“Then I just walk. I go home.”

Again Trask was silent for a time. Finally, grinning, he shook his head once more. “Old Brian—I remember one of the last times I saw him. I’d been on a job in New York, and he’d invited me down to Tennessee, where he was living then with Kim Sanders, on her so-called farm. Place had gold faucets, for Christ’s sake. Anyway, Kim Sanders—man, what a piece of work that gal was. While I’m there, her source comes callin’, and Brian kicks him out. Well, Kim comes unglued, and they have this big fuckin’ brawl. Practically destroy the house. Brian tells her he’s cuttin’ out with me. So what does she do? She gets a rifle and sticks the barrel in her mouth. ‘You go,’ she croaks, ‘and I’ll do it. I really will.’ So what does Brian do? He turns to me and says ‘Ain’t love grand?’ Well, that gets her to laughin’ so hard she’s chippin’ her teeth on the gun barrel. And the first thing you know, she’s jumpin’ into his arms, with her legs wrapped around him, and he’s carryin’ her off to the bedroom. I didn’t see them again for a good three hours.”

“That sounds like Brian, all right,” Charley said, smiling. Still, he didn’t want to be sidetracked into reminiscence and storytelling with Trask. “But listen, any name that comes to mind—some place he might be—I’d really appreciate it if you’d give me a call.” He got up and handed Trask a card from his hotel.

“Bel Air Hotel, huh?” Trask said. “You must be a tycoon, Charley.”

“No, I just got lost, that’s all.”

“And you really think it’d go better for him—turnin’ hisself in?”

“That’s why I’m here. He’s my brother.”

Trask smiled. “He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother, huh?”

“That’s about it.”

“Well, I’m sorry, man. I just don’t know where he might be. We been out of touch too long.”

“That’s all right. I understand. And thanks for the beer.”

On the way out, Charley saw Trask’s roommate looking at him from behind the bedroom curtain. He wondered if she hated all men, or just him.

Sometime during the night, while Eve was asleep and dreaming, he came to her. She was dreaming that she was out on Stephanie’s road again and that there was a cougar down in the chaparral, moving parallel to her, its eyes a brighter orange than that burning in the coach lights up ahead. And suddenly Charley was there too, gently taking her hand as he walked along between her and the cougar.

“Don’t worry about mountain lions,” he said. “Their eyes are worse than their bite.”

Though she had smiled at him, she found herself wondering if she had ever experienced this before: humor in a dream. And then she realized that she was waking, that her covers had been been pulled back and a body as naked as her own was cuddling in against her, hard and smooth, its breath redolent of champagne and cigarettes.

Jesus, I’m sorry about today, baby,” he said. “I just had to see you. I had to hold you. Really. I need you, honey.”

Fully awake now, Eve was aware of Brian’s right arm slipping under her shoulders, pulling her toward him. He had moved his left leg across her pelvis and legs, and she could feel his cock already hard against her hip.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” he went on. “And don’t worry, I didn’t come for sex. I just needed to hold you, babe. I needed to feel you in my arms.”

He was already kissing her lightly on the forehead and the eyes and cheek, and now he moved to her mouth, gently, just brushing her lips with his own. But as she didn’t resist, he kissed her more deeply, though without pushing his tongue into her. With his free hand, he caressed her breasts and then circled her other shoulder, so that she soon found herself lying in the sinewy bracelet of his arms, with his body more on top of her now, his erection flat against her pelvic bone.

She was aware that once again he was pushing all the right buttons, doing just what she wanted him to do, giving her just what she needed. Going to sleep, she had felt lost and alone, a twenty-nine-year-old woman, unmarried and childless, not even sure of her lover. And she had longed for just what she had now, the feeling of being at the very center of her universe, locked in Brian’s arms, covered by his sleek body, listening to his loving words. Her one fear was that she might start to cry, because her tension all day had been so great and its release now so sudden. She hated that about herself, the weakness of the female, the need to be held and protected and loved, hated it so much that she could feel herself trembling from the effort not to give in to it.

In the end, though, she could not hold back her tears. And Brian felt them too, tasted them.

“Aw, baby, I’m so goddamn sorry,” he said. “I love you so much.”

Normally that would have been it, the key to the floodgate, and she would have begun sobbing. And she dearly wanted to do so now, to feel the delicious joy of total surrender. But her pride would not let her, and she continued to lie there in his arms, her eyes streaming as he went on kissing and caressing her, telling her how sorry he was about everything and how much he loved her. And in time, as her tears ebbed but his erection did not, she moved down in the bed just far enough so that he was between her legs, virtually unable to keep from entering her.

“Hey, I didn’t come for this,” he said. “Really, honey.”

“I believe you. But what the devil, huh?”

Though his face was burrowed into her cheek and hair, she could feel him smile.

“Right. What the devil?”

In the morning Eve decided to postpone leaving Stephanie’s, at least for another day. And she couldn’t help suspecting that that might have been the reason for Brian’s night visit, because he had sensed her growing anger and resentment and moved to end it, throwing her a few bones of tenderness and caring. In talk-show psychobabble, she figured she had become both his victim and his ennabler, allowing him to be the bastard he seemed increasingly inclined to want to be.

This morning, however, no one could have accused him of anything but the best behavior. From the twins’ bedroom Eve had been watching him down in the pool, patiently trying to teach a fearful Terry how to swim while Mama looked on from her shaded lounge, both hands firmly locked onto her life support system. This day Stephanie had forsaken her lounging pajamas for white culottes and an awning-stripe blouse, not a happy choice, since her lower legs looked like bags of grapes.

Though Eve thought it odd that a healthy eighteen-year-old would have to be taught to swim in her own backyard pool, she of course didn’t plan on saying anything about it. Rather, she decided to join the two of them down in the pool. Unfortunately she hadn’t been able to find her favorite swimsuit—a one-piece black faille—and instead had to make do with a skimpy monstrosity Brian and bought for her at a Victoria’s Secret shop, a white bikini that covered little else besides her nipples and crotch. Though she didn’t care much for either of the Hodges, bloated Stephanie or the boardlike Terry, she took no pleasure in showing them up, waltzing out to the pool finally, almost as naked as her namesake.