Free Fall (19 page)

“Sure.”

He went out and left the door ajar because of the phone cable.

I called Marty Beale’s direct line and a male voice answered. It wasn’t Marty, and it wasn’t Jennifer Sheridan. “Watkins, Okum, & Beale. Mr. Beale’s office.”

“Jennifer Sheridan, please.”

“She didn’t come in today. May I take a message?”

“I’m a friend, and it’s important that I speak with her. Do you know where I can reach her?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m an office temp, and I didn’t get here until this afternoon.”

“Do you know why she didn’t come in?”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

I hung up and called Jennifer Sheridan’s apartment. On the third ring, the phone machine answered. After it beeped, I said, “It’s Elvis. If you’re there, pick up.”

No one picked up.

I called Lou Poitras. A woman’s voice answered, “Detectives.”

“Lou Poitras, please.”

“He’s out. You want to leave a message?”

“How about Charlie Griggs?”

“Hold on.” I heard her ask somebody in the background about Griggs. She came back on the line. “He’s with Poitras. You want to leave a message or not?”

I hung up and leaned against the bars. “She didn’t go to work and she’s not at home.”

Pike said, “Could mean anything.”

“Sure.” Mr. Optimism.

“We could help her.”

“In here?”

Pike said, “No. Not in here.”

“Joe.” I knew what he was saying.

“Wait.”

The cop with the squash head came back for the phone, and forty minutes after that the heavy door opened again and in came the squash with a Hispanic cop sporting a flattop crew cut The squash said,
“You
guys are going to be bused over to County. On your feet.”

You could hear the men in the cells coming off their bunks.

The squash went down the row, unlocking the doors and telling the prisoners to step out into the hall. When the squash got down to Pike’s cell, he said, “What in hell happened to you?”

The big voice said, “Fell.”

Pike was three people behind me.

They lined us up and led us down another corridor past the booking area. The young Hispanic cop brought up the rear.

We went down another short hall and then out into a kind of outdoor alcove. Two uniformed cops were walking into the maintenance building to our right and a third uniformed cop was coming in from the parking lot to our left. A large blue bus that said
SHERIFF
on the side was parked maybe sixty feet away. The deputy sheriff who drove the thing was talking to a guy in the maintenance building. The cop coming in from the parking lot walked past us and went inside through the same door that we had just come out of. The deputy sheriff yelled, “Hey, Volpe,” and went into the maintenance building. Pike said, “Now,” then stepped out of the line and launched a roundhouse kick into the side of the Hispanic cop’s head. The Hispanic cop went down. The squash heard it and turned and I hit him two fast straight rights low on the jaw, and he went down, too. The Hispanic guy who had shared my cell said, “The fuck you guys doing?” He looked surprised.

The black guys with the yellow eyes held on to each other and smiled. The big guy who’d been with Pike said, “Fuckin’ A,” and ran to the right past the maintenance building and toward the front gate. Two other guys ran after him. Pike and I went to the left through the parking lot, keeping low and moving toward the street. We made the fence just as men began shouting. The fence ran back along the side of the building past a trash dumpster and maybe half a dozen fifty-five-gallon oil drums and a motorcycle that looked like somebody’s personal property. We followed the fence back toward the oil drums, and pretty soon we were on the side of the building. The shouts got louder and there were the sounds of men running, but all of the noise seemed behind us.

We went up onto an oil drum, chinned ourselves to the roof, then jumped back across the concertina wire to the street. A couple of kids on mountain bikes watched us with big eyes.

We walked toward the houses just as an alarm buzzer went off at the police station. An older man rocking on a porch stood and looked at us. “What’s going on?”

I told him they were running tests.

We stayed on the street until he couldn’t see us, and then we cut between two houses and started to run.

Somewhere behind us, there came the sound of sirens.

W
e went over fences and through vegetable gardens and between houses. We checked each street for police, then crossed steadily and with purpose as if two white guys on foot were an everyday thing in South Central Los Angeles. Twice we had to pull back between houses for passing patrol units, and once we surprised an elderly woman coming out of her home with a basket of wet laundry. I gave her my best Dan Aykroyd. “Gas company. We’ve had reports of a leak.” The Aykroyd works every time.

We moved from her yard to the next, and worked our way north.

More black-and-whites roared past, and sirens that started far away drew close. The cops knew that anybody who made it through the gates would be on foot, so they’d concentrate their people within a dose radius. More and more cops would flood into the surrounding streets, and pretty soon there would be helicopters. Pike said, “We need wheels.”

“They impounded my car. You think they got the Jeep?”

“I was on the next street over. They didn’t know about it.”

“That makes it, what, ten or twelve blocks from here? Might as well be in Fresno.”

Pike said, “If we have limits, they are self-imposed.” Always count on Pike for something like that.

Two black-and-whites sped east on Florence under the freeway. After they passed, we trotted west into an Arco station that had one of those little Minimart places. A couple of cars sat at the pumps, and a Hostess delivery van sat at the Minimart. A young black guy in his early twenties got out of the van with a box of baked goods and went into the Minimart. Pike said, “Wheels.”

“Maybe he’ll give us a ride.”

Pike frowned.

The delivery guy came out of the Minimart, threw his box into the van, and climbed in after it. I went up to his window and said, “Excuse me. We need a lift about ten blocks west of here. Think you could help?”

The delivery guy said, “Hey, sure. No problem.”

Only in L.A.

Maybe ten minutes later he dropped us off at Joe Pike’s Cherokee. Joe keeps a spare key duct-taped to the inside of the front fender. He found it, unlocked the cab, and we climbed inside. Joe dug under the dash and came out with a plastic bag containing five hundred dollars in cash, a driver’s license that said his name was Fred C. Larson, a Visa card in the same name, and a Walther TPH .22-caliber pocket gun.
Be prepared.

I said, “Fred?”

Pike headed toward the freeway. “They’ll cover our houses and our businesses.”

“We don’t go home. We try for Jennifer Sheridan. We’ve got to get her off the street before D’Muere finds her.”

“Where does she live?”

I told him. Pike drove quickly, and neither of us spoke during the ride.

We parked in front of her building maybe forty minutes later and pressed her call button, but no one answered. We pressed more buttons until someone finally buzzed open the glass door and we went up to the third floor.

We were knocking on her door when a woman with two small children came out of the apartment across the hall. The woman was maybe in her forties and heavy across the hips. She made a
tsk
ing sound when she saw us and said, “I’d appreciate it if you ask her not to make so much noise tonight. All the hammering woke up Teddi.”

I looked at her. “What hammering?”

She pulled the door shut and locked it. The two children ran down the hall. I guess one of them was Teddi. “Well, the knocking. It was so loud it woke Teddi and Teddi woke me and I had to look. It was after two.” She squinted at Pike. “Was it you?”

Pike shook his head.

I said, “Someone was hammering at her door after two in the morning?”

The woman nodded, but now she wasn’t interested in talking. Her children had disappeared around a corner and she wanted to go after them. “Yes, and someone got quite loud, too. It was very inconsiderate.”

“More than one voice?” I was thinking D’Muere.

“I don’t believe so.” She glanced at Pike again. “Well, I thought it was him but I guess not. Her boyfriend. That big guy. I think he’s a police officer.”

“Mark Thurman?”

“I don’t know his name. We just see him in the hall.”

“He was here at two this morning?”

She nodded. “Making a terrible racket. Then they
left together.” Now she frowned at me and looked at my hair.

I said, “What?”

She gave embarrassed, and then she hurried away down the hall. “I’ve got to find those damn kids.”

I looked at Pike. He said, “You’ve got something in your hair.”

I touched my hair and felt something crusty. My fingers came away speckled red. James Edward Washington’s blood. “If she’s with Thurman, she’s running. If she’s running, that means she’s safe.”

“Until she gets found.”

“Yeah.”

Thirty minutes later we checked into a motel Pike knew two blocks from the beach in Santa Monica. It was called the Rising Star Motel. Fred C. Larson signed the register.

The room was simple, but functional, with two double beds and a bath and cheap wall paneling that had been scarred by years of transient use. There was a little round table and two chairs by the window, and a TV bolted to a dresser. The bolts looked thick and heavy enough to pin down a Saturn Five.

Pike left after a couple of minutes, and I went into the bathroom and inspected myself.

I went out to the ice machine, brought back a bucket of ice, then peeled off my shirt, put it in the sink, covered it with the ice, and ran in cold water. I wanted to call Mrs. Washington and tell her about James Edward, but I didn’t. James Edward Washington’s blood was on my shirt and in my hair. How could I tell her about that? When the shirt was soaking, I took off the rest of my clothes, went into the shower, and let the water beat into me. The water was hot. I used the little motel soap and a washcloth, and I scrubbed hard at my face and my neck and my hands and my hair, and then at the rest of me. I washed my hair twice. The police had
let me wash off; but that had been with Handi Wipes and paper towels and Borax soap. There’s only so much you can do with a Handi Wipe. I scrubbed until my skin was pink and my scalp stung with the hot water, and then I got out to see about the shirt I rubbed the fabric as hard as I had rubbed my skin, but it was too late. The bloodstains were set, and would always be there. How could I tell Ida Leigh Washington about that?

Twenty minutes later there was a double rap at the door and Joe Pike let himself in. He was carrying an olive green Marine Corps duffel and a large grocery bag and he was wearing new sunglasses. The sunglasses would’ve been the first thing he bought He put the grocery bag on the little round table and the duffel bag on the bed. He looked at me and nodded. “Better.”

“You went by the gun shop?”

He took waist holsters and handguns from the duffel. “Called one of the guys and had him pick up some things. We met at the market.”

“Have the cops been by your shop?”

Pike nodded. “They’ve got an undercover van parked down the block. It’ll be the same at your place, too.”

Great.

Pike unwrapped the holsters and inspected them, and then tossed one to me. Clip holsters. We could snap them to our waistbands and wear our shirts out over them for that Miami thug look. Pike handed me a Smith .38. He counted four hundred dollars out of a plain white envelope, handed half to me. “There’s food in the bags.”

He’d bought soap and deodorant and toothbrushes and paste and razors and the things you need to keep yourself up. He’d also bought a six-pack of cold Thai beer. I put the toiletries in the bathroom, and then we ate. While we ate I called my office to check for messages, but there were none. I called my home next
and there were two messages from Jennifer Sheridan. In the first message she identified herself and asked if I was there and, when I didn’t answer, she hung up. In the second, she again asked if I was there, but this time when I didn’t answer she said that she would call back later tonight. She said that it was very important that she speak with me. She was speaking softly and she didn’t sound happy.

Pike watched me listen. “Jennifer?”

“She’s going to call later tonight.”

Pike stared at me.

“I’ve got to be there, Joe.”

Pike’s mouth twitched, and he stood up, ready to go. “If it were easy, it wouldn’t be fun.”

W
e cruised the Mulholland Snake from Cahuenga Pass to Laurel Canyon, and then back again. It was after ten, and the traffic was light and getting lighter, mostly affluent stragglers who’d put in extra hours at the office or in the bar and were only now cresting the mountain in their effort toward home.

When we saw that there were no police stationed at either end of Woodrow Wilson Drive, Pike shut the lights and pulled over. “You want me to take you in closer?” The turnoff to my house was maybe a mile in along Woodrow Wilson.

“Nope. Too easy to get boxed if we meet a black-and-white coming the other way.”

Pike nodded. “I know. Just thought I’d offer.”

“There’s a turnout about a mile and a half east that the kids use as a parking place, on the valley side overlooking Universal Studios. Wait there. If the police come I’ll work my way downslope, then come back around onto Mulholland and meet you there.”

“If you don’t get caught.”

Some support, huh?

I slipped out of the Jeep, then trotted off Mulholland
and onto Woodrow Wilson Drive, taking it easy and slipping into bushes or shadows or behind parked cars whenever headlights showed around a curve. Woodrow Wilson Drive is narrow and winding and affects sort of a rural quality, even in the midst of high-density housing and fourteen million people. There are trees and coyotes and sometimes even deer, and, though there are many homes in the area, the houses are built for privacy and are often hidden from view. Frank Zappa lives there. So does Ringo Starr. Smaller streets branch off of Woodrow Wilson, and, like mine, lead to areas often more private, and even more rustic. If the police were waiting for me, or came while I was there, it would be easy to work my way downslope, then loop around and work back to Mulholland. Of course, it’s always easy if you don’t get caught.