King Maybe (23 page)

22

Lots Going on in Mach One

I was feeling a tiny bit better as I cranked the Toyota into compliance. I'd been unwilling to go into the day carrying the image of the gods of North Thontein with me, so I'd gotten Garlin Romaine to say she'd talk to Casey about working as her assistant.

“What's she doing now?” she'd asked me.

“Cheerleading. But she's sick of it.”

“Then she's got energy.”

“I don't think energy will be a problem. And she's big. I mean, she can . . . you know, pick you up and get you into the shower and stuff.”

“Will I like her?”

I shrugged. “I did.”

“Good enough. I'll call her today.”

“Great.” I turned to go, but she reached over and put a hand on my arm.

“And try to think of some way to help Suley,” she said.

The day was
waning, the sun hanging low in the west, kind of a cheap-floor-polish yellow from all the dust that the wind had stirred up. Looked like a costume-jewelry sun from a discount chain store. Less than three hours before I was supposed to punch in the entry code at Granger's gate and go in to do the dirty.

On the phone Anime said, “It's from some messages we managed to harvest from Patty's Facebook page. ‘Lots going on on Mach One,' someone wrote her, and she wrote back, ‘Check out Two,' the number written out like that, so we figure it's Mach Two, and then she said, ‘And don't talk about those here.'”

“The speed of sound,” I said. “Mach Two is twice the speed of sound.”

Anime said, “I looked it up. Mach is ‘a dimensionless quantity representing the ratio of flow velocity past a boundary to the local speed of sound.' That's the kind of thing that gets Lilli worked up. So we figured maybe it's machone.com. We searched it as one word, machone.com and it's available—I mean, for sale—and machtwo.com comes up as a blank page, which usually means that someone has bought the domain name and parked it.”

“Parked it.” I was pulled over on a side street about halfway between Garlin Romaine's place and my West Hollywood storage unit.

“They're not ready to use it yet, so they leave it blank. If you put an underline in between
mach
and either
one
or
two
, you get a ‘Page not available notice,' which can mean the same thing. Or a bunch of other things that have to do with your browser, except we checked the other things, and it doesn't mean them.”

“Do you think it's important?”

“It's the only thing we don't understand,” she said, “and Patricia didn't want it discussed on Facebook, so yeah, we think it's important.”

“Maybe
Mach
is an abbreviation, or a code word.”

“We're thinking abbreviation. If it's code, why tell someone not to use it? We've tried
machine
and
macho
and
Machu
and
machaca
and
mach schnell—
which is, like, German for ‘hurry up'
—machicolation
and some other stuff.”

“‘Machicolation'?”

“Oh, good, I really hoped you'd ask. ‘An opening high in a castle through which one drops things or pours molten lead on the enemy.'”

I said, “Tyrone is going nuts.”

“Tell him to come over and go nuts with us. It won't help, but at least he'll have company.”

“Anything else interesting?”

“Well, yeah, if you're easily entertained. She's changed schools twice in four years. She got most of the way through sixth grade in her first middle school, then moved to one farther away, and then in eighth she moved to Rina's school.”

“And she hasn't changed her home address?”

“No. Each school is a little farther from her house than the one before. She's definitely not in the default area of the school she goes to now.”

“What about quality?”

“You mean, like, did she move because the other school was better or because she couldn't keep up in the first one?”

“Something like that.” I looked at my watch. I was now fifteen minutes closer to my scheduled arrival at Jeremy Granger's house.

“None of them is a magnet school or a charter or anything,” Anime said. “Not remedial either, just your basic crappy California middle schools, full of kids trying to qualify as average and teachers getting older with one eye on the clock.”

“Rina likes her school,” I said, and immediately asked myself,
Does she? She was okay with it last year, but—

“Well, lucky her,” Anime said, with a certain touch of frost in her voice.

“Why would Patty change schools like that?” It seemed a safer topic. My phone buzzed, and I looked down to see a number I didn't know. “Hang on,” I said, and put her on hold.

“Junior?” Garlin Romaine said. “Tell me, is your father still alive?”

I said, “Afraid so.”

“Well, dear, when he dies, you know, you're perfectly free to use your real name. No adult should have to call himself Junior.”

“Junior
is
my real name,” I said. “My father wanted to name me after himself, but his name was Merle, so—”

“How appalling. When there are so many good names. Rex, for example.”

“I don't see myself as a Rex. Listen, I'm on another—”

“I'm sorry, I won't keep you. Just wanted to tell you I called your young woman, and she sounds perfect, if a bit Mason-Dixon. She's coming over in half an hour.”

“Good to hear.”

“She sounds . . . sunny,” Garlin said. “We could use a little sunshine around here.”

“Hope you get some. Gotta go.”

I switched back to Anime. “So,” I said.

“Obviously, disciplinary problems,” she said, as though speaking to someone fresh off the boat from Thontein. “But forget learning any more about it. Not even Lilli and me can—”

“And I,” I said automatically. “Lilli and—”

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I could have endured a
lifetime
of embarrassment. Wait while I write that down . . . And . . .” she said, slowly, “. . . I.
There.
Now, to return to the topic, the school system buries that kind of information, about disciplinary issues, at the bottom of a hundred-foot-deep pool of radioactive water, full of glowing sharks. You know, even if a kid gets transferred for bringing a weapon to school, the school they stick him in doesn't get told about the weapon?”

I looked at my watch again. “Hard to believe,” I said, mainly to say something.

“You think? Well, we'll keep trying to figure out
mach
, okay?”

“Fine,” I said, but she'd hung up.

As much as
the deadline for tonight was pushing at me, I was worried about Stinky. He hadn't phoned me, he hadn't given me the money he'd promised for the stamp or even tried to talk me down. That was a problem, because when Stinky wants something, he wants it
now
. He hadn't answered my calls, of which there had at last count been five.

It was enough to make me wonder whether the Slugger had found him.

That was worrisome, not solely because I liked Stinky—I didn't, really, or not very much—but also because Stinky was the only way the Slugger would be able to find
me
. And even though I wasn't staying anyplace anyone would associate with me, a name is a
great
start when you want to find someone. Crooks being the way they are, the Slugger could probably locate lots of folks who would agree to set me up for an amount of money that wouldn't strain his budget. Once, years ago, during our usual fight, Kathy had asked me, “Don't you ever want to associate with a better class of
people
?” and I'd made the unforgivable mistake of laughing. At this juncture that question had the aura of fate, ignored while rapping on the window.

So it was important for me to know whether Stinky was alive and just being Stinky or not. If he
was
alive, I was pretty certain I knew where he was. But it was way the hell out in Santa Monica, more than two hours there and back, maybe three at this time of day, and time was getting tight.

I also wanted to stop by my storage unit and get my tools, although I could do without them in a pinch, since I had the codes. The storage unit at least had the virtue of being nearby.

So, with the clock ticking, I wanted to go to Santa Monica and I wanted to pop into the storage unit. But I
needed
to make a call.

Need won. I put the car in gear and headed north, crossing Santa Monica Boulevard until I was only a block or two from Ronnie's place. Then I pulled to the curb and dialed.

“What?” she said.

I said, “Thanks for picking up.”

“I decided I can't change you if I don't talk to you. You need changing so badly.”

“Change me tonight,” I said.

“It'll take longer than that.”

“Well, you can
start
tonight. I . . . uh, I need a ride.”

A moment passed as I replayed the words in my mind, remembered how Tyrone had kicked himself, and followed suit. It hurt. I said, “Ow,” but she'd hung up.

I counted to ten and pushed the button again. Her phone rang.

She said, “What time?”

“Around eight.”

“Are you about to tempt fate again?”

“I am.”

“I'd have thought you'd have learned by now.”

“You're
speaking
to me,” I said.

“Yeah, but I'm not through being mad.”

“I haven't got much choice. I have to go tonight.”

“Or what?”

I told her.

“Well, as much as I don't want to help you put your head into the lion's mouth, I will. But not at eight.”

“Why not?”

“I'm not home, and I won't be home until about eight fifteen.”

I chewed on my lower lip for a moment. “Are you someplace we can meet up?”

“Not unless the lion lives in the general direction of Disneyland.”

I said, “No one lives in the general direction of Disneyland.” Granger had said I could go in as early as seven thirty and that he wouldn't be back until midnight. I looked at my watch again, without having consciously decided to do it, and when I stopped looking at it, I realized I hadn't read the time. “Around eight thirty?” I said.

“I guess. My GPS says I'll get there about eight twenty, but it's always optimistic. Eight thirty is probably safe. What's the plan?”

“I pick you up and we go get another car. Then you go have a coffee or a foie gras or something not too far away until I call you. It should be less than an hour.”

“This thing about needing a ride is kind of high school, don't you think? What did you do before you met me?”

“I didn't hit houses in Brentwood,” I said. “In most neighborhoods it's possible to park for an hour without your license-plate number being written down by the gendarmes.”

“Gendarmes,”
she said. “
Foie gras.
Aren't we
je ne sais quoi
?”

“Je t'aime,”
I said. “I think.”

I heard her swallow. “
Mon Dieu.
We'll talk about that later. But just to allow myself to thaw a bit, you should know that I'm not entirely without regard for you either.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“There,” she said. “That's the Junior I know and . . . well, have regard for.”

“See you then,” I said, suddenly feeling ridiculously happy. I waited for her to hang up in my ear, but she didn't. She said, “Goodbye.”

Buoyed by this proof of her regard for me, and with all that unexpected time on my hands, I pointed the Toyota west, toward Santa Monica.

23

Open Me First

I'd been to Eaglet's condominium once before, right after she met Ting Ting, which happened when he brought me some apologetic flowers from Stinky. Stinky needs to apologize frequently. At the time Ting Ting held pride of place as the Filipino houseboy who'd put up with Stinky longest. Eaglet was in Ronnie's and my motel room when Ting Ting showed up with the flowers, and the attraction between the two was mutual, instant, and Shakespearean in scale. Ting Ting moved into Eaglet's condo that very night, breaking what passed for Stinky's heart forever, or at least until Jejomar crossed the blue Pacific and his sails hove into view.

Eaglet's condo was confirmation, if any was needed, that murder pays better than burglary. She was still a relative neophyte among LA hitters, and she already had a condo I put at a million-nine and rising, only about fourteen blocks from the Pacific, close enough to smell it and wipe salt off the furniture all the time. It was newer than tomorrow, with pale wooden floors and edgy, angular Danish Modern furniture that had all the heart of a Danish cookie. At the time I visited them, there had been a moment, after Ting Ting left the room to make us some tea, that Eaglet let the harmless hippie-dippie, retro-flower-child thing slip a little, on purpose, to give me a glimpse into the eyes of someone I shouldn't even think about fucking with. I'd given my version of it back to her, and in the course of a speechless half second we met each other all over again.

And now I'd learned that she'd volunteered to take me out. Oh, well, as Louie said, nothing personal.

If Stinky was in Eaglet's condo—and the fact that the ever-truthful Ting Ting had hung up on me made the odds pretty good that he was—then the only way to talk to him would be face-to-face, since phoning again wasn't going to get me any further than I'd gotten last time. And anyway, at this point I was thinking far enough ahead to have a plan of sorts, assuming I was still alive after the break-in at Granger's to put it into motion. I needed Stinky for that plan. In person.

One of the
things I liked about Eaglet's building was that it didn't have one of those electronic buzzer gates. Standing out there with your back to the curb and the sun going down and a premature streetlight blossoming on your shoulders and the wind whipping the trees around, those things can cut an evening of crime very short indeed. But here, at 3240 Sycamore in Santa Monica, the builder had his priorities straight; he'd skipped the gate and pocketed the expense, and I could walk right in, virtuous as the dawn.

It never ceases to amaze me that people who pay for an eyehole in their door will open up when there's a thumb covering it. It was Ting Ting, of course; Eaglet would probably have fired directly through the door, and Stinky didn't get up for doorbells.

“Ting Ting,” I said heartily, pushing past him. “
Damn
, it's good to see—”

The rest of the sentence evaporated in a slow exhalation of surprise. The long hallway, which, on my prior visit, had been decorator-illuminated to put maximum shine on the furniture, was in semidarkness, except for several chest-high lights a few paces apart, which turned out to be thick white candles flickering in glass chimneys and mounted on brass stands. More candles gleamed in the part of the living room I could see, where curtains were drawn against the sunset, and the air was positively sticky with the scent of tuberose, gardenias, and ginger flowers. Ting Ting put a hand on my arm, but it was a soft hand, not the hand of death he'd used on me that one night.

His eyes were red and puffy. He sniffled. He was wearing dark slacks and a white barong tagalog,
the traditional Filipino shirt, but with a mandarin collar and, pinned over his heart, a curled loop of black ribbon.

“Oh,” I said, pulling up short with an almost audible screech of brakes as the situation presented itself to me, “yes, I . . . um, I figured it—he—would be here. I wanted to . . . to pay my respects.”

“You nice man,” Ting Ting said, causing me a pang of guilt, “but I think Mr. Stinky—”

“You know what?” I said. “You don't work for him anymore, and you don't have to call him
Mr.
Stinky. Just plain Stinky would do fine. Anyway, Stinky and I, we're old friends.”

Ting Ting looked at me, lips pursed, and then shook his head at whatever he'd been thinking. “Is no time for argue,” he said. “Please come in.”

He led me down the hall and into the living room. All the furniture had been pushed to the walls, and the room was ringed with weighty, Mafia-style floral arrangements and more of those big candles. Dead center, so to speak, and up on trestles, was an elaborate casket, the top of which had a decent approximation of Leonardo da Vinci's
Last Supper
painted on it, Jesus and his friends frozen mid-bite by the big announcement. The casket's upper half, where the occupant's torso and head would be, was open, but only by about eight inches. Ting Ting stopped beside it for a moment as he went in, and I waited behind him, looking down at the opening. “In Pilippines we like it open,” he said, sniffling again, “for say goodbye. But Jejomar, he not looking so good.”

“I imagine not,” I said. “Was he a friend of yours?”

“Why?” Ting Ting asked, wiping his cheeks. “You mean, because I crying? Jejomar, he was Pinoy, a Pilipino boy, poor boy, same as me. Dancer, same as me. Come far away from home, same as me. I don't meet him, but, you know, he same as my brother.” He swabbed his nose. “So me, I cry for him a little. I think he cry for me, too.”

“I'm sure he would,” I said.

Eaglet came through the door from the kitchen. Her parents may have been the last Asian hippies in California, but she could shed the stony slacker style just as easily as she could shed Peace, Love, and Understanding when the time came to pull the trigger. Tonight she was sporting a very twenty-first-century look in black, and the glance she gave me wasn't affectionate, but she wasn't going to push it under these circumstances. “Junior,” she said, with teeth. “What a
nice
surprise. Are you hungry?”

“No thanks,” I said, too unprepared for the question to actually consider it.

“Me neither,” she said, “but all day long Stinky's former . . . um, houseboys have been coming by, and they all brought these
flowers
”—she indicated the big, beribboned floral arrangements—“and they all wanted to eat.”

“In Pilippines,” Ting Ting said, with a tiny edge, “everybody eat at . . . at
paglalamay,
at . . . at—”

“The vigil,” Eaglet said, surprising me. “I've been reading up,” she said. “
Boy
, do they eat.”

“Eat because we alive,” he said with a bit of bite in it, and Eaglet, who had a spine of solid brass, took the first step back I'd ever seen her take. I reevaluated the pecking order in the relationship.

“Actually,” I said, “I could eat a little something.” I hadn't had anything since I swiped part of Louie's pastry at Tom N Toms.

“Right back,” she said, but I followed her into the kitchen.

“How's Stinky taking it?” I asked.

“Milking it for all it's worth.” She lifted the lid from a big, steaming pot on the back of the stove. “Rice and chicken okay?”

“Absolutely. You mean he's not really all broken up?”

“He feels
guilty
,” Eaglet said, wielding a serving spoon with admirable precision, “which isn't quite the same thing, is it? But if you ask me, it's . . . you know, a chance for a soliloquy. His big scene. Ting Ting was the only one he really loved. And himself, of course. Gravy?”

“Sure. Where'd the casket come from?”

“He got it off Amazon,” she said. “Stinky has a Prime membership, naturally, so the shipping was free, if you can imagine that. Almost thirteen hundred bucks even
without
the shipping. He wanted to save a thousand, get one that was all wood, but Ting Ting said no, the one in there, with the cafeteria or whatever it is on it, that was the
Catholic
one, and I guess that carried the day.”

“You guess?”

“I tuned out.” She put the dish on a tray and laid down a white napkin, a fork, and a big spoon plumb-straight beside the dish.

“Why'd you tune out?”

“Honestly? I didn't know the guy, he was nothing to me when he was alive, and now that he's dead, he's a pain in the ass. I mean, I gotta have the houseboy, whatever his name was, here in the condo in that big overdecorated egg carton, all my furniture is useless, these guys and their florists are streaming through all day, the place smells like Hawaii, and then there's Stinky, and you know what? An hour of Stinky is like a week of regular people.” She put the tray on a little square table, some kind of blond wood, and pulled out a matching chair. “Eat up, it's pretty good.”

“He's here, right? Stinky, I mean. Staying here.” I spooned some chicken and the vinegary gravy over the rice. Smelled great.

“Is he ever. He's all over the place. He can be too close to you when he's in the other room.”

“This is really good,” I said. I skipped the chair and ate standing at the table.

“I've been learning. That's Ting Ting's mother's recipe, although the chicken here, he says, isn't as good as in the Philippines, because there you, like, say hi to it and they kill it in front of you or something. You know, you can't be in my line of work if somebody wringing a chicken's neck gives you the wussies, but I'll still take a nice neat package wrapped in plastic.”

“So where is he? Stinky?”

“Oh, who knows. Shaving his legs, maybe.”

“I do
not
shave my legs,” Stinky said, billowing into the room. Stinky's waist was in the high fifties, and in the loose black barong tagalog he was wearing, he looked like the mourning blimp you'd hire for a celebrity funeral. “More in
your
line,” he said, with a precisely calibrated tincture of distaste, “than mine, I should think.”

“I'm Chinese and Vietnamese,” Eaglet said, “and probably the least hairy person you've ever known. Compared to me, you're one of those primate species we watch through the bars as they groom each other. You know, eating nits.”

“Through the bars indeed,” Stinky said. “Do you mind if this gentleman and I beg a moment free of your company?”

I said, “Now, now, children.”

“He's yours,” Eaglet said to me. “Try not to return him in one piece.”

She pushed past Stinky, into the living room.

“I'm sure she's a competent little death mechanic,” he said, turning to make sure she kept going. “She's certainly soulless enough. And she shows a certain organizational flair. The plan for the burial is entirely hers. The elevator here goes right down to the garage, and she's rented a van so about nine thirty this evening we'll be able to take . . . ahhh, Jejomar—” He stopped for a moment, blinking rapidly, and I fought the impulse to pat his arm. He probably would have slapped my hand away. “Take him up to a place she knows in the Angeles Forest, wherever that is, which is apparently an absolute garden of murder victims. The casket—” He peered at me, still blinking, but more slowly. “Do you like the casket?”

“Aces,” I said. “For a casket, I mean.”

“Wop overkill,” he said, “but it soothed Ting Ting's soul. He apparently feels that the design of the box is a kind of tip to the angels:
Open me first
.” He heaved an immense sigh. “So by about midnight, Jejomar should be six feet down, under
The
Last Supper
, waiting for the trumpet, or the harp, or the barbershop quartet, or whatever the fuck it'll turn out to be.” He looked at the floor with what seemed to be total concentration. “How's Miss Most Wanted, the Bauble Queen?”

“We've taken a little time-out,” I said, “but we're seeing each other tonight.”

“Well, check your pockets when it's over. Although I don't even know why I say that. She's got just what you need.”

I finished the chicken and went to the pot for more. “Really. And what's that?”

“You have modest but solid instincts, a good eye, and a certain skill level. She has imagination.”

“I don't have imagination?”

“No more than a lead pencil.”

“That's harsh.”

“Well, look at you. You're a pretty good burglar,
and
you've got a corner on the market of crooks who are also private eyes. If you had any vision, you could be making a fortune.”

I said, “You sound like Irwin Dressler.”

Stinky doesn't surprise easily, but both eyebrows went up. “I sound like
Dressler
?”

Irwin Dressler, the world's oldest living still-dangerous gangster, had pretty well headed the mob in Southern California for more than five decades, making things work when the elected government couldn't and scraping off the cream here and there for his efforts, and the mention of his name even now inspired a lot of respect—usually accompanied by a surge of dread—among informed crooks. I'd had dealings with him twice and, to my surprise, survived. He'd even smiled at me a couple of times, and I had moments in which I could actually believe he'd experience a twinge of regret before ordering my death. “That's what
he
says,” I said. “He thinks I should franchise.”

“That's not what he said,” Stinky countered severely. “Surely he said you
had
a franchise.”

“Right, sorry, that's what he said.”

“And your little mystery playmate has the brains to help you work up a business plan. Look how fast she came up with that blather about the bangles. Look at the way she got us out of the clutches of the Slugger and his orangutans. On the fly, with no time to think at all, she out-strategized both of us. And
I'm
smart.”