L.A. Noire: The Collected Stories (12 page)

The waitress comes back with my check and I accidentally-on-purpose brush my fingertips against hers, read her name off her ID, and say, “So, you must be new here,
Lorraine.
” And she says, “Second day.” And I say, “Lemme guess, you’re an actress,” and she slides her hand up the back of her neck, pats her French twist, smiles again, and says, “Tryin’ to be.” And I say, “I know it’s rough, but you’ll make it, kid,” thinking she’s pushing thirty and her
kid
days are numbered. And she says, “Gee, thanks, mister,” and I feel disappointed because that “mister” part makes me feel old but I don’t let it bother to me too much. I ask, “When do you get off?” And she says, “Oh, today I’m leaving at four because I got an audition at Warner Bros.,” and she beams. “It’s just a walk-on, but you never know, right?” and pats her hair again. I say, “Right. So maybe I could pick you up later.” And she frowns and says, “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that.” And I say, “Neither would my girlfriend!” And we both laugh, but she’s already turned away and I’m thinking she’s not really my type, a bit too cheerful, and I’m about to go back to my paper when two guys come in, a big handsome galoot I recognize right away as Johnny Stompanato, and the guy with him, none other than Mickey Cohen! I seen his picture dozens of times but he doesn’t look as glamorous in person, smaller, closer to my size, and I can’t stop staring at him, his dark eyes and dark eyebrows beneath a felt fedora and a wide silk tie with a turtle-and-fish design that must’ve set him back six, seven bucks easy, and my heart’s thumping again as they slide into the booth opposite mine and Lorraine pours them each a cup of coffee, posing while she does, hand on her hip, and me gaping.

Hey, Mickey, you don’t know me, not yet, but I know everything about you—your mother, Fanny, your three brothers, your first boxing match on April 8, 1930, and your last one on May 14, 1933, the fact that you ran gambling for Al Capone in Chicago, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to hear about your pal Bugsy, but I was thinking I could help out, I mean now that you’re short a man at the Flamingo, work reception, you know, I got the experience, or whatever else you need, I’m your man—

All of this going through my mind as I continue to stare at Mickey over the rim of my coffee cup, totally lost in thought, when Mickey says, “What the hell are you looking at?” and I snap to and say, “Me? Nothing,” though I want to hold the newspaper up, point to the headline, and say,
That’s me, I’m the guy who did it!
but Mickey is giving me a cold hard stare, and Johnny Stompanato is giving me an even colder one, so I look away, fumble a few coins out of my pocket, and drop them on the table, trying hard not to let my hands shake.

Out on the street I’m thinking Mickey was just testing me, seeing if I could take it, that he’s going to be getting back to me soon, and I picture myself behind a mahogany reception desk at the Flamingo, chatting up movie stars and gangsters, everyone laughing and saying what a swell guy I am, and I start feeling good again. Before long, I’m behind the reception desk at the hotel, moving dust around with a dirty rag, when these two cops come in and start asking me about the dame who worked at the May Company department store and I give them an innocent look and keep mopping the counter, real casual, and they say something about finding a matchbook with the hotel’s name at the scene of the crime, but I don’t flinch, I just tell them how she checked in and got drunk and left with some sailor, keeping my voice real quiet and they seem to buy it and I think for a minute that I’m telling the truth, that maybe I didn’t kill her after all, that it was the sailor or another guy or maybe even her husband, that it was just a bad dream I had about strangling her till I heard a bone crack deep inside her throat, and I lead the two cops up to her room on the third floor and tell them I’ll be downstairs if they need me and ten minutes later they’re back, and the young cop, a hotshot all-American type, asks me what time the dame checked in and I turn the register book around for him and point out her signature and he asks if she said anything important and I say, “Like what?” and he gives me a long hard stare and for a minute I think the words are going to fall out of my mouth—
It was me! I did it! I’m your man!
I want to say it so bad because it’s time that I was famous, but I keep my yap shut and wipe the counter over and over till it’s so shiny I can see my regular-Joe face staring back at me, but it doesn’t look familiar.

The cops walk around the hotel lobby whispering the whole time I’m busy rearranging keys on hooks that don’t need no rearranging, and then the young one, Mr. All-American, looks at me again and this time I offer him a smile, nothing special, though I freeze it on my face and Carole’s last smile comes into my mind like I just opened a bottle and a goddamn genie popped out.

Carole,
I say, my hands on her throat,
gimme a smile,
but she just looks at me like she always does, like I was nothing, and I ask,
Where was I born? Who am I? What’s my name?
and she sneers and says,
Who cares?
and I say,
I’m John, right?
and she says in a singsong voice,
Or Jack or James or Jake or
—and then I’m pleading,
Carole—Mom—please—
and she says,
You can’t prove that I’m your fucking mother—maybe I just took you in ‘cause I pitied you—
and I tighten my grip on her neck just like I will with all the other girls and I can’t stop squeezing. Afterward I cut her up, body in half, then in pieces, arms, legs, torso, then wrap all of it up in a sack like it was a filleted animal and dump it into one of the trash bins outside the Cudahy meatpacking plant, already half filled with bones and guts, and I never heard another word about it, no news story, no nothing, no one missing Carole.

I’m still looking at the young cop and thinking maybe I’ll make him famous, give him a lead, a tip, that there’s this guy, John or Jon without an
h
or James, who’s connected to this murder and a whole lot more, but I don’t say anything and who knows, maybe I’m lying, maybe there is no John or Jon or James, no tortured boy for you to feel sorry for, no mother named for the actress Carole Lombard, only some guy, some regular Joe without a name, just a monster.

Hell of an Affair

Duane Swierczynski

I am the master of all I survey.

Well, not really.

This
is
Los Angeles, after all.

Still, I like to crack that joke with people. Makes my job sound almost… important. My business card reads: W
ILLIAM
S
HELTON
, P.L.S. (professional land surveyor), G
REATER
L
OS
A
NGELES
T
ITLE
C
O
., D
OWNTOWN
D
IVISION
. But what I really do is drive my Lincoln around in the dry heat and set up my theodolite on its tripod and make little measurements and write them down in my notebook. Then I go home to my empty apartment on West Temple Street, where I stare at the walls and try not to climb them. Just me and my tripod, propped up in the corner, waiting for me to pick it up and report to work the next day.

I don’t even know what made me notice that bar on Los Angeles Street—Ray’s Café, 77.5 by 47.5 feet in a commercial zone.

But the Santa Ana winds were blowing and I was thirsty and I decided to go in.

It was noon. I stepped inside and sat at a wooden table for four, as if I were expecting three friends to join me. Which seemed slightly less desperate than sitting alone at the bar. I leaned the tripod against the opposite end of the table and waited for someone to notice me.

And after a few minutes, she did.

A shot and a cold glass of beer were placed down on the table in front of me and a beautiful woman took the seat next to me. Her scent reached me first—the aroma of jacaranda trees. Her dark hair and smooth white skin were just as intoxicating.

“I know you didn’t order this,” she said softly.

All at once it felt like the collar on my Bullock’s shirt had shrunk a few sizes.

“What is it?” I asked, stupidly.

She smiled. “A shot and a cold glass of beer.”

Only then did I realize that the beautiful woman sitting next to me was the waitress.

“Is there a menu?”

“You can have anything you want.”

“What’s your name?”

She smirked and tapped her right breast.

B
ONNIE
.

“Good to meet you,” I said. “My name’s”

“Let’s go out tonight,” she said.

A statement; not a question. As if going out were a foregone conclusion.

“I’m sorry?”

“We close at two. Come in for a nightcap just before, and we’ll hit the town. What do you say?”

Now, I should have said:

No, that’s ridiculous. I report for work at the Greater Los Angeles Title Company, Downtown Division, at 8:00 a.m. sharp, and if we go out at 2:00 a.m. I won’t be able to get any sleep, and there’s a good chance I’ll record a wrong measurement in my notebook, which could be the start of endless legal and business trouble. Surveyors have been to clean, sober, and deadly accurate.

But of course I said:

“Okay.”

Back at the office Shep was reclining in his chair, sweating out a hangover, eyes barely open. Mallahan was at the accounting desk in the back. I dug my per diem out of my pocket, put it down on the blotter in front of Mallahan.

“What’s this?” Mallahan asked. “You skip lunch?”

“A friend treated me.”

Mallahan rolled his eyes. “And you’re giving this back? Billy, my friend, you’re about as black-and-white as a nun. You don’t have to give this back. We consider it part of your salary.”

The company gave its surveyors cash for lunch, parking, incidentals. Mallahan was the partner who doled it out every morning. But I could still feel the shot and beer rolling around in my guts. I hoped Mallahan couldn’t smell it on my breath. I would have felt like a heel keeping the dough on top of everything else. I let the money sit on the blotter.

“Okay, then,” he said after a few moments, scooping up the bills and depositing them into a metal box he kept in his lower-left-hand drawer. Shep and Mallahan liked to keep their cash in one place. The company had done work for various banks, but they didn’t trust banks. The Depression had wiped them out once before; Shep and Mallahan swore up and down that it would never happen again.

I sat down at my own desk to complete a few field reports while Mallahan grabbed his coat and hat and headed out for his lunch break. Always the same time; always the same place—Philippe’s, on Alameda. Bought the same cheap beef sandwich, the same nickel cup of coffee.

After he returned, thirty minutes later, I spent the rest of afternoon with my theodolite on La Brea, taking measurements on a lot somebody wanted to turn into a department store. The tar pits were behind me. I know it isn’t possible, but I swear I could feel the heat of the prehistoric goop on my back.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about Bonnie.

Her lips.

Her skin, as fragrant and soft as jacaranda trees.

At exactly 1:55 a.m., I stepped into Ray’s Café. The carousing was still happening full steam ahead, even though last call had been announced. I ordered a beer and drank it quick, my eyes watching Bonnie as she glided around the tables, picking up empty glasses and settling tabs.

At 2:05 a.m., she finally came up to me. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. Where to?”

We took my dark-red Lincoln Continental up the Cahuenga Pass to Mulholland. I hugged the curves until she told me to pull over at a lookout over the San Fernando Valley. The moment I hit the brakes she was in my lap, mashing her lips against mine. I could taste the same whiskey she’d given me earlier in the day. She had a small bottle in her purse. We passed the bottle back and forth until the lights down in the valley were a blur. We kissed some more and then she told me she wanted to see the ocean. I thought we should stay put, considering how much whiskey we’d knocked back, but she insisted.

“I want to dip my feet in the Pacific.”

I should have casually glanced at my watch and said something about the time but didn’t. Instead I put the car in drive and sped down Mulholland.

The crack-up happened a few miles later.

I took a curve and braked to make sure we didn’t skid off the edge of the cliff. The guy behind me wasn’t as cautious. Bumper kissed bumper, metal was bent, and we spun out a little. But otherwise, nobody got hurt.

The other guy turned out to be drunk, too, and didn’t seem to be in a mood to throw around any accusations. The flesh on the top of his balding pate was hot pink; his eyes were droopy. So we all sat there up on the side of the mountain, convincing each other that we didn’t need to involve the police. The balding man acted strangely. He seemed furious, but also eager to not bother with any formal complaints. I quickly sobered up; Bonnie drank more from the bottle in her purse. Every now and again she’d slip her tongue in my mouth. The other guy would turn his head away, as if he were both embarrassed and angry at the same time.

By the time we sorted it all out, the sun was creeping up over the horizon. The Lincoln was fine to drive, so I took Bonnie back to Ray’s. She lived in an apartment nearby. I didn’t see which one, because she insisted on me letting her out in front of the bar. I didn’t argue. By that time I was already late for work.

“Come for me tonight,” she said.

“How about dinner?”

“No. Ray’s, right before closing. I’ll get another bottle. You’ll be there, right?”

God help me, I was.

This went on for a while. Late-night dates. Drinking. Mulholland. Feeling wasted all day long. The occasional fender bender, all of them caused when Bonnie surprised me with her tongue in my mouth, or her hand on my lap, or her fingers across the back of my neck. The Lincoln was the only thing I owned that was worth anything, a college-graduation gift from my parents back in Cleveland, and it was slowly taking a beating.

But I didn’t care.

And if Mallahan noticed the dark circles forming under my eyes, he didn’t say a word. I cruised the empty lots as usual, making my measurements, partly daydreaming about Bonnie from the night before and partly in mortal terror that I’d make a numerical slip, and that Shep would catch it, and that would be the end of me at the Greater Los Angeles Title Co., Downtown Division.

Some primal part of me, however, said it was worth it. Cars were nothing but lumps of metal and wiring and hydraulics; Bonnie was flesh and blood. Warm flesh. Warm blood. Her lips, mashing against mine.

I never questioned why.

Why she’d only meet me late at night, toward the end of her shift. Never dinner. Never lunch, certainly. As if she didn’t exist during the daylight hours.

Why she never showed me where she lived, even though I lived downtown, too.

Why she turned down all invites to my place, even though it would be more comfortable than the front seat of my Lincoln or a scratchy blanket from my messy trunk.

I just went along with it.

Her warm lips and the scent of jacaranda trees, which is the smell that first hit me when I moved to Los Angeles, and will forever remind me of the place.

Then one night she canceled.

“I can’t,” she said, tears in her eyes, before disappearing into the back room at Ray’s.

I sat there in the café for a while, nursing a warm glass of beer. She never came out. I finished my beer then went back out to the Lincoln. Made it home in ten minutes. Went to bed, consoling myself with the thought that I’d be reasonably rested and sober for work the next morning.

But I couldn’t sleep.

The next day I told myself to get over it. The fling with Bonnie was fun while it lasted. Had to end sometime. She clearly had trouble, and it was probably the kind of trouble you didn’t need in your life. She was doing me a favor, really. I needed a few good nights of sleep in a row so that I could focus on my job again. I’d been lucky so far, but sooner or later I was bound to slip, and Shep was bound to catch me. When he was sober, he was a math hawk. That afternoon I was surveying a lot out in Culver City. My chest felt lighter, my head clearer, than it had been in weeks. I felt like I’d been given a gubernatorial pardon.

And that very night I was back in Ray’s Café, at exactly 1:55 a.m.

No tears in her eyes this time. Instead, I got a brilliant megawatt smile.

“I knew you’d come back for me,” she said.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked.

“Nothing. Not a blessed thing, now that you’re here.”

We drove out to the beach via Mulholland as usual, and, though she claimed otherwise, I knew something was wrong. The smile was there, but not the smile behind the eyes. She was working out some kind of problem back behind her gorgeous Pacific Ocean blues. Every so often I’d pull my lips away from hers and look at her, trying to seeif by some miracle I’d brought her back. No such luck. She was as distant as Japan.

A lot of hemming and hawing later, she finally told me:

“I need six thousand dollars by tomorrow night or someone is going to hurt me.”

The story she told me doesn’t matter. She told it to me under the moonlight, on the beach, and with Scotch whiskey running through my veins. She kissed me while telling the story, as if her lips were drowning and my face was the life preserver. The story, if you must know, involved a wayward brother who fell in deep with the sharks preying on the illegal gamblers in the back of Ray’s Café. It also involved broken promises and pawning every last thing the brother owned and then pawning every last thing Bonnie owned and garnishing tips and wages and finally had devolved to the threat of garnishing flesh and what the hell else God only knows…

If six grand were not thrown to the sharks by midnight tomorrow.

Like I said, the story really doesn’t matter. Because fact is, I was convinced. This was not just a hard-luck story. Listening to her tell it out there, with the Pacific licking at the shoreline… I’m telling you, it was like listening to a lost book of the New Testament.

I told her I’d help her out.

Even though I barely cleared six grand in a year, let alone two days.

The words were barely out of my mouth—

“Don’t worry, Bonnie.”

—and I knew exactly how I was going to do it, too.

Professional land surveyors use simple gear—a tape measure, a level, a theodolite. We use our instruments to measure the distance and angles from a fixed location to points unknown.

Right up until the day I met Bonnie, I thought life worked the same way. You start out in a fixed location, and through careful triangulation, you can figure out the unknowns.

My fixed position, right at that moment:

I loved Bonnie.

Bonnie loved me.

Someone wanted to hurt Bonnie.

Simple triangulation…

… that pointed me to the obvious solution.

Couldn’t be easier, really.

Shep was sleeping it off in the back room, like he frequently does during lunch hours. Mallahan was off to Philippe’s for his usual beef sandwich, his usual cup of nickel coffee, leaving me in charge.

I took the key from Shep’s top drawer. Went back into Mallahan’s office. Slipped the key into the lock. Opened the metal lid. Extracted sixty one-hundred-dollar bills—about a quarter of the money there, leaving a noticeable dent.

I also snatched an extra hundred in twenties.

(A per diem for embezzlement, I told myself.)

I closed the lid, relocked the box, replaced the key, left a note for Shep and Mallahan that lunch wasn’t agreeing with me, and left the office.

That’s how easy it is to ruin your life.

When I told Bonnie I had the money, she told me she wanted to meet for dinner at eight. Which was a first. Didn’t she have work? No, she said. She’d already arranged it so she could work late.

She chose a woody steak house right off Olive Avenue in Burbank, across the street from the Warner Bros. lot. I sat in my apartment on West Temple, staring at the walls and wondering if Mallahan would be checking that metal lockbox anytime soon.

I wasn’t worried about getting caught; at that point I was thinking that the chips of my life would fall where they may. The important thing was saving Bonnie from the sharks.