L.A. Wars (16 page)

She wore a white satinlike jogging suit. The jacket was half open in front, and he could see she wore no clothes beneath it. She came out the front door and hugged him warmly. In the dim light he could see that she had been crying.

“What's the matter, Mel?”

She shook her head, trying to gain control of herself. “I got a call about an hour ago. It was Johnny.”

“Barberino?”

“Yes. He … he was arrested tonight. One of his weird friends was with him—some guy who called himself Matador. He tried to put up a fight when the police came, and they shot him. He's dead. Johnny said it was awful. He said he'd never seen anything like that, and it made him realize what a … what a fool he'd been. He was arrested for drug trafficking, James.”

Hawker stopped himself in time from saying, “I know.”

Melanie locked her arms across her chest and leaned her head on his shoulder. “He said he needs me, James. He wants me to come down tonight. To the jail.”

“Oh?”

“I've spent the last hour wondering what in the hell I should do. I loved him once … in a way. Maybe even more than I wanted to admit.”

“I know the feeling.”

She looked up at him, her eyes glistening. “Do you? Oh, I would feel so much better knowing that. Because … because I'm going to go, James. It sounds like he wants to change, James. And if that's true …”

Hawker took her shoulders gently and held her away from him. “You'll never know for sure unless you give him a chance, Mel.”

She sighed and sagged against him. She took his face in her hands and kissed him tenderly, stroking the back of his neck. “If it doesn't work out, James—”

“If it doesn't work out, give me a call.” Hawker grinned. “Maybe you could even visit me in Chicago.”

She wiped her eyes, smiling for the first time. “Why do you have to be so damn nice? This would be a hell of a lot easier if you yelled and screamed and told me what a stupid bitch I'm being.”

Hawker turned her and slapped her on the fanny. “Go see your man, lady. You'll both feel better.”

“And I
am
going to visit you in Chicago!”

“Call first. I'll want to clean the bathtub.”

Hawker watched her disappear into the house—and out of his life—before walking back toward his cottage. He stopped on the beach for a few minutes and threw rocks toward Hawaii, wondering why pretty, intelligent women so often dedicated themselves to spoiled men-children.

Johnny Barberino was a lucky man. Hawker wondered if he would ever know it.

Tired of feeling sorry for himself, Hawker jogged over the dunes and back to his bungalow. The lights were off. He stopped, trying to remember if he had left them on.

He was almost sure that he hadn't.

Carefully and quietly he nudged the front door open. He carried no weapon, so he kept his right hand squeezed tight in a fist as he made his way through the darkness.

“Yoo, hoo, is that you, Doug?” called out a high, squeaky voice.

Hawker flicked on the living-room light. Through the open bedroom door he could see the unmistakable shape of Trixie McCall beneath the white sheet of his double bed.

She grinned and waved at him. “I have been looking and
looking
for you, Doug. That day I saw you at the studio I broke a heel running after your car. Turned my ankle and couldn't even walk for an hour. People thought I was nuts.”

Hawker switched on the desk light in the bedroom. “Look, Trixie, I'm flattered and all, but I really don't think—”

She swung the sheet away, revealing what Hawker suspected—she wore nothing but an ankle bracelet. “Oh, Doug, please don't be mean to me tonight,” she purred. “I'm being as open as I can with you.”

“I can see that.”

She slid off the bed and came to him. Her nipples were large and erect on her firm breasts, and the hair on her thigh confirmed that she was, indeed, a natural blonde. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his ear. “You're so masculine, Doug, like a real, live man—”

“Trixie, don't.”

“And you've got such broad shoulders, and I like that funny, humpy nose—”

Her fingers had found his belt. “Trixie, I've got a plane to catch in the morning. I've got to get some sleep.”

There was the sound of a zipper, and Hawker discovered that his traitor hands were exploring the glories of her body. “Ummm …” she whispered as his pants slid away. “No one sleeps in Los Angeles, silly.”

“I'm beginning to believe that,” said James Hawker as he lifted the naked woman into his arms and carried her toward the bed.…

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one

Just minutes before the assassin fired, James Thornton Hawker realized that, instead of arriving late for an exclusive penthouse party, he had arrived early for a flesh orgy.

It was a party hosted by Chicago's very rich for Chicago's very beautiful.

Hawker knew he didn't fall into either category. He wondered why in the hell he had been asked to attend.

He had been invited by Saul Beckerman. The multimillionaire Saul Beckerman. The Saul Beckerman who was the ruling fist behind a chain of jewelry stores that crisscrossed the nation. The short, portly Saul Beckerman with the expensive toupee, the gaudy clothes, the gaudy cars, the gout-red face, and the backslapper's guffaw.

Beckerman was an acquaintance. Not a friend.

Even so, Hawker had always found him open and likable. Beckerman had grown up poor on Chicago's tough South Side. A quick little Jewish kid who had learned the hard way to survive in a neighborhood ruled by poor Irish thugs.

Beckerman was no fool. Instead of trying to fight the bullies, he used his wits to prove himself invaluable to them. He was inarticulate, uneducated; but he was smart enough to know that hustle and hard work can make up for almost any shortcomings.

Beckerman had one goal as a kid: to work his way out of the ghetto. Money became his ticket, tough business deals his vehicle. He climbed over backs and stepped on faces.

Business ethics were a luxury of the rich.

Beckerman kept right on ramrodding until he had made it to the top.

Hawker had met Saul Beckerman about ten years earlier at the annual awards banquet where Hawker was presented the Lambert Tree Award for Valor, Chicago's highest honor for a cop.

Beckerman was considered wealthy even then. Even so, his ghetto background was easy to read. In his speech. His dress. His raw jokes. His loud laugh. Hawker remembered thinking that he tried way, way too hard to fit in with his more refined business associates.

There was something both comical and pathetic about him. He was like a kid in a candy store: nervous but happy.

Everything seemed to impress him out of proportion. He had a terminal case of a ghetto kid's sense of inferiority. The award impressed him. Hawker impressed him. And the ceremony had almost reduced him to tears.

“Anytime you need anything, anything at all, you just come see Saul Beckerman,” he had told Hawker solemnly after the ceremony. “Anything I got is yours. We both come from the same shithole, eh? We both worked our asses off to get out. We both know the score, right? These other bozos, they know how to hold their teacups and that sort of shit, but guys like you and me know something more important. We know how to fuckin'
survive
.”

Then Beckerman did something that had both touched and surprised Hawker. He had slipped his watch off his wrist, jammed it in Hawker's hand, then pivoted away, teary-eyed.

It was a slim gold Rolex. Even then it was worth a couple of grand. It was so beautifully made that Hawker rarely wore it.

Hawker had seen Beckerman off and on over the years. Never socially, though. So Hawker was a little surprised when he returned from a trip to the west coast to find the embossed invitation waiting at his little apartment in Bridgeport.

Along with the formal “You are cordially invited …” was a scrawled note from Beckerman:

Hawk—I got some important business to talk about. May need your help. Saul

So on a Saturday night in September, Hawker climbed into his midnight-blue Stingray, the vintage classic he had rescued from police auction, and cruised down Archer through the old Irish section. He picked up the Stevenson Expressway, east into the city. On Lake Shore Drive he turned north, wheeling easily through the lights and noise of downtown Chicago.

There was an autumn balm in the wind off the lake. The wind mixed the musk of fallen leaves and Canadian streams with the industrial stink of asphalt and foundry stacks.

Souped-up cars loaded with teenagers weaved in and out of the suburbanite traffic. Late-night window-shoppers and club-hoppers roamed the sidewalks.

The party was at Beckerman's penthouse apartment. The apartment was a plush cell built into one of the marble and mirror-windowed skyscrapers that loomed over the city and Lake Michigan.

Hawker left his car with the parking attendant, then rode a sterile elevator to the twentieth floor. When he rang the bell, a black butler dressed in a white tuxedo swung open the double doors. The suite was done in marble and metal. Ultramodern. It was done so tastefully that Hawker knew Beckerman had either hired an interior decorator or left the furnishing up to his young and lovely wife, Felicia.

The room was crowded with a strange mixture of middle-aged men and young women. The women looked like they had driven straight over from Hefner's Playboy mansion.

There were blonds and brunettes, and one particularly sultry-looking negress. The punk look was in, and most of them wore their hair ratted or butch, styled in careful disarray. It was a night for formal attire, and their dresses were built to display, not cover. The girls seemed to be competing, to see who could show their breasts most spectacularly.

The men were big-business types. Expensive suits. Loud laughter through a plume of cigar smoke. Big glasses of bourbon being sipped through glazed smiles.

An army of Boise speakers pounded out gaudy jazz, and people yelled to converse above the din. Even so, Hawker could sense an awkwardness in the room, the uneasiness of strangers thrown together with unfamiliar plans.

The uneasiness didn't last long.

Hawker found the bar and took an iced Tuborg as far away from the speakers as he could get. There was still no sign of Saul or his wife, so Hawker sipped his beer and watched.

When the men at the party weren't belting down drinks, they were fetching drinks for the girls. Things were loosening up. There was the sound of wild laughter as the black girl climbed onto the shoulders of a chunky, balding man with a bright tie.

He paraded her around the room as she gulped a martini. When the drink was finished she tossed the glass away, then stripped her blouse up over her head and hurled it into the admiring crowd. Her breasts were heavy onyx, glistening with sweat.

The men clapped and cheered—and worked harder at their drinks as the other women began to step out of their dresses.

There were about a dozen females in the room, and soon they were all topless or completely naked. When the men began to huff and stumble out of their suits, Hawker knew it was time to find his hosts, give his regrets, and get the hell out.

The black girl had dismounted. She eyed Hawker from across the room, then padded through the staggering couples to the corner where he stood. She was down to sheer white bikini panties now, and her black pubic thatch was visible beneath them.

“How 'bout it, honey?” she challenged demurely, fingering the buttons on his sportscoat. “I'm all heated up and got no one to play with.”

Hawker looked over her shoulder. “You're in luck. I think your friends are choosing up teams right now.”

“Yeah,” she said, pressing her bare breasts against him, “but I don't want to give these to anybody but you.”

“I can't accept any gifts that won't fit in my pocket,” said Hawker. “And those definitely will not fit.”

Across the room, he had spotted Saul Beckerman's wife, Felicia. She wore a sleek white evening dress, and her raven-black hair tumbled spectacularly over her shoulders. Felicia's jaw was clamped tight, and her eyes blazed. She did not look happy.

Hawker handed his empty Tuborg bottle to the black girl. “Sorry,” he said. “Company rules.”

The bottle crashed to the floor as Hawker walked away.

He had met Felicia Beckerman only once before, at some civic function where everyone was too busy being polite to have a good time. She had struck him then as being an unlikely partner for Saul. For one thing, she seemed too bright. Too sure of herself. Too confident in her role of the modern woman to waste her time on a guy as crass as Saul.

Saul had money. And men with money usually end up with beautiful women. But Hawker had always expected Saul to end up with one of the brassy beauties. A gum chewer. A bleacher of hair and master of profanity. A loud dresser and louder talker.