Lullaby Town (1992) (6 page)

Pike said, "Gun shop." Pike owns a gun shop in Culver City.

"We're on the job again. Backtrack to a woman and child."

"You need me?"

"Well, I'm here at the house and I'm not yet pinned down by snipers across the canyon, so I guess not yet."

Pike didn't answer.

"You know the director, Peter Alan Nelsen? He's our client."

Pike didn't answer some more. Trying to talk with Pike is like carrying on a fill-in-the-blank conversation.

I said, "Try to make conversation, Joe. It's easy. All you have to do is say something."

Pike said, "You need me, you know where I am." Then he hung up. So much for conversation.

The microwave dinged. I took out the meat loaf, transferred it to a metal pan, opened a can of new potatoes, drained them, put them in the pan around the meat loaf and sprinkled them with garlic and paprika, then put bacon over the meat loaf and put the pan in the oven on high. I like the skin on my meat loaf to be crispy.

The cat said, "Naow?"

"No. Not now. About forty-five minutes."

He didn't look happy about it I finished the Falstaff, got another, drank most of it on the way up to the shower and the rest of it on the way back down. When the meat loaf was ready, I put out two plates and sliced off the ends for me and a center cut for the cat. He watched me put the end cuts and the potatoes in my plate and the center slice in his. He purred loudly as I did it. I sprinkled Tabasco on mine and A-1 on his, then took the beer and both plates out to my deck. There's a Zalcona glass table out there with a couple of matching chairs and sometimes we eat at the table, but sometimes we take down the center section of the rail and sit at the edge of the deck and look out over the canyon. With the rail, you are separated from the view. Without the rail, you are part of it. We eat there often.

When we were finished, I said, "Well? How was it?"

The cat stretched and broke wind. He's getting older.

I took the dishes inside, washed them, put them away, then stretched out on the couch with a finger of Rnockando to read the latest Dean Koontz when the doorbell rang. It was Peter Alan Nelsen and his best friend Dani. Peter was dressed the same way he'd been dressed earlier, but Dani had shifted to buff-cut blue jeans and a designer sweatshirt with little pearl beads worked into the fabric. The sweatshirt was a pale lavender and looked good on her.

Peter walked in without being asked and said, "Whadaya say, Private Eye? You ready to rock?" He was squinting a lot and swaying from side to side and he smelled like his clothes had been doused with bourbon.

He staggered into the center of the floor and looked around and said, "Hey, this is neat You live here alone?"

"Yeah." The cat started to growl, a hoarse sound in his chest.

Peter saw my drink. "What's that, scotch?"

I got a short glass and poured a little of the Knockando. I held the bottle toward Dani, but she shook her head. Designated human.

Peter went to the glass doors and looked out at the canyon. "Hey, I like this view. This is okay. I got a place up on Mulholland with a view. You gotta come up sometime. We'll have a party or something."

"Sure."

Peter saw the cat sitting sphinxlike on the arm of the couch. "Hey, a cat."

I said, "Be careful. He's mean and he bites."

"Bullshit. I know about cats." Peter swayed over to the couch and put out his hand. The cat grabbed him, bit hard twice, then ran under the couch, growling. Peter jumped back and shook his hand, then bent over and peered under the couch. I could see the blood from across the room. "That sonofabitch is mean."

Dani stood quietly to the side, maybe looking a little sad.

I said, "Peter, it's late. I'm tired and I was getting ready for bed. What do you want?"

Peter straightened up and looked at me like I had to be kidding. "Whadaya mean, sleep? It's early. Tell him, Dani, tell him it's early."

Dani glanced at her watch. "It's ten after ten, Peter. That's late for some people."

Peter said, "Bullshit. Ten after ten ain't nothing to guys like us." He looked at me. "I figured we could go out and knock back a few, maybe shoot a little pool, something like that." He sat down on the couch and threw an arm over the back, forgetting about the cat. The cat growled, and Peter jumped up and moved to the chair across the room.

I said, "Another time."

Peter frowned, not liking that. "Hey, you don't want to party?"

"Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm tired and I want to go to sleep, but most of all because you're so drunk you sound like you're speaking Martian."

Dani made a soft, faraway sound, but when I looked at her, she wasn't looking at either me or Peter. Peter scowled and leaned forward in the chair. "You got some smart mouth on you."

"The rest of me ain't stupid, either."

He poured himself more of the Knockando and got up and went over to the glass doors. "I want to know what you've got on Karen."

"You mean, how close have I come to finding her in the six hours since I started looking?"

"Yeah."

"She is no longer a member of SAG or SEG or AFTRA, which probably means she no longer acts or works in front of the camera. I spoke with people I know at the Bank of America and the phone company and the police, all of whom are checking their computers for information about her past or present, but I probably won't hear from any of them until tomorrow.

I talked with the man who was her theatrical agent, Oscar Curtiss, who is trying to be helpful but probably won't be. It goes like that sometimes. He wanted me to tell you that because he would like to do business with you."

Peter made a little flipping gesture with his drink. "Fuck'm."

I shrugged.

Peter said, 'That's it?"

"Yep."

"I thought it would go faster."

"Most people do."

Peter poured himself another three fingers of the Knockando, took it to the glass doors, and drank it. He stared out at the canyon for a while, then put the glass and the bottle on the floor and turned back to me. It took an effort to get himself turned around, like a tall ship in a wind with a lot of sail. He said, "I'm calling you out." Marshal Dillon.

I said, "Yeah?"

He nodded. "You're goddamned right. I didn't like the way you spoke to me at the studio today, and I don't like the way you're speaking to me now. I'm Peter Alan Nelsen and I don't take shit."

I looked at Dani. She said, "Why don't we just leave, Peter? He doesn't want to party. We can go somewhere and party without him."

Peter said, "Hey, Dani, you wanna leave, leave, but I'm calling this sonofabitch out." Peter sort of swayed forward, squinting the way you do when you're seeing three or four of something that there's only one of.

He said, "C'mon, goddamnit, I'm serious," and put up his fists. When his fists went up the cat howled loud and mournful and flashed out from under the couch. He grabbed Peter's ankle and bit and screamed andc lawed with his hind legs. Peter yelled, "Sonofabitch," jumped sideways, stumbled into the chair, and fell over backward. The cat sprinted back under the couch.

I said, "Some cat, huh?"

Dani helped Peter up, then righted the chair. Peter said, "Lemme alone," and pulled away from her. When he did he fell to his knees. He said, "I'm all right. I'm all right." Then he passed out.

I said, "Is he like this a lot?"

Dani said, "Pretty much, yeah."

"I'll help you get him outside."

"No, thanks. You could get the door, if you want."

"You sure?"

"I can bench two-thirty. I squat over four."

Nope. She wouldn't need the help.

Dani lifted him into the chair, then squatted in front of him and pulled him onto her shoulders and stood up. She said, "You see?"

I got the door.

She moved out past me and stopped on the porch and looked back at me. "I know it doesn't show, but he really likes you. You're all he talked about this afternoon."

"Great."

She frowned, maybe looking a little angry. Defensive for him. I liked that. "It's not easy being him. Here's a guy with all he has going, and he can't just go hang out, you see?"

"Sure."

"Everybody in his life is there because they want to screw him. Any time there's a woman, he's thinking it's because she wants to rip him off. Any time a guy says he's Peter's friend, it's because he wants to be in business with Peter Alan Nelsen, the big deal, not with Peter Nelsen, the guy." She said it as if we werej ust standing there, as if Peter Alan Nelsen wasn't an outsized yoke across her shoulders.

I said, "He's got to be getting heavy." She smiled softly. "I can hold him all night." I followed her out to a black-on-black Range Rover and opened the right front door. She eased him into the front seat and carefully placed his head on the headrest and buckled the seat belt around him. She tested it to make sure it was snug. I said, "Everybody's out to screw him but you."

She nodded, then shut the door and looked at me, and there was something soft within the hard muscle. She said, "Are you going to quit? He pulls stuff like this and most people quit."

I shook my head. "I'm liking you too much to quit."

She made the little soft smile again, then wenta round to the driver's side, got in, and made a U-turno nto the little road that winds down the blacknesst oward Laurel Canyon and Mulholland Drive.

I went back into the house and picked up the empty glasses and the Knockando bottle and cleaned up the spilled booze. The cat came out from under the couch and watched me for a while, and then he left. Off to do cat things, no doubt.

When the glasses were put away, I went out onto the deck again and looked down into the dark canyon below. It was open and free and, beneath me there, lights moved along the curving roads.

Maybe they were Dani and Peter, but maybe they weren't.

The next morning I rose early and was out on the deck again while the sun was still low in the east. The canyon below was cold and green with a faint hint of haze, and high overhead a red hawk rode a growing thermal, looking for gophers.

I did slow stretches and then the Twelve Sun Salutes from the hatha yoga and then an easy tae kwon do kata and then a hard one, snapping the moves with power and speed and certainty of purpose. It feels clean to do it that way. Sometimes when I practice in the early evening, the two little boys who live in the cantilevered house down the street come over and watch and we talk about things that are important to small boys. I find that they are important to me, too. In the morning, I ama lways alone. Lately I've noticed that I work out less in the morning and more in the evening. Maybe Peter Alan Nelsen was feeling that way, too.

I showered and shaved and put out two eggs for poaching and made a batter for blueberry cottage cheese pancakes. While I waited for the griddle to heat, I called my answering machine. There were messages from my friends at the Bank of America and the phone company and from Lou Poitras. My friend at the B of A said that their credit check showed that no one named Karen Shipley or Karen Nelsen or listing either of those names as either a maiden or former name possessed a credit card of any kind anywhere within the United States. My friend at the phone company said pretty much the same. Lou Poitras said that Karen Shipley had once gotten a ticket for parking in a red zone but had paid it prompdy. Her address at that time was the apartment she had shared with Peter Alan Nelsen. He said that if I found her, I probably wouldn't have to assume she was armed and dangerous, but that I might want to bring along backup just in case. That Lou. He's a riot, isn't he?

I made four pancakes and the poached eggs, then crushed the poached eggs on top of the pancakes, poured a large glass of nonfat milk, and brought die food and the milk to the table. The cat had left during the night. Sometimes he eats breakfast with me, but sometimes he doesn't. When he doesn't, I don't know what he eats. Maybe small dogs.

Karen Nelsen had no phone in either name, but I had sort of expected that. After ten years, the odds were large that she had remarried. The credit cards were another matter. If she had a credit card under Nelsen or Shipley, or with Nelsen or Shipley listed as a former name, she should've turned up. That was odd,b ut there were explanations. Maybe she had joined a cult and no longer had a name. Maybe she had given over all earthly traits and artifacts to a higher being named Klaatu, and in return Klaatu had blessed her with eternal bliss and escape from snoopy private cops. Or maybe she simply didn't like credit cards. Hmmm.

I had run through all of my leads and I had come up with nothing and it made me feel small. I needed another line. Maybe I should ask Klaatu.

The phone rang and Oscar Curtiss said, "I think I got a line on Karen Shipley for you."

I said, 'Thanks, Klaatu."

"Hunh?"

"I sneezed. What do you have?"

"I dug out that stuff and I found an old address. It's 3484 Beechwood Canyon Place, Apartment 2. It's where she lived after the divorce."