Parishioner (39 page)

Lou was looking at Ecks as if the Parishioner’s words carried weight and form. He studied each one like a production line manager looking for flaws in his assemblers’ work.

“You got to understand, man,” Lou said, “I don’t know what it’s all about. I got information but not nearly enough to make the right connections. And if what you say about Chick and Jerry is true, then I need to get out. I need to get paid.”

Ecks could see the desperate man’s point.

“How much you lookin’ for, Lou?”

“Two hundred thousand sounds about right. With that I could get out to Australia.”

“I cain’t argue with that,” Ecks said. “If I get up near a million or more you deserve your dram. But the truth is, I’m broke and you got no reason to trust me. How do we work that into this payday of yours?”

Lou had gotten into the habit of looking over toward the door to his office building every thirty seconds or so.

“We should get away from here,” he said. “If the police come it’ll be over for both of us.”

Half an hour later the unlikely pair were seated in a booth at Loud’s Coffee Shop on Wilshire. Lou ordered a mocha coffee with whipped cream while Ecks had a black American blend.

“Just tell me one thing,” Ecks said to the detective.

“What?”

“What did Benol ask you to do—exactly?”

“All she wanted was for me to find that Brayton Starmon, who she said was born Brayton Welch.”

“Nothing else?”

“She said something about three boys that went missing twenty years ago. She said that she heard Starmon had information that would lead her to them.”

The walk up La Brea had been under the hot sun, and even though the heat hadn’t bothered Ecks, Lou was sweating like the soda cup he’d left on the bus stop bench. The detective was visibly relieved by the coolness of the café. Even Ecks found the air-conditioning restorative.

“The way I figure it is that you came across Martindale in your search,” Xavier said. “He’s a high-end operator. If Brayton got something on one of his break-ins that might have had worth, he’d come to Chick and make a deal.”

Up until then Baer-Bond was nervous, motile. His hands and face were in motion. He looked up at any movement in the room. But when Ecks started reenacting the detective’s
investigation Lou got still and serious.

Ecks didn’t mind the attention. There was, after all, a burgeoning partnership between the two men. He needed to nurse the relationship along until it brought him to the place he had yet to define.

“This here is tricky, Lou. We both have our little secrets. And you know that I believe that there’s a big payday with nobody to claim the check. If I give you my knowledge you could run away with it. Same is true with you for me. But we got to come up with something.”

“Yeah,” Lou said, “yeah.”

“So maybe we could ask each other some questions and see if the answers open up a possibility.”

“Like what?”

“Do you know what the people who have gotten killed and who might still die have in common?”

Baer-Bond knitted his eyes and shook his head.

Ecks believed this to be an expression of truth.

“The surfer and mass-murdering boy,” Ecks said, “and one other were kidnapped by the man who lived on Marietta Circle.”

The detective’s eyes became elusive.

“Don’t be hidin’ your eyes from me, Lou. If we gonna work together then you got to prove that you can share.”

“How’d you find out about Sprain?”

“Benol told me.”

“How’d she know?”

“Uh-uh, Lou. Your turn.”

“The third man is called Leonard Phillips. He’s a pervert. Works for the porn industry out in the Valley. Got a job at Zebra Films but he never leaves the set. Lives behind a trash can like a roach in the wall.”

“Lenny O,” Ecks said with a nod.

“You know that too?”

“What I don’t know is why Chick and Jerry would think that they could make money from killin’ people ain’t got two sticks between the four of ’em.”

“They sure didn’t tell me.”

“But maybe they did and you don’t know it.”

Ecks’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket just then. The sensation caused him to smile.

“What’s that mean?” Lou asked.

“Maybe they had you lookin’ for something,” Ecks suggested. “Maybe you saw or heard something that stuck in your head.”

The sweat on Baer-Bond’s brow had dried into a sheen of salt. His eyes had found their range on Ecks.

“Look, man,” Lou said. “All this could just be smoke and mirrors—like they had on that TV show, that … that … that
Mission Impossible
. I got to check some’a this out and think it over.”

Ecks’s phone throbbed again.

“Gimme a number and I will call you later on,” Lou added.

“When?”

“I’m not gonna say when exactly but it’ll be in less than a day. If I don’t call by then I won’t. So unless you plan to shoot me or arrest me I’m gonna walk out of here and do some looking and thinking of my own.”

It wasn’t the ideal resolution of the meeting, but Ecks appreciated the bind Lou was in. He didn’t know whether his employers were really in jail. He didn’t know Ecks at all.

The Parishioner shrugged and wrote down the number of a throwaway cell that he kept in his safe.

“I don’t have no two hundred thousand, Lou. If I did I wouldn’t be sittin’ here talkin’ to you. But I could sell one of my vehicles and raise some cash. If you do decide to call me, and I haven’t found out the answers I need from somewhere else, then I’d be willing to give you enough for a one-way ticket to someplace where you might could be a beach bum.”

“A minister sent you to me? Really?”

“You go and do your soul-searchin’, brother. Do that and call me—or don’t. If you do, and I still need what you got, we can play twenty questions again.”

Lou Baer-Bond considered the words, realized that he had no choice, gulped down the rest of his sweet drink, and rose to walk away.

Ecks wondered what kind of wild card Lou would turn out to be. He was a ruthless, very
efficient murderer. He didn’t feel guilt or remorse. For probably not much money he had killed two men. Now he was desperate because the little he had made had gone to chili dogs and whores. He would cheat Ecks out of reflex and kill him if he could.

The old Xavier Rule felt right at home.

“I need to know what’s happening,” Benol said on the message from the first call.

“Brother Ecks,” Father Frank said on the second message. “Ms. Richards has been calling, worried that you might have abandoned her cause for some profit-making scheme. I assured her that such a thing is impossible but also promised that you would call her and make a report.”

“Hello?” she said halfway through the first ring.

“Hey, Bennie.”

“Where are you?”

“The Wilshire District. I’m having a coffee and wondering how a single decision by a teenaged girl can create a whole world of pain.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Where are you?”

“The reading room of the downtown Y.”

“There’s a restaurant ’bout six blocks from there called Pablo’s Tandoor. Meet me there in one hour.”

“Have you betrayed me, Mr. Noland?”

“That, my dear, would be impossible.”

Forty-five minutes past midday Benol Richards walked into the Mexican-Indian restaurant to find Ecks sitting at a two-person booth against the back wall. The walls and booths, furniture, floors, and ceiling were all decorated with Olmec, Aztec, and Hindi gods and goddesses, sacred animals and indecipherable texts.

Ecks rose up from his seat and actually kissed the young-looking woman on her cheek. She touched the place where his lips had brushed her and frowned.

“What’s going on?” she asked. If she were Jesus she might have added the appellation—Judas.

“You hungry?”

“No.”

“Order something anyway. They like it when people pay to sit at their tables.”

“I don’t care. You order for me.”

The waiter came and Ecks ordered.

“I need to know what’s going on,” the honey-colored possible penitent said when they were alone.

Xavier took a stiff piece of paper out of his inside breast pocket. This he placed before Benol.

She picked up the card, glanced at both sides, and put it back down on the table.

“So?”

“That was my question for you,” Ecks replied.

The two freckles under her eye seemed to be more pronounced. Ecks wondered whether this was some kind of physical show of embarrassment.

Before Benol could reply, the waiter returned with plates of tandoori chicken, chiles rellenos, vindaloo lamb, and basmati rice.

“We used to fuck, okay?” she said after the server left again.

“But why would you think that he would send you money so long after you’d run away? Full-grown man having sex with a child who is his brother’s daughter probably wouldn’t have guilt as a primary emotion.”

“My dad was his stepbrother,” Benol said. “Anyway, he wasn’t even my real father. When he married my mom, she already had me. Clay and I weren’t related by blood and we only met after I was in foster care.”

“You were still a teenager.”

“Yeah. But he kinda fell for me. I could lead him around by the nose.”

“Until Brayton.”

“Yeah. Clay got jealous.”

“And that’s why you sold those kids?”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“One boy’s dead, another’s in prison for life, and those are the two who got off easy.”

Actual tears formed in the woman’s eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“The detective you hired killed the surfer and Brayton too.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I … I … I …”

“Was your uncle part of the scam?”

“No. No, he wasn’t.”

“Then why would you expect him to send you money?”

“I had letters.”

“What kinda letters?”

“He was in love with me. I used to say I wanted him to do things, sex things, and he’d write me love letters telling me what he’d do. Signed them and everything.”

“He said he loved you?”

“He did love me. He did everything I wanted.”

When he ran women Ecks had heard this story in a hundred variations.