Point Doom (8 page)

“Gee-zus,” I said, “a kid almost thirty years younger than you. Sounds like you hit the jackpot. So, what’s her business?”

“Matchmaking of some kind. She runs a dating deal for rich gay boys in Hollywood. And here’s the good news: she’s a real tiger in the sack. She’s into yoga and all that stuff.”

“Jesus, I’m jealous. Is she a switch-hitter or something? Is that how she got into the gay matchmaking thing?”

“Nah, she’s straight, as far as I know. I really like the girl and she’s a full-on nine plus. Her friend, some guy who is gay, and went into advertising, started the company. The way Laighne tells it, he got busy with his job and then made her the managing partner. She’s in charge now. The girl’s a whiz on the Internet too. She can do anything. You want some chump’s background checked out, some producer or your ex-wife’s new guy, she can have the dope for you in twenty minutes—with a webcam up their ass. The girl’s for real—no joke. She used to be in security or something in Europe, but now that she’s in the program, she says she won’t go near ruining people’s careers or taking any cheap shots.”

“Nice,” I said. “Sober, sexy, successful, and single. The four S’s.”

“She’s got a pad in Santa Monica and a guest house on some big estate near Point Dume. I’m spending the weekend with her out there before I start the new job.”

“Moving right along,” I said. “Sweet.”

“I’m havin’ a ball. I also met one of her girlfriends, at a Brentwood meeting. She’s okay, I guess. Kind of an L.A. bimbo, actually. Painted nails and aftermarket knockers.”

“Okay, so what about me?” I cracked. “I’m single and sober and semi-sane. Maybe she can help me ring the bell too. This girlfriend might be dying to meet a broke, semi-homeless, fucked-up, ex-private detective with a nifty career in the auto industry.”

Woody shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “Laighne’s cool—straight up—but her gal pal feels high-risk. About fifteen minutes sober from what I can tell, all about glitz and all that Beverly Hills celebrity clubbing jazz. My bet is that you’d be better off continuing to date your old standby: Mrs. Thumb and her four daughters.”

I checked my watch. I would now be returning late from lunch and I still had to walk the two blocks back to work.

Woody followed me to the corner traffic light, then grinned his pearly grin again and shook my hand. “Okay, pal, stay in touch,” he said. “Good luck with the new place. Call me tomorrow and maybe I’ll e-mail you the script so you can read it.”

“Deal,” I said. “See you Thursday, your place, right?”

“Sure. That’ll work. The two of us together can make that screenplay a total ass-kicker.”

ELEVEN

W
hen I reported for work several mornings later, the day before my new day off and move (Rhett had fired two salesmen and shuffled the cards again), Fernando and I had a decent conversation at the back of the car lot behind the company’s detail van. He was smoking a joint and said he wanted us to be friends. He again denied that he had torched my mom’s Honda.

As we talked I realized that I had misjudged my co-worker as an ignorant South American asshole thug. He was a step up from that. He launched into a five-minute tirade in Spanglish about Sherman Toyota—how he hated Max and Rhett and the management staff with a passion for bullying him and changing his day off three times.

Nando’s style was to attempt to intimidate everyone he met. Even his bosses. When I had not backed down, and instead punched him out, I had earned his respect and affection. That day I found out that my lot partner was also an avid computer-dater and was consistently misrepresenting himself as a surgeon on several websites to the women he hooked up with, saying that because of his out-of-country medical license he’d had to settle for a career in investment banking, or some other whopper-snot. Fernando, on his first phone call to these women, would close the conversation with the all-important question, “Jou dell me somezing, my sweetz: are jou busty?”

LATER THAT AFTERNOON,
to amuse me and himself, Nando, who was freshly annoyed at our boss Max for making him split a commission because he’d arrived at work late that morning, decided to square accounts. My lot partner reasoned that he now had nothing to lose: “Fuk disa cockzooker. I gonna fix hisa chit real goo. Jou zee.”

Max kept his big brass key ring on his desk. It contained Sherman Toyota’s business keys and his own car and house keys. While the tall oaf was in Rhett’s office with the paperwork on a deal on a two-year-old Prius, Fernando walked in and snatched his keys.

Outside, my lot partner motioned for me to follow him around to the back of the building. He then heaved the key ring up onto the flat roof of the dealership.

An hour later, after discovering his keys were missing, Max spent two furious hours calling people. Even a locksmith. His annoyed wife, Margie, had to drive the fifty miles from their house near Magic Mountain to bring Max the extra sets of keys to the house and his Benz SUV.

Fernando, of course, was delighted. He took great pleasure in making his adversaries miserable.

THAT NIGHT, BEFORE
quitting time, the showroom was empty. Nando had been instructing me on how to online date for free and I’d been chatting with a girl in Santa Barbara about us getting together for coffee.

The showroom PA blared. “FIORELLA! JD FIORELLA TO THE GM’S OFFICE. JD TO RHETT’S OFFICE.”

On my way there, Vikki, who had just finished up with an Asian lookie-loo tire-kicking couple outside on the lot, walked in. Her customers were now leaving the dealership with a brochure.

She motioned me to her desk. This girl, for two obvious full D-cup reasons, had become the sales leader at the dealership over the last several days.

I walked over to where she was sitting. Her makeup was perfect, as usual, and standing above her, I was able to see down her low-cut blouse that accentuated her pink bra and hefty knockers. The only thing that might put a man off about this girl were her wide hips. Most men find hippy women unattractive. I, on the other hand, have always enjoyed a wide ride. Vikki was at least twenty pounds too beefy.

“Hey, JD,” she cooed, “can we talk for a sec?”

“Sure,” I said, “talk. But you heard, I’ve just been summoned by the company’s brain trust.”

“So you and Nando had an argument out back last week?”

“It wasn’t a big deal,” I said. “A territory misunderstanding, is all. As you know, Nando can be a knucklehead.”

“I hear you’re pretty good at taking care of yourself. I like that quality in a man.”

“I do okay.”

“And you also know I’m a single woman, right?”

“I know you’ve got an ex-husband. I’ve heard you on your cell with your lawyer at least twice.”

Vikki smiled up at me, exposing expensive, pretty, perfectly capped teeth. “Divorces can be scary,” she cooed. “My ex is also a lawyer. It’s a nasty situation.”

“I hear that.”

“Well, okay. See, I was just wondering if you might like to have dinner with me sometime. Maybe after work tomorrow.”

This was the first time in eighteen months that a woman who was not a hooker or a member of an online chat room had come on to me. I’d already pigeonholed Vikki as a West Side gold digger. I had enough recovery in me and enough ex-private detective horse sense to know she could be trouble. Plainly, the girl was out of my league. I had no intention of having anything other than a work relationship with her.

“Hey, that’s nice,” I said, “maybe another time. I’m pretty busy these days.”

“Well, anyway—you just let me know, JD. The ball’s in your court now.”

Then Vikki pulled one of her business cards from the holder on the desk and wrote her private e-mail address on the back.

She handed me the card. While I was accepting it, she scratched the back of my hand with her half-inch-long red index fingernail. “It just might be fun,” she whispered.

WHEN I GOT
to Rhett’s office I could tell that he and Max had been waiting for me—the room was silent and they were stone-faced.

Without saying anything, Max motioned for me to close the door and sit down.

When I didn’t move, Max glared at me. “Over there, Fiorella,” he ordered. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

I still didn’t sit down. I could feel that something was about to hit the fan, and I already smelled the stink of it in the room. “Look guys, if this about those keys . . . ” I said.

“Screw the keys,” Rhett said. “Max’ll find them or he won’t. This isn’t about the keys, okay? We’ve got a major problem.”

“Involving me?”

Max stood up. “We got some very fucked news this morning, Fiorella.”

Rhett lifted a hand to shut Max up. “I’ll handle this,” he said. “Look, amigo, we heard from our contracts guy at the bank. Turns out that your 4Runner deal went tits up.”

“You’re kidding!” I said. “What went wrong?”

“We got scammed, my friend. That beaner bitch used stolen ID and credit cards. The whole thing was a rip-off, from the get-go. I’ve been on the phone with the business office. The bank put a hold on their check days ago and then redeposited it. It bounced twice. Total flimflam. Pretty slick too. Christ knows where that 4Runner wound up. Probably some friggin’ chop shop in East L.A.”

Hearing this information was like a punch to the head. I took a deep breath. Now I was up shit creek—in hock to my best friend and out over two grand in commission. “Okay, so what happens next?” I said.

Max interrupted: “Look—I’ll ask this point blank. I have information. Were you involved here in any way?”

I glared at Max. “Absolutely no way!
And fuck your information
!”

Rhett frowned. “Let it go, Max. He’s clean. You can see it in his face. Back off!” he snarled.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” Max hissed.

I faced my manager again. “If you’re accusing me of something, tell me now! Otherwise shove your information up your ass. Or maybe I’ll shove it up there for you.”

Rhett waved his arms for us to stop. “Look, JD, I checked over your commissions,” he said.

“Okay. And . . . ”

“If we deduct the money you earned from the sale, your check on Friday comes out to be $1,310, before taxes.”

“Jesus,” I said, my head now banging, “I’m screwed here.”

“Then, there’s the five-hundred-dollar spiff I paid you in cash. That has to come out too.”

“C’mon, Rhett,” I said, “that’d leave me with six or seven hundred bucks for two weeks’ work!”

“Sorry, Fiorella, the store is getting short-sticked and so are you. I’ve gotta spend tomorrow morning at the bank to clean up this mess. It won’t be fun.”

“Okay, then how about this: spread the money out over a couple of paychecks. I’m really in a tight spot here. I borrowed fifteen hundred based on that sale. Now I owe the money back. You’re my boss. Help me out here.”

“I know,” Rhett said, pulling out his handkerchief and blowing his nose, then picking more snot out with his fat index finger and wiping it on the handkerchief. “It’s a tough break all around, but there’s nothing we can do. Company policy is company policy.”

AFTER LEAVING RHETT’S
office, I went back to my desk. Vikki watched from two cubicles away as I tore my tie off and picked up my sales tracking notebook. “What’s up, Tiger,” she whispered. “You look like your dog just got run over. What happened in there?”

I was angry. I couldn’t talk. I felt like hurting Max—the guy had developed a hard-on for me and my anger was starting to build, and that scared me. And tomorrow I would have to face Woody with the news that I could not pay him. I was royally screwed.

“Look, do you mind,” I said to Vikki, “some other time. I can’t handle any chitchat at the moment.”

My expression apparently startled her. “Hey,” she shot back, turning away in her swivel chair, “whatever you say.”

OUT ON THE
lot, on my way to my demo Corolla, I told Fernando about the situation. We were standing in our sales patch, between cars, alone.

Nando sneered, then spit on the window of a Camry. “Deeza preeks. Maz and Writ, dey fuk jou any way dey can. Maybe becauz a da kees. I tink zo. Theysa make up some big fukkin’ lie to tell jou.”

TWELVE

T
he following morning, out on Point Dume, with my head pounding after almost no sleep and another dream about dead-body parts, I woke up sweating.

While I was dressing I decided that I had no options. I’d make the move anyway, then worry about the consequences on the back end. Hopefully, I’d make a few sales and get even as quickly as possible. I’d tell Woody the truth and let the chips fall where they fell.

After packing up my clothes and computer I was ready to leave Mom’s place. She and Coco were sunning themselves near the back patio table while Mom studied the astrology chart of one of her celebrity clients.

“Okay, Ma, that’s it,” I said. “I’m all done. I’m ready to hit the road.”

She flipped her astrology book facedown, shuffled some papers, then looked up at me over the top of her glasses. “You and I need to have a serious and unemotional conversation, James.”

Christ
, I thought,
what the hell did I do now?
Then Ma held up a chart. “I’m not pleased with your current aspects at all.”

Happy to avoid another mother and son confrontation regarding my flaws and dogshit life, I glanced down at the diagrammed paper. “Thanks, Ma,” I said, “but I’ll be okay.”

“I’ve already told you that Mercury’s retrograde.”

“Hey, that’s no surprise—whatever it means. Talk to my boss.”

“I’ve been sitting here pondering your chart. You must exercise extreme caution these next two weeks, especially in relationships. There’s darkness here.”

“I intend to, Ma. Thanks.”

“Don’t patronize me. Be careful. Very careful.” Then she looked back down at my chart.

“Okay, it’s a promise,” I said.

Mom’s expression got darker. “There’s also your unpleasant Pluto. It may cause you mischief. It’s a conjunction.”

“Right, Ma,” I said, kissing the top of her glasses by mistake instead of her head. “I’ll keep this stuff in mind.”

“Call me, James.”

Coco was smiling. “Be well, James. You’re a smart boy. This is a new beginning. I wish you great success.”

“Remember, James: caution,” Mom repeated. ”Do you hear me?”

“Jesus, Ma, I hear you.”

MOVING MY CLOTHES
and computer into the apartment went easily enough. One trip in my demo Corolla did the trick.

At the door to my new place I met my next-door neighbor as she was just leaving—a painted sixty-year-old L.A. floozie named Brenda who’d worked all her life, she said, as a barmaid. She was half-tanked as we spoke. It was one o’clock in the afternoon.

MY APPOINTMENT TO
work on the script with Woody was at his apartment at Fifteenth and Arizona, in Santa Monica—two o’clock—only a fifteen-minute drive from my new place on Short Avenue.

Woody lived alone. I knew he’d be expecting me and I hated the idea of having to go back on my word to a pal, to put him off about the fifteen hundred I owed, but I had no choice. He’d be upset but it was time to work my program and face the music.

I’d already had too much coffee that day, plus a Red Bull, and I needed to pee badly when I got to the top of the stairs and knocked on his door.

There was no answer. I waited a few seconds, then tried again. The result was the same. I tried again, rapping more loudly. Still nothing. No footsteps either.

Pulling out my cell phone, I punched in Woody’s number. After a pause I heard ringing from inside the door. He had to be home. Woody always carried his cell.

I decided to try the door. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t locked.

Pressing the handle and pushing the door open, I stuck my head inside. It was the middle of the day and all the interior lights were on. I yelled, “Hey Woody, I’m here. Where in hell are you?”

Still no answer.

The living room was empty but neat, almost militarily clean. The TV was on and white dots were floating across its otherwise blank screen. In the upper corner green blinking letters printed out DVD. I saw the remote on the coffee table five feet away.

Walking down the hall I yelled again. “Woody, it’s me, JD. You here?”

Passing the kitchen, I came to the bathroom. There was a smudge of something black on the door by the knob. I called again, “Hey, it’s JD.” Then I stuck my head inside the john.

The room was empty but immaculate too. All the towels by the shower were the same color and hung neatly on their racks. My friend was quite the housekeeper for a guy who lived alone. Impressive.

Then the smell hit me. It was nasty and unsettling. The stink of puke.

The other half of the bathroom was behind the door so I pushed it open all the way.

One almost-new toothbrush was tucked into its chrome holder and the soap dish contained a fresh bar. I could still see the letters on it. But the sink itself was filled with the contents from the medicine cabinet; toothpaste tubes and deodorant, itch creams and spare shampoos, several kinds of aspirin, a box of hair dye, and stuff for an upset stomach. The bottle of pink liquid had spilled and had soaked into some of the other items around it.

The toilet seat cover was down, so I lifted it up. There was a ring of puke inside—the source of the terrible stink. Leaning closer I stared down at what was in it—something floating in the water—a thick piece of flesh. A penis!

I leaned down to look more closely at the thing. Jesus!

LEAVING THE BATHROOM
I pulled my .44 out of the rear of my belt, my brain now slamming itself against the inside of my skull. Wham wham wham.

The bedroom door was closed but ajar.

I didn’t want to go in. Something terrible was in there. Something I’d seen before and didn’t want to see again.

After a pause, I crouched, readied my gun, then slammed the door open.

THE BODY ON
the bed had been placed on a large piece of clear plastic sheeting that covered the light-brown, unwrinkled bed spread. Four blue pillows were above the corpse, at the head of the mattress. Arranged pillows.

The arms and legs of the body were splayed, pointing at the four corners of the bed. It was Woody.

I stood staring at the thing for a few seconds; this strange, white mannequin block of flesh with its tattooed upper arms and a thick chest and belly. Blood had pooled at the bottom of my friend’s corpse. The color was purple-black.

I stepped closer with the gun still in my hand, aiming it at my friend Woody for some reason, still expecting something to move or jump out from somewhere.

My brain began sputtering—attempting to make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I was getting the same messages I had received five years before when I’d been at the East Bronx apartment building in New York City. The shock of violent death is something you never get used to. The unrealness of it scrambles the senses. It’s scary shit.

Now, just inches from the body, the thing that was no longer Woody but a sort of purpled-stained porcelain mummy. I looked at it more closely.

My friend had been a big guy. He had hairy arms and a wide, hairy chest. The bruised slab before me appeared to have been shaved, head to toe. The body was on its back yet its arms, legs, and head were all facing down. There was massive bruising on all the limbs. The wound at the crotch had to have been delivered postmortem because there was no significant blood loss.

Prolonged pain had to have been the MO here. Hours and hours of torture before the relief of death.

I stepped back. To breathe. To take everything in.

Whoever had been here with this body was long gone.

I felt my head shifting into investigative mode. It had been a long time. My first boss as a detective in New York had been ex-FBI—Eddy Zakowski. Eddy had twenty-five years as a veteran field agent before he retired and went out on his own. He knew the job inside out. I had started with only one skill: I was good at martial arts. Then, over time, Eddy schooled me on photography, bugging, disabling security devices, effective bribery, surveillance, money laundering, basic kinesics, and so-so computer hacking skills. I had also learned the best way to visually dissect a crime scene in under five minutes without destroying trace evidence and DNA. We’d worked cases together time and again. But the most effective skill I had learned from Eddy was how to deal with death from the delivery end: I wasn’t afraid to use my gun when I needed to. But my one weak spot had always been my shooting ability, hence the cannon I carried in my rear waistband.

I MOVED QUICKLY
back to the bathroom. In the sink was the box of hair dye. I opened the box and took out what I was looking for: the thin plastic gloves inside. I put them on.

Back in the bedroom, still being cautious, I moved to the closet with my gun in front of me. Keeping my hands free I opened the door with my elbow and cleared it. An overwhelming smell of vomit reeked from the enclosed space.

I flicked on the light and looked around at the walls in the narrow space. One of them had several drying stains.

Backing out of the room, I removed several tissues from a box on the dresser, then returned to the closet.

Holding the Kleenex between my fingers, I pinched enough of the puke away to have a sample. Then I wadded the tissue sheets into a ball and stuffed them into my inside jacket pocket.

After that, for another sample, I found one of my friend’s dirty socks in a full laundry basket, then stuck it in my pocket too.

Everything inside the little room, all the clothes and shoes, had been pushed around. Half a dozen starched, long-sleeved car salesman’s white shirts had been torn open and pulled off their hangers.

Woody had apparently owned three leather jackets. They were in a heap on the floor. Two black and one brown. Their arms had been sliced off and lay on top of a pair of boots in the corner.

I reclosed the door, hit the light switch, then tucked my .44 away.

The bedroom’s shades were closed and everything electronic in the room appeared to be on. The stereo on the nightstand was softly replaying a CD and there was an open bottle of Hiram Walker’s Ten High next to the machine.

Woody, of course, didn’t drink. When I picked up the bottle by inserting my finger into the open top I noticed that it was one-third full. I felt my stomach wrench again involuntary.

Knowing better than to mickey any evidence and possibly get myself jacked up in the process, I began using more tissues to pick things up, just to be sure.

I turned up the sound on the CD player.

As I listened I realized I knew the album. It had been a favorite of my father, Jimmy Flowers, and it had played over and over again in his writing den when I was a boy:
Sinatra Sings Cole Porter
. The song was “At Long Last Love.” Sinatra crooned, “ . . . is it Granada I see, or only Asbury Park?”

SOMETHING WAS OFF
about the music. This was not Woody’s taste. My friend was a Fleetwood Mac and Eagles fan. I’d heard their songs often enough on his Honda’s car stereo outside AA meetings, after the session, when we’d talk.

To double-check my memory I opened a drawer on the nightstand in search of Woody’s music stash, again using more tissues in addition to the plastic gloves. Twenty CD albums lined the inside of the drawer. No Sinatra. Only seventies and eighties soft rock. The music playing on the stereo might have been brought in.

Is it Granada I see, or only Asbury Park?

Definitely, this was fucking Asbury Park.

CLOSING THE DRAWER,
still looking down, I saw that my friend’s laptop case was open on the floor nearby. The computer was gone.

My eyes scanned the bed again and took in the other night table. On it I saw an absurd-looking seventies lava lamp with its green bubble floating slowly to the top. That was definitely Woody.

Then, on the floor, near the head of the bed, I spotted what I thought to be a stack of men’s magazines. A
Penthouse
and half a dozen others. Near it on the carpet but not in the stack was a lone copy of
Cuffed
, with a seminaked girl on the cover, her wrists clamped to the headboard of a steel-framed bed, and her thonged ass extending toward the camera.

I flipped open
Cuffed
and saw page after page of mocked-up seminude torture scenes.

I’d had enough. I badly needed to take a piss.

RETURNING TO THE
bathroom, I stared down at the penis in the toilet. Whatever blood there was in the water had drained to the bottom of the bowl, below the puke-stained rim.

I didn’t want to piss in his shower and leave my DNA there, and his bathroom sink was full of junk that I should not move, and I couldn’t bring myself to piss on my friend’s cut-off cock in the toilet.

Back in the kitchen I opened drawers until I found the one with cooking utensils, the drawer next to the one with the regular knives and forks and spoons. Pulling out two wooden salad tongs, I returned to the bathroom. Then, leaning down, using the things like chopsticks in my gloved hand, I picked up the penis and carried it to the sink, then set it on the wide rim.

Screw the cops and the crime scene stuff. After I’d peed, I flushed the toilet. I let the bowl fill and flushed again.

Then I made a decision: I wasn’t going to put Woody’s dick back in the toilet water. That’d be an easy tell for the crime-scene guys. I’d leave the thing somewhere else, somewhere obvious, where they could find it.

Returning to the bedroom, still holding my friend’s cock with the wooden tongs, I dropped it down on the bed.

That was wrong too. Would a killer slice off a guy’s cock and then just leave it there next to him? No way. A severed penis had to be a trophy, otherwise why leave it floating alone in the toilet?

But this was getting too crazy. My brain went numb as it continued thumping in my skull, on overload. Screw it! I couldn’t deal with it.

Crossing the carpet to the dresser, I pulled several tissues out of the Kleenex box, then laid the thing down on the dresser, on top of the tissues. The hell with it. Let the cops figure it out.

PULLING OUT MY
cell phone I punched in 9-1-1.