Runaway Heart (14 page)

     
"He promises to be here," Susan said.

     
Dr. Shiller signed Herman's release and handed it to him.
"I'll get the floor nurse to bring a wheelchair and we'll get you on your
way."

     
After the doctor left and Susan was alone with her father, she put
an angry scowl on her beautiful face.

     
"What?" he asked.

     
"If you try and get out of this operation . . . I'll. . .
I'll kill you myself. You
promised,
Dad."

     
"I know, I know . . . right, I promised, and we both know
what a lawyer's promise is worth."

     
"Dad."
It was a threat, the way she said it.

     
"Okay," he grinned. "But I gotta go see Melissa
first, and, while I do that, I have a job for you."

     
"What?" she said, still suspicious.

     
"I want you to find us a new private detective—not a computer
guy like Roland, but a real gumshoe, somebody with good resources in San
Francisco. Resources means friends on the San Francisco Police Department. We
need a look at the ME's report, the crime scene evidence. An ex-cop who's now a
P.I. might be a good place to start."

     
"An ex-San Francisco cop?" she said.

     
"Maybe, but I think it's better if the guy lives down here
and has worked cases up there, 'cause we're gonna be in L.A., and I don't wanna
have to be flying him around, paying per diem, and stuff like that. So, call
around. Start with the L.A. Police Department and get a list of ex-L.A. cops
who are now in the P.I. business and who worked cases up north. If that doesn't
work, try finding one in San Francisco."

     
"Dad, we can't investigate Roland's death, the police
will do that.
And you're going to be out of action until your condition is fixed."

     
"We can't
not
investigate it."

     
She looked at him for a long, painful moment.

     
"What?" he said, putting a little push on it. But it was
just acting, because he couldn't help noticing how concerned she was standing
at the foot of the bed, her fists on her hips, trying to figure a way to steer
him, to get him to do what she wanted.

     
"Dad, if you don't do this, I'm gonna brain you."

     
"Can't hurt me if you hit me on the head . . . nothing much
up there."

     
A nurse came in and unhooked Herman from the monitors. A few
minutes later he was being rolled down the corridor on chrome and plastic
wheels and pushed into the elevator like a two-hundred-pound holiday turkey.
Susan followed. He was slumped, yet full of stubborn pride, heroic but clumsy,
brave but ill-prepared. He was a million dollars in debt, yet headed downstairs
to drive away in a movie star's expensive sports car.

W
hatta dump,
Jack Wirta
thought, staring at his
newly rented office with open hostility. The three story building
was on Santa Monica Boulevard, near Fairfax. He was getting a rate on the
rental because the building was owned by the estate of his ex-police-partner's
son. His old partner, Shane Scully, had found out two years ago that he had
fathered a child with a wealthy woman who had died and left their son the
building. Shane agreed to give Jack Wirta, L.A.'s newest private eye and cosmic
joke, a deal on the one-room office: twelve hundred a month, no furniture, and
utilities included.

     
The place was poorly situated, especially for an ex-cop.
Everywhere he looked, up and down the dingy third-floor corridor, he saw crime
. . . vice, mostly. A gay male "dating service" that called itself
Reflections occupied several adjoining offices down the hall. Why it was called
Reflections, Jack Wirta didn't even want to guess. He'd already had a run-in
with its proprietor, a willowy Hispanic ex-chorus boy named Casimiro Roca.

     
"I hope you aren't intending to put chairs out in the
hall," Roca said, arching a plucked eyebrow at Jack.

     
"Why the fuck would I put furniture out in the hall?"
Jack snapped.

     
"One doesn't need to use foul language to make one's
point."

     
"Sorry." Jack didn't really want to start up with this
guy.

     
"The last people, the ones who had that office before you,
they always had ten folding chairs out here with people sitting in them all
day, smoking, talking, laughing. One could barely get one's work done."

     
"Well, I think that was a casting agency, but I'm not going
to be having any casting calls, so I think we can forget about that problem.
I'm Jack Wirta," he said, putting out his hand, trying to be nice.

     
"Casimiro Roca," the man shook it hesitantly. "But
I go by Miro. You look like a cop," he added suspiciously.

     
"Used t'be. Not anymore."

     
"Well, just try and be quiet. Miro could use a little
peace."

     
"You're not speaking euphemistically, I hope." Jack
said, smiling.

     
"Don't be a child," Miro replied, then turned and
actually
sashayed
down the hall—more hip action than the cast of
Cats.

     
Jack Wirta watched Miro until he pirouetted at his door and paused
theatrically. "Something else Miro can do for you?" he said. Not
exactly an invitation, but not exactly a statement either.

     
"I was just thinking . . . that's some walk you got
there."

     
"I used to dance professionally," he said.

     
That was Reflections.

     
At the other end of the hall was some kind of phone-bank boiler
room called Herbal World Health Products. They had fifteen or twenty employees,
and to Jack's cop eye all of them looked pretty badly tweaked. They scurried
like junkies, heads down, carefully watching the ground. Strung-out little
cowboys and cowgirls with twitchy movements and criminal eyes who spent the day
on phones selling unlicensed health products. If he called Hollywood Vice they
would come up here and take down the whole floor. But Jack was into "live
and let live" these days. It was his new motto.

     
So much for his third-floor neighbors.

     
The office was located down the street from the West Hollywood
Health Club, situated on the edge of five gay blocks along Santa Monica
Boulevard that most Angelinos referred to as "Boy's Town."

     
Overbuilt guys in tank tops and muscle shirts strolled the
sidewalks in too-tight jeans, swinging their shoulders and looking like they'd
kick the shit out of anybody who even muttered the word "faggot." On
the job Jack had never had a problem with the gay community. He'd always
figured to each his own, but he was beginning to wonder if having his office
here was such a good idea. He was ruggedly handsome and he'd been hit on twice
already this morning within the half block he'd walked from his parking space
to the front entrance.

     
By ten o'clock he had set up his desk and moved one club chair in.
His old, ink-stained blotter was ready and waiting for that first big
career-defining, high-profile case. Bring on a Robert Blake operetta. His new
file cabinet was alphabetized but empty, anxious to be crammed full of
important revenue-producing, adrenaline-pumping material.

     
As he worked, he tried to ignore the pain in his lower lumbar region—throbbing
at first, then building, as always, until, by late morning his back was on
fire. The pain came the same way as it had for almost six and a half years.

     
Each morning he had to unroll himself from the fetal position he
seemed to be arranged in when he woke up. After half an hour of agonizing
stretching, with one eye on his bottle of painkillers, he would finally
leverage upright and limp into the tiny kitchen of his duplex, telling himself
he wasn't going to pop one more Percocet—ever. The little bastards were
addictive, and he knew he was badly hooked. But by eleven o'clock he was always
in such agony, he could hold out no longer. It was pain unlike anything he had
ever experienced before he'd injured his back. He would inevitably find himself
circling the pills until, finally, he would angrily grab the plastic bottle,
shake one of the damn things into his hand, and wash it down, promising himself
that this was absolutely the last one he would take.

     
End result: He would struggle back to a pain threshold of plus
five—which was barely manageable. He would then
wander through his day, feeling the pain
building ominously until it hit a nerve-jangling nine about four hours later.
Unable to find a position or an alcoholic state that enabled him to endure it
for even another minute, he would break the solemn promise to himself, grab the
bottle, take another, make one more empty promise, and so on. It had been like
that ever since he'd stopped the armor-piercing nine-millimeter Parabellum fired
by that shithead, Emil Matasareanu, or his buddy, Larry Eugene Phillips Jr., at
the North Hollywood bank shootout in February of '97.

     
Four surgeries and two bone grafts later, he could finally stand
up, but it wasn't easy. A grueling two-and-a-half-year rehab followed before he
could reapply for duty. He'd been forced to retake the Police Academy physical,
which of course included the dreaded obstacle course. He had eventually crashed
and burned doing the wall climb, and they carried him off on a stretcher. One
lawsuit and another two and a half years later, he was off the force on a
75-percent disability that paid him $2,800 a month, after taxes. But he was
also completely addicted to Percocets. Since it was a triple-hit painkiller,
three copies of each prescription were filed with various state agencies to
guarantee you couldn't get more without a doctor's approval.

     
A year ago, when his most forgiving M.D. would no longer write him
a prescription, Jack Wirta became an illegal drug user. He was now buying black
market "Cets" from an African American drug dealer with a speech
impediment, named "Carbon Paper"—a moniker derived not from the color
of his skin, but from the fact that he was great at forging prescriptions under
a variety of phony names.

     
It was past eleven and Jack had just started hanging pictures and
plaques in his new office, trying to hide the wall scars, pounding in nails
with a hammer, when, suddenly, the door swung open and Miro Roca was standing
there again, hands defiantly on his slender hips.

     
"Is that supposed to be funny?" he said, lisping
slightly. "You're knocking the wall down."

     
"Relax," Jack said, trying to talk with a nail between
his teeth and lisping slightly himself. "Gimme ten minutes and I'll be done.
I don't have that many certificates anyway. My career in law enforcement was
undistinguished."

     
Uninvited, Miro sashayed into his office—the hip motion really was
something to watch. Then he dropped theatrically into the one worn leather
chair: the spin, the drop, and the smile all executed in one fluid motion. Drum
riff. Cymbals. Applause. Like that.

     
Miro started chewing at a cuticle, nibbling thoughtfully, picking
up one of the four plaques on the desk with his free hand. It was a Certificate
of Merit for the North Hollywood bank thing.

     
"Help yourself, there," Jack said as he finished
pounding the nail in the wall and hung his police academy graduation picture.
He was in the third row at the end, ramrod straight, his game face on.

   
  
Casimiro was still looking at the North
Hollywood certificate, reading the citation. "This was some pretty serious
shit," he said. "Miro saw this crazy bastard on the TV, walking
around shooting people."

     
"One doesn't have to use foul language to make one's
point," Jack smiled.

     
"I was being bitchy when I said that. Sorry," Miro
conceded.

     
"Apology accepted." Jack climbed down from the
step-ladder, then appraised the pictures and plaques on the wall.
"Straight?" he asked Miro, who was now also studying them.

     
"Funny thing to ask an obviously gay man," Miro said,
and when Jack turned, Miro smiled. "Just foolin' with ya, honey. Yes . . .
yes . . . I think they're straight." And then he wrinkled his nose at the
pictures, and for some unknown reason Jack found himself smiling, too. At least
this guy didn't take himself too seriously, which Jack noticed was a growing
problem among people who hung out west of La Brea.