Shamus In The Green Room (11 page)

“I did not,” he replied. “How fascinating. Fiction, of course,

is the operative word. I don’t mean to be insulting, but even

best-selling writers get it wrong. I could write my own book

about that!”

“That’s exactly why I’m here, Captain Donaldson. I want

to get it right.”

He launched in. “One-third of all deaths are reported to

the coroner. Sixty-five thousand people die each year in L.A.

County, so that makes about twenty thousand deaths we have

to contend with. These include all nonnatural deaths: acci-

dents, homicides, suicides—”

“Let me stop you right there,” I interrupted. “What I’m in-

terested in is how those rulings are made. Let’s take suicide.”

“All right.”

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“How do you know that a person, say, swallowed pills on

purpose? How do you know they didn’t accidentally overdose,

or that someone didn’t force them to ingest a whole bottle of

Valium or whatever, maybe at gunpoint?”

“What colorful scenarios. Your books must be very exciting.”

“I don’t write mysteries per se. I write about them. Actually,

I write about the people who write them—the dead ones. Dead

mystery writers.” Well said, Cece.

“Ah. Fascinating. A species of critic. Well, you keep after

them. Standards are so important.”

I nodded in agreement, though biographers don’t exactly

toe the line as far as standards go. We’re the vultures, the ones

who swoop down on the dead. We rifle through their drawers,

read their letters, air their dirty laundry.

“As for your query,” he went on, “we wrestle with questions

of truth every day.”

“How can you ever be certain you’re right?”

“The truth is always there in front of you, Ms. Caruso. You

just have to be ready to confront it.” The captain put down the

file and coughed into his hands. “Excuse me.” He pounded on

his chest. “Too many years of smoking. Back to your example,

though. Let’s take another one, shall we?”

“All right.”

“Let’s say that a person’s body is found near a cliff. An

unidentified person. Did that person jump, or was she—he or

she, I should say—pushed, or did he or she merely slip and

fall?”

Father McGarrigle could do that, too. See right through you.

“If it was an accident,” he continued, “we’d expect to find cer-

tain conditions in place. Unsteady terrain, loose rocks, slippery

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mud.” Which was not the case in Lunada Bay. Not in September,

at least.

“And if it was a homicide?”

“If the person was pushed, we would expect to find bruising

consistent with that particular activity. If this person was found

on his or her back, we’d look for such bruising on the chest. If

this person was found facedown, we’d look for bruising on the

back. We would also look for signs of multiple footprints.”

“And suicide?” My heart was pounding now.

“We’d try to ascertain state of mind. We’d be talking to

friends, family.” He stopped and looked directly at me. “Of

course, if there was a note, and its authenticity was undisputed,

well, that would be that. Barring any complicating factors, the

ruling would be made immediately.”

“And the body would be released.”

“The body would be released. The matter would be

closed.” He took the file and put it in his top drawer. Then he

closed the drawer and stood.

“I’m afraid I have a meeting right now. Perhaps we can con-

tinue this at a later date.”

I unstuck myself from the chair and followed him to the

door.

“One last thing.” Captain Donaldson placed an avuncular

hand on my shoulder. “I am available if you need to talk about

anything. Please feel free to call me or drop by like you did to-

day.” He gestured around his office. “These are your tax dollars

at work, after all.”

As I walked down the corridor and through the heavy

wooden door, I felt more confused than ever. Worse yet, it was

starting to feel like normal.

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t

O n t h e w a y t o R a f e ’ s , I c a l l e d i n f o r m y messages. There was one from my daughter, Annie, who said

she didn’t want to say I told you so, but did anyway; one from

Bridget, whose grandmother had seen me on the cover of In

Touch at the hairdresser’s and was wondering if she bought her

own copy, would I sign it?; one from Lael, who wanted to bor-

row the bat-wing-sleeve sweater for a date tomorrow night; one

from Gambino, calling from the hallway outside the court-

room for moral support; and one from the Mayor, who said she

had news.

I returned Gambino’s call first, but didn’t get an answer. I

called the Mayor next and got Andy at the Spot, who said the

Mayor hadn’t been in all day, but she’d instructed him to tell

me to get in touch with Barker, who was expecting to hear

from me. He said this like I knew who Barker was. Then he

gave me a number with an 818 area code, which I did know

was the San Fernando Valley, on the other side of the hill.

I needed to pull over. I found a shady spot on Pico in front

of a belly-dancing studio whose front entrance was flanked by

a pair of headless mannequins wearing dusty old harem pants,

silver-coin belts, and cropped gauzy tops. A genre of vintage I

had yet to plumb.

I got Barker’s wife, Helene. She told me I could reach her

husband at Jumbo’s Clown Room. Must be she and Barker had

some sort of understanding because Helene sounded way too

blasé about her husband’s bar of choice, which I knew from as-

siduous reading of the tabloids, as opposed to personal experi-

ence, to be a strip joint in Hollywood where Courtney Love

had once danced.

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“Jumbo’s Clown Room!”

I asked for Barker.

“Barker who?” the guy on the other end of the phone

asked.

Good question.

“Is there a Barker here?” I heard him yelling over the music.

There was noise, like maybe the phone had fallen onto the

floor, some fumbling, then a voice said, “This is Barker.”

I still didn’t know if it was his first or last name.

“Hello. This is Cece Caruso. I got your name from the

Mayor.”

“Yeah, sorry about the a-hole who answered the phone.

He’s new.”

“I understand.”

“So you were asking about some hourglass tattoos. Two

girls.”

“That’s right,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

“Heard those girls are screwing your husband.”

“Yes, well, I think so. I’m not a hundred percent sure. Still,

I’m very upset.”

“You wanted their names,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Listen, I gotta tell you something right off the bat. I don’t

care what the Mayor might have told you, I’m not getting in-

volved in any murder-for-hire shit, nothing like that. I’m clean

as a whistle and staying that way.”

“You’re kidding, right? Hello? Mr. Barker?”

“Name’s Barker.”

“Barker. I’m sorry if the Mayor gave you that impression. I

don’t want to hurt them. Not at all. That’s the furthest thing

from my mind.” I laughed nervously. “Oh, my god.”

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“Good to hear. Hey, can you call me back on my cell? This

prick here is giving me shit about tying up his line.”

“Sure.” Sure I will. Sure I’ll call back my new friend, Barker,

a tattoo artist at a strip bar worried I think he’s a hit man.

He answered on the third ring. Taking his time. A man of

leisure.

“No new identities,” Barker said right off the bat, “no fake

passports, no funny prescriptions. You talk to the Mayor about

that shit, okay? That’s her turf.”

“Okay.”

“Damn straight.”

“So those girls,” I prompted.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“I remember ’em,” he finally said. “Long time ago. Must’ve

been more than twenty years by now. I did ’em. I don’t mean I

fornicated with them, because they were underage, of course,

with fake IDs they must have done themselves they were so pa-

thetic. A blind person could’ve spotted them a mile away. But I

was drinking then, and couldn’t give a shit, and the statute of

limitations is up on that particular infraction, anyways.”

Someone honked at me. “You leaving?” A guy in a BMW

looking for a parking space. I shook my head, annoyed.

“Sorry,” I said, turning my attention back to Barker. “I’d

like to be totally clear here. You said you did them. That means

you gave them matching tattoos?”

“Good work, wasn’t it?”

Well, that was that.

If he’d tattooed both of them, then the woman I’d seen,

the woman with the unmarked white skin, couldn’t have been

Maren.

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“They were spoiled brats,” Barker said. “Sexy as hell,

though. Had that rich-bitch vibe going. Said their boyfriends

were Bay Boys.”

“What’s that, a rock band?”

“Surf punks. Local badasses. Still around, still going strong

all these years later. But I didn’t believe ’em for a second. No

girls who hung with Bay Boys would be stupid enough to offer

to blow me for the price of a couple of tattoos.”

Okay.

“The weird thing was, they had a kid with them. That’s

what was so fucked up. She didn’t look happy to be there. It

wasn’t any place for a kid.”

Proof. I needed proof. Something, anything, to bring to

Smarinsky and Donaldson. “Are there records? Release forms?”

“Not anymore. That shit is long gone. I sold the place. It’s a

Payless shoe store now.”

I took my last shot. “You’re absolutely sure? The tattoos

were located on these girls’ shoulders, both of them?”

“On their shoulders. Supposed to be exactly the same. I

cheated a little, though. The hourglasses weren’t exactly the

same. One of them, don’t remember who was who, that girl

had less time than the other one.”

I’ll say.

t

I t o o k O v e r l a n d t o W a s h i n g t o n , W a s h i n g -

ton to Ocean, and Ocean to Venice Beach.

The same refrain kept playing over and over again in my

head.

Rafe is a liar.

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Rafe is a liar.

Rafe is a liar.

I should have known when I saw him in action at Ike’s

liquor store. I should have walked away then, like I should be

walking away now. But I couldn’t, somehow. I couldn’t just

walk away.

“I know what you did,” I sputtered, red faced, when he

opened the thick, plate-glass door of his canal-front house.

Strange that a person so enamored of privacy would live some-

place transparent to the outside. Maybe he liked the illusion

that he had nothing to hide.

He didn’t answer me right away. He turned around. At

first, I thought maybe there was someone else there. Maybe

Will—Will, who could fix anything, except this.

But Rafe was alone. It was quiet. All I could hear was the

quacking of the ducks, who wanted somebody to toss them a

crust of bread. Ducks don’t have it so easy.

Rafe turned back to me.

“Let’s take a walk. I owe you an explanation.” He shut the

glass door behind him—carefully, as if it were the first time, or

the last.

CHAPTER

TWELVE

It didn’t occur to me to be scared. What I felt was punch-

drunk, as if I were going through the motions without really

inhabiting my body.

I followed Rafe down the cracked sidewalk, house after

anonymous house. Some had small rowboats tied to the weath-

ered wooden docks. Here and there, thickets of palm trees cast

shadows on the glassy water. We stopped at a bridge wrapped

with tiny Christmas lights and watched a couple in a red boat

float by. The woman’s laughter skipped along the surface of

the water, like stones. It was absurdly pastoral.

Venice, California, was established around 1900. It was go-

ing to be a simulacrum of the original, with classical arcades,

Moorish accents, and twenty miles of waterways. But these

were mostly paved over by the end of the twenties to make

room for cars. For decades afterward, the few remaining canals

languished, swampy and mosquito infested. An urban-renewal

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project in the eighties made them desirable again, and so ex-

pensive only the very rich could afford to live nearby.

Rafe was very rich. He could have whatever he wanted.

“They tried to kill all the ducks a few years back,” he said,

breaking the silence. “Muscovy ducks. They had some awful

disease, and they were afraid it would spread to the wild flocks.

A bunch of people from the neighborhood gathered them up

in the middle of the night and took them to secret locations to

save their lives.”

“Is there a reason you’re telling me this now?” I asked.

“People do strange things in the name of love.”

“Not good enough,” I snapped.

“Dude,” Rafe said, waving at a tall man in a Rolling Stones

T-shirt crossing the next bridge over. “Sam the man. How you

doin’? We going to see you Saturday?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.” The man walked on, then turned

around. “Give my best to Will.”

“My neighbor.” Rafe stuck his hands in his pockets and