The Butcher's Granddaughter (17 page)

I leaned my chair back on its hind legs until I was comfortably settled against the side of the jukebox, picked up my beer in one hand, and with the other reached inside my jacket and put the picture of the dead redhead in front of him. His only response was to look blankly at me, his deep-set brown eyes cowering beneath eyebrows that met over the bridge of his nose.

Then he lit a match and set fire to the picture, placing it gently in the ashtray and watching it until the whole thing was a frail cinder that had stopped smoking. I didn’t stop him. I didn’t say anything. We sipped our beers.

He finally said, “This is gonna cost you.”

“I know, Rat. We’re in the same business. Don’t tell me what I know. Tell me what I don’t know.” I stole one of his cigarettes from the pack he had sitting on the table. The cellophane wrapper was still on them and stuffed into it was a matchbook from Scream. They were unfiltered Camels, and the smoke was heavy in my lungs.

“Five hundred. Cash. No favors. No trade.”

He was either nervous or scared and that made me nervous. The Rat was generally a little jittery, but his nerves were on end. I said, “Give me two hundred bones’ worth and we’ll see if I need or want more than that.”

He lit a cigarette. His hands were vibrating. “Oh, you’ll want it,” he croaked. “You’ll want more than you can afford, old buddy.”

I laid two C-notes on the table and his hand flashed out and stuffed them in a pocket almost before I let go of them. I said, “OK, impress me.”

He waved to the bartender and ordered another beer. After it came and he had a few sips he said, “Her name is Josephine Michelle King and there is absolutely no record that she ever existed. I’ll tell you some of what I know, and that’ll be the limit of the hundreds you blew me.”

I nodded. He lit another cigarette, chaining. I told him those filterless things would kill him, and he gave me the finger. Then he said, “She’s eighteen years old, or would’ve been, I guess. She was born in Seattle and drifted down the coast to the city about four years ago. Came through San Francisco, stayed a bit in Fresno for fuck knows what reason, then landed in L.A. She gave the hello to an ad in the
Times
that probably asked specifically for redheads with some kind of talent.”

I shut my eyes tight against the image of her in that drawer, the splinter deep in her brain. I said, “Like fucking.”

He shrugged. “Actually, probably massage or something like that. Anyway, the ad was placed by an escort service-slash-whorehouse in North Hollywood. The gooks can’t get enough white pussy, you know, and she was probably makin’ a grand a day by—”

“Wait a minute. The place was Asian-owned?”

“Asian
mob
owned.” He twitched, glancing around the bar. Then he suddenly frosted over. “Jesus Christ,” he said, almost to himself, “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you, talking this shit.” He looked into my eyes and I saw that his initial nervousness had turned to outright fear. “Jesus, Bird, do you know what those guys do? To people like you and me? To fucking
informers
?”

“We’re not informers. And what, have you been talking to the cops or something?”

He shook his head wildly. “No. I’m not like you, man. I have my loyalties.”

“Then what are you worrying about?”

“Man, when Double F dug me up and told me what you were after, I didn’t think it was any big deal. And then the fuckin’ Chinks turn up in this whole thing...”

It was like listening to a conspiracy theorist on late night T.V. “So now it’s the Triad? So what? They’re fuckin’ everywhere.”

“
I know
. And then I think about this bitch coming down through San Francisco, and then she just happens to get involved with a place owned by those goons? I don’t know, man. Sounds like she was connected before she ever got to L.A.”

I leered at him and reached in my pocket for more money. He waved it away. “It’s not the money, man. Look, people who talk about the Triad get fucked up. Bad. Remember Denny Rohr?”

I shook my head.

“Yeah, sure you do. He used to push hot credit cards out of Beverly Hills. Anyway, a little group of Koreans trying to make a name for themselves started strong-arming him. So Denny told a couple of customers about what was happening, you know, so they wouldn’t buy from the wrong people. You know how they found him?”

“I can guess. With his tongue cut out and shoved up his ass.”

“Yeah. In his apartment, laying next to his sister, who was in the same state. I like my tongue, Bird. I like it where it is.”

We were at a stalemate. After a silent minute, I said, “There has to be a price. You can’t bring me this far and then freeze up. What is it?”

While he thought about it I ordered him another drink. Before it came he said, “All right, it’s going to cost you a thousand dollars.”

“I don’t have that on me.”

“I’m not done,” he said. He’d gotten cold again. “Before you see what I got, you understand something. If they get to me, I’m giving you up. Completely. I’ll use everything. They’ll kill you and everyone you even remotely care about.”

“You’re overreacting, Rat. This isn’t about their business.” I tumbled it over in my head. He couldn’t possibly give me anything that would put him or me that squarely in harm’s way. And even if he could, I’d have to use it first. I could always decide not to. I called his bluff and played off his greed. “Keep the two bills,” I said, dropping my chair forward like I was getting ready to leave. “Josephine Michelle King. Got it. I’ll find her myself. For a grand, you can forget it.”

He let me stand all the way up before he said, “You ever hear of a yacht called the
Azure Mosaic
?”

I tried not to let it get me, but he saw it. It was in my face. I went ahead and sat back down.

“That’s what I thought. A thousand dollars. You go down.”

My throat had gone dry. “I’ll get it to you.”

“Tonight.”

I nodded. I couldn’t talk anymore.

The Rat lit another cigarette and enjoyed having me by the short hairs for a minute. There was still fear in his eyes. “So Josephine gets a bit of a reputation at this little place, and before you know it she’s on the
Azure Mosaic
doin’ the nasty for some serious sugar. After a while, like in any business, she builds up a clientele. Now, it’s pretty obvious she cashed in her chips. Know who killed her?”

I shook my head. I was sipping my beer, trying to get my throat to untwist.

“Give me what you’ve got on you. I’ll consider it a down payment.”

I threw four more wadded-up hundreds at him. He didn’t suck them up in his tight little fist like he had the first two. He tugged at the corners and played with them for a minute, like he was trying to figure if what he was doing was worth it. He finally pocketed them, eyeing me as he did, and then pulled an envelope from somewhere beneath the table; large, yellow, reinforced with cardboard. “You ever seen this picture before?” he asked, and drew a color eight-by-ten print from the envelope.

I looked at it, recognized it immediately. It was the frontpage photo of Cynthia Dahzai Ming standing on the deck of her yacht. “You could’ve gotten this at the newsstand, Rat. What do I get for the G?” My voice was back, but my throat was still tight with anticipation and nerves.

“That photo was cropped from a larger negative and blown up. You can’t get near that tugboat unless you’re in it up to your ears. This picture was taken from shore with a serious telephoto. Guy got the whole fuckin’ ship. And she wasn’t the only one on deck,” he said, tapping a delicate finger on Ming’s face. “The photographer was paid a lot of money to suppress the rest of the photo and turn in a cropped negative to the L.A. Times. He was paid even more money to give it to yours truly.” He drew another photo from the envelope, laid it reverently in front of me, and said, “I think you can figure out who paid off the press.”

The picture lying in front of me could have been used in a brochure for any cruise line. All the elements were there: girls with flowing hair wearing neon-colored bikinis and milk chocolate tans and nothing else; sapphire-blue water all around; a deck with a fully equipped bar and neatly stacked fishing tackle; and parading through it all, every conceivable shape and size of well-moneyed gentleman. Most were wearing surf shorts and t-shirts, the kind they see eighteen-year-old surfers in and think that stonewashed cotton somehow makes a beer-gut and desk-ass magically disappear. There were a few wearing suits and ties, and a few more were clad in casual sportswear, polo shirts and such. In all it looked like maybe seventy-five people were standing on the deck.

Josephine King, the beautiful redhead whose picture was now ashes between us and whose body lay unidentified in the county morgue, was near the top of the photo. She was smiling almost directly into the camera. If you had a jones for redheads and someone showed you the photo, she would be the first place your eye went. I found myself trying to see her breasts in the dark green bikini top she had on, but I couldn’t. She was squished up against a portly, tanned guy in white slacks and a dark blue polo shirt with white buttons at the collar. The hand wrapped around Josephine’s waist had a gold ring on each finger, and the other held a drink and a long, black cigarette. He was balding but his hair had no gray, and he looked about as distinguished as a wealthy Southern Californian can. Josephine’s left hand was resting gently on the man’s broad chest, and the rings I’d seen in the morgue glittered in the sunlight.

It was safe to assume that the man I was looking at could be made very nervous with that photo. And that was exactly what he was going to be. Nervous.

I looked up from the photo and said, “Who is he?”

“Benjamin Parenti. Guys like him are my bread and butter. He’s an entertainment attorney, works downtown. He’s a fuckin’ crud. He—”

The Rat’s eyes suddenly got huge and he looked past my shoulder. Before I could react my hair was wound up in what felt like a propeller and I was jerked to my feet and pulled up and backwards over the jukebox. Struggling to both flip over and figure out what the hell was going on, the last thing I saw as I disappeared over the machine was a squat Asian guy with a gun so big he could barely get his stumpy little fingers around the grip. He was holding it in The Rat’s face and saying, “Leave or die.” And then I thumped to the ground behind the juke and was dragged down the dark hallway that leads to the toilets. Still clawing at the hands in my hair, I scraped past the men’s room door and through a fire exit and was half-thrown against the brick wall across the alley.

I heard a crunch as my head and shoulder connected with the brick, and I slumped into a pile of garbage. I sat up slowly, not bothering to get out of the soft, comforting trash, and opened one eye.

There were two of them. The tall one I had lost on the freeway that morning was standing against the now-shut alley door, smoothing the wrinkles from his suit and brushing strands of my hair from his hands. The shorter one was standing over me. In one hand he had the gun, in the other nothing but fist that looked like a cantaloupe. In keeping with what I’d seen of his personality so far, he spoke in short, accented sentences that required immediate responses.

“Where is it,” he said. There was no inflection to suggest it was a question. His accent was nasal, possibly Vietnamese.

I was going to be tough and say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about I swear to God please don’t hurt me,’ but all I got out was, “I don’t—” and then that fist came crashing across my cheekbone and sent me back into the trash.

He waited with sage-like patience for me to pull myself from the stinking garbage, not helping, not hindering. I finally sat back up with my head between my knees, distantly thought about how pitiful I had to look, and tried to focus on his face. My vision blurred, then focused, then doubled and then tripled, and so I looked back between my knees to keep from throwing up.

He grabbed my hair and jerked my head up, snapping it against the wall so I could have a headache while we talked. “Where is it?” he demanded again.

Whatever it was he wanted, two things were obvious—I didn’t have it, and I would therefore suffer further bodily harm because I could not produce it. I drooled a little between my legs and fell back on plan A. “I swear, man, I swear to God I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You want the picture? Jesus, I think I dropped it when your goon tried to pull me through the jukebox.” My speech slurred thickly through blood and saliva.

He turned his head, which attached directly to his shoulders with no hint of a neck, and spoke in staccato Asian dialect to his blank-faced sidekick. He let go of my hair and I let my head fall back between my knees. I heard the alley door open and shut. “You guys work for Cynthia, don’t you?” I managed, slurring ‘Cynthia’ into something like ‘Sniff.’

He put a paw under my chin and propped my head back up. He was looming over me and smiling. His breath smelled like strong coffee and fish, and he spoke through teeth that would never again be white. He shook his head. “Do not think,” he said. “Speak.”

I could hold my head up on my own now and my vision was only full of bright spots that flashed on and off. I couldn’t feel the barrel in my back, so I knew my gun had been lost in the scuffle. I started to sweat. “What should I talk about?” I asked slowly.

He slowly brought the muzzle of his cannon up and pressed it to my chest. “Talk about death.
Now where is it?
”

“The photo? Didn’t your—”

No fist this time. He raised the barrel to my throat and leaned on it until my wind cut off. He clenched his stained and stinking teeth and said, “The locket. Where is the
locket?
”

Then his head exploded.

Chapter 12

Tanya Parker stood on the bottom step of the cement stairs that came down from Al’s alley door. For a split second she stared dazedly at the slumped figure in front of me. I quit gaping at the remains of his head and watched her as she snapped out of it. I started to get up and go to her, but she stopped me with, “I’m all right, Bird. I’m all right.”