The Monkey's Raincoat (29 page)

“If he's got guests,” I said, “he won't want a bunch of pugs standing around his living room. There's twelve here. How many soldiers can he have?”

Pike's mouth twitched again. “Didn't somebody say that about the Viet Cong?”

The three of us started back up the hill. By the time we made the Jeep, the drizzle had evolved back into rain—heavy, gravid drops that beat at you, and thudded into your head with a sound I imagined to be like that of the hooves of bulls, pounding damp earth, earth damp with blood.

The Cherokee was thick with the smell of wet clothes and mud and sweat and fear. We eased down off the mountain under the canopy of rain, Ellen under the dash up front, me and Sanchez squeezed onto the rear floorboard, Pike driving. I'd wrapped Sanchez's wrists behind his back with duct tape. I'd once kept a car running for years, held together by duct tape. There's nothing like it. I put the 9mm between Sanchez's legs and told him if he made a sound he could kiss them good-bye.

When the road finally leveled out down by the tunnel, Pike said, “Uh-oh, the Eskimo just jumped out and is waving at us.” I shoved the gun harder into Sanchez's crotch and felt the drop-stick feeling you get from adrenaline rush. Then Pike said, “Ha ha. Just kidding.”

That Pike.

The Cherokee moved steadily forward for several minutes, then slowed and Pike said, “We're out of the park. You can get up.”

“Is this another joke?”

“Trust me.”

We turned left into the heavy lunch-hour traffic on Los Feliz. When we were up in the seats, I stripped the tape from Sanchez's wrists and rebound them, taking time to make sure the job was done right. Ellen watched Sanchez as I did it, her face empty. Maybe she was studying to be like Pike.

She said, “What did you do to my son to make him scream like that?”

Sanchez looked at me. He'd probably never seen her face. Just a woman with a bag for a head.

“She's the boy's mother,” I said.

Sanchez shook his head.

Ellen continued to stare at him as we eased to a stop at a traffic light. The pounding rain had slacked to a misty drizzle. A black kid in a big yellow Ryder truck pulled up next to us with his radio blasting out Mozart's
Piano Concerto in D
Minor
. Probably trying to found a new stereotype. Pike took a sandwich out of the bag under Ellen Lang's seat, ham and white bread, and ate.

Ellen lifted the Dan Wesson and pointed it at Sanchez's face. “Are you the one who murdered my husband?”

Sanchez straightened. I didn't move. Pike took another bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed. His lenses were blank in the rearview mirror. Sanchez said, “I swear to God I know nothing.”

Ellen looked at me. “I could kill him.” Her voice was calm and steady.

“I know.”

The .38's muzzle didn't waver. Pike was right. She had a quiet body. She said, “But we might need him to get Perry.”

“Unh-huh.”

She lowered the .38. Something like a smile pinched the corners of her mouth. She turned around and sat forward, resting the gun in her lap. Joe reached across and patted her leg.

I said, “We should drop these two off somewhere.”

Pike said, “Where? Your Eskimos probably tapping his watch right now. Maybe they've already found the body.”

“This isn't going to be easy,” I said. “It might go wrong.” Pike shrugged. “She can handle it. Can't you?”

“Yes,” Ellen said. “Let's get Perry.”

Five minutes later, we came to the massive mortared wall, followed it up past the gate, turned around at the side street, then drove back down. We parked the Cherokee off the road about a block from the corner of Duran's estate. Pike got out, said, ‘C'mere, you,” and pulled Sanchez out into the street. Pike turned him around, then hit him behind the right ear with the flat of his pistol. Sanchez smacked against the Cherokee and collasped. Pike hoisted him into the rear seat again, then dug out the duct tape and put strips over his mouth and eyes, and bound his ankles.

I helped Ellen into the driver's seat, then closed the door and spoke to her through the open window. “If anyone comes, get out of here and go for the cops. If they stand in front of the car, run over them. If you hear shots, go for the cops. If Sanchez tries to make trouble, shoot him. When you see us coming, start up and be ready to go.”

“All right.”

Pike slammed the rear door, then came around and looked
at Ellen. He looked at her the way you examine something that you don't want to make a mistake about. “There's going to be killing,” he said.

She nodded. “I know.”

“You might have to do some.”

Another nod.

“You got a lipstick, something?”

She shook her head.

“Look in the glove box.”

Ellen bent across the seat. Sanchez moaned and shifted in the back of the Jeep. “Joe,” I said.

Ellen leaned back into the window. She had a brown plastic tube. Estée Lauder Scarlet Haze. Pike ran the color out, then drew a bright red line down his forehead and along the bridge of his nose and two parallel lines across each cheek under his eyes.

“You're getting crazy on me, Joe,” I said.

She watched him without a word, and she held steady when he did the same with her. “Not crazy,” he said. “She's going to want to forget, so reality ends now. It's easy to forget the unreal. In a year, in five, she thinks of this, it's all the more absurd.”

“You two look silly,” I said.

Ellen Lang twisted the sideview mirror so she could see herself, first one side, then the other. No smile, now. Just consideration.

Nobody said good-bye or I'll be seeing you or keep a stiff upper lip. When Sanchez was secure and the doors were closed and locked, Pike and I trotted back up the hill toward Duran's, me carrying the 9mm loosely in my hand, Pike the HK.

When we came to the estate, we turned onto the side street and followed the wall until we came to an ancient olive tree, grown gnarled and crooked with huge limbs twisting up and over. Pike said, “You remember what I said about the layout?”

“You look dumb with that lipstick on.”

“You don't remember, do you?”

“Just past the front knoll is the motor court. Main house with two levels. Guest house in the rear. Pool and poolhouse. Tennis court to the northeast of the pool.”

He nodded. Pike went up first. I handed up the HK, stuck the 9mm in my belt and followed. Water from the rain-heavy leaves showered down on us every time the tree shook. When
we dropped down, I thought we were behind the Mexico City Hilton, but Pike said no, it was only the guest house, the main residence was larger. We followed the perimeter of the guest house toward the rear of the estate and came out by a small stand of newly planted magnolia trees. Three women and four men were standing around a sheltered brick barbeque off the poolhouse, cooking hamburgers. They were wearing sweaters and long pants and one of the men wore a hat. It never rains in Southern California. They looked comfortable and at ease and more than a little drunk. None of the men was Domingo Duran. The man with the hat laughed loudly, then grabbed the breast of the nearest woman. She swatted him away and he laughed louder. He had a flat, round face and a nose with jagged scars from the time someone had tried to bite it off, and he dressed like a hick from back east: black lace-up shoes, Sears pants, and a lime green golfing sweater over a white Arrow shirt, all of which went beautifully with his crushed gray felt hat. I looked at him and smiled and said, “Well, well.”

“What?” Pike said.

“You see the gentleman in the hat?”

“Yeah.”

“Rudy Gambino.”

“What's a Rudy Gambino?” Pike refused to keep himself current on underworld figures.

“Mobster from Arizona. From Newark originally, until his own people sent him out west because they couldn't control him. Duran's connected with him. Buddies.”

Pike said, “I like his nose.”

Inside the poolhouse, two young thick-necked Chicano kids in black suits leaned against a pinball machine and smoked. Muscle to keep Uncle Rudy safe.

We went back past the guest house, slipped along a narrow shrub-lined walk, and edged up against the side of a fountain behind pale red oleander. The drizzle had stopped altogether now, but the clouds were still dark. We had a clear view of the front of the guest house, as well as the pool and the poolhouse and the back side of the main house. As big as the guest house was, the main house was larger. An enormous white Spanish Mediterranean, heavy-walled, with quarry-tiled patios and red-tiled roofs and oversized beams. The patios were covered and partially hidden behind lush landscaping. A man in a trench coat sat at a small glass table, well out of the rain. He was holding a paperback copy of Stephen King's
The Dead
Zone
but he wasn't reading. A Remington over/under shotgun rested on the table. Arizona muscle.

A guest house had three separate facing doors, like a triplex. The door farthest away from us opened and two thugs came out with Perry Lang between them. The boy was blindfolded and his left hand was heavily bandaged. He walked the way you walk when you haven't slept well in a while. I felt Pike shift next to me. Good luck, and bad. Good luck, that the boy had been brought here. We wouldn't have to force his whereabouts out of anyone. It wasn't smart for them to have him here, but Sanchez said they'd moved the boy this morning. They'd probably been keeping him in a safe house, but decided to bring him closer in case something went wrong with the ambush and they needed a little extra leverage. Maybe I should call Poitras. I could tell him the kid was here and he would act on it. But maybe by the time I got to a phone and called the cops and the cops got here, the Eskimo would've come and gone and taken the boy with him, maybe not quite as alive as last reported.

Bad luck because of Gambino. How many Arizona soldiers did he have hanging around the guest house and the main house and the garage? What would Gambino do when Pike and I made our move? Normal business practice would be noninterference. But he was a guest in Duran's home. They were friends. Besides that, he wouldn't know for sure if we weren't coming for him. Shit.

Gambino left the barbeque and sloshed across to the main house. He carried a Coors and belched so loudly we could hear him sixty yards away. Classy. He didn't bother with the walkways. Guess he didn't give a shit if he tracked messy into his good friend Domingo Duran's home. Maybe he figured Mexicans didn't mind.

The two guys holding Perry stopped outside of the guesthouse, talking, then one of them continued on with the kid across to the main house. The second one came our way, toward the garage. We dropped along the row of oleander until we were out of sight of the rear yard, then came out onto the walk.

“If we're going into the main house,” Pike said, “we're not going to do it through the back. Too many people.”

We were zipping along, backpedaling along the walk toward the garage. “Did you see a way in through the front?” I said.

“Sure. Windows. Doors.”

Smartass. “You always carry lipstick in your truck?”

“You wouldn't believe what I got in there.”

The walk ended at a door off the rear of the garage in a nice circular spot strewn with pretty white rocks. There was a heavy adobe wall to the right, as thick as but lower than the main wall, extending from the garage to the main house. To the left the grounds sloped away to an open rolling lawn. It was through the door or across the lawn. On the lawn, we could be seen. The door was locked.

We stepped back off the walk into the shrubs and waited. There were footsteps, then the second thug came along, hissing air through his teeth and digging in his pocket. When he stopped at the door and took out a silver key, I stepped out and hit him once in the ear, hard. He sat down and I hit him again. Pike picked up the key. “Not bad.”

I waffled my hand from side to side. “Eh.”

Pike put the key in the lock and opened the door. A short Mexican with a broad face and a gray zoot suit took one step out, pushed a gold Llama automatic into Pike's chest, and pulled the trigger. There was a deep muffled
POP
, then Pike came up and around with his right foot faster than I could see. There was a louder sound, what you might hear if you drop an overripe casaba melon onto a tile floor. The Mexican collapsed, his neck limp. Pike looked down at himself, put one hand over a growing spot high and to the right of his chest, then sat down. “Keep going,” he said. “Get the kid.”

I felt like I might scream. I looked at him, nodded, then pushed through the door. Forward. Never back up.

There were three Cadillac limos, two Rolls-Royces, and a bright yellow Ferrari Boxer in the garage, but no more thugs. I went out to the edge of the motor court and looked at the front of the house. Another limo was there. A service drive branched off the motor court and ran around to the side of the house, then looped back around to the garage. That would be the kitchen. I walked out across the motor court to the service and followed it around to the side of the mansion. Maybe the way to get the kid was to walk up to things and shoot them and when I ran out of things to shoot I'd either have the kid or be dead.