Written in Dead Wax (42 page)

I said, “Thanks for the tear gas grenade.”

Nevada turned and stared at me for a moment with genuine astonishment. Then she regained her poise and said, “You’re most welcome. They were on special.”

“I know,” I said. “Two for twenty bucks.”

“I never could resist a bargain. What are you doing here, by the way? Are you following me?”

“No. Are you following me?”

“For once, no.” She hesitated. “Want to have a coffee?”

I said, “They make good coffee in LA.”

“Yes, you’re in clover here, aren’t you?”

We walked through the morning heat past the glare on glass buildings and into the air-conditioned coolness of the Cinerama Dome. Nevada led the way to the balcony café. She’d obviously been here before. We ordered and sat down in a curving, leather-padded booth.

“How is Tinkler?” she said.

“He’s house-sitting for me. And cat-sitting.”

“Oh, that’s good,” she said. “The girls will like that. I was going to ask about them next. How is that going?”

“Tinkler thinks his chronic flatulence may have permanently alienated Fanny’s affections.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’d never be that shallow.” Nevada held up the record bag that was on the table beside her. “You keep staring at this.”

“Do I?” I hadn’t realised I was so obvious.

“Do you want to know what’s inside? Of course you do.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, you’re not going to find out.” She sipped her coffee. “Oh, all right,” she said. She picked up the bag and took out the record. It was a vintage gatefold copy of
Their Satanic Majesties Request
by the Rolling Stones, with the original lenticular cover. “It’s a present. For Tinkler.”

“He’ll love it,” I said.

She examined the album. “You see it’s got the hologram cover.”

“Lenticular, actually,” I said. “That’s what we call it.”

“Anyway you can see Mick Jagger’s little arms move back and forth. Sort of.” She tilted the cover up and down, studying it with satisfaction. “Do you really think he’ll like it?”

“Oh yes.”

“Are you sure he doesn’t have it already?”

“Not the American version.”

She stared at the record. “Is this the American version?”

“Yes.”

“But it says London on it.”

“That’s right.”

“So the one that’s marked London is the American version?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll never get the hang of this.” I was startled to realise that she sounded on the verge of tears.

“Listen,” I said quickly. “He’ll be delighted with it. He will be
unwholesomely pleased
with it.”

She managed a smile. We finished our coffees in silence and left the café. Back outside, blinking in the glare of the sunlight, we paused for an awkward moment before going our separate ways.

When I got back to the house I didn’t say anything to Ree about seeing her.

* * *

The next morning, as I walked out to my car—I had borrowed it from the garage so often that I’d begun to think of it as my own—the next-door neighbour leaned over the fence and beckoned to me. I struggled to remember her name and came up blank. So I just gave her a big smile instead. She was wearing a red tracksuit and sunglasses.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Hi. The guy in the suit was around again.”

I realised she meant Gordon Hallett, Dr Tinmouth’s lawyer. “The white guy in the suit?”

“Yeah. With another guy.”

“Another white guy?”

“No. He looked Mexican or Indian or something. But he was in a suit, too.”

Armed with this maddeningly vague information I drove to the garage. As I walked back through the heat and noise Berto came over to me. “I saw that chick again,” he said. “The one with the red hair.”

“She was here?”

“With the Porsche Carrera, yeah. She asked me to give you this.”

It was a printout of a map with a spot marked on it. Above the map a phone number had been written in ballpoint pen. Underneath it was printed an address and a time, and the words:

I didn’t tell Ree about my rendezvous with Nevada that evening. She was out doing a gig anyway, so there didn’t seem much point. As we ate lunch together at her house we talked about the possibility of her inheritance, about the legal battle that would surely commence. I suggested a game of chess but she said that she wasn’t in the mood. Once again I felt like a barrier had come down between us, but I had no idea what it was, or how to deal with it.

Shadows were lengthening and evening was coming on as she left for her gig. I waved as she pulled away.

As soon as she was out of sight, my phone rang. It was Berto at the garage. “It was that chick again,” he said. “The redhead. She just came around asking for you. She said she had to change the place. The place where you’re meeting.”

I could feel myself sweating. I was glad I hadn’t got this call while Ree was with me.

Berto read me the directions to the new rendezvous and I wrote it all down. The new address was near Westlake Village, in the vicinity of the Malibu Hills. I stared at it for a moment then took out my phone again. I found the piece of paper with the map of the original meeting point and dialled the number written on it. It went straight to voicemail, a synthesised generic American voice inviting me to leave a message.

I said, “Nevada, what’s going on?” and hung up.

Then I went into the kitchen and started making coffee. As the water was coming to the boil my phone bleated, announcing a text. I picked it up and read the message.
Sorry about the changes. Safer this way. Malibu Hills! See you soon. Nx

* * *

I drove west along the Ventura Freeway, famed in story and song, and turned off onto Lindero Canyon Road. From there I took a side road sliced into the rock of what at first I thought were tall hills but gradually began to realise were actually small mountains.

The light was fading to a banked orange glow as I reached the rendezvous, an observation point carved out of the cliff face beside the road. There was a small semicircular area with a low guardrail fitted around it where you could pause to stare out at the sheer drop, then rolling parkland and finally the tiny lights of suburban housing to the east.

Above the observation area, the road rose into the mountain in a precipitous straight line, which suggested a major feat of either engineering or sheer masochism. About a hundred metres below it was a parking area and I left my car there and walked the rest of the way.

Nevada was waiting for me in the observation area.

She waved as I got out of the car and trudged up towards her. She was still wearing the ridiculous red wig. Actually, I thought as I walked up the hill, it wasn’t so ridiculous. It looked quite good on her. The air was clean and cool and smelled of pines and sage.

As I approached her she was staring out at the vista. She didn’t turn around and now I was almost beside her. I wondered if she was upset about something.

“Lovely spot,” I said. She turned to me.

It wasn’t Nevada.

It was Heidi.

“Isn’t it just?” she said. “I’ve got to tell you, it’s been an education following you around.” Whatever her accent was, it wasn’t German. Maybe South African. Or perhaps Australian. She smiled at me. I immediately turned around, thinking whatever her game was, I wanted to get the hell out of there.

And he was standing right behind me.

Heinz.

He had come out of nowhere. Or maybe he had simply followed me up the slope. He smiled, too. “You’re not leaving already, are you, mate?” His accent was definitely Australian. “You’ve only just got here.” He seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “We weren’t sure you’d come, what with all the chopping and changing.” He looked happily at Heidi, at me, at the barren mountain slope where we stood.

Suddenly I realised just how alone I was.

“You’ve picked a nice place for it, anyway,” he said.

“Place for what?” I said. I wanted to keep them talking. My mind was racing. I hadn’t seen another car go by since I’d arrived here. We were absolutely isolated, and I’d put myself in their hands.

“We have a little bone to pick with you, mate,” said Heinz.

I realised that the only chance I had was to run down the hill and get back into my car. Somehow do it before they caught up with me. I wondered how fast he was. His bulk suggested strength rather than speed.

She would probably be the real threat, but she was some distance behind me now, since I had started moving away from her and the observation area. “A bone to pick?” I said. “About what?” I took a careful step to my side, keeping my eyes on them. It was not enough to alarm them, but increased my distance from her.

“Saddling us with a trailer-load of fucking useless records.” I realised he was talking about Lenny and the Vinyl Crypt, the scam I’d arranged. “We didn’t appreciate having our time wasted like that, mate. Going through every single fucking one of them.”

“I can still smell them,” said Heidi.

“That’s the mould,” I said, trying to relax and sound conversational. “You know what you have to do about that?” Then I threw myself to one side and started running down the hill.

He was faster than I could have imagined. Despite his bulk he got in front of me and blocked the way, moving with great rapidity and no apparent effort.

“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. He had a gun in his hand now. “None of that.”

I turned and looked back at Heidi. She was holding a pistol, too.

I began to understand that there was no way out.

“Let’s get on with it,” she said.

He looked at her. “What do you think?”

“Over the edge.” She nodded at the abyss beyond the guardrail. “Just one more careless tourist.”

“Fair enough.” He pointed the gun at me. I backed away from him slowly. He was forcing me towards her.

“Wait,” I said.

Heinz shook his head good-naturedly. “That’s what they always say.” He moved towards me, backing me into the observation area where she waited. I was now on one side of the semi-circle of tarmac. They were on the other, watching me speculatively.

“It won’t look so good if I’ve got a bullet in me,” I said. “That’s not just one more careless tourist.”

“He’s right, you know,” said Heinz. “You take his left arm, I’ll take his right.”

“Don’t forget to get his phone.”

“Oh yeah. Points for remembering, babe.”

They moved towards me.

Just then there was the high thin sound of a motor approaching. We all looked up and saw the headlights of a car coming down the steep slope of the mountain road towards us. Above the headlights a blue light was spinning. Then we heard the brief blurting of a siren.

The noise a police car makes when they want you to pull over.

I looked at Heinz and Heidi. They had moved close together and they were both holding their guns out of sight. He looked across at me and said, “If you say anything, we’ll kill the cops and then kill you.” I backed away from him.

“Hey,” said Heidi. But I kept moving until I was as far away from them as I could get, on the other side of the observation area.

Then I realised she wasn’t talking to me. They weren’t paying any attention to me.

Instead, they were both staring up the mountain road.

Because the car wasn’t stopping. It wasn’t even slowing down. It
increased
its speed, the engine a rising powerful snarl as it hit the bottom of the steep section of road, bounced up over the kerb and sped headlong into the observation area.

Heinz and Heidi had started to move, but it was too late. The car hit them both full on, with the sound of a sledgehammer striking a side of beef.

Then there was the scream of brakes as it pulled up, just short of the guardrail. Heinz and Heidi both continued over it, however, flung by the force of the impact, sailing out into the darkness.

Heidi was as loose as a rag doll, eyes shut and mouth open. Heinz, on the other hand, had his eyes wide open and was staring at me.

I saw his look of aggrieved astonishment as he flew out into the void.

Then they were gone in the darkness.

Hundreds of feet below them, the rocky floor of the canyon waited, black as night and deep as forever. I stared down, but I could see nothing.

The door of the car opened and Ree stepped out. She took the blue light off the roof.

“Who’s your guardian angel now?” she said.

We drove for miles in silence. Back down the mountain. Back to the freeway. Finally Ree turned to look at me, with the lights from the dashboard on her face, and said, “It was kill or be killed.”

“You won’t get any argument from me.” I was still shaking, as if I had a bad fever. And I kept staring in the rear-view mirror as though I was expecting something to come after us. But what? Ghosts? The wrath of God? As the shock wore off, my brain was slowly beginning to work again.

I said, “You intercepted the messages?”

She glanced over again and gave me a crooked smile. “You see what happens when you try and sneak off to meet your ex?”

We were driving through Hidden Hills now, where Ventura Freeway became Ventura Boulevard. “What about my car?” I said. I had suddenly remembered, with a sickly acceleration of my heartbeat, that we’d left it parked back there, just below the observation area.