Orphan X

14 Dream Come True

In a form-fitting dress, Candy McClure waited at the bus stop on Ventura Boulevard, duffel bag resting near the pointed toes of her thigh-high vinyl boots. Passing cars brought wolf calls, which she basked in along with the morning sun. A bus hissed to the curb, and a group of would-be gangstas unpacked from it. They shuffled past, all lowered trousers and top-buttoned flannel shirts. The leader, not unreasonably taking her for a hooker, pivoted to shake his hips in her direction. “Hey, Catwoman, wanna play with this?”

“Love to.” She reached out, grabbing his crotch through a baggy expanse of denim and squeezing. He made a noise like a whinny as she steered him around, depositing him on the bench next to her. She played him like an instrument, crushing at will, bringing forth various sounds as his friends circled in a sort of animal panic. When she released him, he rolled onto the sidewalk. She’d managed to squeeze out a few real tears to go with the inked ones tattooed at the corner of his eye.

Boys.

He struggled to his knees and then to a hunched approximation of standing.

“Thanks,” Candy said, checking that her press-on nails remained intact. “Good session.”

His friends conveyed him up the street.

A few minutes later, a rented Scion sedan pulled up, the window lowering. Crammed into the driver’s seat, Danny Slatcher hid behind mirrored aviators and a mustache imported from 1980. A larger vehicle would have suited him.

“’Bout time,” she said.

With a long arm, he reached across and flung open the passenger door. “Get in. And change. You look like a whore.”

And he looked like an insurance salesman. Which she supposed was the point.

“Wow,” she said, climbing in. “A crappy purple Scion. Like in the song.”

“What song?”

“Train,” she said. “‘50 Ways to Say Goodbye.’” A brown grocery bag in the footwell contained her cover outfit. As he drove, she pulled on the new clothes. “It’s about a guy making up outlandish ways his girlfriend died so he doesn’t have to—”

“You handled the esteemed assemblyman?” he asked.

“Excessively,” Candy said.

Ten blocks later, when Slatcher parked at one of the seedy tourist motels off the 101 near Universal Studios, she emerged from the car a new woman. She wore clunky espadrilles, a shapeless skirt pulled too high at the waist, and a loose blouse with fussy ruffles to hide her va-va-voom figure.

Slatcher unfolded himself from the car. He was quite tall at six-three, but that didn’t account for his size — it was more his breadth. He wasn’t athlete-stacked but rather pear-shaped, bulky like the outermost Russian nesting doll. His capacious midsection always surprised Candy, and yet there was no flab, just firm mass and muscle, a rock-hard gut billowing beneath a checkered taupe golf shirt. His true-blue jeans, pleated, served as another nod to out-of-towner aesthetics, as did the Oakley wraparounds worn backward on his head to rest at the bulge in his neck.

He hoisted three ballistic nylon Victorinox suitcases from the auto-opening trunk and set them down. Brusquely, he handed her a floppy sunhat, which she set gently atop her Farrah Fawcett wig. The brim wobbled expansively around her head, every tourist’s bad beach-fashion statement.

Telescoping one Victorinox handle up, she tilted the case onto its embedded wheels, feeling the weight of the contents as they clanked. Side by side, like mismatched flight attendants, she and Slatcher headed for the tiny reception office.

Their entrance was heralded when the opening door knocked a bell — actually cheery jingle bells—affixed above the frame. A wattle-necked woman looked up from a paperback. “Welcome to Starry Dreams Motel,” she said.

“Heavens to Betsy,” Candy said, arming sweat off the band of brow exposed somewhere between her big shades, the feathery Farrah hair, and the straw brim that shielded much of her face. “Such a dry heat.”

“Where you folks in from?”

“Charleston,” she said. “Checking in under Miller.”

“Ah, yes,” the woman said. “I have you in Room Eight.”

“Will you please put hypoallergenic pillows in our room?” Slatcher asked.

“I’m afraid we don’t have hypoallergenic pillows here.”

Candy rested an elbow on the counter. “You know what they say. They just don’t make men like they used to.”

Slatcher gave an annoyed marital grunt.

The woman processed two key cards and handed them across.

“What time does breakfast open?” Slatcher asked. “We’re heading early to Universal Studios.”

“There’ll be coffee and Danish out from six A.M.”

“Bless my stars,” Candy said. “We’d better not be waking up that early.”

“It’s three hours later for us,” Slatcher said. “That’s nine.”

“Look at that,” Candy said, grabbing her suitcase and heading for the door. “He can add, too.”

The minute they entered their room, Candy yanked the sunhat off, Frisbeed it onto one of the queen beds, and tugged her head free of the wig. She scratched at her hair. “Fuck me,” she said. “That shit is hot.”

They unzipped the suitcases, laying out pistols, magazines, and boxes of ammo on the floral bedspread. Candy inspected the barrel chamber and bore of a Walther P22. “So this broad. Katrin White. What’s our leverage?”

They’d spoken briefly on the phone on her way down the mountain.

“Our leverage is Sam.”

“Who we have a bead on.”

“Sam,” Slatcher said, “is under control.”

“Then why’d Ms. White drop off the radar?”

“Because he took control of the situation.”

“The Man with No Name?”

“That is correct. He killed one of my freelancers.”

“Kane?”

“Ostrowski.”

“Huh,” she said. She’d never liked Ostrowski.

“I’ve brought in a field team for us,” Slatcher said. “Former Blackwater.”

“Hoo-rah.”

“This guy’s very dangerous.”

“I assumed as much.”

“He does not want to be found.”

Candy unzipped her duffel bag. “Well,” she said, hoisting out a jug of hydrofluoric acid, “then let’s make his dream come true.”