Sunset Express

CHAPTER 9

It was a little before ten when I followed the trail of security men down to my car, then zipped to the Virgin Megastore, bought the new k.d. lang and a collection of Louisiana hits called Cajun Party, then sat in the Megastore's parking structure and went through the envelope of hotline tipsters. I had almost seven hours until Lucy's plane; plenty of time for the world's fastest detective to do his marketing and work his way through a significant number of interviews, especially if he attacked his investigatorial responsibilities in a methodical and professional manner.

I organized the twenty statement forms by location and decided to start with those people who were closest and work outward.

I went back into the Virgin, got change from a pretty young woman with a pin through her nose, then found a pay phone on Sunset Boulevard to arrange the interviews. A homeless man with a shopping cart filled with neatly folded cardboard squares was seated beneath the phone, but he graciously moved aside when I told him I needed to make some calls. He said, 'Please feel free. It is, after all, a public instrument.' He was wearing spats.

I fed in a quarter and dialed Mr C. Bertrand Rujillio, who lived less than five minutes away. A man with a soft, raspy voice answered on the fourth ring and said, 'Who is this?'

'My name is Cole, for the law firm of Jonathan Green. I'm calling for Mr C. Bertrand Rujillio, please.'

There was a pause, and then the rasp came back. 'Do you have the money?'

'Is this Mr Rujillio?'

Another pause, softer. 'The money?'

'If you mean the reward, that won't be paid unless the information you provide leads to the arrest and conviction of Ms Martin's murderer.' Truly said that the phone bank operators had explained all this. Truly said I wouldn't have to worry about it. 'I need to take your statement, Mr Rujillio. Can we arrange that?'

The pause again, and this time the line went dead. I stared at the phone for a couple of seconds, then hung up and scratched C. Bertrand Rujillio's name off the list.

The homeless man said, 'No luck?'

I shook my head.

Of the next three calls, two reached answering machines and one went unanswered. Nobody home. I said, 'Damn.'

The homeless man said, 'Four out of four is poor luck.'

'It can't last forever.'

'Will you have many more calls?'

'A couple.'

He sighed and looked away.

Two more calls and two more answering machines and all the nearby people were done. So much for efficiency. So much for my plan of starting in close and working out. I said, 'Well, hell.'

The homeless man said, 'Tell me about it.'

I looked at him. 'I had a plan, but no one's home.'

He made a sympathetic shrug, then spread his hands. 'Flexibility, my friend. Flexibility is the key to all happiness. Remember that.'

I told him that I would and shuffled through the witness forms and decided to hell with starting close. I called Floyd M. Thomas in Chatsworth. Chatsworth was a good forty minutes away. Floyd M, Thomas answered on the third ring in a fast, nervous voice and told me that he had been expecting my call and that he would be happy to see me. I hung up. The homeless man said, 'You see? When we force events we corrupt them. Your flexibility allowed events to unfold in a way that pleases you. We know this as synchronicity.'

'You're a very wise man. Thank you.'

He spread his hands. 'To possess great wisdom obliges one to share it. Enjoy.'

I drove to Chatsworth.

Floyd Thomas lived in a studio apartment on the second floor of a ten-unit garden apartment just off Nordhoff. Scaffolding was rigged around the front and sides of the place, and Hispanic men in baggy pants were chipping away cracked stucco. Earthquake repairs. Thomas himself was a thin, hunched man in his early fifties who opened his door only wide enough to peer out at me with one eye. When he opened the door a cloud of moist heat oozed out around him like a fog. I slipped in a card. 'Elvis Cole. I called you about the Martin murder.'

He looked at the card without taking it. 'Oh, yes. Floyd Thomas saw that. Floyd Thomas saw exactly what happened.' Floyd Thomas. Don't you love it when they speak of themselves in the third person.

'That's great, Mr Thomas. I'll need to take your statement.'

He unlocked four chains and opened the door just wide enough for me to enter. If it was in the high nineties outside, Thomas's apartment must've been a hundred ten with at least three industrial-strength humidifiers pumping out jets of water vapor. Stacks of newspapers and magazines and periodicals sprouted around the room like some out-of-control toadstool jungle, and everything smelled of mildew and body odor. I said, 'Hot in here.'

'Floyd Thomas chills easily.' Sweat leaked down out of his scalp and along the contours of his face and made his thin shirt cling to his skin. Thirty seconds inside his apartment, and I was beginning to sweat, too.

'So what did you see, Mr Thomas?' I dug out the form and prepared to take notes.

He said, 'We were over the Encino Reservoir, They were in a long black convertible. A Mercury, I think.'

I looked at him without writing. 'Over the Encino Reservoir?'

He nodded. 'That's right. I saw them with a woman in their car, and I'm sure it was her. She was struggling.' His eyes shifted side to side as he spoke.

I put down the pen. 'How were you over the reservoir?'

His eyes narrowed and he looked suspicious. 'They'd taken me up in the orb to adjust the chips.'

'The orb?' I said. 'The chips?'

He pulled back his upper lips so that his gums were exposed. 'They force chips into my gums that no one can see. They won't even show up on X-rays.' He made a tiny laugh. Hee-hee. Like that.

I said, 'You believe you saw Susan Martin in a black Mercury convertible when you were up in the orb.'

He nodded again. 'There were three men in black and they had the woman. Black suits, black ties, black hats, dark glasses. She had seen the orb and the men in black had to make sure she was silenced. They work for the government, don't you know.'

'Of course.'

'When will I get the reward?'

'We'll let you know, Mr Thomas.'

I thanked Floyd Thomas for his time, then drove to a nearby 7-Eleven and made five more calls, which resulted in three more interviews. Mr Walter S. Warren of Van Nuys was a retired general contractor who was convinced that his younger brother, Phil, was behind the kidnapping. He revealed that Phil had once eaten in Teddy Martin's Santa Monica restaurant, had cracked a tooth while enjoying the steak tartare, and had promised to 'get that prick' for what had happened to his tooth. Ms Victoria Bonell, also of Van Nuys, was an extremely thin woman who shared her ranch-style home with seven pug dogs and nine million fleas. Ms Bonell described an elaborate scenario in which 'lipstick lesbians' and 'power dykes' were behind Susan Martin's murder, information she had overheard while having her hair colored at a place called Rosa's. I dutifully noted these things, then went to see Mrs Lewis P. Reese of Sherman Oaks, who offered me tea and finger cakes, and who clearly knew nothing of Teddy Martin, Susan Martin, or the kidnapping. She was elderly and lonely, and I stayed twenty minutes longer than necessary, chatting about her dead husband. The detective does his good turn.

I left Mrs Reese at twenty minutes after two, bloated on tea cakes, itching from fleas, and smelling of Floyd C. Thomas's pod-person environment. I thought that if I was going to make any more calls maybe they should be to Jonathan. Maybe I should ask him if he really wanted to spend his money having me interview these people?

I stopped at a Ralph's market, bought Tide, Downy Fabric Softener, two Long Island ducklings, enough salad ingredients for a family of nine, and was home by ten minutes after three. The airline told me that Lucy's flight was expected to arrive on time. I put the ducks into a large pot, covered them with water to thaw, and put the pot in the refrigerator. I showered, shaved, put on fresh clothes, and made a last-minute check of the house. Spotless. Pristine. Free from embarrassing dust bunnies.

I took Pike's Jeep, pushed back down the hill and made my way to LAX, arriving at the gate twenty-eight minutes early. I took a seat across from an older woman with brittle white hair and pleasant eyes. I nodded hello and she nodded back. She said, 'I'll bet she's very pretty.'

'Who?'

'The one you're waiting for. You should see the smile on your face.' Know-it-all.

The gate grew crowded and, with the growing crowd, I began to feel anxious and goofy. Then the plane was down and my heart was hammering and it was hard to breath. I said, 'Snap out of it, dummy. Try to get a grip.'

The older woman laughed, and a man holding a two-year-old moved away.

I saw Lucy first, emerging from the jetway behind three elderly gentlemen, and I wanted to yell, 'Hey, Luce!' and jump up and down.

Lucy Chenier is five feet five, with amber green eyes and auburn hair rich with golden highlights from all the time she spends in the sun. She was wearing black shorts and a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled and white Reebok tennis shoes, and she was carrying a gray canvas shoulder bag that probably weighed nine thousand pounds and her Gucci briefcase. When she saw me she tried to wave but her hands were full with the bags. Ben yelled, 'Hey, there's Elvis!' and then I shouldered past two Marines and Lucy was hugging me and I was hugging her back, and then she stepped away and said, 'Oh, your poor eye!'

'You look so good, Luce. You don't know.'

We gave each other a long kiss, and then I hugged Ben, too. Ben Chenier had grown maybe four inches in the three months since I'd last seen him. 'You're taller.'

He beamed. 'Four six and a quarter. I'm getting close to five feet.'

'Wow.'

I took the shoulder bag and we moved with the flow of arrivals down to baggage claim, Lucy and I holding hands and Ben ranging ahead of us, burning off eight-year-old-boy energy. Lucy's hand felt dry and warm and natural in mine, and as we moved along the white tiled corridors they told me about their flight (uneventful) and how Ben was spending his summer (a week at Camp Avondale with his Cub Scout pack) and about Lucy's business in Long Beach (amicably renegotiating a six-year-old divorce settlement involving complex corporate holdings). As we talked there was a growing feeling that these were not just two people with whom I would spend time, but two people I was allowing into my life. It was a thought that made me smile, and Lucy said, 'What?'

'Just thinking how glad I am that you guys are here.'

She squeezed my hand.

When their luggage arrived we loaded it into the Jeep and followed LaTijera out of the airport northeast up through the city. It was rush hour, and the going was slow, but going slow didn't seem to matter. Ben said, 'We're going to your house?'

'That's right. I live in the hills above West Hollywood.'

'Where are we gonna sleep?'

Lucy and I traded a smile. 'I've got a guest room. There's a bed for your mom, and a camper's cot for you.'

'What's your house like?'

Lucy said, 'You'll see when we get there, Ben.'

I smiled at him in the rearview. 'It's perched on the side of a mountain and it's surrounded by trees. A friend said that it reminds her of a tree house.'

Ben said, 'Cool.'

Lucy raised an eyebrow and looked at me. 'What friend?'

I said, 'That was years ago.'

'Mm-hmm.'

We made great time through the Slauson Pass, then climbed north through the Fairfax District past CBS and finally up Laurel Canyon and into the mountains, and then we were home. The summer sun was still high in the west as we turned into the carport and got out, and Lucy said, 'Oh, this is just wonderful!' You could smell the eucalyptus and the pine and, high above us, the two red-tailed hawks who lived in the canyon floated on rising thermals. I said, 'You guys hungry?'

Ben said, 'Yeah!'

Lucy said, 'Starving, but I want to take a bath first.'

I showed them in through the kitchen and led them past the entry and across the living room and, as we walked, I watched Lucy's eyes flick over the kitchen counters and the refrigerator with its Spider-Man magnets and the bar built into the dining room wall and the stone hearth in the living room and the bookcases and pictures, trying to take in as much of my life in those few seconds as she could. She caught me watching her and gave me a smile of approval. 'I like.'

I showed them their room and bath, then brought them out onto the deck. Ben said, 'Oh, wow,' and raced around the handrail, looking down. It's about a twenty-foot drop.

Lucy said, 'Elvis, it's beautiful.'

'This canyon merges with Nichols Canyon, which opens out into the basin. The little bit of city you see is part of Hollywood. Tomorrow morning we'll take the road below us down to the Budget Rent-a-Car.'

She turned back to the house and lowered her voice. 'And where does the master sleep?'

I grinned and pulled her close. 'The stairs off the living room lead to the master's quarters.'

She pushed away, then leaned against the rail and crossed her arms. It was a pretty good pose. 'Perhaps a bit later I'll get a chance to inspect the premises.'

I shrugged, but even pretending to be disinterested was somehow impossible. My voice came out hoarse and broken. 'If you're good, perhaps I'll let you.'

She let a smile curl out from under the world's longest eyelashes and lowered her voice still more and let the southern accent come thick. 'Oh, Studly, Ah intend to be very, very bad.'

The air seemed to spark with a kind of electric heat and then Ben raced back from the side of the house. 'Elvis, can I go down the hill?'

'Up to your mom, pal.'

Lucy looked over the rail. 'Is it safe?'

'Sure. It's a gentle slope. The people who live over there have a couple of boys, and they play all along the ridges.'

Lucy didn't look convinced, but you could tell she was going to give in. 'Well, okay, but stay close to the house.'

Ben ran around the side of the house again, and this time we could hear him crashing down through the dried grass and into the trees. Lucy looked at me and I looked back, but now she was giving me serious. 'So. Are you going to tell me about the eye, or do I have to keep wondering?'

'A police officer named Angela Rossi popped me with a sap.'

Lucy sighed and shook her head. 'Other women date doctors or businessmen. I have to fall for someone who gets into street fights.'

'It wasn't much of a fight. She suckered me.' I told her about what Green had hired me to do, and how I had done it, and how I had come to get the eye.

Lucy listened, interested more in the parts about Jonathan Green, and frowning when I told her how Rossi had eye-faked me. 'She caught you off guard. You underestimated her because she was a woman.'

'If I said that it would be taking something away from her. I didn't underestimate her, she was just good enough to sucker me with an eye-fake.'

Lucy gave me one of her gentle smiles, then touched the mouse. 'You're such a sweetie.'

I nodded.

She came close and went up on her toes and kissed it. 'I need to make some calls about tomorrow, and I want to take that bath. May I use your phone?'

'Sure.' I brushed at her hair, then stroked her upper arms. 'You don't have to ask, okay? Whatever you want to do while you're here, just do it. Ben, too.'

She went up on her toes and kissed me again. 'Keep an eye on Ben?'

'The good eye or the bad eye?'

'Funny.'

While Lucy was making her calls I fired the grill, then split the ducks and rubbed them with lemon juice and garlic and pepper. Lucy phoned two attorneys to arrange her next day's meeting, and then she called Jodi Taylor. Jodi was filming her series, Songbird, and had invited Ben to spend the day with her on the set. When Lucy was off the phone and in the bath I checked on Ben and, when the coals were right, put the four duck halves on the grill and covered them. I was back in the kitchen working on tarragon rice and salad when the cat door clacked and the cat walked in. He froze in the center of the kitchen floor and growled.

I said, 'Knock that off.'

He moved through the kitchen, stopping every couple of steps, his cat nose working and the growl soft in his chest. I said, 'We're going to have guests for a few days, and if you bite or scratch either one of them it will go hard for you.'

His eyes narrowed and he looked at me. I said, 'I mean it.'

He sprinted back through his door. There are some things you just can't talk to him about.

I checked on Ben again, then finished with the salad and set the table and put on the new k.d. lang. Lucy reappeared in fresh shorts and wet, slicked-back hair, wrapping her arms around me from behind and sharing her warmth. She said, 'Everything is just perfect.'

'Not yet,' I said. 'But soon.'

We called in Ben and ate, and little by little we moved through the evening, talking about and planning our coming days, Lucy and I gently touching as we talked, each touch a way of sharing something larger than a simple tactile experience, and after a while even the excitement of the adventure couldn't keep Ben going and Lucy finally whispered, 'He's sleeping.'

'Need help getting him to bed?'

'No. I'll get him on his feet and he'll walk.' When their door was closed I shut all the lights save one, then went upstairs and took off my clothes. The house was still, and I thought that I could smell her the way, I supposed, the cat had. But maybe that was my imagination.

I lay in the dark for what seemed forever, and then I heard the door below open and the sound of her on the stairs, and I thought how very lucky I was that she had come, and that I was the one whom she had come to see.