The Black-Eyed Blonde

12

It had to have been López who delivered the knockout blow. I don’t know what he hit me with — a blackjack, probably — but it got me right on that conveniently placed outcrop of bone at the base of the skull, on the right side. I must have gone down like a felled steer. The kind of unconsciousness I entered was nothing like the kind you drop into when you fall asleep. It was dreamless, for one thing, and there was no sense of time passing — it started and ended at what seemed pretty much the same instant. It felt like a dummy run for death, and if that really is what being dead is like, then the prospect is not so bad. It was the waking up that hurt. I was lying on my face on the floor, the side of my mouth stuck to the linoleum by my own blood and drool. No point saying how my cheekbone felt. An ache is an ache, though this one was a whopper.

I lay there for a while with my eyes open, hoping the room would stop wheeling like a carousel. The light was dim, and I thought it was maybe twilight, but then I heard the rain. My wristwatch had stopped working — I must have banged it on something when I fell. I wondered how long I’d been out for. A half hour or so, I thought. I put my hands to the floor and gave myself a heave. A woodpecker was working in energetic slow motion on that bone at the base of my skull. I felt around there with my fingertips. The swelling was hard and hot and as big as a boiled egg. I foresaw the necessity for cold compresses and repeated doses of aspirin: it was possible to be in pain and bored at the same time.

I still had my wallet, but the holster at my hip was empty.

Then I remembered Lynn Peterson. I looked around the kitchen, checked the living room. She was gone. I hadn’t really expected her to be here, after the way López had looked at her. I paused to take a deep breath before going into the bedroom, but she wasn’t there, either. The Mexicans had turned the house upside down, and it looked as if a tornado had torn through it. They had emptied every drawer, ransacked every closet. The sofa had been sliced open and its stuffing yanked out, likewise the mattress in the bedroom. They’d sure been keen to find whatever it was they were looking for. I had a hunch they hadn’t found it.

Who was this guy Peterson? And where the hell was he, if he was anywhere?

Wondering about Peterson and his whereabouts was a way of staving off thoughts of Peterson’s sister and her whereabouts. That the Mexicans had taken her with them I didn’t doubt. They’d known who she was and hadn’t been fooled by my fumbling attempt to cover up her identity. But where had they taken her? I had no idea. They could be well on the way to the border already.

I felt weak suddenly and sat down on the disemboweled sofa, nursing my swollen and blood-caked cheek and trying to figure out what to do next. I had no leads on the Mexicans, none. I hadn’t even seen their car, the one with the canvas roof with the holes in it that Mr. Busybody across the way had described. I’d have to call the cops; there was nothing else to do. I picked up the phone that stood on a low table by the sofa, but it was dead — the service would have been cut off weeks ago. I got out a handkerchief and started to wipe off the receiver, then gave up. What was the point? My prints were all over the place, on the knob of the back door, in the kitchen, here in the living room, in the bedroom — everywhere except the attic, if there was an attic. Anyway, why try to hide? I’d already talked to Joe Green about Peterson, and I intended to talk to him again about Peterson’s sister, as soon as I worked up the energy to get myself off this sofa and back to the office.

* * *

I went out and around by the side of the house. How come it was raining again? It wasn’t supposed to rain in June. Seeing that my car wasn’t out front, I thought the Mexicans had stolen it, but then I remembered I had parked it down the street. When I got to it, I was wet already and smelled like a sheep — not that I’ve ever been near enough to a sheep to say what one smelled like. I made a U-turn and got on the boulevard. The rain was coming down now like polished steel rods, though the sky in the west was a cauldron of molten gold. The clock on the dashboard said it was six-fifteen, but that clock had never worked properly. Whatever time it was, the day had begun to end, or if not, my eyes were giving out.

I decided not to go to the office and headed instead for Laurel Canyon. When I got there, the dark was really coming on. The redwood steps up to the front door of my house had never seemed so many or so steep. Inside, I changed my shirt and jacket and went into the bathroom to have a look at my face. There was a dark red gash on my cheekbone, and the skin around it was all the colors of the rainbow and more. I swabbed it with a wet face towel. The cool of the water was soothing. It was going to be a long time before that swelling abated. The good part was that the cut wasn’t deep enough to need stitching.

I went into the kitchen and mixed myself an old-fashioned, with brandy and a twist of lime. It took effort, but the effort was good for me and helped me to get myself in some sort of focus. I sat on a straight-backed chair in the breakfast nook — yes, the damned house had a breakfast nook — and sipped my drink and smoked a couple of cigarettes. The pain in my cheekbone was jockeying for the lead with the pain in the back of my head; I was in no condition to judge, but it seemed to be a dead heat.

I took down the receiver of the wall phone and dialed Central Homicide. Joe the Steadfast was at his desk. I told him what had happened at the house on Napier Street, or bits of it. He was skeptical.

“You say two Mexes turned up out of nowhere and kidnapped this broad? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yes, Joe, that’s what I’m telling you.”

“Why’d they take her?”

“I don’t know.”

He was silent for a while. I heard him light a cigarette, I heard him blow out the first draw of smoke. “This Peterson again,” he said in disgust. “Jesus Christ, Phil, I thought we’d cleared that one away?”

“So did I, Joe, so did I.”

“Then what were you doing at his house?”

I took a second searching for the answer — any old answer. “There were some letters my client wanted collected.” I stopped. It was the kind of lie that could get me into worse trouble than I was already in.

“You find them?”

“No.”

I knocked back a good hard swallow of my drink. The sugar in it would give me energy, while the brandy would stop me from trying to use that energy to do strenuous things.

“And how come Peterson’s sister is involved now?” Joe asked.

“I don’t know. She arrived at the house just after I did.”

“You knew her before?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Joe chewed on that for a while. “There’s an awful lot here you’re not telling me, Phil — that right?”

“I’ve told you all I know,” I said, which we both knew was another lie. “The thing is, Joe, this business with Peterson’s sister, it’s got nothing to do with my end of things. This is other business, I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I just am. The Mexicans had been at Peterson’s place before — they’d been seen scouting around outside the house, looking in the windows, that kind of thing. My guess is Peterson owes them money. They had the look of men who are owed, and owed big.”

Another silence. Then: “The Peterson broad, she give you any clue as to why the Mexes were looking for her brother?”

“There wasn’t time. She was fixing us a drink when they came in the back door waving guns and looking mean.”

“Ooh,” Joe cooed, “so the two of you was getting friendly, eh, even though it was the first time you met? Sounds real cozy.”

“I got bopped, Joe, first with a gun barrel across the face, then with a blackjack or something on the back of the head. My eyes are still spinning in their sockets. These guys are for real.”

“Okay, okay, I get it. But listen, Phil, this ain’t my jurisdiction. I’m going to have to call in the Sheriff’s office. You understand? Maybe you should have a quiet word with your pal Bernie Ohls over there.”

“He’s not exactly a pal, Joe.”

“Sounds to me like you’re going to need any kind of pal you can get, even the not exactly kind.”

“I’d rather you called him,” I said. “I’d appreciate it. I’m not at my best, and even at my best Bernie tends to get up my nose — or I tend to get up his, depending on the weather and the time of day.”

Joe sighed into the mouthpiece. It sounded like a freight train going past my ear. “All right, Phil. I’ll call him. But you better have your story straight when he comes knocking on your door. Bernie Ohls is no Joe Green.”

You’re right, Joe, I wanted to say, you’re certainly right there. But all I did say was “Thanks. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than that, you son of a bitch,” he said, laughing and coughing at the same time. Then he hung up. I lit another cigarette. It was the second time I’d been called a son of a bitch that day. It hadn’t sounded any less of an insult in Spanish.