“Double with bath is six bucks. Noon checkout.”
California! He loved it. Inside, they embraced, kissed. He unzipped the red dress and drew it down her shoulders and arms. She drew it down past her hips and thighs herself, looking like countless French paintings, Herself Surprised.
She stepped out of it, leaving the dress a crimson puddle on the floor, and caught his silver belt buckle to draw him close to her. They clung dizzily to each other, with deep, long kisses, then she was opening his buttons as he unfastened her bra and her breasts sprang free, achingly beautiful in the dim light.
In bed together, naked, touching one another, both inexperienced. When he finally began to enter her, Penny arched her back and drew in a sharp breath.
A whisper, “Dunc, please, be... It’s... my first time...”
He was wild with passion, nothing had ever been harder than the restraint she needed. Moving slowly, ever so slowly, he had not even fully entered her before he came. He had never known anything as exquisite in his life.
He withdrew, still half engorged. They clung together, entwined. She whispered, “I... I love you, Dunc.”
“Love you, my lover,” he said into her hair.
Her hand found him, he started to get hard again.
“Oh, Dunc... yes,” she whispered.
This time, no holding back. Her legs locked around him, held him tight as he bucked and thrust. Suddenly she arched with a small astonished cry and he spent, and spent, and spent again.
The Purple Cockatoo was dark except for a bright fan of gold from the open door in the back wall marking the office where the manager tallied the night’s receipts. Pepe pulled the fitted cloth cover over the piano; he wouldn’t be playing here again.
Dunc had found him, Dunc would be back to talk about the deaths of Artis and Ned, things that Pepe couldn’t talk about. This was a smart, observant kid. If he started remembering...
Pepe sipped his white wine, considered. He couldn’t have Dunc in touch with him, but it would be smart to keep track of where Dunc went, what he did. Yes. Smart. He’d make a phone call. No telling what the kid was thinking about right now.
They slept, woke, found one another, slept, woke again shortly before noon in each other’s arms to the sounds of people moving around outside, cars starting. Kissing, shyly, neither of them moving. Then moving, slowly at first, then faster, faster, then wildly to mutual explosion.
When they finally got up for a quick shared shower, there were two fine streaks of blood on the sheet. It awoke in Dunc a strange, exciting meld of emotions he had never known before: possession, an intense desire to protect, commitment to her.
Chapter Twenty-six
Penny reassured romance-loving Aunt Goodie from a pay phone, then Dunc drove them out along winding Sunset Boulevard toward the Palisades. It was a warm and sparkling day full of music, he had a hard time keeping his eyes off Penny. She was wearing dark glasses, the windows were open and her hair was blowing around her face. Her legs were tucked under her, tracing the taut line of her thigh against the red skirt. A scant hour ago he had been between those thighs. He couldn’t believe it.
“Where are you taking me, mystery man?”
“I was thinking of lunch,” he said.
She slid over beside him to rest her head on his shoulder. “I knew there was something about you that I found attractive.”
Dunc stopped at a seafood place on the ocean side of the Coast Highway, at a window table they ate fisherman’s platters and watched swimmers splashing in the languid surf.
“I wish...” Penny left the thought unfinished.
“Me too,” said Dunc.
Farther north they saw the turnoff to Rephaim’s church and said in tandem, “Yeah, let’s,” and laughed in delight at the shared thought. Here they had first met, just over a month ago. They wanted to remember it. They would. A tan ’52 Ford and a police black-and-white were parked outside the open door with the cross over it. Three men emerged.
The first was tall and athletic with a hard-bitten face and frown lines on his forehead. The second was a uniformed bull with a revolver on his hip. The third was Rephaim in his flowing robes, his magnificent head of silver hair wild, his eyes even wilder. He raised both manacled arms to point at Dunc.
“Thy heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” He advanced toward them, quivering with righteous rage. He cried, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts!”
“I haven’t done anything to you,” said Dunc, taken aback.
Rephaim thundered, “I will feed thee with wormwood, and give thee water of gall to drink.”
“What is happening here?” demanded a bewildered Penny.
The cop led Rephaim away to the prowl car. The hard-bitten detective said, “We’re not too sure ourselves. We got a memo about the San Fernando police cracking a big illegal-alien smuggling ring out in the Valley.”
“But what does that have to do with Rephaim?” she asked.
“Well, this morning we get a call from somebody belongs to this Church of the Order of Melchizedek, complaining about greasy Mexicans, so we attend the reverend’s service unannounced, we find a couple dozen wetbacks. The reverend says they’re members of his congregation, but none of ’em has a word of English. No papers, no home addresses, no money. So we called Immigration.”
The prowl car with Rephaim in back accelerated up the road.
“The reverend just keeps saying they were farmworkers from the Valley, he has no idea they were illegals. But—”
Penny said forcefully, “I think he was telling the truth.” She turned to Dunc. “Honey, what’s going on?”
“I told Gus’s uncle about getting beat up. He must have passed it on to his friends in the archbishop’s office, and they may have gone to the police. But this I don’t understand, the aliens getting busted here...”
The detective said, “Anyway, we really wanta talk with his acolyte or deacon or whatever the hell he calls himself?”
“Hector?” asked Dunc.
“Yeah.” The three of them walked over to the edge of the pool. The detective added, “The reverend seemed pissed at you.”
“Maybe he thought I was the one who called you.”
“Maybe. Anyway, this guy Hector’s got a lot of explaining to do. I really want to talk to him.”
There was a roar like an enraged bull elephant. They whirled — the six-by-six was roaring down the road at them, Hector hunched over the steering wheel, shrieking, face distorted.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”
The detective dodged one way, Dunc dragged Penny the other, the massive truck’s nose and front wheels missed them all and hit the surface with a great splash, sending an inverted waterfall of filthy water out over the concrete skirting at the far end of the pool. Its rear wheels rested on the broken concrete apron, its engine drowning to silence.
“Here’s Hector now,” said Dunc to the detective.
It made the Metro section of the Monday L.A. Times, with a picture of Hector’s truck nose-down in the swimming pool at the church of a zany cult calling itself the Seven Priests of Melchizedek. Smart police work by the LAPD, said the paper, had broken up an illegal-alien smuggling ring involving the cult, three officials of a hod carriers’ union, and four immigration agents, who had been suspended pending an internal investigation. Six mentions of policemen, one of the archdiocese, none of Dunc.
They read it lying side by side on their stomachs on a big gaudy towel at Malibu beach, Dunc in dark blue boxer-style swim trunks, Penny looking like a movie star in her dark glasses and a shiny light blue one-piece swimsuit.