A minute later Laguna Canyon Road was disappearing under his headlight, his skin tightening against his skull. He took the curves in long bites, leaning into them and accelerating out, straightening the bike and laying himself almost flat in a fifth-gear crouch when he hit the passing lane and shot past cars that seemed to be backing up. He wore goggles to keep bugs from hitting him and tears from spreading across his face, keenly aware that at the Jota’s speeds a helmet was vanity. The deep, hollow rasp of the engine droned under him. Telephone poles bunched closer and closer together. Hilltops slipped by against the pale night as if on fast film. Halfway down the road he found his rhythm, bounding back and forth between the lanes for high-apex turns that ended in straights of purest speed.
Downshifting into fourth, Shephard leaned into the long arc that connects Laguna Canyon Road to Interstate 5 and climbed onto the freeway at a modest ninety. From behind a lumbering truck, he crossed three lanes with a faint tilt of bodyweight and braced himself against the footpegs for the blast into Santa Ana. The airport lights flickered before him and were gone; the stars blurred as Irvine became Tustin became Santa Ana, and just when the entire continent seemed to be spreading itself out for him, slowly, like a lover across a bed, the First Street sign flashed by and he had only a mile to cut his speed. In a moment of lucidity before he turned off the freeway, Shephard likened the trip to making love, or what he remembered of it.
He found Little Theodore’s chopped Harley Davidson parked across two spaces outside the Norton Hotel. The night was warm and there were mariachis playing in the café next door. He looked through the window at them: short, wide men dressed in black, their music happy and imprecise, the guitar lagging the rhythm by a fraction of a count.
The hotel lounge was dark and smelled of beer. Little Theodore took up most of a corner booth, dressed as always in a black T-shirt from which his huge arms emerged, mirrored sunglasses, and a broad black hat. Shephard noted an addition to the hat: a band of silver dollars wrapped around the crown. Little Theodore’s beard was still red, tangled, gigantic. Before him on the table were two glasses and a full bottle of tequila. A grin cracked across his face when he saw Shephard. “Hey, little jackass,” he called. “Come over here.”
Shephard sat down and Theodore filled the glasses. The Cuervo Gold made Shephard shudder when it went down. Sitting with Little Theodore is like sitting with the past, he thought as Theodore refilled the glasses. He hasn’t changed in ten years, not since Wade first hired him as a temporary bodyguard.
“Someone bash your brain pan?” the big man growled.
“It’s too hard for serious damage. Just a little dent.”
“I’ve been looking forward to this all night, little jackass. Man shouldn’t drink alone.” Theodore hooked down the tequila and set the glass on the table with a slap. The shot glass looked like a thimble in his hand. He pushed Shephard’s face to the side. “Who did it?”
“Someone who doesn’t want me working the Algernon case. You heard about it?” Shephard drank his second glass.
“Heard about it? It’s all over the goddamn papers. I figured you’d be callin’ me soon.”
“The guy who hit me is a private dick named Harmon. He’s an ex-Newport cop, a sergeant. He took me out at the Hotel Sebastian and wrecked my apartment when I was sleeping it off.”
Theodore filled the glasses again and leaned forward. “You mentioned business on the phone. Want me to break his arms?”
“No. I need him functional so I can get to his boss. But I do have some business. Tim Algernon got your number from Marty the Friday before he was killed. Did he call you?”
Little Theodore shook a cigarette from a pack on the table. “Yeah. Friday night about eleven.”
“And?”
“Hey, slow down, pissant. We got to drink, we got to ride, we got to talk. We got time to get to everything.”
“I’d like to get to this first. I’ve got a dozen scraps of evidence and not one good reason why someone would kill Tim Algernon. But I think he knew it was coming.” Theodore sighed and downed his tequila. Shephard did likewise.
“He was scared,” said Theodore. “Not whinin’ scared, but casual, take-your-time, beat-around-the-bush scared.”
“What did he want?”
“First he wanted to know if I was working much these days. Then he wanted to know how my book was selling. Tell the truth, I barely remembered the sonofabitch. Played some horses with him once is all. Half an hour later, the story comes out. Says he’s worried some punks know he’s got money stashed on the grounds. He wants me to move in as discouragement. Room, board, five hundred a week. Which totals about a thousand a week the way I eat and drink.”
Shephard pondered the story. “Why was he worried, anything specific?”
“Just worried is what he said. He’s a big mouth when he wins big and drinks, so I figured he’d talked and was gettin’ spooked. Anyhow, I said no. I got a new old lady and she’s a real treat to drag this old sack of fat into bed with at night. Got my own place, the book is sellin’ good, me and Ray is going to write up another one. Shit, what I want to go live in some manure heap for?” Theodore shrugged. “Now this,” he said quietly, returning his attention to the tequila. “Now he’s a dead man. Didn’t mean to hold out on ya. Was gonna call, case you didn’t first. Drink up, Shephard. We’re all dead too soon.”
Shephard drank and felt the tequila eroding his sense of control. Just as well, he thought. He lit a cigarette, which returned him to calm.
“Whoever killed him didn’t want any money. We found him in the morning, with over a thousand dollars worth of currency stuffed down his mouth. You say he beat around the bush. What about?”
“Told you. Everything and nothing. The book, the work, the bullshit.” Theodore leaned back; the booth shook.
“When did he want you to start?”
“Next morning.”
“Did he go up in price, or offer the five hundred right off?” Just how desperate had Algernon been?
According to Little Theodore, Algernon had started with an offer of three hundred, then gone up to five. Then, sounding drunk, he “got weepy” when Theodore said no. Then he hung up, and that was the last that Little Theodore heard of him until his wife read him the story in yesterday’s paper. Shephard had forgotten that Theodore could neither read nor write. I only know how to spell ten words, he liked to brag, and all of ’em’s dirty.
“Whoever killed him smashed his head with a rock, then set him on fire. Whoever killed him sent him a Bible with a little hate mail attached. Whoever killed him has someone else in mind, too, if I’m reading it right. I missed him by two hours at the Sebastian. He’s in town. I know it.”
Little Theodore poured them two more shots and downed his instantly. Shephard obliged, put down the glass, and found himself looking at another full one. Again they drank. The music wavered in his brain, the smell of the cactus steamed up into his nostrils. Theodore capped the bottle and grinned.