The rival gang that took Bennett’s tape.
And broke into my house, wrecked my stuff, strung my room with Christmas lights and generally shit in my mess kit. While I was out helping Eddie Vo get away.
Chapter 10
Cristobel’s place was a washed-out, once-blue, and now rickety apartment just past Fahrenheit 451 Books. The dog, sensing home turf, led Frye down a walkway. The buildings seemed to slouch in lazy angles, a patternless surrender to time and gravity.
He stood on a big patio, surrounded on three sides by railing. Dunce nosed the door to Number Seven. Through the Dutch door, Frye could see her sitting with her back to him, shoulders forward, head down a little, right elbow held outward.
For a moment he watched as she worked a big pair of scissors through some material, her left hand spreading it flat. Through the picture window she worked behind, Frye noted the blue glitter of the Pacific and the sun high in a flawless sky. Her reflection rode across the water, mingled with the sun — a truly special effect, Frye concluded. He moved closer.
Dunce barked and jumped at the door, and Frye watched Cristobel turn. He was getting a smile ready when a dark shape suddenly blotted her out and he found himself looking at a large black man who wiped out the ocean and sun: no shirt, muscles bunching and sweat glistening off his chest, his hair planed flat in the manner of Carl Lewis, a not very friendly look on his face. The man moved from the window and the door swung open. Dunce slipped inside with a series of whimpers that told of abduction, torture, escape. The black man offered his hand. “Jim Strauss,” he said.
“Chuck Frye.”
“Find our dog?”
“He kinda found me.”
Frye stepped in, aware of the commotion at the far end of the room — woman and dog in a homecoming scene. Dunce barked at him. Cristobel turned. Same face, he thought — full, pale skin, good mouth. Dark eyes, light hair. Off the charts. She gave him a contraceptive glare.
“Well, hello, Mr. Frye.”
“Hello, Miss...”
“Strauss.”
He forced a smile at both of them. “Oh, you two are... great, super.”
Jim smiled at him without mirth.
“Cristobel will do,” she said. “Blaster latch onto you?”
“He did.”
“He’s like that. A social animal.” She looked at Frye, shaking back her hair, hands on her hips and fingers spread against her jeans.
“Good to meet you,” said Jim. “Thanks for bringing back our dog.” Frye watched him disappear into a hallway. A door closed, music started up.
“He’s not rude,” she said. “He’s just working out.”
“Olympics?”
“Model. Everything has to be perfect.”
“Looks like he’s getting there.” Blaster’s head slipped under his hand. “I was putting a note on your dog’s scarf last night and he followed me to my car. I was in a hurry and he just sorta jumped in. The note said I was sorry for a bad opening line and wanted a proper introduction. Anyway, I apologize for what I said, and I’m sorry I kidnapped your dog.”
“That was a crappy thing to say to a girl you don’t even know.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t really expect me to say yes, did you?”
“No.”
“You Southern California guys are so damned arrogant sometimes. You think it’s cool. Some women must like that, but it just makes me think you’re a bunch of narcissistic queebs.”
“If you’ve got a blindfold and rifle, I’ll shoot myself.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “Okay. Truce. Beer?”
“Sure.” He watched her go to the kitchen with an adulterous guilt, very much tuned in to the way she filled her jeans. Full-bodied but light on her feet, a gold chain around her ankle. He glanced toward Jim’s room, from which a series of odd huffing noises came, timed roughly to the music. When she came back, he was looking at the material she’d been cutting. It was a light blue background with yellow slices of moon on it. “Nice.”
“Kind of a sun dress,” she said. She held up a swatch of cloth. “Good silk. I liked those little moons.”
Frye sat on the couch and Cristobel took a chair. He looked out to the sand, the sun, the ocean glittering like a tossed handful of diamonds. “Nice place here.”
“Thanks. We rented it a year ago. Cheap and a good view. Hard to find in Laguna. What happened to your head?”
“A cop hit me with his gun.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Not exactly.”
“I’ve been following the story about Li. She’s been missing since Sunday, right? Any suspects?”
“There’s a suspect but I’m not so sure he’s solid. The cops think so.”
“My experience with cops is you get good treatment if you’re high-priority, and bad treatment if you’re not. I’d think that Li Frye is pretty high.”
Frye wondered just what this experience with the cops was, but it didn’t seem time to press it. He looked at Cristobel, feeling a sour regret that she was married, that he was married — technically, at least — that he had put his worst foot forward, kidnapped her dog, and now sat here with his pecker coming up like a garden gopher while he drank her beer.
“Don’t get discouraged,” she said. “They’ll find her.”
Through the picture window, Frye could see the people gathering on Main Beach. Bleachers and a stage had been set up, banners proclaiming the MIA Committee rally.
Cristobel fiddled with her anklet. The sun lit up her hair from behind. She has eyes that seem to see a lot, Frye decided. She picked up a framed picture from the coffee table: a young man in a flight suit, and his F-4. “I lost my brother Mike over there,” she said quietly. “Somewhere over Quang Tri.” She handed him the photograph.
“I’m sorry.”
Cristobel nodded, drank from her glass, shook back her hair and looked toward Jim’s room. “You got a job besides that surf shop?”
“I was a reporter for a while. Got fired.”
“Looking for another one?”
“Kind of. I’m trying to help Benny right now. I’m trying to find Li. The cops and FBI are all over the place, but nothing’s happening.”
“Sometimes when nothing seems to be happening, that’s when everything really is.” She looked straight through Frye with a curious air of resignation, as if he were a window and she a passenger gone one stop past her destination.
“I’m done with my work for the day,” she said. “Like to walk over to the hotel, have lunch?”
Frye listened to the music still throbbing from Jim’s workout room. This woman can turn on a dime, he thought. It makes me a little nervous. “Sounds like a good way to get my face really creamed.”
She smiled. “We have an understanding.”
“I’ve got the sore face.”
“Don’t worry.”
They found a table at the far end of the patio, pads on the chairs, great view. Cristobel wanted a bottle of Cabernet and Frye could find little wrong with the idea. He looked down at the Whitewater easing toward shore, a few kids splashing around, a couple standing in the surf for a kiss that lasted until the wine arrived. A hundred yards up the beach he could see the MIA Committee banner and a huge American flag. The public address system squawked over the hissing waves. They touched glasses. “To the safe return of your sister-in-law,” she said.
Frye nodded and drank. “Good wine.” He drank more and leaned back, letting the sun and the alcohol mix, using the privacy of his sunglasses to study the person across from him. The wine loosened him a little and he babbled: surfing, the MegaShop, contests, growing up on Frye Island, college failures and his several years of aimlessness that ended in his first real job as a reporter for the Ledger. His words seemed to come out under their own power, and as he listened to his voice he wondered about this woman. There’s something oddly real in her, he thought, or something really odd. But which?