The blonde was in my headlights. If I’d been going faster than the limit, I’d have hit her. She reached out a hand to touch the cab’s hood, maybe to convince herself that it had really stopped.
When I began breathing again, I pried my fingers from the wheel, rolled down the window, and shouted, “What the hell, lady?”
“You’re the best,” she said, walking around the cab. “I wasn’t sure you’d stop. I need a ride and here you are...”
She tried to open the rear door and was surprised to find it locked. She frowned, then figured it out. “Aw, crap. You’re off duty?”
She was in her late twenties, maybe three or four years younger than me. Dressed California casual, in aqua T-shirt and tight designer jeans. Not spectacular but pretty enough. Straight blond hair. Tanned skin. Good body. Carrying a big floppy purse, the size of a beach bag.
“Please,” she said. “I’m desperate. I really fucking need a ride... away from here. It’s worth fifty dollars.”
“Where to?”
She hesitated, then said, “Ritz-Carlton.”
Fifty bucks to drive five or six miles. I stared at her, thinking about it.
“A friend drove me here. He... didn’t want to leave the party. And he didn’t want me to leave, either. Understand?” She looked to our left. I looked there too, and couldn’t see anything but the vague shadowy outline of one of those residential complexes with cookie-cutter buildings, heavy on the redwood and stucco. “Please. I really need a lift.”
She seemed to be suffering from a lack of sincerity, but fifty bucks was fifty bucks, so I pushed the button that unlocked the doors and she hopped in.
Softened by the age-yellowed bandit barrier, her face looked better than pretty. A hometown beauty contest winner whom the movie cameras didn’t love quite enough. In some kind of trouble. She ran her fingers through her hair and let out a long sigh. “You’re a lifesaver,” she said. Looking to the left again, she added, “Let’s went, Cisco.”
I stepped on the gas but kept my eye on her in the rearview as she reached into her big bag. She didn’t look like carjacker material, but I stopped breathing until her hand reappeared with a cellular. She raised the thin slab to her ear. “You clear?” she asked somebody, leaning forward, tensing. “Great, baby. I’m in a cab,” she said. “Right. Amazing luck, huh, a fucking cab out here in the boonies... No. Just worry about yourself. I’m golden.” She listened for a few beats, then, “Shit. You think?”
She snapped the phone shut.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
Linking eyes with me in the rearview, she said, “I’m not sure. Look, I, ah, didn’t mean to offend. The boonies comment.”
“Boonies works for me. This is where Republicans come to die.”
“You live here long?”
“About a year.”
“Before that?”
“L.A.”
“Ah. That makes more sense. The hair. I...” Her cellular must’ve vibrated again. “Excuse me,” she said and took the call. “Yeah?” Her head dropped and her face hardened. “Woohoo. I’m so scared, you dickless wonder. Eat shit and die.” She clicked off the phone. Then she lowered her window and threw the phone out into the night.
“Friend?” I said.
She leaned forward, closer to the plastic guard that separated us, and asked, “Want another fifty?”
“I’m listening.”
“Get off this street as soon as you can, stop, and cut the lights.”
She looked back to where I’d picked her up, doing a head turn that almost matched Linda Blair’s. There was nothing much to see behind us.
In front of us, the neutral ground on the left went on and on. There was a park to our right, separated from the sidewalk by a low white double-rail fence. I could see where the fence ended. I goosed the gas and made the turn into the park on two wheels. Then I made another turn into an empty parking area separated from the road by thick foliage. I braked, killed the engine, and turned off the lights. “This what you had in mind?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, baby,” she said. “Perfect. But I could use a Valium the size of a hockey puck.”
I turned to look at her. “That’s a Woody Allen line, right?”
“Broadway Danny Rose,” she said. She leaned forward and squinted at my license information in the moonlight. “J.D. Marquette. So you’re into movies, huh, J.D.?”
“I used to have a job that gave me a lot of free time.”
“Me too.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“You can call me Nora. Ah, J.D., we may be here a while.”
“Yeah?”
“I am paying you a hundred bucks.”
“Point made, Nora.” I reached down, picked my book and reading light from the floor, and put them into the cab’s glove compartment.
“You even read about movies, huh? Maybe we should play the movie game while we wait. It’s my favorite.”
“I’m not big on games, Nora.”
“Oh, come on. You’re good. The way you nailed that Woody Allen, maybe too good. I think we should stick to just one genre. All things considered, maybe crime movies.”
“I don’t play games,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on here?”
“Kind of a crazy story with a crazy twist to it.” She was grinning at me.
“That line’s from Double Indemnity,” I said. “Fred MacMurray. Now, stop with the bullshit and tell me why we’re sitting here in the dark.”
“I guess that’s not asking too much. My friend... his name is Tom Iverson... we live in the Florida Keys. Tom has this dumb charter boat thing going. But he does other odds and ends too. So he tells me he’s got business here and we’ll be spending a few days at the Ritz-Carlton, which sounded like a nice kinda getaway. Only when we arrive, he says the business is with this guy I don’t really care for, who’s like a freak and a half, you know. Anyway, we go to this... Hold on. Car coming.”
Nora and I sat silent as a black Escalade floated by, heading south.
When it was well passed, I said, “Okay for us to leave now?”
“No. Not okay. There’ll be more and they know I’m in a cab.”
“Who’s they?”
“Friends of the asshole.”
“So, tell me about the asshole.”
“His name is Joey Ziegler. A stunt man. You probably saw him in the last Batman, the one with the dead Joker guy. I’ve never exactly warmed to Joey, because he does stuff like grabbing a tit when Tom isn’t looking. Anyway, we’re bringing Joey a little something Tom picked up in Yucatan, a—”
“A piece of junk worth half a million,” I said, completing her sentence.
She smiled. “Oops. You do know movies.”
“You were feeding me a remake of Night Moves. Not a bad film. Gene Hackman as a private eye. Lousy ending. Tell me what really went on back there, Nora. Right now, or I’m tossing you out of the fucking cab.”
“Okay, this is the truth, J.D. Wait... another car.”
This one was a white Escalade. Moving at about fifteen miles per hour. Flashlight beams shot out of its open windows, scanning the foliage on both sides of the road. I didn’t think they could see any part of the cab.
“Maybe we should move further back in the park,” I suggested when they’d passed.
“Okay. But don’t turn on the lights.”
I started the engine, backed onto the lane, and began creeping deeper into the park guided by moon glow. We passed a golf course and, eventually, a building in darkness that I assumed was some sort of clubhouse. The lane made a fork, one section continuing on, the other circling the building to a small lot. I took the latter, moving the cab as close to the rear of the building as I could.