“I know,” I said. “It’s one of my greatest failings.”
“Not taking things seriously?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m ashamed, but there it is.”
Alice nodded slowly.
“You think,” she said, “that I’m some L.A. chick with pretty good legs...”
“Very good,” I said.
“Thank you, but here’s how it’s going to go,” Alice said. “I warn you to get as far away from Jumbo Nelson as you can, and stay there. If you don’t take the warning, some people will come around and hurt you. If you still don’t get the message, some people will come around and kill you.”
“Oh,” I said. “You’re not flirting with me.”
She looked at me steadily. There was very little in her smallish eyes that seemed feminine — nor, for that matter, quite human.
“Will you give it up?” she said.
“No,” I said.
Alice looked at Z.
“My advice to you, Injun Joe, is to stay out of this,” she said.
Z didn’t look up from his newspaper. Alice stood, picked up her purse, and put on her sunglasses.
“You’ll be hearing from us, soon,” she said, and walked out.
37
We were quiet, listening to the rain fall. The scent of her perfume lingered.
“Good-looking,” Z said.
“Except for the eyes,” I said.
“Eyes looked kind of hard and empty,” Z said.
“They did,” I said.
“Hard to imagine bopping her,” Z said.
“Scary,” I said.
“She look at me with those eyes,” Z said, “might not be able to get it up, you know?”
“I bet I could do it,” I said.
“Brave man,” Z said.
“Intrepid,” I said. “You in?”
“In,” he said.
“Hard to plan something like this,” I said. “Basically we go ahead and do what we do and assume if something comes up we can handle it.”
“I stay by you,” Z said.
“This isn’t,” I said, “something either of us can do drunk.”
Z nodded.
I got up and went to the closet and unlocked it. I took a Colt Python revolver, in its holster, off the top shelf, and a box of .357 shells. I walked back and put the gun and the bullets on my desk.
“Same gun you’ve fired at the range,” I said. “Six-inch barrel. Six rounds in the cylinder. As you may recall, it’s not brain surgery. Aim for the middle of the mass. Squeeze the trigger.”
Z frowned.
“Could you write that out for me?” he said.
“If I thought you could read,” I said.
Z got up and put the gun on his belt.
“How come I don’t get one of those fancy semiautos like they all have in the movies?” he said.
“Revolver’s simpler,” I said. “Fewer moving parts.”
“What you got?” Z said.
“Thirty-eight,” I said. “Two-inch barrel.”
“How come you don’t get something bigger.”
“I got something bigger, but the .38 is lighter to carry, and up close it works fine,” I said. “Generally I don’t need to pick people off as they ride along the ridgeline.”
Z nodded.
“The .357 is kinda heavy,” he said.
“Especially when it’s loaded,” I said.
“Wouldn’t want to wear it empty,” Z said.
“Good thinking,” I said.
“You think she’s serious?” Z said.
“Yes.”
“You think some people gonna try and pound on you?”
“Yes.”
“So there might be some fighting,” Z said.
“Might,” I said.
Z nodded.
“Good,” he said.
38
“Why don’t they just shoot you?” Susan said. “Soon as you became an annoyance?”
She was preparing Pearl’s supper, which was mercifully the extent of her cooking, except on rare and vaporish occasions when she decided to make us a meal.
“Not sure,” I said.
Susan spooned some boiled hamburger with broth over the Kibbles ’n Bits in Pearl’s bowl. Pearl sat perfectly still, and watched her intently.
“How much do they know about you?” Susan said.
“I don’t know.”
“If they knew about you, they’d know that a lot of people would expend a lot of effort to find who did it.”
“Including you?”
“Led by me,” Susan said.
She put Pearl’s food down on the floor and patted Pearl on the shoulder as Pearl began to eat.
“Certainly,” she said, “Quirk and Belson would give it special attention. Healy, the FBI person.”
“Epstein,” I said.
“And when Hawk came back from central Asia, he’d put together his own posse, don’t you think?”
“Might,” I said.
“He’d get Vinnie Morris, the Mexican man from Los Angeles.”
“Chollo,” I said.
“Who might bring Bobby Horse.”
“Probably would,” I said.
“I’m sure Tedy Sapp would come up. And maybe even that black gangster, you know, the one with the huge bodyguard,” Susan said.
“Tony Marcus.” I said. “The huge bodyguard is Junior, the jittery little doped-out shooter is Ty-Bop. How come you can’t remember people like Tony Marcus, and you remember Bobby Horse like he grew up with you.”
“I don’t know,” Susan said.
Pearl had cleaned up her supper, and was sitting again, staring at Susan.
“How can you not know?” I said. “You have a Ph.D. from Harvard?”
“Well, I did read somewhere that by adulthood, we are so full of accumulated data that our brain has trouble sorting it.”
“Oh,” I said.
Susan reached into a polished chrome canister on her kitchen counter and came out with an odd-looking item, which she handed to Pearl. Pearl ate it.
“What was that?” I said.
“Duck and sweet potato,” she said.
“Part of our supper?” I said.
“No,” Susan said. “Our supper is being prepared as we speak by the lovely folks at Upper Crust Pizza. It will arrive at seven.”
“Large?”
“Yes.”
“Not broccoli or brussels sprouts on it.”
“No, I’ve put health aside this one time,” Susan said. “What do you think of my theory about why they haven’t shot you?”
“They may know a lot. They may not,” I said. “But what they do know is that the murder of someone connected to the Jumbo Nelson case would fully engage the local cops.”
“So they’ll kill you only if it is less dangerous than letting you live,” Susan said.
“Probably,” I said. “But their success is not a foregone conclusion, you know.”
“I know,” Susan said. “In fact, I can only bear the possibility if I am certain they’ll fail.”
“Everybody has so far,” I said. “Besides, if I can believe Alice DeLauria, my immediate danger is only a savage beating.”
“That’s consoling,” Susan said.
“I was hoping it would be,” I said.
“And you’re not afraid,” Susan said.
“I am afraid,” I said. “It’s overhead, sort of. The price of doing business.”
“And you’re able to push past it.”
“Yes,” I said. “Otherwise I couldn’t do what I do.”
“And you do what you do because?”
I shrugged.
“I’m better at it than I am at anything else?”
Susan nodded.
“And you read Le Morte d’Arthur too early in life,” she said.
“Yeah, that too, I guess.”
“And, I suspect, if you didn’t do what you do, you’d be someone else,” Susan said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“And you won’t let fear make you into someone else.”
“What if I said to you, ‘I love what I do but I’m too scared to do it’?”