Rollins ducked behind his bar, swung the short-barreled shotgun up over the wooden surface, and dropped the shooter. The second man opened fire at Rollins and backed outside into the cold night.
Rollins ran after him, stepped over the body on the floor, and realized he knew the two shooters. He had met the two men a year earlier at a poker game that was run by his liquor distributor. The men were two brothers named Storrono. He made it to the door in time to see the Escalade arrive outside the bar and the surviving shooter step in. Rollins remembered the bloody footprint where he had stood. As the SUV drove off, Rollins ran inside, snatched up the telephone behind the bar, called the police, and told them what had just happened and who had made it happen. The anger carried him through the crime-scene examination and the long police interviews that night.
He hadn’t thought much about the danger he was in until he was ready to leave the police station the next morning. The police detective in charge of the case said that if he saw anything that worried him—any sign that somebody was unusually interested in him—he should request temporary protection.
Before the trial of the remaining Storrono brother, the case suddenly changed, or the police view of it did. The suspect talked. The murdered man was not an enemy of the Storronos. They had simply agreed to do a contract killing. The man they had killed was one of the targets of a federal investigation. The man who had wanted him killed was another, much bigger, and more important organized crime figure. From that moment, the main concern of the authorities was keeping Storrono alive. Pete Rollins was still in danger, but he was no longer essential.
Federal officials took over the case, and shortly after that they told Rollins he was going to be relocated to South Carolina. His name would be Joseph Carver. They supplied him with a driver’s license, birth certificate, Social Security card, high school diploma, and a job in a furniture factory outside Charleston.
It was hot work, operating machines with sharp steel blades spinning rapidly and sanders that filled the air with fine sawdust that stuck to his skin and found its way past his mask and goggles into his nose and eyes. After a few months, the government determined that he could never be Pete Rollins again and had intermediaries sell his bar and his house. They paid his mortgages and sent the remainder in two checks made out to Joe Carver. He decided to move to Los Angeles.
Carver arrived in Los Angeles with plenty of money and a notion that it was time to open a new business and start over. He spent some time at first just getting used to L.A. nightlife and meeting people. He spent a lot of money on drinks and dinners. He had overdone it, he knew now, and he regretted it. He had gotten to know a lot of women very quickly, but he had not made the right impression. Two of them thought he was probably an armed robber and had told Kapak’s men.
Last night he had overheard the names of the two women—Sandy Belknap and Sonia Rivers. To his surprise, he actually remembered both women clearly. He had met Sandy Belknap in the Adder Club. She was a young blond who seemed fresh and enthusiastic, with a cute face and blue eyes. He had not had any serious intention of forming any kind of relationship with her, because she was too much engaged in being pretty. But he had learned over the years that the best way to attract the attention of women was to be seen with the best-looking ones. The others seemed to find that intriguing. Maybe they thought it meant he had been cleared of their worst suspicions—he couldn’t be a dangerous creep. Since he wasn’t as good-looking as the woman he was with, maybe he was rich or clever or funny. The first night he started talking to her, other women began to drift in his direction, and then to put themselves behind her, in his line of sight.
He had actually met Sandy Belknap five times in three different clubs. After the first time, she had always been the one to approach him. She’d found it most comfortable to make her entrance by coming up to a friendly acquaintance who bought her first drink and gave her a few minutes to study the crowd without being overwhelmed. It was possible that she subscribed to the same theory he did, that people were most attracted to the person already taken. When he and Sandy had legitimized each other for a few minutes, they had parted with an affectionate hug and found other partners.
Sonia Rivers had seemed to Carver to be more promising. She didn’t have that protective wall of self-satisfaction that Sandy had. She was not at ease in bars trying to meet men. The first night he had met her, he had caught an expression now and then on her face that he interpreted as a kind of astonishment at finding herself in a club.
He had approached her in a quiet moment while a band was leaving and the DJ was getting set up, and asked if he could buy her a drink.
“Gee, I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want one.”
“It’s not really about wanting the actual drink. It can be a soft drink. No alcohol. It can be water, and you don’t have to swallow any of it. A drink is symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“That you’re willing to hang out with me for a bit and talk and stuff.”
“And stuff?”
“I’m not promising stuff. That’s only if we like each other. Otherwise, just a friendly chat, and no stuff. If the issue is me and not the drink, you say, ‘Get lost.’ Now, would you like a drink?”
“I feel funny about it, to tell you the truth.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want to look like a woman who goes to bars to pick up men.”
“Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Not really.” She considered. “But I guess that’s one way to look at it.”
“What’s another way?”
“That I’m here to have fun.”
“Great,” he said. “Let’s have some fun. Do you have any board games? A piñata?”
“I’m sort of starting to see your point. The fun I was thinking of does involve meeting a guy. So, okay, let’s see about that fun. Do you dance?”
“Tonight I do.”
They had fun that night. They danced for a while. Then he took her to the Pacific Dining Car for a late-night dinner, and then back out to the clubs. He had always favored champagne for late-night excursions because it was less debilitating than distilled liquor, and since he was buying champagne for a woman, it had to be good champagne. He had not wanted to leave a credit history in the name Joe Carver because of the Storronos, so he had to spend cash. So he supposed he had been guilty of flashing a lot of cash in front of her like a bank robber. That was certainly where those accusations had come from. She hadn’t imagined it. But there was an incredible distance between spending a lot of cash and being a robber, and he wondered what he had done to make her take that leap.
That night while they were alone in the relative quiet of the all-night restaurant, she had asked him lots of questions and he had answered them more or less truthfully. He had mentioned that he had come to Los Angeles only a month earlier. So that had supplied the other half of the story. He was a man from elsewhere who had arrived a month ago and was around town spending lots of cash. But that was all.
He got into his car and drove. He was going to find Sonia Rivers and see what he could do to correct her first impression of him. Telling Kapak he hadn’t robbed him hadn’t worked. Maybe getting the two women who had implicated him to change their minds might add some credibility to his denials. If that didn’t work, somebody was going to end up dying.