“Sure,” he said, as though he was surprised to learn I was still leaning against the car. “So I figure that person, like I said, is on our side, and maybe he’s got something to tell us.”
“Maybe he does,” I said. “You told me to stay away from the case, and that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“You’re shitting me,” Spurrier said mildly. “You picked up Max’s dry cleaning.”
“I picked up Christy’s dry cleaning,” I said. “Max’s just happened to be in with it.”
Spurrier gave it a moment’s thought and decided to go for the misdemeanor rather than the felony. “Then you’ve been talking to Christy.”
“It was a personal favor.”
“You want to do him another one?”
“If I can.”
“Tell him to come see us.”
I looked at my feet, feeling a warm wave of relief. “I don’t know, Ike,” I said.
“He can bring a lawyer,” Spurrier said grandly. “We know he didn’t do it.”
I brought my eyes up to his, trying to look like someone about to walk through fire. “I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll get him there tomorrow.”
For a moment I thought he was going to laugh, but all he did was shake his head. Then he stepped back and fired his cigarette into the gutter.
“You bled on your car,” he said.
13 ~ Wolf Pack
With a stop at a thrifty drugs to pick up a bandage for my arm and fifteen greasy but satisfying minutes at a Burger King, it was well after ten by the time I got to Reseda. Kids with nothing to do were cruising up and down the main streets, and I wondered-not for the first time-how anybody can have nothing to do with all the things that so obviously need doing. In a phone booth at Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way, I looked up Elena Aguirre’s address and dialed Wyl’s number.
“Fan Fare,” he answered.
“Wyl,” I said, “you’re at home.”
“Force of habit.” The words were a little fuzzy at the edges, and I remembered that it was Wyl’s custom to drink a Manhattan or two, or as many as he had in the house, after work.
“Have you got an Academy Players’ Directory?”
“Silly question. I’ve a complete set, beginning with 1945.” Wyl always got a little British after a couple of Manhattans, and since he now sounded like Prince Philip, I figured he’d had four or five.
“Do me a favor. Get a recent one and look in the agents’ section. I want an address for Ferris Hanks.”
“He’s alive?” I let it pass, and Wyl came to his own rescue. “Awful, awful man,” he said. “You know, the good die-”
“ You’re still alive,” I pointed out.
There was a silence, and when he spoke he sounded affronted. “One needn’t say everything one thinks of,” he said snippily. “One does not need to be reminded of one’s age.”
“Sorry,” I said. “Listen, Wyl, I’m in a phone booth.”
“Oh, you poor boy.” He sounded aghast. “I’ll get right to it.”
A moment later I had an address. “That’s up near the bird streets,” he said, “just off Sunset Plaza. There aren’t any offices up there. He must be working from his house.”
“Thanks, Wyl.”
“Anytime,” he said. “Well, cheerio.” Make it six Manhattans.
Thirty years ago the Valley was mostly Anglo, with a few Hispanic pockets tucked in to supply a work force in the remnants of the orange groves and tomato farms that once stretched, fragrant and fruitful, across its broad floor. Now, in the flatlands north of Ventura Boulevard, most of the Anglos had followed the orchards into memory. The faces in the cars and on the sidewalks were brown, black, and occasionally yellow. The new cash crop seemed to be the minimall, motley collections of unrelated businesses shoveled into cramped, fanciful stucco structures with too few parking spaces. The donut shops and the nail parlors were run by Vietnamese, and most of the video stores offered peliculas en espanol. Two Latino kids leaned out of the window of a primo seventies Oldsmobile and whistled appreciatively at Alice. “Bitchen Buick,” the driver called. Then, when the light changed, he laid rubber all over the street. Some things hadn’t changed.
Elena Aguirre’s house was one of a set of five on Hesperia Street, as identical as grapes in a bunch. The contractor had attempted to disguise the limitations of his imagination by photocopying the same blueprint five times, throwing the copies into the air, and then building the houses however the plans landed. Some sported their front doors on the left and some on the right, suggesting quintuplets who parted their hair differently. Some faced the street and some sat sideways. They were painted a remarkable range of colors that extended from old mustard to new mustard. In the daylight, I thought, they’d look like Schultz’s teeth.
Each house apparently served as the Mother Ship to three or four automobiles. The half-acre of pink primer on the fenders and doors offered a complement of catsup for all that mustard. I found a parking space opposite the address I’d copied from the phone booth and sat there, wondering what to do.
The scene with Spurrier played and replayed in my mind. He’d let me off easy; I didn’t really think my threat of revelation had been anything but transparent. On the other hand, a man like Spurrier was likely to have a veritable convention of skeletons in his closet. And then there was Spurrier’s closet itself-the one he was in, according to the man in The Zipper. Not likely to look for help, Schultz had said.
No one went in or out of Elena Aguirre’s house. No lights were on.
Had it been Elena, or Marta herself who had hung up on me?
By now Marta knew about Max’s death. I asked myself what I would do, if I were an illegal alien whose boss had been murdered, and I decided I’d do exactly what Marta was doing. I’d go to ground and stay there. But would I go to ground in my cousin’s house?
I would if I didn’t have anyplace else to go. Did Marta? For all I knew, she was back in San Salvador by now.
Why did I keep replaying the conversation with Spurrier? There was nothing remarkable about it. He’d wanted something from me that I was already prepared to give him, and when I finally gave it to him, he recognized it for what it was: a pawn waiting to be sacrificed. He’d almost laughed in my face. And I’d almost laughed back, and that was why I kept holding the encounter up to the light.
I hadn’t been terrified. My mind hadn’t overloaded and shut down, my stomach hadn’t rebelled. I’d faced him down, both of us playing games and both of us seeing through the other’s game, and I’d walked away from it with no more damage than a new bandage on my arm, a broken taillight, and a car that needed washing. I could have regarded myself as whole again, if it hadn’t been for one thing.
It wasn’t Spurrier who terrified me. It was the kid in the dark, the kid with the friendly voice and the carpet cutter.
Headlights swept the street, and a no-color Hyundai, as dented and puckered as a raisin, pulled into Elena Aguirre’s driveway and a woman in blue jeans and a white T-shirt got out, lugging a pillowcase full of something soft and heavy: laundry. She was of medium height, and her dark hair reached midback. Elena, probably. She walked very briskly, back straight despite the weight of the load thrown over her shoulder, to the front door. All business, she dug through a ring of keys and did the necessary. Three locks, a lot of locks but not excessive for Reseda these days. She went into the house and pulled the door closed without so much as a glance around.
Wouldn’t she look around if her cousin were hiding there? I decided she would and started the car. I’d pulled it out of the space and turned it around before I realized that no lights had gone on in the house.
So maybe she went to the back.
Maybe the electricity was off.
Maybe the Farm Boy was in there, waiting for her.
Shit. I backed into the space again and got out of the car.
It wasn’t a wide street, but it seemed to take several minutes to cross. One small blessing: The builder had economized on windows, so I could edge around the side of the house without having to duck down more than once, as I passed a cheap, rectangular, aluminum-framed sliding affair that probably opened onto a dining room or a bedroom. Elena’s car exhaled heat, creaking and popping behind me.