Ellen went into the dining area and came back with a coaster and a napkin. She put the coaster on the coffee table in front of me and the napkin on the arm of the couch by my hand. “There,” she said.
Poitras came back and asked for her side of it. When he saw the Chivas bottle he gave me a look. I gave him a look back.
Ellen spoke slowly, in short, declarative sentences, describing how two men had approached her in the Ralph’s parking lot, forced her into the backseat of their car, and taped a sack over her head. One of them was the tattooed man. They drove around for a while, Mexican music playing and one of them occasionally patting her rump, until they arrived at the Beachwood house. They told her that Mort had stolen cocaine from them and that they had killed him and would kill her, too, if she didn’t tell them where Mort had hidden the dope. They wouldn’t believe her when she told them she didn’t know what they were talking about. They put a gun to her head and snapped the trigger and touched her breasts and between her legs and threatened to rape her, though they hadn’t. One of them, the fat one, brought in Perry and slapped the boy repeatedly while the other asked her about the drugs. She screamed for them to leave Perry alone, but they wouldn’t, and that was when she told them that Mort had hidden the cocaine but that now I had it. After that, another man came and they took the boy away and hadn’t brought him back.
I watched her tell it and sipped at the Chivas and felt bad. Once when she mentioned Perry her voice broke. Other than that, she was fine. I decided she’d started out a pretty tough lady, back there in Kansas. So tough she took life-with-Mort on the chin for so long that it finally changed her into what Janet Simon had dragged into my office three days ago. I wondered if she could heal back to the person she had been. Could anyone, ever?
When she finished, Poitras ticked his fingers on his belt buckle and frowned at me. “Can you talk or are you incoherent?”
I sampled more of the scotch. Chivas ain’t so bad no matter what they say. Probably just elitists, anyway.
Poitras excused himself to Ellen, then got up, and we went over to the kitchen. I brought my drink. He poured himself a cup of coffee and stared at me for a while. “You think Lang took the dope?”
I said, “I think Mort’s lousy for it. I see him for the patsy. It’s either inside or it’s Garrett Rice or it’s both. I’m thinking Duran’s guys would be smarter than to try to screw the old man, so that puts it on Rice.”
Poitras nodded. “We been trying to find him.”
“Aha.” My voice was loud.
Poitras looked at me. He didn’t like what he saw a whole lot. “We talked with your friend Kimberly Marsh. Her boyfriend looked like he’d had a little trouble.”
“Clumsy, that guy.” It was getting tough to stand up straight, but I was doing okay.
Poitras said, “You think she had anything to do with it?”
“She’d go for it,” I said. “Only she had no way to get away with it. Party like that, she’d be dressed sexy, showing as much skin as she could, no big pockets, no big purse, no way to hide four and a half pounds of dust.”
He tapped his belt some more. “So now Duran has the boy.”
I took more of the scotch and looked across the dining area out the glass doors. A police helicopter was pulling a tight orbit somewhere over Hollywood, its big spot tracking something on the ground.
Poitras said, “You asked me how much weight Duran could carry, remember? That was when I asked you if this had anything to do with Morton Lang, and you lied?”
I looked at him. He was angry. He was also out of focus.
“We’ve got files since 1964 connecting Duran to the Rudy Gambino family, operating out of Phoenix and Los Angeles,” he said. “He’s what the feds call a clean associate. Duran won’t set up a dope deal or muscle into a business, but he invests through a guy like Gambino. The feds have been trying to bust Duran for years, only they can’t because he keeps himself clean. They’ve got him placed as an investor with dope up from Colombia, with hotel kickbacks in Phoenix and Tucson. He owns a couple of banks in Mexico City and he’s on the board of a bank in New Orleans. Gambino launders his Gulf Coast pornography take through Duran’s New Orleans bank and gives Duran a cut. It goes on like that. This give you some idea what kind of weight he can handle?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.” Poitras walked away from me, back into the living room. “Mrs. Lang, who was the man who came and took your son?”
She said, “I don’t think they called him by name. He spoke to the other men in Spanish, then he told Perry they were leaving. He said that in English with a different accent. It wasn’t Spanish.”
“That would be the Eskimo,” I said.
Poitras said to her, “Did you see anyone who might’ve been Domingo Duran, or did any of the men in the house refer to him?”
She looked at me with a little bit of the fear back in her eyes. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“He isn’t liking it. He’s coming in late in the game and we’ve got bad cards.”
“You got no cards at all.” Poitras looked big and grim and ominous, like the Michelin Man with a bad headache. He said, “You should’ve put me in on this as soon as you suspected, Elvis.”
Ellen Lang said, “What’re you talking about? What’s wrong?” The first bright tinge of panic.
I said, “What’s wrong is that Duran can beat what we have. He’s kept himself away from it except for me and he can beat my story easy enough if people in the right place are willing to say the wrong thing. They will be. My statement gives the cops probable cause to go in to Duran’s, but Duran won’t have Perry in his home. He’ll deny everything, and all we’ve done is jeopardize Perry with nothing but a guy named Sanchez to show for it.” It came out harder than I liked, but I was angry with Poitras and too drunk to handle it.
Lou said, “That’s about it.”
Ellen Lang got white and the corner of her mouth with the red mark began to tremble. I put my hand over hers and squeezed. Her jaw clenched and the trembling stopped. “I’m all right,” she said.
The phone rang and Poitras went back into the kitchen for it. I poured some of the Chivas into Ellen’s coffee cup and put it in her hand. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. “Trust me. It’ll work out.” I gave her my everything-under-control smile. She didn’t look convinced. Maybe it’s tough for a drunk to look convincing. I saw the Eskimo put a size 18 hand on the boy’s shoulder. I saw them walk out to the long black limo. I saw the limo disappearing into the high desert hills. I saw Domingo Duran, jabbing his sword toward the hills, saying Then other men will come, and put your body there, where you will not be found.
I spilled another inch of Chivas into my glass, then went into the kitchen so Ellen Lang couldn’t see me drink it. Poitras was talking in that low mumble cops use that only other cops can hear and understand. After a while he hung up and said, “Okay. You left two in the house, like you thought. Fat guy in the hall and another one in the living room. The house is listed to a man named Louis Foley. The neighbors up there say Foley moved to Seattle two months ago and that the house has been up for sale. Your guys probably just pulled up the sign and cracked the lock box.”
“That’s great. They’ll promote you to Lieutenant along with Baishe for this kinda work.”
He looked at me. “You’re pushing it, Hound Dog.”
“And you’re acting like an asshole with that woman in there. She’s been through hell and all you got to say is a lot of bullshit about how I didn’t call you in and how we got nothing. Negative bullshit that she doesn’t need to deal with. She’s missing a child, Poitras. She’s lost her husband.”
I was very close to him. His big face was calm. He said, “Take a step back, Elvis.”