“That’s true.”
She touched different volumes. “I know some of these. I read the histories of King Arthur when I was in college. I worked as a teacher’s aide. I read them to the children when the teachers went on break.”
“I’ll bet you enjoyed that.”
“Yes.” Ellen turned to me from the books. “Was Mr. Pike really a policeman?”
I was impressed. “He must like you. I’ve never known him to tell that to anyone.”
“Then he was.”
“For a while. Pike will never lie to you. You don’t have to doubt anything he says.”
“He says he’s a professional soldier.”
“He has gun shop in Culver City. He owns the agency with me. But sometimes he goes to places like El Salvador or Botswana or the Sudan. So I guess that makes him a part-time professional soldier.”
“Was he in Vietnam with you?”
“Not with me. He was in the Marines. We didn’t meet until after we’d mustered out and were back here in L.A. Pike was riding in a black-and-white. I was working with George Feider. We met on the job. When Pike and the cops parted company, I made the offer.”
“He told me he wasn’t a successful policeman.”
“He wasn’t successful, but he was outstanding. Pike and some of the cops he worked with had what we might call a grave philosophical difference. Guy like Pike, philosophy is all. He rode a black-and-white for three years and for three years he was outstanding. Even splendid. He just wasn’t successful.”
“He likes you quite a bit.”
“That’s the Marine. Marines are all fairies at heart.”
“Did he get those tattoos in Vietnam?”
“Yeah.”
“What for?”
“Ask him.”
“I did. He said I wouldn’t understand.”
“Joe’s got a little credo he lives by. Never back up. That’s what the arrows on his shoulders are for. They point forward. They keep him from backing up.”
She stared at the end of the sofa. “I understand that.”
I finished the pineapple juice and crushed the can. “Don’t let Joe get to you. Life is very simple to him, but it isn’t always the way he’d like it to be. Part of his problem with the cops.”
She nodded but didn’t look any less empty.
“Think of a samurai,” I said. “A warrior who requires order. That’s Pike.”
“The arrows.”
“Yeah. The arrows allow him to impose order on chaos. A professional soldier needs that.”
She thought about it. “And that’s what you are?”
“Not me. I’m just a private cop. I am also the antithesis of order.”
“He said you were a better soldier than he. He said you won a lot of decorations in the war.”
“Ha ha, that Pike. You see what a card that guy is? A million laughs.”
“He said you’d deny it.”
“A scream, that guy.”
“He said that everything of any real value that he’s learned, he’s learned from you.”
“Flip it to channel 11, wouldja?” I said. “I think Wheel of Fortunes on.”
She stared at me for a very long time. She didn’t change the channel. “I can’t be the person I was anymore, can I?”
I gave her gentle eyes. “No.”
She nodded, but probably not to me. “All right,” she said. “I can understand that, too.”
30
When Joe got back he had a bottle of Dalmane and six Valiums. We put out the red beans and rice and cornbread, and ate. Ellen stared at her plate and said, “I’ve never eaten a ham hock before,” so I slit the skin and showed her how to get out the meat.
She ate quietly and completely, finishing what Pike put on her plate. Joe and I drank beer, Ellen had milk. I pointed out a few of the more uproarious ironies of life, but neither Ellen nor Joe showed much in the way of appreciation. I was used to it from Pike.
We finished the meal, did the dishes, then went into the living room. No one said more than five words at a time. I put on a Credence Clearwater album, then went into the entry closet and came back wearing my Groucho Marx nose.
“Appropriate, as always,” Pike said, then went out onto the deck. Ellen smiled once, then looked away. After a while I took off the nose and picked up Valdez Is Coming
I was almost through it when Ellen made a hoarse sighing sound from her end of the couch. When I looked up, her eyes were red and tears dripped down her cheeks. I reached across and touched her leg. She took my fingers and said, “What did they do to make him scream like that?”
Pike stepped in off the deck. I slid across the couch and held Ellen for a while, until she asked for two of the Dalmane and said she would go up to bed. I went up with her and stood at the foot until the Dalmane had done its work, then I shut the light and went down.
Pike said, “I like her.”
“You told her you were on the cops.”
“I like her a lot.”
I got two Falstaff from the box. We offed all the lights in the house, turned the stereo low, then went out onto the deck. A couple of cars moved through the canyon roads to the south and east, appearing then disappearing behind the houses that dotted the hillside. The coyotes were quiet.
Pike hung his feet off the deck. I joined him. Just like Tom and Huck.
I said, “Duran’s spotter had a good deer rifle, we’d be history.”
“Maybe.”
We sat. Heavy clouds blocked out the moon and most of the stars. You could smell the coming rain in the air. Springsteen sang about tough kids and broken hearts on KLSX.
I said, “Remember the other day, when I said Mort had given himself up?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t. She did.”
“I know.”
“She’s over the edge right now. Mort, the kid, who she is. She doesn’t have as much self-esteem as a piece of bread.” Pike’s beer can raised, tilted, lowered. “I want her to make it back,” I said.
“Unh-huh.”
I took a pull on my Falstaff. “Does it strike you odd that Duran’s giving me so much time to turn over his dope?”
“It does.”
“Like maybe he knows I don’t have it, but he’s using me to find it for him.”
“Unh-huh.”
“Joe, how the hell can you see at night with the sunglasses?”
“I am one with the night.” Raise, tilt, lower. You never know whether he’s serious. “Duran wants you to find the dope because he doesn’t know how. If he tells his people to find something, all they know how to do is rack ass. That doesn’t get you very far, and maybe eliminates someone with some important information.”
“It would’ve been easier to hire me.”
“Maybe.”
“Only maybe I won’t hire, and I turn it over to the cops.”
“He probably shit himself, thinking about that one.”
I nodded and sipped the beer and listened to Springsteen’s courage flow into Mellencamp’s raucous honesty. “Joseph, what have you learned from me?”
“Good things.”
“Like what?”
He didn’t answer. I finished the Falstaff, then crimped the can square and crushed it. “A guy like Duran, worth a couple hundred million, a hundred K can’t be worth the hassle.”
“He’s not doing it for the money.”
“That’s what I don’t like. Maybe we’re all just running out of time. Maybe Duran says to hell with it and smokes the kid and the rest of us.”
Pike finished his beer, set the can on the deck. Pike never crushes cans. I guess he’s man enough without that. “Maybe you should find the dope before that happens.”
A big splat sounded behind me, then again to my left, then something wet hit my forehead. Joe stood up. “Good time for a walk.”
He went in through the living room and let himself out the kitchen door, locking it behind. I picked up our cans and went in out of the rain. My father, rest him, would’ve been proud.
The rain slapped at the deck and ran down along the glass. When I was little, I would sit in my window and watch the rain and feel easy and at peace. I didn’t feel that way often anymore, though I kept trying out windows and rainstorms and probably always would.
I turned the stereo off, put on the lamp at the head of the couch, stretched out, and finished Valdez. Much later, Pike let himself into the kitchen, moving like a dark shadow across the edges of the lamplight. He put muddy Nikes in the sink, peeled out of his wet shirt and wet pants and went into the little bathroom. “You up?” A voice in the dark.