“Palaniappans!”
“Whatever. You had the one conversation and now you think they’re out to get you, because the daughter looks like a woman you caught the clap from back in the day.”
“It wasn’t the clap, it was some kind of…I don’t know. Some kind of Filipino gunge. And that’s not why they’re doing this. It’s because, I think, I started sniffing around, trying to figure out what’s going on with Bungalow eleven.”
Ashford grunts again, this time in amusement. “Man, I can’t wait to get your drug screen back.”
“You’re going to be disappointed,” Cliff says. “I’m not high, I’m not drunk. I’m not even fucking dizzy.”
Ashford attempts to stare him down, doubtless seeking to find a chink in the armor. He makes a clicking noise with his tongue. “So tell me again what happened after you and Marley left the Surfside.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“You go that way, you’re not doing yourself any good.”
“How much good am I doing myself sitting here, letting you nitpick my answers, trying to find inconsistencies that don’t exist? Fuck you, Ashford. I want a lawyer.”
Ashford turtles his neck, glowers at Cliff and says, “You think you’re back in Hollywood? The cops out there, they let you talk to them that way?”
Cliff gays up his delivery. “They’re lovely people. The LAPD is renowned for its hospitality. As for where I think I am, I trust I’m among guardians of the public safety.”
Ashford’s breathing heavies and Cliff, interpreting this as a sign of extreme anger, says, “Look, man. I know what I told you sounds freaky, but you’re not even giving it a chance. You’ve made up your mind that I did something to Marley, and nothing I say’s going to talk you out of it. Lawyering up’s my only option.”
Ashford settles back in his chair, calmer now. “All right. I’ll listen. What do you think I should do about the Palnappians?”
“That’s Palaniappans.”
Ashford shrugs.
“If it were me,” says Cliff, “I’d have a look round Bungalow Eleven. I’d ask some questions, find out what’s happening in there.”
“What do you think is happening?”
“Jesus Christ!” Cliff throws up his hands in frustration, and closes his eyes.
“Seriously,” says Ashford. “I want to know, because from what you’ve told me, I don’t have a clue.”
“I don’t know, okay?” says Cliff. “But I don’t think it’s anything good.”
“Do you allow for the possibility that nothing’s going on? That given everything you’ve said, the multiple occupancies, the sign, the vehicles disappearing…” Ashford pauses. “Can you remember any of the vehicles that disappeared? The makes and models?”
“I’m not sure they’ve disappeared. I haven’t been able to check. But if not, they must be piling up back there. But yeah, I remember most of them.”
Ashford tears a clean page from his notebook, shoves it and a pen across the table. “Write them down. The model, the color…the year if you know it.”
Cliff scribbles a list, considers it, makes an addition, then passes the sheet of paper to Ashford, who looks it over.
“This is a pretty precise list,” he says.
“It’s the job. I tend to notice what people drive.”
Ashford continues to study the list. “These are expensive cars. The Ford Escape, that’s one of those hybrids, right?”
“Uh-huh. New this year.”
Ashford folds the paper, sticks it in his notebook. “So. What I was saying, do you think there could be a reasonable explanation for all this? Something that has nothing to do with a witch and a movie? Something that makes sense in terms someone like me could accept?”
This touch of self-deprecation fuels the idea that Ashford may be smarter than Cliff has assumed. “It’s possible,” he says, but after a pause he adds, “No. Fuck, no. You had…”
A peremptory knocking on the door interrupts Cliff. With a disgruntled expression, Ashford heaves up to his feet and pokes his head out into the corridor. After a prolonged, muttering exchange with someone Cliff can’t see, Ashford throws the door open wide and says flatly, “You can go for now, Coria. We’ll be in touch.”
Baffled, Cliff asks, “What is it? What happened?”
“Your girlfriend’s alive. She’s out by the front desk.”
Cliff’s relief is diluted by his annoyance over Ashford’s refusal to accept that he and Marley are not lovers, but before he can once again deny the assertion, Ashford says, “Your house is still a crime scene. You might want to hang out somewhere for a few hours until we’ve finished processing.”
Cliff gives him a what-the-fuck look, and Ashford, with more than a hint of the malicious in his voice, says, “We have to find out who that blood belongs to, don’t we?”
Chapter 6
IN THE ENTRYWAY of the police station, Marley mothers Cliff, hugging and fussing over him, attentions that he welcomes, but once in the car she waxes outraged, railing at the cops and their rush to judgment. Christ Almighty! She woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so she went to a diner and did some brooding. You’d think the cops would have more sense. You’d think they would look before they leaped.
“It’s my fault,” Cliff says. “I called them.”
She shoots him a puzzled glance. “Why’d you do that?”
He remembers that she knows nothing about the Black Demon, the blood, the slit porch screen.
“You left the door open,” he says. “I was worried.”
“I did not! And even if I did, that’s no reason to call the cops.”
“Yeah, well. There was weird shit going on last night. I got hit by vandals, and that made me nervous.”
They stop at a 7-11 so Cliff can buy a clean t-shirt—it’s a tough choice between a white one with a cartoon decal and the words Surf Naked, and a gray one imprinted with a fake college seal and the words Screw U. He settles on the gray, deciding it makes a more age-appropriate statement. They go for breakfast at a restaurant on North Atlantic, and then to Marley’s studio apartment, which is close by. The Lu-Ray Apartments, a brown stucco building overlooking the ocean and the boardwalk—with the windows open, Cliff can hear faint digital squeals and roars from a video arcade that has a miniature golf course atop its roof. It’s a drizzly, overcast morning and, with its patched greens and dilapidated obstacles, a King Kong, a troll, a dragon that spits sparks whenever someone makes a hole-in-one, etcetera, the course has an air of post-apocalyptic decay. The dead Ferris wheel beside it emphasizes the effect.
Marley’s place is tomboyishly Spartan, a couple of surfboards on the wall, a Ramones poster, a wicker throne with a green cushion, a small TV with some Mardi Gras beads draped over it, a queen-size box spring and mattress covered by a dark blue spread. The only sign of femininity is that the apartment is scrupulously clean, not a speck of dust, the stove and refrigerator in the kitchenette gleaming. Marley tells Cliff to take the bed, she has to do some stuff, and sits cross-legged in the wicker chair, pecking at her laptop. He closes his eyes, surrendering to fatigue, fading toward sleep; but his thoughts start to race and sleep won’t come. He tries to put a logical spin on everything that happened, works out various theories that would accommodate what he saw. The only one that suits is that he’s losing it, and he’s not ready to go there. Finally, he opens his eyes. Marley’s still pecking away, her face concentrated by a serious expression. In her appearance and mien, she reminds him of girls he knew in LA in the eighties, many of them weekend punkers, holding down a steady job during the week, production assistants and set dressers and such, and then, on Friday night, they’d dress down, wear black lipstick and too much mascara, and go batshit crazy. But those girls were all fashion punks with a life plan and insurance and solid prospects, whereas Marley’s a true edge-dweller with a punk ethos, living paycheck to paycheck, secure in herself, a bit of dreamer, though her practical side shows itself from time to time—for a week or two she’ll binge on schemes to resurrect her fiscal security; then, Pffft!, it all goes away and she’s carefree and careless again.