Leo spoke into the silence, breaking the spell.
"I'm not sure you're going to like it, though."
Cassie swallowed back a catch in her throat.
"How come?"
"We'll talk about it when I see you."
"When and where?"
"Just come here. But make it soon. Either tonight or tomorrow first thing. This has to go down by tomorrow night or we lose it."
"All right, tonight after work. You still in the same place?"
"Always. One last thing. I'm turning on the memo button on the phone machine here so I have this on tape. Kid, you know I love you but it's been a long time. Don't get insulted, because this is just a precaution. Ever since Linda Tripp and Monica Lewinsky, it's standard operating practice around here. Here goes. Are you currently working with any law enforcement agency at this time?"
"Leo…"
"Don't say my name. Just answer the question. I'm sorry but this is a precaution I have to take. People been settin' traps right and left out there."
"No, Leo, I'm not. If I wanted to set you up I could have done it back before I spent the nickel at High Desert. Everybody and their brother wanted me to make a deal then. But I didn't."
"You sure didn't and you know I appreciated it. Didn't I take care of you when I could? What about that PI you wanted to hire – that cost me five grand, you know."
"You took care of me, Leo. I won't forget."
"I wish you'd forget using my name."
"Sorry."
"Okay, good enough. The tape's off. We're good to go. I'll see you in a little while. Take – "
"Did you get the passports?"
A pause.
"Not yet. Next time I'm out I'll make a call to check on that. Okay?"
"Okay, but I need them. Soon."
"I'll deliver the message. See you soon. Take all usual precautions."
After she hung up Cassie's eyes traveled up the wall next to the door. Her eyes held on the poster taped on the wall and facing her. It showed a woman in a string bikini walking on a sun-drenched beach. The word TAHITI! was scrawled in the sand behind her, just out of reach of the surf's wash.
"To the place where the desert is ocean," she said out loud.
7
CASSIE drove west on Sunset. She had the top down on the Porsche. She loved the thrum of the engine coming through the seat and the deep, guttural tones she heard on the curves. At Beverly Glen she turned the Boxster north and followed the winding canyon road over the hill and down into the Valley.
Leo Renfro lived in Tarzana in the flats north of Ventura Boulevard on a street fronting the 101 Freeway. His house was a small, postwar ranch house without any real defining design or style. It was like every other house in his neighborhood and that was exactly the way Leo wanted it. Leo had survived by being nondescript, by blending in.
She drove by the house without braking and then up and down the surrounding blocks, studying every parked vehicle she passed and looking for the telltale signs of a surveillance vehicle: vans with mirrored windows, cars with more than one antenna, pickup trucks with camper shells on the back. One vehicle caught her attention. It was a plumbing repair van, according to the sign painted on the side panel. It sat at the curb in front of a house one block from Leo's house. Cassie passed it without stopping but then turned around and headed back, pulling to the curb and parking a half block from the van. She sat there watching the vehicle and looking for movement behind the glass, a shifting of the suspension as people moved around inside, any indication of life within. Nothing happened but Cassie maintained her vigil for almost ten minutes before she saw a man in a blue jumpsuit come out of the house and approach the van. He opened the side door and climbed inside. A few moments later he carefully lowered a heavy pipe-snaking machine to the road. He then got out, closed and locked the van's door, and pushed the machine toward the front door of the house. He seemed legit to Cassie. She restarted the Porsche, made one more circuit through the neighborhood and then returned to Leo's house. She parked at the curb out front and reminded herself not to buy into Leo's constant paranoid sensibility. She remembered all the rules and precautions he used to lay on her and Max before a job. Don't bet black before a job, don't eat chicken before a job, never wear a red hat and so on and so on. It was all step on a crack, break your mother's back stuff as far as Cassie had been concerned.
Until that last night at the Cleopatra.
When Cassie got to the front door she looked up at the joists of the roof overhang and saw the old bullet camera was still in place. She was wondering if it still worked and got her answer when Leo answered the door before she knocked. She smiled.
"Guess it still works."
" 'Course it does. Had that there goin' on what, eight years now. Person put it there guaranteed it for life and I believed her. Nobody knew her shit better than her."
He smiled.
"How are you, Cassie? Come on in."
He stepped back to let her in. Leo Renfro was in his early forties, with a trim, medium build. He had thinning hair that was already gray. It had been gray when Cassie met him almost a decade earlier. He'd told her then that it was from having to grow up too quickly. He'd practically raised Max, his stepbrother, after their mother died in a drunk-driving accident. Leo's father was an unknown but Max's wasn't. He was in Nevada State doing ten to twenty-five for armed robbery.
Cassie stepped into the house and Leo pulled her into a fast, tight bear hug. It felt good to her. It felt comforting, like home.
"Hey, kid," he said with a somber and loving tone.
"Leo," she said and then pulled back with a concerned look on her face. "I can say your name now, right?"
He laughed and pointed toward the back and started leading the way to where she knew he kept his office in a wood-paneled den off the pool.
"You look good, Cassie. Real good. Like the short hair. Is that sort of a butch thing left over from High Desert? What was it I heard they call the lamb choppers up there, the High Dee Hoes?"
He glanced back at her and winked.
"You look good, too, Leo. Still the same."
He looked back again and they exchanged smiles. It had been years since Cassie had seen him but Leo had barely changed. Maybe a little less hair but still deeply tanned and trim. She assumed he must still be following his regimen of yoga and then morning lap swimming to stay in shape.
In the living room they had to step around a couch that was oddly placed at an angle facing the corner of the room rather than the fireplace. This caused Cassie to look about and she noticed all of the furnishings of the room were positioned strangely, as if the fireplace – the obvious center of the room – were not there.
"Remind me to get your interior designer's number before I leave," she said. "What style is this – postmodern break-in?"
"Hey, I know. I just had the place feng-shuied and this is the best I can do with it. For now."
"Feng what?"
"Feng shui. The Chinese art of harmonic placement. Feng shui."
"Oh."
She thought she remembered reading about feng shui. Something about it being the latest cottage industry in L.A. among the cosmically enlightened.
"This place is doomed," Leo was saying. "Bad vibes in all directions. I feel like Dick Van Dyke – comin' in the door and tripping over the furniture. I should just get out of here. But I've been here so long and I have the pool right here and everything. I don't know what I'm gonna do."
They came to the office. Leo's desk was at one end, next to the row of sliding glass doors that looked out on the pool. Lined along the opposite wall were dozens of cases of champagne. Seeing the stacks of boxes gave Cassie pause. In the past, the Leo Renfro she knew and had worked for would never have stolen property in his own home. He was a middleman who set capers into motion and arranged for the fencing of the merchandise afterward but he almost never came into physical proximity with it unless it was cash. Seeing the champagne right in his office made Cassie question what she was doing there. Maybe things had changed with Leo since Max. She stood in the doorway to the office as if afraid to enter.