End Time (15 page)

On the way they stopped at a florist and bought $800 worth of flowers, about ten bundles, wrapped in clear cellophane—all the flowers the place had.

The Cremation Society was a single-story ranch house with a touch of Spanish mission about it; wide entranceway arches under terra-cotta roof tiles. Clean, functional. A Taco Bell for the dead. Bhakti chose an open pine casket. He removed the wrappings from the flowers and laid them on Janet's folded hands, piling them inside the open box.

Then he chose to witness Janet's cremation, Cheryl with him, both watching through the fireproof glass window as the gas jets released the poor girl's soul.

The mangled body of his daughter under the large pile of flowers caught fire, but Bhakti did not look away. Instead he began to chant the “Antim Ardas,” the final rite of the dead, the soft Punjab dialect filling the viewing room:
“In the Lord's fear, the wind and breezes ever blow. In the Lord's fear, thousands of rivers flow.”

As they waited for the ashes to cool Bhakti picked an urn from a leather-bound catalogue. A Nambe urn, a kind of silver metal alloy that never lost its shine; he chose the shape of an hourglass. He knew the metal—knowing metals was part of his job. Mostly aluminum, but Nambe, Inc., kept the formula secret. The urn radiated a kind of eternal, timeless beauty, the luster of silver and the durability of iron; it didn't so much remind him of Janet, but a kind of invulnerability, an exoskeleton—giving her all the protection in eternity he failed so miserably to give her in real life.

“I'm sure her mother will like that too,” Cheryl comforted him. They were sitting in his SUV outside the crematorium, the urn in the open driver's well between the front seats. Bhakti stared at the silver hourglass, and his hand strayed to its smooth sides.

“Her mother's about to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Connecticut. I talked to Eleanor's sister Lauren last night. She tried to reach me three times yesterday, and when I didn't answer…”
Didn't answer what? Where the hell are you?
A conversation that started with outrage at Bhakti's not being there and ended somewhere in tears and anguish.

What were the odds that Bhakti had found Janet about the same time Guy and Lauren Poole were driving crazy Eleanor to the Bridgeport Hospital? Things happen in threes or just all at once? The latter, it seemed. In any case, Bhakti had faced a choice: find Janet or chase Eleanor.

“Things got confused, and my in-laws are very angry. There are a lot of bills I have to straighten out. They didn't even know Janet was…” He couldn't say the word
dead.
He went on instead, “When Janet vanished, Eleanor left too, but … I kept looking for Janet.” He stared out the windshield at nothing. “Then Eleanor, my wife, got up from her wheelchair that first night, got up for the first time in ten years, and drove to her sister's up north in our other car—” Bhakti stopped, realizing how crazy this sounded.

He shook his head in subdued dismay. Then sighed. He shifted the subject, asking Cheryl, “What were you doing when I showed up at your door?”

The lady cop powered down her passenger window and rested her head against the car frame; somehow it was easier to think things, say certain things, through an open window.

“Putting in my two weeks' notice with the highway patrol,” she said slowly; then in final resignation, “Getting a divorce.”

She went silent for a moment.

“What are you going to do now?” Bhakti asked her. Cheryl looked at him. “What are
you
going to do?”

*   *   *

Half an hour later found them sitting at Canter's Deli. Same table and chair as Herman the cop union lawyer. Bhakti even ate the same bloody thing. Cottage cheese and a peach half. Cheryl had heard bits and pieces, but now she heard Bhakti's whole mad tale. The vanishing, the back and forth search along the border, Eleanor getting up from the wheelchair, the burned-down Chen house and hematite earrings. Even Madame Zelda, Senora Malvedos. What a crazy story.

Thing was, Bhakti had Cheryl hook, line, and sinker at, “I woke up at three a.m. and just knew something was wrong.”

So when he told his newfound cop buddy about the kiddy Felix the Cat song on his BlackBerry and that one of the girls, Lila Chen, might still be alive—it crept up Cheryl like slow strangulation. Maybe she'd been too late for the chopped girl in the orange Chevy because she'd never followed one Felix lead to the next; maybe if she—

Her heart-attack sandwich came and she felt her chest tighten. Same as before—corned beef and chopped liver. Idly Cheryl slipped her napkin to her lap. That grinning Felix face smiled up at her; yet another urban artistic anarchist had drawn a version of the cat right on the tabletop in black pen. Indelible black pen. The restaurant had just been covering it up with a napkin until they could get a new table. The pressure in her chest blossomed for a moment, then dissipated to nothing.…

But now a thought crystallized in her mind. With both of their lives altered by the grinning cat, with both Bhakti and herself working the case—

Find the girl, Lila Chen. That's what they'd do. Bhakti was on a mission, and Cheryl wanted in. To somehow give Sweet Janet her final rest by finding the other little lost lamb. A worthy goal. How they got to this place in their minds didn't seem so complicated. More like an unspoken decision, over a canned peach and half-eaten sandwich.
We will proceed
.

Now.

Find Lila Chen alive. And they'd find those who killed Janet.

For Cheryl the rest of the nagging details of daily life—splitting with Rachel, moving her stuff back east to Poughkeepsie—somehow fell into place. She kissed Rachel good-bye, and Rachel promised one of her property lawyer colleagues would somehow protect them from the vampire wrongful death suit by the terribly aggrieved family of the arm-chopper choir boy, Ricardo Montoya.

Rachel seemed resigned, sad—but with a look in her that seemed to say,
Cheryl, you always have a place here. I'll wait.
But Cheryl didn't know what to tell her; more like,
Don't wait up.
Words best left unspoken.

Bhakti picked and paid for a motel in Escondido as base command—the Holiday Inn. And yeah, they even shared a room. Privacy didn't seem to matter; the Punjabi materials engineer seemed to have been raised in the Queen's Own Privy Guard, more considerate than even Rachel, a stickler for hygiene protocol—God, the guy even rinsed out the sink after he combed his whiskers or brushed his teeth, and put the toilet seat down. Now, that was well housebroken.

The only things she kept of her past life were her uniform blues, her CHiPs motorcycle gear, and her sidearm. Since she'd given notice at the department, they put her on zero shifts and zero duties, and with a little of Herman's finagling she didn't have to turn in her shield until the last day. So for the first lap of their search she did it on her BMW, in uniform hooked into Dispatch, and that helped when talking to scumbags. While Bhakti followed along in the black rental SUV.

*   *   *

The first few stops on their search were rudimentary police work: buttonholing snitch types hanging around the Felix scat on walls and toilet stalls, a bodega, a bar—they'd found a picture of Lila on Facebook, and used it. But for a couple of days no luck.

Their first hit was a handyman for some local bangers, his curbside office a bare sidewalk in South LA by a smiley Felix spray-painted in an alley. Street dealers always knew what was going on. The one they found was a kid about fifteen, doing the
Hi-Bye
,
how you doin'? Whassup? Catch you later
act for curbside cruisers and passersby that crossed his shadow. A very handy man.

The young dealer jumped up and down and waved his arms like a gooney bird as Cheryl idled her BMW bike and climbed off. He didn't try to run; he was a scarecrow for the lookouts with binoculars. The head-shop lads watching from a nearby building would see him prancing about and knew the heat had showed her face. Time to split. Shut down. Set up shop somewhere else. In forty seconds their rat trap would be an empty shell. And nobody'd bother with their front man, as he was only a kid. No point in booking.

Cheryl escorted the young lad into an alley, unholstered her Glock, and put it in his mouth. The kid's eyes widened, but he wasn't that scared. Probably happened to him before. Nothing like a little experience to take the edge off critical moments. It was her buddy, the nerdy tagalong—the one in the chinos, polo shirt, and cheap pull-on loafers like Abdul from the local dollar store—that looked scared. Like he hadn't expected this bitch cop to pull a gun.

Cheryl spoke to her new buddy very slowly and deliberately, “Look, cuz. I don't care about your business. I don't care about your homey's pixie-dust empire. I think with a little luck you're going to grow up and have a great future in commercial real estate. What I care about is a girl. We're looking for a girl. Chinese. About eighteen. Not from around here. So I want you to go to the boss and pick a place to meet. Here's my cell number. He's gonna talk to me about the pimps. Not the regular pimps, the weird ones. The ones nobody wants to know. Understand?”

The kid understood.

“Now empty your pockets.”

The kid emptied his pockets. Little vials and twisted baggies came out in his hands. A nice haul.

“On the ground.”

The vials and baggies were put on the ground in a small pile. Cheryl the bitch cop carefully crushed them with her boot, spreading the pixie-dust around. The kid's face dropped, but he knew this drill. This was the fishhook into the boss.

“So you can tell him, I'll double the price on whatever you spilled on the ground today. Looks about a thousand. So for a ten-minute meet he can have 2K. Got it? Make the call, we'll hang at the Dunkin' Donuts. Just keep in sight.”

The kid nodded. “Cool.”

Bitch Cop Cheryl kept one of the vials. Held it up to the light, examining. It didn't look like regular crank or rock. It had a strange shimmer to it, sort of rainbow sparks.

“What are you peddling?”

The handyman preened a little. “You haven't seen it yet, have you, mamacita? It's the new Dr Pepper. Like the ad, y'know? I'm a Pepper. He's a Pepper.” The boy glanced at Bhakti. Then back at the smart lady cop. “Wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?” When she didn't respond the lad answered her question in a more conventional way. “They call it Big D, chica. It's Dalekto. It's delicious. It's delightful. You take a snoot, you'll dig it.”

“Maybe another time.”

The call from Super Fly came about five minutes into a coffee and doughnut.

“You got my money?”

“We will. Do you take a check?”

A pause. “You're one crazy bitch. I could get to know
you
.”

“Get to know me now.”

*   *   *

The limousine pulled up to Cheryl's bike in the parking lot of the Escondido Holiday Inn around dusk. Bhakti had retired to his SUV, but got out when the long black car stopped by the curb. The window rolled down an inch, and the voice came out. “Why look, if it isn't Snarky and Putz.”

Bhakti looked a little confused. Cheryl snorted. “I don't think he watches many cop shows,” she said through the partially open window. “We can go into the bar if you want.” But no reply came from inside the car. Then after a moment the shiny car door unlatched and swung open. Under the sodium lights of the motel apron, Cheryl and Bhakti slid into the spacious back of Mr. Bossman's limo and let their eyes adjust.

The guy wasn't much of a Super Fly: no flash, no gold bling-bling. A Banka-Gangsta; he wore an Armani suit and Testoni crocodile loafers. Size 48 and 12, respectively. But not a fat man. Nice, polite, tight, and controlled.

He measured the two guests in his private mobile office for a few silent moments. “You want a soda? A Perrier? A Dr Pepper?”

Bhakti swallowed hard, like his throat was parched. Shook his head but didn't dare to speak—he'd never been this close to a criminal before. The Banka-Gangsta smiled and wagged his head a little and looked at the Punjabi scientist. “When we're done here, you let the officer from the highway patrol take you into the mall and get some clothes. You can't walk around like that. With those rubber shoes with the fake stitching and ten-dollar Costco shirts. I mean, the only thing you're missing is the leaky pens in a pocket protector.”

Bhakti glanced at himself, up and down. Then said, frankly enough, “They're in my laptop case.”

At which point both the Banka-Gangsta and Cheryl erupted in laughter.

“Where'd you find this guy, Sistah?”

Cheryl shrugged. “I found his girl. Then he found me. Sort of an accident.”

“That the girl you looking for? What's up with that? Did your buddy, Hadji here, marry a Chinee?”

Cheryl shook her head no, then showed him the Facebook photo of Lila Chen. “We think she's still alive.”

The Banka-Gangsta lit a cigarette and flipped on the reading light behind his head. He put on a pair of reading glasses and stared at the photo of the Chen girl for a long time. He sighed, a stream of smoke shooting from his nostrils and then the remnants from his mouth.

“A lot of girls come through LA. You know that. I mean this is Booty-City. All the starry-eyes going for Hollywood and getting holy wood instead. You got the Spics runnin'—” He broke off, didn't mean to insult Cheryl, figuring she was who-knows-what. “Sorry. I didn't mean anything.” He came back to the point. “Look, the Chinese and Japs and Koreans, they got gambling, protection, loan shark, yeah—but they're not crazy about anybody messing with their sweet stuff. Y'know it's a family thing. They'll marry a seventy-year-old to a fourteen-year-old before they'll put high-class poon out for bids. Take care of the brothers and uncles too. No kidding. Arranged marriage.
Wild,
right?”