"H" Is for Homicide (12 page)

I leaned forward and tapped Luis on the shoulder, trying the only Spanish phrase I'm familiar with. "Uh, habla usted ingles?"

"Shit, lady. What do I look like, a retard?" he said. His English wasn't even spoken with an accent, and I had to wonder if the gangbanger outfit was an affectation.

"Oh. Well, could you pull over at this next corner and let me the fuck out? I gotta make a quick phone call."

This did not produce the desired results.

I kept my tone conversational as I turned to Raymond, placing my mouth up close to his ear. "Excuse me, Raymond. Could you have the guy let me out up here?"

Raymond had run his hand up under Bibianna's skirt, pushing the fabric back, running a finger under the rim of her underpants. There was nothing remotely sexual about it. He was claiming his rights. I could hear her murmuring, "Fantastic… oh, baby, that's great," anything to appease and placate his neediness. The driver caught my eye in the rearview mirror and winked at me conspiratorially. He flipped on the car radio to mask the escalating sounds. Salsa music filled the car. This was repellent.

I was fully prepared to fling myself out, risking concussion and broken bones, just to escape from this brothel of faux fur and religious artifacts. I waited until the car slowed as we approached the on ramp to the freeway, then I slid my hand under the door handle and gave it a yank. Nothing happened. Both of the window cranks had been removed in the rear. I leaned my forehead against the tinted glass, staring out the window. Behind me, I could hear Raymond fumble with his belt buckle and the zipper to his pants. This was worse than an X-rated video. I turned and stared at them.

"God, Bibianna," I said loudly. "How rude! How do you think I feel sitting here while you screw some stud! Why don't you keep your hands to yourself, okay?"

Raymond turned a sex-groggy face toward me, his eyes at half-mast. His mouth seemed gorged, his chin laved in lipstick, his hair standing straight up. The whole car smelled like hormones, sex juice, and underpants. Luis, all a smirk, tried to peer into the backseat through the rearview mirror.

I turned on him savagely. "Hey, Jack. What are you lookin' at?" And then to Raymond. "I'm sorry, Raymond. I know it's not your fault how these people act."

Bibianna pushed herself into an upright position, doing what she could to pull her skirt back into place. She murmured, "Sorry." She had a big hickey on her neck where Raymond had been slurping away on her.

Raymond actually seemed embarrassed, tucking in his shirt. He went through a sequence of behaviors that included the head jerking and the neck rolls.

I plowed right on. "I told her I got a steady boyfriend in the slammer," I said to him. "The last thing I need is watching you two get it on. God. She's got no class." I sat back in the seat, brushing imaginary lint off my black pants.

Raymond pulled out a handkerchief and wiped some of Bibianna's lipstick off his chin. His smile was sheepish. "Take it easy. It's not her fault. She can't help it," he said.

"Well, I get sick of hearing her brag about you. Why can't she keep her opinions to herself?"

"She brags about me?"

"No, Raymond. I'm just saying that to hear myself talk," I said. "I don't suppose I could trouble anybody for some grub. We haven't had breakfast and I'm starving to death."

Raymond leaned forward and gave Luis a thump on the head. "What's the matter with you? Pull off here. Didn't you hear what the lady said?"

Raymond studied me with amusement, talking to Bibianna over his shoulder. "I like your friend, here. She's got some spunk."

"This isn't spunk, Raymond. This is irritation," I said. Bibianna eyed me uneasily, but I was really on a roll. I was making up Hannah's character as I went along, and it was liberating as hell. She was short-tempered, sarcastic, outspoken, and crude. I could get used to this. License to misbehave.

Raymond smiled at me.

"This okay, boss?" Luis, of the handsomely tattooed arms, was slowing near the entrance to a McDonald's on upper State Street.

"This okay with you?" Raymond said to me. He seemed genuinely concerned that the restaurant meet with my approval.

"Raymond, this is perfect. Way to go."

I ate three Egg McMuffins. If it had been 10:00 A.M., I'd have had a couple of QP's with cheese instead. Bibianna couldn't eat. She sat and picked at an apple Danish while Luis and Raymond, with a flair for the Gallic, ordered French toast and French fries, with a side of maple syrup. I had spotted a telephone in the narrow corridor leading to the ladies' room, but the wall-mounted instrument was in plain view of the table where the four of us sat. Raymond kept his arm loosely draped around Bibianna's shoulders, rubbing her upper arm in a manner meant to be sexy. Guys learn to do that in high school and it's very irritating. She was back to being passive, obsequious, and subdued. I wanted to see her sass him. Resist. I wanted her to thumb her nose at him. It was not going to help her to act like a whipped dog. It was time she stood up for herself again. If she acted like a victim, the guy was going to treat her like one.

I got up from the table. "I gotta go to the can. Come with me, Bibianna. You can rat my hair."

"I'm fine."

"Well, I'm not. Could you pardon us, Raymond? We have to go do some girl stuff."

"Have at it," he said.

I kissed my fingertip and placed it on the tip of his nose. "You're a peach."

He slid out of the booth so Bibianna could get up.

IN THE LADIES' room, she turned on the faucet and splashed some cold water in her eyes. I pulled out a paper towel and passed it to her. She buried the lower half of her face in the paper toweling, staring at herself in the mirror above the sink. She wiped her hands and threw the paper away. "Thanks for what you did in the car. God, I can't stand this. I really hate his guts."

"He's certainly crazy about you," I said.

She moved into one of the stalls, trying the window above the toilet. "Shit. This is nailed shut. Do you think there's another way out of here?"

"I don't know. I'll check," I said. I was in a bit of a bind with Bibianna, wanting to help her without actually giving up proximity to Raymond Maldonado. I went over to the door and opened it a crack, making a show of searching for a rear exit. All I caught sight of was Raymond doing one of his head jerks. The public pay phone on the wall was tantalizingly near, but Luis was bound to spot me if I tried to use it. I closed the door again. "What's the matter with Raymond?"

"He's getting worse," she said morosely. "I never saw him so bad."

"Yeah, but what causes that?"

"It's called Tourette. TS, whatever that is. It's like something in his nervous system – neurological and like that. All I know is he does that stuff over and over and sometimes he gets into uncontrollable rages. He's got pills he won't take because he can't stand the side effects."

"He's had it all his life?"

"I guess so. He doesn't ever talk about it much."

"But he's not doing anything for it?"

"Smokin' dope helps, he says, and he sometimes shoots up."

"Is that why you left, because of the Tourette?"

"I left because he's a jerk! The other I could live with, but the guy's turning mean. It's got nothing to do with his condition," she said. "Jesus, we gotta figure out how to get out of here." She moved into the second stall and tried the window there. Also locked. "The hell with it. We're going to have to make a break for it some other way. I wish Tate were here."

I said, "You and me both, kid. You think Raymond knows you're involved with him?"

"God, I hope not. He's so jealous, he can't see straight."

"How'd you meet Tate?"

"He crashed a costume party last Halloween. Dressed as a cop. Everybody thought it was a joke, except me. I can smell a cop a mile off." She took a brush from her handbag and ran it through her hair. "It's really different with Jimmy."

"Well, that's obvious," I said. "I take it you're in love with him."

She smiled fleetingly for the first time since we'd left the jail. "I better be. We got married week before last. That's why my place is coming up for rent. I'm moving in with him."

The door flew open. I must have jumped a foot. It was Luis with his.45 and his little smirking mustache. "All right, ladies. Time to go. Speed it up. Raymond says you been in here long enough."

I waved at him dismissively. "Oh, come off it, Luis. What is it with you? Running around acting like an idiot. I still have to tee-tee and so does she."

He colored faintly. "Snap it up."

"Right," I said, moving over to the first stall. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shove the gun in his waistband and back out of the room.

Ten minutes later we were on the road.

So that's how I came to be speeding down 101 in a low-rider Wednesday morning, October 26. Vera's wedding was coming up on Monday and I was going to miss it, sure as shit. If Raymond killed Bibianna, he was going to have to kill me, too. By Halloween, I'd probably be in the long-term parking lot at LAX, crammed in the trunk of some stranger's vehicle. Even in the hot sun, it can sometimes take days before anybody picks up the scent.

Luis drove while Raymond sat in the front seat fiddling with the radio. At irregular intervals, he would go through his ticcing sequence. If he was talking to Luis, the tics would seem to subside, only to assail him with a vengeance as soon as his mouth was shut. Bibianna had curled up on the backseat in a troubled sleep. At least now she wouldn't have to worry about being quizzed by the Santa Teresa cops. I was feeling wired. In the past couple of hours, I'd passed through fatigue to exhaustion and out to the other side. God knows my work exposes me to an occasional unsavory character, but I really don't like violence or danger or threats to my health. My semiannual visit to the dentist is as masochistic as I care to get. Yet here I was in the company of these vatos, wondering how I could get to the telephone number Dolan had given me. I missed my beloved handbag, my jacket, and my gun. At the same time, I confess, I felt extraordinarily alive. Perhaps I was merely experiencing one of life's peak moments before the bottom dropped out.

At Oxnard, we left the freeway and continued south on Highway 1, winding our way through the southeastern section of town. We passed the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme (pronounced "Y-knee-me"). The road began to parallel the deep blue green of the ocean, which was far off to our right. The beaches were deserted except for an occasional fisherman casting his line out into the water. The sand had been packed down and darkened by the rain, but the sky was now cloudless, a clear azure blue. The morning sun had burned the fog away, and I could see straight out to the horizon. On the landward side, loose sand swept down to the highway from rosy beige cliffs creased into folds by erosion, hills flattening out to pale gray scrub, freckled with vegetation.

After we passed Point Dume, houses began to appear, rilling the widening strip of land between the road and the ocean, properties piling up rapidly as the miles accrued. In the parking lane, RVs and pickups were lined end to end. Guys in shorts and wet suits unloaded surfboards and wind-sails. By the time we reached Malibu, apartments and condos and single-family dwellings were crowded cheek by jowl, the architectural mix ranging all the way from chateaus to beach shacks, Italian villas, Tudor mansions, Cape Cod, and concrete. The rich folk with taste had apparently been elsewhere the day the planning commission took a vote. (What planning commission?) As a consequence, the road was densely lined now with retail businesses, signs advertising Texaco, Malibu Lumber, Crown Books, Shoes, Fast Frame, Jack-in-the-Box, Motel, Malibu Inn, Liquor, Jimmy's Ribs at the Beach, Budget Cars, Palm and Card Reading, Shell Gas, Realty, Arco AM/PM, Malibu Travel, Motel, Liquor, Pizza, Real Estate, Locksmith, Shoe Repair, Malibu Fish Market… a vulgar hodgepodge of neon, billboards, and blinking lights. Traffic was piled up in a perpetual gridlock of Mercedeses, BMWs, and Jaguars.

We hit the light where Sunset Boulevard dead-ends at Pacific Coast Highway. The woman in the little sports car idling next to us turned an uneasy eye on Luis with his watch cap and his Walt Disney arms. He had a truly vile suggestion he was kind enough to share with her. Raymond gave his head a censoring thump. Maybe that's why he wore the watch cap, to keep the brain damage to a minimum.

Luis rubbed his head irritably. "Hey, man. Take it easy."

"You take it easy," Raymond shot back with an apologetic glance at me. It was clear he'd pegged me as the refined one in the crowd.

When the light changed, Luis pulled out with a series of jerks that left the rear suspension bucking. Within minutes we had passed from prosperity to privation.

Our destination was a beach town a few miles south of the airport in an area tainted with poverty. To the east, the ghetto communities of Compton, South Gate, and Lynwood were rigidly subdivided into gang turfs where some fifteen to twenty homicides marred the average weekend. Here, there were only endless drab buildings decorated with angular territorial declarations thrown up by the taggers with cans of black spray paint. Wait until future cryptographers resurrect those stone tablets. Even the passing city buses were defaced, mobile messengers bearing insults from one gang to the next. The streets were littered with trash and old tires. The winos had already plucked up all the bottles and cans, anything that could be recycled in exchange for Thunderbird revenues. A dilapidated sofa sat on the curb as if waiting for a bus. Listless ghetto warriors loitered near a corner market. On the island side of the four-lane boulevard, every third storefront had been boarded up. Those still doing business were protected by steel bars across plate-glass windows papered over with advertisements.

I saw a Burger King, a Savon drugstore, a corner record shop with a big sign reading CLOSED, a post office branch with a U.S. flag drooping from its pole. On the ocean side of the street, there was a tired mix of small frame houses and boxy apartment buildings. All the yards seemed to be raw dirt surrounded by chain-link fences. The poor sections of every city I've seen have the following elements in common: sagging porches, flaking paint, grass that's tenacious if it grows at all, vacant lots filled with rubble, Pepsi-Cola signs, idle children, cars with flat tires permanently parked at the curb, abandoned houses, lethargic men whose eyes turn vacuously as you pass. Violence is a form of theater that only the disenfranchised can afford. Admission is cheap. The bill of fare is an ever-changing drama of life and death, drugs and stickups, drive-bys, retaliations, the fearfulness of mothers who look on in anguish from the sidelines. As often as not, it's the bystanders who fall prey to the spray of random bullets.

We cut inland, driving past six square blocks of housing projects. I could feel anxiety stir like a boiling sickness.

By the time we reached Raymond's place, I had no idea what part of Los Angeles we were in. We parked the Ford out in front of a three-story apartment building, across the street from an automobile salvage yard. There were probably forty units in the apartment complex, arranged in tiers around a concrete courtyard. At first glance, it didn't seem all that shabby to me. The neighborhood itself wasn't nearly as impoverished as some we'd traversed.

It was midmorning, and even with a nip still in the air, most of the apartment doors stood open. The interiors I glimpsed were crowded, overfurnished, and dismal. The televisions all seemed to be tuned to the Anglo soaps, while the radios, sitting atop the sets, played Hispanic music, curiously at odds with the gringo images. There were Halloween decorations everywhere, but some had been up so long, the pumpkins were getting soft and the crepe-paper skeletons were powdered with dust.

The four of us clambered up a rear staircase to the second floor, where we turned left, proceeding to an apartment that overlooked the street. "Is this your place we're going to?" I asked Raymond. He was walking with Bibianna, the two of them just ahead of me. Luis was bringing up the rear in case I tried to bolt.

"This is for when we get married," Raymond said with a shy glance at her. He felt in his pocket in a sudden recollection. He pulled out a key on a metal ring with a big plastic M attached, probably for Maldonado. He handed it to Bibianna. My guess was he'd meant it to be a ceremonial moment, but she shoved it in her handbag, barely honoring it with a look. Her face was stony and he seemed embarrassed that she showed no enthusiasm for matters that obviously obsessed him.

The problem with real life is there's no musical score. In movies, you know you're in danger because there's an ominous chord underlining the scene, a dissonant melodic line that warns of sharks in the water and boogermen behind the door. Real life is dead quiet, so you're never quite sure if there's trouble coming up. A possible exception is stepping into a strange apartment full of guys in hairnets. Personally, I've never understood how wearing a hairnet ever came to symbolize the baddest of the bad-asses on the street. There were five of them, all Hispanics in their late teens or early twenties, all wearing heavy wool Pendleton shirts buttoned up to their chins. Three were sitting around the kitchen table, one with his girlfriend on his lap. A second girl sat with her bare legs outstretched, tight skirt hiked up to midthigh. She was smoking a cigarette, practicing smoke rings through pouty lips painted bright red. Two guys lounging against the wall came to attention as Raymond came in the door. On the wall was a large handmade sign with "R.I.P." at the top and Chago's name in caps below, a pair of praying hands and a crucifix drawn in the space between. Someone had tacked several snapshots of Chago on the wall nearby, along with what looked like a testimonial of some kind. Among the piles of papers on the table was a stack of homemade flyers, reproductions of the same neatly hand-lettered prose. From the somber expressions and the number of beer bottles evident, I gathered these were Chago homies and that we'd interrupted an impromptu wake. I checked for Raymond's reaction, but he had none. Did he feel no sorrow for his brother's death?

I willed myself to behave casually, assuming an air of nonchalance. What did I have to fear? After all, I wasn't a prisoner, I was Raymond's guest. I could pick up the information for Lieutenant Dolan and then head on home. Granted, I don't usually hang out on gang turf, but I try to be open-minded. There were cultural differences here that I couldn't even guess at, let alone define. That didn't make anybody bad, right? So why expect the worst? Because you don't know what the hell you're doing, a little voice inside me said.

The air was gray with smoke, some of it marijuana, a substance I haven't abused since I was in high school (except for that brief period when Daniel Wade was in my life). The decor, at a glance, consisted of royal blue shag carpeting and the kind of furniture sold on the roadsides across the border in Mexico. (Also in Orange County on Euclid, south of the Garden Grove Freeway.) It looked like Raymond had made an attempt to upgrade the place, covering the entire large wall to my left with smoky gold mirrored tiles. Unfortunately, the tiles had recently been smashed with a kitchen chair, which had been tossed to one side, its chrome legs askew. Most of the glass had been swept up, but I could see signs of blood on the bare wall behind. It wasn't bright red or dripping, but it was clear something frightful had taken place here not long ago. No one referred to the destruction. Raymond showed no curiosity at the sight, which lent support to the notion that he was responsible. Bibianna took it in at a glance but said nothing. Maybe she knew better than to mention the fact. I tore my gaze away.