"H" Is for Homicide (19 page)

I'd watched her set it up so many times by now, I was almost ready to try it myself. This one wasn't the usual red queen on a black king strategy but ran in suits so that if you won, you ended up with only four piles, one for each suit, cards in numerical order from aces up to kings. She went through all the cards in her hand by threes without coming up with a play. She tossed the hand in and pulled the cards together in a pile.

"You want to do my chart?" I asked.

She shook her head. "The stuff's at my mother's and Raymond won't let me talk to her. I tried to call her last night, but he caught me with the phone and nearly beat the shit out of me. What an ass…" She glanced over at Raymond, who had stopped what he was doing so he could stare at her. Bibianna stirred uneasily and glanced at me. She said, "I can read your palm instead. Put your hands on the table."

"Palm down?"

"Yeah. Just put 'em down on the tabletop."

I eased my feet out from under me and leaned forward so I could rest my palms flat on the table as instructed. Raymond must have realized she was into her palmistry and he went back to work. Bibianna's look became intent. She scrutinized the backs of my hands, then lifted both and turned them over. She took my right hand in hers and examined it with care, saying nothing. Her manner was as professional as a doctor's. I don't believe in palmistry, any more than I believe in numerology, astrology, the Easter bunny, or the tooth fairy, but there was something in her expression that piqued my curiosity. "What?" I said.

She ran an index finger across my right palm, took up my left palm, and looked at it again. "You like action. You know how I know that? When you put your hands down on the table, you left a lot of space between. Insecure people put 'em close together. Short nails indicate you're aggressive. No ridges or spots, which is good. Means you're healthy. Skin type is medium, doesn't say much, but look at this… how wide the space is between your thumb and the fingers on this hand. You think for yourself…"

Her voice was hypnotic and I found myself listening to her with great seriousness. I'd expected a lot of talk about life lines and love lines, but she didn't have a chance to get to that. The trouble broke out so suddenly, I never knew what started it. I heard a shout, the banging as a chair fell over backward. By the time I looked up, Raymond had Tomas down on the floor. He was clutching the guy by the throat, the switchblade against his cheek. Raymond's face was contorted by rage, his hands shaking as he squeezed his fingers into Tomas's windpipe. Tomas was burbling, his eyes wide as he struggled to free himself. Sweat had beaded his forehead. I saw the blade of the knife slip into his cheek, sinking into the flesh, blood welling up. Raymond seemed almost hypnotized by the process. No one else made a move. It seemed to be one of those moments where retaliatory violence would only jeopardize Tomas's chance of survival.

Bibianna whispered, "My God…" She crossed the room, kneeling beside Raymond, where she began to murmur in his ear. I could see him struggle for control. He made a sound like a sob, very tight and ancient, almost a squealing at the back of his throat. Bibianna touched his hand, talking to him earnestly. "Don't do this, Raymond. I beg you. Let him go. He didn't mean nothing by it. You're hurting him. Please…"

He lifted the knife. Bibianna extracted it from his hand while his victim rolled away, blood pouring down his face. Raymond seemed to cough and his rage shifted from Tomas to Bibianna. He grabbed her by the arms and hauled her upright, shoving her up against the wall so hard her head banged a piece of plaster loose. He put his face an inch away from hers, the now familiar ripple of tics tugging half the muscles in his face. His eyes rolled up in his head so that he seemed to look at her with the milky, blind slits. His voice was a whisper. "I'll kill you, you ever interfere with me again, you got that?"

Bibianna nodded frantically. "I won't. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to…"

He stepped away. The ritual cough and bark began and I could see him jerk his head, rolling his shoulder in its socket. Luis had grabbed a kitchen towel and was pressing it against the cut in Tomas's cheek, issuing orders in Spanish. Blood soaked through instantly. Two of the guys came to Tomas's assistance, helping him out the door. The apartment cleared rapidly. My heart was pounding. Bibianna sank down on the couch, white-faced. She put her head between her knees, close to fainting. I moved over and sat down beside her, patting her and murmuring words of encouragement as much for my own benefit as for hers. Moments later, Luis returned. I gathered that someone was taking Tomas off to the emergency room. In the meantime, Raymond seemed to have regained control. Bibianna composed herself and picked up her cards again with shaking hands. Luis wiped blood off the kitchen floor. All of us understood how important it was to get past the moment. To avoid any further upset, we acted as if nothing had happened, which made us co-conspirators. No reference was made to Tomas or what he'd done to precipitate Raymond's reaction.

Raymond paced the room, snapping his fingers restlessly as he turned to Bibianna. "Hey. Get your jacket. We're going out. Hannah, you too."

I got my jacket. Hell, I wasn't going to argue with the man.

This time Raymond and I took the Ford, while Luis followed us in the Cadillac, Bibianna in the passenger seat. I turned halfway, looking through the back window at the Caddy, which kept pace with us. Luis and Bibianna were only dark silhouettes. "How come she always goes with him on these runs?"

"We fight," he said.

I studied him with interest. He seemed relaxed, his manner open and easy. I was beginning to understand that for a short period of time just after an "attack," he was really rather benign, as if soothed by the outburst. For a brief interlude, he would be completely approachable, even loving. He was not a bad-looking guy. He could probably find a woman who'd care for him if he wasn't fixated on Bibianna.

He caught my look. "What are you lookin' at?" His words were belligerent, but the tone was mild.

"I was just trying to figure out why you're so obsessed with Bibianna. Why insist on marriage when she's clearly not that hot for it?" I held my breath, but he didn't seem to take offense.

"She can't mess with me. No way. People who screw with my head have to learn they can't. She hasn't got the word yet."

"About what? You have her back. What else do you want?"

"I have to make sure she stays."

"How can you do that?"

"I did already," he said. "She just doesn't know it yet."

THAT AFTERNOON AT the Southern California College of Auto Fraud, I took a "crash" course in "Swoop and Squat," which Lieutenants Dolan and Santos had summarized so neatly in our little jailhouse chat. We drove up into West L.A., on the border of Bel Air, running Sunset Boulevard from Sepulveda to Beverly Glen. Afternoon traffic was hellish and the drivers familiar with that stretch of road seemed to drive with their eyes shut, shifting lanes without notice, exceeding the speed limit by thirty and forty miles per hour. Once we found a mark, Raymond and I, as the "squat" car, would position ourselves in front of it while Luis and Bibianna would pull up beside us. Luis would "swoop" suddenly into our lane. Raymond would slam on the brakes and the hapless mark behind us, caught by surprise, would plow right up our tailpipe. Luis would speed off while Raymond and I, in our car, and the mark in his, would pull over to the curb, all of us dismayed and outraged by the unexpected turn of events. There was no danger of the mark's turning around and calling the cops, because we all knew the LAPD wouldn't respond to the scene of an accident unless there was bodily injury involved. It was strictly up to us to exchange names, addresses, telephone numbers, and the names of our various insurance companies, after which we'd take off, connect up with Luis and Bibianna again, and go looking for the next vie. We ran the scam four times, with Raymond assuring me we'd racked up maybe thirteen thousand dollars' worth of business.

What troubled me, aside from the fact that I was whipping the hell out of my neck, was a worrisome little shift in my attitude. What idiots, I thought. People deserve anything that happens to them. I was beginning to believe it was all the mark's fault for being gullible and stupid, for not recognizing the game in progress, for being foolish enough to take our assurances at face value. I could feel that secret sense of superiority every con artist must have when the bait goes down and the victim snaps it up. Mentally, I had to shake myself off, though I suppose it never hurts to be reminded that none of us are that far away from larceny. Actually, it's the people who make the most righteous moral noises that I worry about the most.

We packed it in at five after a quick conference in a little pocket park where we'd pulled off to compare notes. Several nannies in uniform murmured together while the toddlers in their keeping cavorted on the play equipment. We sat on the grass, Bibianna with her shoes off, while Luis and Raymond stretched out in the fading sunlight and relived every thrilling moment. It was like hearing men talk about a golf game or a hunting trip, the two of them rehashing the experience in amazing detail. There was a quick debate about whether to try one more quick accident, but none of us were really interested. All I wanted was some aspirin and a trip back to Dr. Howard's office, where I could look forward to a back cracking that would liberate my neck.

Raymond said he had an errand to run, so he and I got back in the car. Luis peeled off in the Caddy with Bibianna while Raymond turned onto Beverly Drive and headed into the heart of the Beverly Hills business district. Two blocks down, he took a right on Little Santa Monica, which runs parallel to Santa Monica Boulevard. As we approached Wilshire Boulevard, he slowed, looking for a parking space. The meters had all been taken. With an expression of impatience, he turned into the entrance to an underground parking garage that serviced a twenty-story office building. We paused at the electronic kiosk, which buzzed, clunked once, and presented him with a ticket. The electronic "arm" shot up and Raymond slid into the nearest parking spot, clearly marked for the handicapped. He left the keys in the ignition and opened the door on his side.

"Wait here. Somebody hassles you, move the car. I'll be right back."

A vertical sign on the wall indicated that the elevators were located through the double glass doors. He walked rapidly in that direction, heels tapping on the concrete, the sound echoing against the ramps sweeping up to the left. What was he up to?

The minute he was gone, I took the keys out of the ignition and slipped around to the rear of the car, where I opened the trunk. It was empty except for the spare tire and jack. Rats. I slid into the front seat again and returned the keys to the ignition. I leaned over and checked the door pocket on Raymond's side of the car, but all I came up with were a torn Los Angeles street map and some discount coupons for a local pizza joint. The pocket on my side of the car was empty, which I knew because I'd checked it slyly while we were driving around. I popped open the glove compartment, crammed with junk. I began to sort through the wad of old gas receipts, defective ballpoint pens, successive years of car registrations, the service manual, work orders from the mechanic who did the routine maintenance. Raymond was conscientious about upkeep, I had to give him that. At regular thirty-second intervals, I checked the underground reception area where I'd seen him disappear. I was assuming he'd gone up in the elevators to one of the executive offices above. I sorted through the mess of papers in my lap, uncovering rags, a beer flip, a moldy Hershey's bar suffering from heat prostration, a foil-wrapped condom. Did we once keep our gloves in our automobile glove compartments? Now, the space seemed to rank right up there with the refrigerator as a resting place for animate and inanimate debris, evidence of a lack of personal cleanliness you'd just as soon your friends never found out about. I returned the odds and ends to the glove compartment, being careful not to be too tidy about it. Frustrating. I'd hoped to come up with something. Oh, well. With snooping, you can't expect to score every time out. An illegal search might net results in four cases out of ten. The rest of the time, it simply satisfies your basic nosiness.

By the time I heard Raymond's heels tap-tapping against the concrete, everything was back in place and I was ratting my hair in the rearview mirror, which I'd swiveled around to face me. This "Hannah Moore" persona was having a distinct effect. My "do" now consisted of some really nifty spikes on top. I looked like a punker, but it was kind of fun, if you want to know the truth. Next thing I knew I'd be getting my ears pierced and chewing gum in public, social sins my auntie had always warned me about, along with red nail polish and dingy bra straps.

Raymond opened the car door and tossed the automated parking ticket on the dashboard while he shrugged out of his jacket and tucked it in the backseat. I picked up the ticket and held on to it for him, taking advantage of my little helping girl impulse to glance down at it casually. On the back, in lieu of parking validation stickers, there was the stamped imprint from the firm of Gotlieb, Naples, Hurley, and Flushing. Attorneys? Accountants? Raymond whipped the ticket out of my hand and stuck it in his mouth, clamping it between his teeth while he started the car and backed out of the space. What was his problem? Gosh, the man just didn't seem to trust me. As we turned left out of the parking garage, I silently repeated the name of the firm, like a mantra, until I'd committed it to memory. I'd have Dolan check it out if I could get a call through to him.

We drove back to the apartment through rush-hour traffic: six lanes of the Indy 500, featuring business execs and other control freaks. I was tense, but Raymond didn't seem affected. External stresses didn't seem to disturb him the same way emotional matters did. He flipped the radio on to a classical station and turned the volume up, treating the cars on either side of us to a sonata that sounded like it was made up almost entirely of mistakes. This stretch of the 405 was flat, a sprawling expanse of concrete, riddled with factories, dotted with oil derricks, power lines, and industrial structures designed for no known purpose. In the distance, an irregular fence of chimneys was silhouetted against the skyline, which had browned down to an eerie sunset of green-and-orange light.

It was after seven o'clock and fully dark by the time we pulled into a parking space out in front of the apartment building. Walking up to the second floor, I was struck by the sounds of apartment life. As usual, many front doors stood open, televisions blaring. Children were running along the balconies, engrossed in a game of their own devising. A mother leaned over the railing and yelled at a kid named "Eduardo," who looked to be about three years old. He was protesting in Spanish, probably complaining about the indignity of an early bedtime.

Luis took the dog and went home soon after we got to the apartment. He'd been baby-sitting Bibianna, making sure she didn't bolt the minute Raymond's back was turned. The television set was on, tuned to a cable rerun of "Leave It to Beaver," which Bibianna watched halfheartedly while she laid out another hand of solitaire. Nobody seemed to feel like fixing dinner since we'd all spent a hard day smashing up cars and cheating California motorists. Bibianna's depression was exacerbated by cramps, and she went off to bed with a hot-water bottle. Raymond conjured up the telephone from its latest hiding place and sent out for Chinese. His tics were back, though they'd ceased to bother me. The guy's personal problems were much larger than the Tourette's, which I suspect other people probably learn to cope with pretty well. His sociopathology was a different matter altogether.

While the two of us sat at the kitchen table, waiting for the guy to deliver the order, Raymond rolled and smoked a joint. I picked up a couple of the half-completed insurance forms I'd seen earlier. Time to make myself useful, I thought. I looked from the first form to the second. "What's this?" I said, a laugh bubbling up again. I can't help it – some spelling errors tickle me. "Suffering from a bad case of 'bruces'?" As I reached for a third form, Raymond snatched the papers away from me.

"Raymond, come on. What's the matter with you? You can't send that to an insurance company. Both of those claims say exactly the same thing." I went ahead and pulled a third claim form from the pile. "Here's another one. Same date, same time. Don't you think they check this stuff? They're going to pick up on that. Here, look. If you want to have those guys fill out the forms, at least use a little imagination. Set up a few different stories…"

"I was going to do that," he said with irritation.

"Let me have a turn. It'd be fun," I said.

At first, I didn't think he'd do it, but his gaze had settled on my face and I could see I'd piqued his interest. Reluctantly, he relinquished the form we'd been wrestling over. I picked up a pencil stub and began to print out the narrative for an auto accident.

"Don't make it sound too smart," Raymond said.

"Trust me."

I proceeded to invent, off the top of my head, several variations of the accidents I'd participated in that afternoon. I had to pat myself on the back. I was really good at this. I'd make a fortune if I ever turned my hand to crime in earnest. Raymond apparently thought so, too. "How you know all this stuff?"

"I'm a person of many talents," I said, licking my pencil point. "Quit peeking. You make me nervous."

Raymond got us both a cold beer and we chatted while I wrote up fictional fender-benders and minor wrecks. Raymond hadn't managed to graduate from high school, whereas I attended three whole semesters of junior college before I lost heart.

"Why'd you quit, though? You're smart."

"I never liked school," I said. "High school, I was smokin' too much dope to do well. College just seemed to be made up of all this stuff I didn't like. I was too rebellious back then. And it's not like I had a 'career' goal in mind. I couldn't see the point in learning things I didn't want to know. Poly sci and biology. Who needs it? I don't give a damn about xylem and phloem."

"Me neither. Especially phloem, right?"

"Yeah, right," I said, laughing on the assumption he was making a joke.

He smiled at me, rather sweetly. "I wish Bibianna were more like you," he said.

"Forget it. I'm a mess. Divorced twice. I'm not any better at relationships than she is."

He cleared his throat. "You know, in my experience? Women are no fuckin' good. The average woman will take you for everything you got. Then, you know what they do? They leave your ass and walk off. I don't get it. What'd I ever do?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Raymond. Guys have left me and that doesn't make ' em bad. That's just the way life goes."

"They break your heart?"

"One or two."

"Well, now see… that's the difference. You get your heart broke like I do, it's hard to trust, you know that?" He stared at his beer bottle, peeling a strip of the label with his thumbnail.

I felt myself go still and I chose my words with care. "I'll tell you what somebody told me once. 'You can't make anyone love you and you can't keep anyone from dying.'

He stared at me, his dark eyes nearly luminous. There was a silence while he digested that. He shook his head. "Here's what I say. Somebody don't love me? They die."

At eight forty-five, our dinner arrived in six white cartons, complete with tiny flat plastic pillows of soy sauce and Chinese mustard strong enough to cause a nosebleed. I forked up my food with the voracious appetite generated by secondhand marijuana smoke, which was probably fortunate under the circumstances as the dishes themselves seemed remarkably similar. All of them were tossed together in a flurry of bok choy and bamboo shoots, one smothered in a sauce that looked like Orange Crush thickened with cornstarch. Both Raymond and I made little snuffling noises as we ate, polishing off everything except a golf-ball-size clot of steamed rice. The strip of paper in my fortune cookie read, "Your sunny disposition brightens everything around you." Raymond's read, "No two roads ever look alike," which made no sense whatever. He seemed to think it was profound, but by then the whites of his eyes had turned pink and he'd started eating a dope-inspired snack that he had devised – grape jelly scooped up with stale com chips. I went to bed, but before I turned off the light, I took out the stolen bridal photo and took one more look. Who was this woman? I knew it would come to me. Her identity might also turn out to be unrelated to the investigation, but I didn't think so.