Murder in Vein (2010) (36 page)

Remembering that Stacie had said she thought Cubby had
been living in an alley not far from the spot, Madison turned
down the first street and then turned into the alley that ran
behind the storefronts. It was short and a dead-end. She turned
the car around and slowly made her way back out to the street,
keeping her eyes peeled for signs of Cubby.

Working her way methodically through the maze of alleys,
side streets, and parking lots, Madison covered the area between
Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards and found nothing. She
crossed the major intersection and did the same to the large
block to the east; again, nothing. Mostly she just spotted people
trotting through the rain from buildings to their cars and vice
versa. It was nearing the end of the business day, and people were
mostly leaving.

Moving another block east, closer to the freeway, she spotted
a ragged couple hovering in a back alley doorway. She got out
of her car and approached them. "Do you know a man named
Cubby?" she asked.

The man, white, with long, straggly gray hair, nodded but
didn't look up. The woman, a female copy of the man right down
to the smell of cheap booze, glared at her.

"Do you know where I can find him?" Madison asked.

The man remained silent, but this time he looked at Madison. His eyes were bloodshot. He shook his head.

Madison prodded with another question. "Do you know
Porky?"

The man looked down and nodded. The woman said nothing
but continued to stare, her eyes as runny as her nose.

"Know where I can find him?"

The man jerked his head up. "Porky ain't a him."

"Is it a place? Can you tell me where it is?"

"Porky ain't a place neither."

The puzzle and the man's cryptic answers were frustrating
Madison. She fought to contain her composure. Whatever Porky
was, at least the man had acknowledged knowing it. "Okay," she
said, trying again. "How can I find Porky?"

The man started to say something, but his words were interrupted by a spasm of coughs. He lifted a trembling hand and
pointed off in the distance. "Near the freeway."

"Anything more specific?"

"Fuck off, bitch," snapped the woman. "Can't you see he's
sick?"

"Can I get you something?" Madison asked. "Some help?"

The woman glared at her. "Just leave us alone."

Madison dug into her purse, pulled out ten dollars, and held
it out toward the couple. Between tipping the waitress at Bloodlust, feeding Cubby, and now this couple, Madison was going
through her paycheck pretty damn fast. The woman eyed the
money as if it were a snake, then snatched it before Madison
could change her mind. Madison figured they were probably
going to spend it on booze, but maybe the booze would at least
keep the old guy warm.

As she walked away, Madison heard the man mutter between
coughs, "Near Hollywood. Freeway near Hollywood"

It was a few blocks to where Hollywood Boulevard crossed
over the Hollywood Freeway. Madison pulled into the parking lot
of a corner burger joint almost next to the freeway. Ordering a
burger and Coke, she sat in her car and ate while looking around
at the area. It was going to be easier to continue on foot here.
Several streets crisscrossed at odd angles, and building positions
were less orderly. It would be almost impossible to cover the area
in the car. The rain had stopped, but the sky didn't look like it
was through dumping.

Swallowing the last of her burger and taking a big swig from
her Coke, Madison scrounged around in the back seat of her car
until she located a ball cap. It was navy blue, with Auntie Em's
emblazoned in white across the front, a gift from Kyle to all his
employees last Christmas, along with a small-a very smallbonus. Madison put the cap on her head and pulled her hair into
a ponytail, threading it through the opening in the back of the
cap. Then she stuck her ID and some cash into her jeans pocket
and her cell into her jacket pocket. After stuffing her purse under
the front seat, locking the car, and using the filthy ladies' room at the burger place, she was ready to go. She had a lot of area to
cover before darkness sent her back to Topanga.

The man in the alley had said Porky was near the freeway and
Hollywood Boulevard. Even though that narrowed it down considerably, it still left a lot of nooks and crannies to investigate in
a short time. Before leaving the restaurant, she'd asked one of the
counter guys if he knew anything about Porky. He'd screwed up
his face, then shook his head in the negative.

"How about homeless people?" she prodded.

The guy behind the counter, a scrawny twenty-something
Latino with a sparse moustache and tattoos dripping from under
the short sleeves of his tee shirt with the burger joint logo, looked
at her with suspicion.

"I'm a journalist," Madison lied, "doing a piece on the homeless in Hollywood. I'm told several homeless live here near the
freeway."

He nodded, giving her more attention than she welcomed. He
looked her up and down, the suspicion giving way to a lascivious
grin. "They around. But the real story is here, chica. I'm the story
you lookin' for."

"You ever hear of a guy named Cubby?" she asked, ignoring
his come-on. "Old black guy."

"Yeah, I know him." The grin turned to a scowl of disgust.
"Comes in now and then for a burger when he's got money.
Drives off customers with his stink and crazy talk."

"Crazy talk?"

"Vampires, chica." The guy laughed as he wiped down the
counter with a dirty cloth. "Last time the old guy was in here,
he says he seen vampires." He squinted at her with a slow smile.
"You lookin' for vamps, baby? I'll bite you if you want"

Madison gave him a smile, thinking how the guy would piss
his pants if he ever saw a real vampire at work.

"Thanks, but maybe another time." She looked out the door,
at the freeway. "So this Cubby guy," she said, continuing with her
train of questions. "He might be interesting for my piece. He live
around here?"

The guy shrugged, realizing he was getting nowhere. "I
seen him a few times on the other side of the freeway, digging
in trash-maybe there. Haven't seen him in a couple of days,
though." He threw the dirty rag in a nearby sink. "Good riddance."

"Can I leave my car here while I take a look?"

"This ain't no park 'n ride." He gave her the up-and-down
stare again. "Then again, maybe I could be persuaded."

Madison dug a ten-dollar bill out of her pocket. "I hear this is
the going price these days for non-valet parking in Hollywood"

Just as customers came into the greasy shack, the guy snatched
the money. "I'll watch it for ya."

"Thanks. It's the old silver Honda. I shouldn't be long."

Madison took off, hoping the guy didn't call his 'hood friends
to boost her car while she was gone.

ince the guy in the burger joint said he'd seen Cubby on the
other side of the freeway, that's where Madison headed first.

She jogged down Hollywood Boulevard, crossed over the
freeway, and came to a stop at the first cluster of buildings. The
guy hadn't said which side of Hollywood Boulevard he'd seen
Cubby on, north or south, just that it was on the other side of the
freeway.

Standing in front of a squat building that housed a secondhand store, Madison took a minute to think about where she
would go if she was homeless and needed shelter. Then again, she
was nearly homeless-with questionable options.

If she needed shelter and chose this area to live in, Madison
thought she might stick close to the buildings next to the fence
that bordered the freeway. They might afford some protection
against the elements and provide a little privacy. Even though
there was a decent clearance between the fence and the buildings
and it was paved, it wasn't wide enough for cars to drive down.
And along the fence, weeds had been allowed to grow unchecked. Anyone holed up along there would not be disturbed very often
or easily seen.

Madison carefully entered the space, keeping her eyes peeled
for signs of life, both human and animal. As much as it was a
perfect spot for homeless squatting, it was also a great spot for
rats. Scraps of paper, fast-food bags, and disposable cups littered
the vegetation along the fence, stuck fast to the tall, thin weeds
like large chunks of dandruff. When her sneaker landed on a slippery piece of decayed fruit, Madison started to lose her balance.
Suppressing disgust, she put out a hand to the stucco side of
the low building to steady herself and found it sticky and grimy
from rain-drenched dirt. Before moving on, she wiped her hand
on her jeans and scraped the bottom of her sneaker against the
pavement, then reminded herself this was no time to be prissy.
Her time was growing short.

Behind the low building was a set of dumpsters. Madison
stood on her toes and peered in. Nothing. Nothing around them
either. There were a couple of cars parked behind the secondhand store but no sign of people. The rain was keeping most visitors to this dismal area at a minimum.

Across the parking lot was another depressing building, followed by another. It seemed to be an old, run-down business
complex. The buildings were all gray, their walls showing chunks
of missing stucco, especially at the corners of the buildings, as if
they'd been chewed on by large rats. They stood near each other,
one after the other, with small parking alleys between them. Each
had faded, unlit signs describing what type of business they held,
and most looked closed, with iron bars on the windows and
doors. Only the secondhand store had cars in its parking area.

Madison moved past each depressed building, checking each
one's dumpster area for signs of life. So far, she'd met neither
human nor animal. The rain had started up again, coming down
soft but steady. She zipped up her jacket against the cold and wet
and kept moving.

Just after the last building in the group, she spotted another set
of similar-styled buildings. These looked in worse repair than the
others, possibly even abandoned. They were set vertical to the first
set, their fronts facing in the direction of a small, dingy side street
instead of Hollywood Boulevard. She wove her way in and around
these buildings and their dumpsters. Cubby had said he wasn't
going back to his former place, but she might find someone who
knew where he had gone or who knew more about this Porky.

Behind the last building, the one with its back close to the
freeway fence, Madison found something promising. In a nook
made by one building abutting another was a heap of cardboard.
It wasn't stacked one piece on top of the other, ready for trash
pickup, but was arranged in a crude shelter. Two sides of the
small abode were made up by the rough sides of the buildings.
The front and top were of thick, flattened cardboard.

With caution, Madison looked inside, expecting to find
someone trying to keep out of the rain, but it was empty except
for scraps of ragged cloth and pieces of crushed plastic pushed
up against one wall and covering the ground. Like the group of
buildings, it had an abandoned feel about it. It might have been
Cubby's home, or it might have belonged to another unfortunate
soul. She moved on.

Hunkering down more inside her jacket, Madison moved
forward, slower now, her eyes scanning every detail of the area
around the cardboard house. Her ponytail was soaked, and her feet were wet. A chill was building, working its way from the outside in toward her core. It only added to the creepiness of the
place. Good sense told her to turn back. Madison beat back her
fear, setting it off to the side, along with the cold, to be dealt with
later. Whatever direction her life took, she knew she could not
move forward until the killings were resolved.

A little farther past the building, she found evidence of
another possible dwelling. This one was under a low corrugated
piece of metal that had been wedged against the fence and a short
shrub. Around it, cardboard had been used to establish crude
walls affixed to the fence and metal roof with scraps of twine.
Compared to the size of the last one, this seemed like a duplex.
Again, it looked abandoned.