Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (24 page)

But the thing is, he didn't take the game that seriously. As
he once famously said to an actress who told him she was worried about how to play a scene: "Ingrid, it's only a movie."

I was slumped behind the wheel of my parked taxi, drowsing over a copy of Francois Truffaut's conversations with Hitchcock, taking an easy trip through the great director's head. It
was a slow night. Lots of slow nights in Laguna Niguel, but
there wasn't anything left for me in L.A. and I was living more
or less rent-free in my sister and brother-in-law's converted
garage in the Hills, making enough behind the wheel to pop
for dinner for them every now and then.

I wasn't fooling myself. I knew I was just treading water
and I'd have to swim for shore sooner or later. But on nights
like that, nice and balmy, with nothing pressing, treading seemed preferable to making waves and attracting sharks. Not
that sharks don't find you anyway.

I was in the middle of Hitchcock's description of "Mary
Rose," a ghost story he'd considered filming, when the box
started squawking and, between squawks, Manny, back at the
garage, was repeating a familiar name. Mine. J.D. Marquette.

Manny has a cleft palate and his words have a slushy, lispy
sound that I won't try to duplicate in print. "Fare's at a shopping center on La Paz Road, J.D.," he said, adding the name of
the center and the exact address. "He'll be in front of Gregor's. Tyoo smashed to drive home."

"Good job, Manny," I said. "I love ferrying drunks."

I turned off the battery-operated book light, a gift from sis,
closed the cover on Hitchcock and Truffaut, and went back
to work.

That section of La Paz Road is like Mall Town U.S.A. One
shopping center right after the other. By light of day, with their
too-new, seamless, pastel-colored plaster coats, the structures
resemble not very creative film sets, populated by extra players. Those pastels turn circus sinister at night, especially after
the shops have started to shutter and most of the extras have
headed home.

A big guy staggering around with his collar open and his
tie at half mast and four other males, somewhat more sober,
were gathered near the entrance to the center, in front of
Gregory's Sports Grill. The drunk was the only one of them
who looked as if he'd ever played a sport other than foosball.
He was big enough to have been a linebacker in his younger
days, before he gave it up to booze.

"Glad you made it so fast," a thin guy with glasses said
when I got out of the cab. He turned to the ex-linebacker.
"Sonny, here's the cab."

"Fuck the cab," the drunk, a.k.a. Sonny, said. "Don't need
no fuckin cab."

The thin guy gave me Sonny's address in Monarch Pointe
and a pleading look.

I took a step toward the big man. "Come on, sir," I said,
taking his elbow. "Time to go home."

He jerked back, face flushed, eyes red as Dracula's. "Don't
you touch me. Who the fuck are you?"

"He's the cabbie, Sonny," one of the other guys said.
"Gonna drive you home."

Sonny glared at me for a second, then staggered to the
side. "Goin home, myself," he muttered. "Doan need help
from this long-haired prick."

He did his drunk dance toward the few cars remaining in
the parking lot.

The thin guy with glasses ran after him, tried to stop him.
Sonny shoved him away, then staggered to a beautiful creamcolored Lexus convertible. He paused, doubled up, and emptied the contents of his stomach over the rear of that lovely
vehicle.

Better it than the interior of my cab.

He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket, then
struggled with the car door, got it open, and squeezed behind
the wheel.

"Jackass's gonna kill himself," one of the men said.

"Or somebody," I said, as Sonny roared past us, trailing
vomit and exhaust.

The thin guy with glasses apologized for wasting my
time, gave me two twenties for my trouble. That seemed like
a fair enough exchange, even including the long-haired prick
comment.

I got back in the taxi, folded the twenties, stuck them in the pocket of my island shirt, and checked in with Manny.
"Fare decided to drive himself home."

"Anybody else there need a cab?"

"Doesn't look like it."

"Shit, J.D. We oughta start chargin' these bastards for cancelations," Manny lisped.

"Absolutely," I said. "You got anything else for me?"

"Price of gas, these fuckers should pay."

"Damn straight," I said. "You got another run for me?"

"Naw. It's dead here, J.D."

"Then I think I'll call it a night."

"Wish I could," Manny said. "The fuckers."

It wasn't that late. Especially for somebody who gets up around
noon. There were a couple of bars near the ocean that still
might offer an hour or two of action, such as it was. Probably
wouldn't take me that long to blow the forty.

There was no traffic along La Paz. Just the darkness broken by my headlights, the occasional streetlight, and the even
more occasional traffic light. I thought about Kelly. There's
a scene in Citizen Kane where this old guy played by Everett
Sloane tells the reporter that when he was a kid he saw this
little girl on a ferry, wearing a white dress and carrying a white
parasol. He never met her, but as he says, "Not a month goes
by when I don't think of her." That was kind of like me and
Kelly Raye. Except that we did meet. And we lived together for
a while, until I made a mistake and she discovered I wasn't the
kind of uncomplicated, dependable young man she thought I
was. Funny thing, I was ready to be that guy. But hell, too little
and too late. So she was in L.A. and I was in L.N. And not a
day went by when I didn't think of her.

I was recalling her birthday two years ago, when I'd just flown in from New York and ... Christ! A blonde suddenly
leaped out of the shadows on the left, hopped the neutral
ground, and ran right in front of my goddamned cab.

I jammed my foot on the brakes and the cab skidded to a
stop inches from her, my movie book and lamp sliding to the
floor. The seat belt was digging into my shoulder. My hands
were locked around the steering wheel.

The blonde was in my headlights. If I'd been going faster
than the limit, I'd have hit her. She reached out a hand to
touch the cab's hood, maybe to convince herself that it had
really stopped.

When I began breathing again, I pried my fingers from
the wheel, rolled down the window, and shouted, "What the
hell, lady?"

"You're the best," she said, walking around the cab. "I
wasn't sure you'd stop. I need a ride and here you are ..."

She tried to open the rear door and was surprised to find
it locked. She frowned, then figured it out. "Aw, crap. You're
off duty?"

She was in her late twenties, maybe three or four years
younger than me. Dressed California casual, in aqua T-shirt
and tight designer jeans. Not spectacular but pretty enough.
Straight blond hair. Tanned skin. Good body. Carrying a big
floppy purse, the size of a beach bag.

"Please," she said. "I'm desperate. I really fucking need a
ride ... away from here. It's worth fifty dollars."

"Where to?"

She hesitated, then said, "Ritz-Carlton."

Fifty bucks to drive five or six miles. I stared at her, thinking about it.

"A friend drove me here. He ... didn't want to leave the
party. And he didn't want me to leave, either. Understand?" She looked to our left. I looked there too, and couldn't see
anything but the vague shadowy outline of one of those residential complexes with cookie-cutter buildings, heavy on the
redwood and stucco. "Please. I really need a lift."

She seemed to be suffering from a lack of sincerity, but
fifty bucks was fifty bucks, so I pushed the button that unlocked the doors and she hopped in.

Softened by the age-yellowed bandit barrier, her face
looked better than pretty. A hometown beauty contest winner
whom the movie cameras didn't love quite enough. In some
kind of trouble. She ran her fingers through her hair and let
out a long sigh. "You're a lifesaver," she said. Looking to the
left again, she added, "Let's went, Cisco."

I stepped on the gas but kept my eye on her in the rearview
as she reached into her big bag. She didn't look like carjacker
material, but I stopped breathing until her hand reappeared
with a cellular. She raised the thin slab to her ear. "You clear?"
she asked somebody, leaning forward, tensing. "Great, baby.
I'm in a cab," she said. "Right. Amazing luck, huh, a fucking
cab out here in the boonies ... No. Just worry about yourself. I'm golden." She listened for a few beats, then, "Shit. You
think?"

She snapped the phone shut.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

Linking eyes with me in the rearview, she said, "I'm not sure.
Look, I, ah, didri t mean to offend. The boonies comment."

"Boonies works for me. This is where Republicans come
to die."

"You live here long?"

"About a year."

"Before that?"

"L.A."

"Ah. That makes more sense. The hair. I ..." Her cellular
must've vibrated again. "Excuse me," she said and took the
call. "Yeah?" Her head dropped and her face hardened. "Woohoo. I'm so scared, you dickless wonder. Eat shit and die."
She clicked off the phone. Then she lowered her window and
threw the phone out into the night.

"Friend?" I said.

She leaned forward, closer to the plastic guard that separated us, and asked, "Want another fifty?"

"I'm listening."

"Get off this street as soon as you can, stop, and cut the
lights."

She looked back to where I'd picked her up, doing a head
turn that almost matched Linda Blair's. There was nothing
much to see behind its.

In front of us, the neutral ground on the left went on and
on. There was a park to our right, separated from the sidewalk
by a low white double-rail fence. I could see where the fence
ended. I goosed the gas and made the turn into the park on
two wheels. Then I made another turn into an empty parking
area separated from the road by thick foliage. I braked, killed
the engine, and turned off the lights. "This what you had in
mind?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, baby," she said. "Perfect. But I could use a Valium the size of a hockey puck."

I turned to look at her. "That's a Woody Allen line,
right?"

"Broadway Danny Rose," she said. She leaned forward and
squinted at my license information in the moonlight. "J.D.
Marquette. So you're into movies, huh, J.D.?"

"I used to have a job that gave me a lot of free time."

"Me too."

"What's your name?" I asked.

"You can call me Nora. Ah, J.D., we may be here a
while."

"Yeah?"

"I am paying you a hundred bucks."

"Point made, Nora." I reached down, picked my book and
reading light from the floor, and put them into the cab's glove
compartment.

"You even read about movies, huh? Maybe we should play
the movie game while we wait. It's my favorite."

"I'm not big on games, Nora."

"Oh, come on. You're good. The way you nailed that
Woody Allen, maybe too good. I think we should stick to just
one genre. All things considered, maybe crime movies."

"I don't play games," I said. "Why don't you just tell me
what's going on here?"

"Kind of a crazy story with a crazy twist to it." She was grinning at me.

"That line's from Double Indemnity," I said. "Fred MacMurray. Now, stop with the bullshit and tell me why we're
sitting here in the dark."

"I guess that's not asking too much. My friend ... his
name is Tom Iverson ... we live in the Florida Keys. Tom has
this dumb charter boat thing going. But he does other odds
and ends too. So he tells me he's got business here and we'll be
spending a few days at the Ritz-Carlton, which sounded like
a nice kinda getaway. Only when we arrive, he says the business is with this guy I don't really care for, who's like a freak
and a half, you know. Anyway, we go to this ... Hold on. Car
coming."

Nora and I sat silent as a black Escalade floated by, heading
south.

When it was well passed, I said, "Okay for its to leave
now?"

"No. Not okay. There'll be more and they know I'm in a
cab."

"Who's they?"

"Friends of the asshole."

"So, tell me about the asshole."

"His name is Joey Ziegler. A stunt man. You probably saw
him in the last Batman, the one with the dead joker guy. I've
never exactly warmed to Joey, because he does stuff like grabbing a tit when Tom isn't looking. Anyway, we're bringing Joey
a little something Tom picked up in Yucatan, a-"

"A piece of junk worth half a million," I said, completing her
sentence.

She smiled. "Oops. You do know movies."

"You were feeding me a remake of Night Moves. Not a bad
film. Gene Hackman as a private eye. Lousy ending. Tell me
what really went on back there, Nora. Right now, or I'm tossing you out of the fucking cab."

"Okay, this is the truth, J.D. Wait ... another car."

This one was a white Escalade. Moving at about fifteen
miles per hour. Flashlight beams shot out of its open windows,
scanning the foliage on both sides of the road. I didn't think
they could see any part of the cab.

"Maybe we should move further back in the park," I suggested when they'd passed.

"Okay. But don't turn on the lights."

I started the engine, backed onto the lane, and began
creeping deeper into the park guided by moon glow. We passed
a golf course and, eventually, a building in darkness that I
assumed was some sort of clubhouse. The lane made a fork,
one section continuing on, the other circling the building to a small lot. I took the latter, moving the cab as close to the rear
of the building as I could.

"Better," she said. "Maybe we'll make it through the
night."

"You were about to tell me the truth."

"Right. My friend John and I have been collecting a few
dead presidents selling heroin to Brentwood and Beverly Hills
assholes who like to impress their party guests with a special
after-dinner treat."