Nick’s paranoia. He was famous for it, especially when stoned. He’d been busted twice, and now he was always seeing cops. She glanced in her own rearview mirror until she saw the car that bothered him, the gray American car. Though she was pretty sure it was just Nick, she tucked the dope under the seat anyway.
“Let’s drive off, see what happens,” Nick said.
She pulled away slowly from the curb, drove to the stop sign, no car following them. “Pot’s just not your drug.”
“Wrongo, baby doll,” Nick said. “Here he comes.”
The gray car crept along about half a block back. She drove down De Longpre, took a right on Las Palmas, left on Santa Monica, left on Cahuenga, and the Olds stuck like chewing gum. It was very quiet midweek in the winter, a bum asleep in the sun, two men in tight white jeans going into the Spotlight.
“One guy in the car,” Nick said, still watching out the side mirror. “Flattop, he looks like fucking Joe Friday. You can lose him in the alley.”
She turned left up the side street and up the alley past the Masque, dodging potholes, stacked wooden pallets, and a homeless guy with three mismatched dogs pissing on the wall, it was way too narrow for a whacking huge Olds to get through. She threaded her way to Vine via alleys, then made a series of fast turns, Selma to Argyle to Yucca to Gower, making sure he was gone before ascending the hill to Franklin. She stopped at the curb in front of the Fuckhouse, let Nick out. He leaned back in the door, his hair hanging around his gaunt face. “I’m serious if you wanted to stay here. And this ain’t some kind of bullshit seduction.”
“Thanks, Nick,” she said.
He reached out and stroked her cheek with a rough guitar-calloused thumb. “Bye, Josie. You take care of yourself.”
She drove back to Echo Park, shivering in her white vinyl boots and poly dress. That was exactly what you’d expect, a bust, to completely fulfill the Tyrell curse. First you lost Michael Faraday, then you went up to Tehachapi on a drug rap. Her daddy was right, you could never get a break in this world.
As she approached the house on Lemoyne, clinging by its toenails to the side of the hill, she had a sudden instinct to circle the block, the way she used to when she lived at the Fuckhouse, just to see who was out on the street before she parked and made her way back to the place. There it was, the gray Olds, down on Scott Road, parked in front of the elementary school. And Joe Friday nowhere to be seen.
He was no cop. She understood that now. If it had been about Red and the dope, how would he have known where she lived?
Five grand and you’d just disappear.
She swallowed, still feeling those hands around her neck, the rage in those fingers. She thought of her shoes by Meredith’s bed. When your only son killed himself, that was enough to drive anybody over the edge. Hadn’t it done that to her? Hadn’t she stood right over Meredith’s bed, thinking,
I could kill her right now.
What had she thought she was doing, going into the house in Los Feliz like that? How had she expected Meredith to react?
She hadn’t thought about that at all, just wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt Josie, remind her that no one was safe. After all, the woman had come in and taken everything Michael had ever touched. But Josie hadn’t thought through, hadn’t considered how far Meredith would go. She’d thought a rich, glamorous woman like Meredith Loewy would be too civilized, would back off. Evidently she had been mistaken. Maybe she should have poured something in that sleeping ear while she could. Elena would have.
Stalked
J
osie stood in the dim back hall of the Lotus Room, her drink on the tray underneath the phone. Phone numbers and erotic graffiti and flyers for bands covered the Pepto-Bismol pink wall. The idea that Meredith could hate her this much, that she wanted her dead, like Michael, a body in the morgue. No, it was crazy, her imagination was going wild, she hadn’t slept in so long. And yet, the memory of Meredith on the phone, whispering
five grand and you just disappear.
Those enormous hands closing around her throat, the fury in them, her body remembered—the glands in her neck, the tendons, even now. Her own bizarre thoughts. She focused her Veruschka eyes and stared at the phone dial, tried to think what to do next.
Every time someone came out of the bathroom, the disinfectant smell billowed, gagging her, but at least the bar was filling up, the after-work crowd stopping in from downtown for a weak drink and a botulistic plate of Chinese short ribs. They wouldn’t try to get her in here, not with all the City Hall types around, people with connections. She took the change out of her purse with a freaky thin, Blue Period hand, set the coins up on the shelf in piles, dropping several onto the floor in the process. Her hands were so cold, they wouldn’t bend right. Her mind was as stiff as her fingers, trying to close around the idea that someone was out there with a job to do, and the job was to end the life of Josie Tyrell.
Would he shoot her, or just grab her on the way to her house and strangle her with a wire, the way they did in the movies? She was shaking uncontrollably, she needed to get the goddamn money into the phone. She took a swallow of vodka, and put the coins into the slot, hearing them drop inside. She dialed Pen, but there was still no one home, the ring ring ring like the universe’s answer to any cry for help. There was never anyone home. Only the neat gentleman with death in his eyes. She let it ring, hoping against hope that Pen was at the door with her key, she might run in any minute. But she didn’t. Josie hung up and the money came chiming back into the coin return. She struggled not to cry, not to break down, she had to do something, she couldn’t freak now. A man went into the bathroom, giving her a long look.
She turned away from the stink of the men’s room, called information, and got the phone number for Tilly’s. She tried to memorize it long enough to dial the numbers, repeated it over to herself, what she thought she heard. She was infinitely grateful to hear Tilly’s growly smoker’s voice on the line. She asked for Pen, hearing Dave the cook yell something in the background, the crash and bang of dishes, and Pen came on.
“Pen, I think Michael’s mother’s taken out a hit on me. I’m at Sammy’s and I don’t know what to do. She threatened to do it and I was out with Nick and we saw this guy, and now he’s here at my place.”
Pen sighed wearily, as if she had been talking about invaders from Neptune. “Oh, fuck, Josie, don’t get psycho. Be reasonable. You know she’s not going to take out a hit on you, you know that, don’t you? Have you slept at all?”
“No, but it’s for real, I swear.”
“Go take a pill, sleep it off. You shouldn’t have taken on this movie, I told you not to. You need to just fucking kick back. It’s too fucking much. Give yourself a goddamn break why don’t you?”
Josie knew what it sounded like—like Nick having a paranoid fit. Not even Pen believed her, it sounded crazy even to herself. “Fine. But if I show up dead, tell the cops it was Meredith Loewy, okay?”
She could hear the cook shout,
Number three, hey, stop jerking off over there.
“Okay, I will. Now you swear you’ll go to sleep, okay? I’ll call you when I get off. You’re going to be okay, Josie,” Pen said. “It’s a bad day, that’s all.”
Josie hung up the phone, lit a cigarette, leaned against the pink sticky wall across from the phone trying to gather her thoughts. Down the hall, the Buddha altar by the kitchen glowed in the light of the flickering candles in their red votive cups, the potbellied deity surrounded by tangerines and incense, things printed in gold on red paper. She didn’t know how to pray, especially to some collection of dime-store knickknacks, but she tried to.
Please, let someone fucking care about this.
She wouldn’t call Nick, she didn’t want to go back there anymore. It would be too fucking easy to start all over again. She called Phil Baby at Otis and also at home, she called Henry. She called Shirley at Genghiz’s. Paul and Ben’s apartment phone had been disconnected. Well, the universe had spoken. There was no one left to turn to.
On the wall by the phone, under Cassiopeia’s phone number, someone had written,
Man cannot stand very much reality.
How true that was. She tilted her head back against the wall, trying to keep the tears inside. What she wanted more than anything was to take a few of those reds in her purse and check out. Just for a little while. But she didn’t want to nod out at Sammy’s, slide down to the sticky floor, her legs spread like an obscene doll’s, she had to keep on top of this, she had to live out this moment as she had lived out every other goddamn thing since Michael’s death, second by excruciating second, it seemed an impossible mass to climb over, a pathless mountain range.
Why did Meredith have to hate her so much? They had both lost Michael, it should have drawn them together, not set them tearing at one another like the dogs her brother Tommy and his friends used to set on each other in the tow yard after dark. Snarling and ripping at each other, you couldn’t help but hear them. She wanted to be with Meredith the way they’d been that night in Los Feliz, talking about the good things about him, when she’d gotten to see the human side of her. She’d only wanted that woman to like her. But Meredith had decided from the very first instant exactly who and what Josie Tyrell was, what she wanted from her son. And Michael had made sure of that, waving her in his mother’s face like a cape before a bull.
She drank her watered vodka, staring at the phone, the constellation of messages and numbers and scrawled genitals. The Loewys and the Faradays. People like that. The whole world was theirs, why did they have to fuck with people like her? Couldn’t they just be satisfied with ruling the planet? No. Look at Michael, he had everything, but it had combined inside him like a lab experiment gone wrong. It festered, it grew, it took away everything good and left him with a yawning emptiness she could never have filled. Look at Meredith. Aside from her music, what was she anyway? Just a frightened, middle-aged woman with money in the bank, money that couldn’t keep her safe, money that couldn’t keep her son alive, that couldn’t do anything but call out more death.
She kept watching the door into the hall, for a man in a flattop. A girl came down the hall, a short, wide dyke with pins in her nose and her ear, a chain between them, her hair in a short shaved Mohawk. Josie recognized her, she was a drummer in a dyke band that played sometimes at the Hong Kong Café. She stopped at the phone, saw the drink and the coins and the purse. Josie quickly pushed off the wall, got her hand on the receiver first, wondering if the girl would punch her. “Sorry, I’ve got just one more call.”
The girl heaved a sigh, but made a gentlemanly gesture of “you first,” though she made no move to go, propping herself up on the facing wall, her big drummer’s arms akimbo. Under her gaze, Josie turned away and put coins in the slot, concentrating not to drop any, and dialed.
“Loewy residence,” the Spanish maid answered.
“Yes, Meredith Loewy please. Tell her it’s Josie Tyrell.” She stood taller, under the Mohawk girl’s scrutiny. Straight girls weren’t necessarily losers.
She heard the maid’s steps walking away, listened hard for how the conversation would play.
It’s that girl on the phone.
Her boss would know which one. She tried to imagine Meredith’s reaction to the fact that she was still alive, irritation well concealed, red under green. Would she even talk to her, or would the maid lie, say Meredith wasn’t home? Some music was playing in the background, strings, something sweet and whipped creamy, Mozart maybe, or the other guy, Haydn. Steps again, the rattle as the phone was retrieved.
“Josie?” Meredith said. She sounded surprised to be hearing from her.
Josie took a sip of vodka, the ice trembling against the side of the glass.
“Josie?” Meredith said impatiently. “Is that you?”
“Thought I’d be dead by now?” She looked over at the drummer, who stuck out her lower lip in a gesture of
that’s a new one.
Now Josie was glad she was there, in case there was trouble, she looked like someone who could handle herself in a fight.
A long pause then, she could hear Meredith clearing her throat. “Why, were you planning it?”
Josie tugged at the metal-encased phone cord, imagining how it would feel wrapped around her neck. “Gray Olds? Guy with a flattop?”
“What
are
you talking about?”
All her fear turned to anger, with just that snotty emphasis, the better-than-everybody cadence. “Five grand, remember? Couldn’t you think of something better to do with that money, like clean out your pool? Killing me won’t bring him back, Meredith.”
There was a silence on the line. “You really think I’m capable of that?” She could hear Meredith’s careful breathing. “I was just talking. My God, you really think I could—Really, Josie, your imagination is getting the better of you.”
Josie frowned, looking up at a white-shirted City Hall type coming out of the men’s room, zipping up his fly. The heavy drummer girl crossed her arms, as if to protect Josie from his interference, or maybe just protecting her place in line. He scuttled back down the hall.
“So who’s this joker who’s following me around, Santa Claus?” She could hear the Chinese cook in the kitchen yelling at someone, rapid fire. The Buddha grinned mockingly. “I want you to know I told people. If anything happens to me, they’ll know it’s you.”
“Oh, Josie, you didn’t.” It came quick, defensive. Like it was civilized to hire a hit man, but barbaric to let people know she’d done it.
“You didn’t think I’d let you get away with it.”
She heard Meredith heave a shuddering sigh that had levels to it, like a house running downhill. “You think I hired someone to kill you. You’re insane.”
“Maybe,” Josie said. “But listen, anything happens to me, they go straight to the cops. I fall down the stairs, eat a bad sandwich, you’re on the hook.” Her punk audience nodded approvingly.
“All right,” Meredith said. “All right. I did hire someone. But not to kill you, please, try to believe me.”
She just wasn’t sure. At the end of the day, she did not want to think that this woman hated her enough to want her dead. It was one thing to suspect someone you knew wanted to murder you, but another thing to have it be real. A very, very big difference. But she had been Elena. She knew it was possible to be that cold.
“Josie, try to understand. You broke into my house. You came into my room while I was sleeping. You . . . let’s say you seemed somewhat unstable. I hired an investigator to follow you. I just wanted to know where you were, that’s all.”
It sounded reasonable. Meredith Loewy wouldn’t jeopardize everything she had to do something to Josie. Would she? But Meredith hadn’t thought twice of robbing the shit out of her. On the other hand, would Meredith have any idea how to set it up, whom to call? She didn’t exactly hang out in the right crowd. Josie would probably have more success in that area.
Still, reasonable didn’t mean true. Just because murder for hire seemed overly dramatic didn’t mean Meredith hadn’t done it. Michael had blown his brains out. Anything could happen. Reason was seductive, it gave the appearance of truth, but they were smart, Meredith and her family. They knew just how to bend the truth to suit themselves. Josie felt herself back off from belief like a dog that smelled poison in a chunk of meat. “Just because I didn’t go to college doesn’t mean I’m an idiot,” Josie said. “If you were really afraid of me, you’d hire a bodyguard, not a private eye.”
A Chinese woman in her fifties squeezed by. The punk girl had given up on the idea she would ever get to use the phone. Now she was just enjoying the drama. Meredith cleared her throat but said nothing. Mozart burbled in Los Feliz, while out in the bar, the jukebox was playing Elvis, “All Shook Up.”
“I can prove it,” Meredith said. “Let me meet you somewhere.”
“Why? So Flattop can come and finish the job?” Though she knew chances were slim he’d come blazing away at the Lotus Room. No, she wouldn’t show and then he’d wait for her on the way to the car.
“You told all your friends, remember? I’m not planning on spending my golden years in prison. Orange isn’t my color. Come on, Josie. Anywhere you say.”