Chapter 13
Rollo glanced out into the twilight before scurrying inside Jimmy’s third-floor apartment, a laptop computer clutched to his chest, the rain falling warm and clean behind him, one of those summer storms that didn’t cool anyone off.
Jimmy stood in the doorway. “Come on in, Rollo!” he shouted over the rain, calling to the row of apartments across the courtyard, his hands cupping his mouth like a megaphone. A fatigued pigeon resting on a phone wire cocked its head. “You bring the drugs and donkey porn?”
“Very funny.” Rollo unzipped his windbreaker as he walked inside, taking handfuls of cell phones out of the inner pockets, clattering them down onto Jimmy’s kitchen table. He headed for the refrigerator. “You got any Mountain Dew?”
Jimmy sat down at the table and spread out the papers Rollo had given him at the funeral, listing over two months of Walsh’s prepaid phone calls. Like a lot of ex-cons freed from the system’s rigid phone restrictions, Walsh was an inveterate talker. The record contained hundreds of brief calls, touchstone calls rather than conversation. Jimmy had barely started checking them out. He picked up one of Rollo’s cell phones. “Clones?”
“Just like you asked for.” Rollo cracked a can of Mountain Dew and sat beside him, opened his laptop. Now that everyone and his cockatoo had Caller ID, the only way to run Walsh’s numbers without being tagged was to use untraceable clone phones, their ID and billing codes identical to a legitimate unit in use somewhere else. Rollo cracked his knuckles, loosening up his fingers. “Hundred bucks a dozen, but no guarantee on how long they’re good for. The phone company is getting smarter all the time.”
“Boo-hoo.”
“Hey, man, people put in a lot of time and effort scamming the system, then some supercomputer steps in and ruins everything.” Rollo dragged a few sheets of crumpled paper out of his pocket. “You’re lucky Walsh didn’t have a clone, or you’d be shit out of luck. These are the last calls he made—my inside guy at the company couldn’t pull them until this morning. That’s what he said, anyway. I think he was holding out for a big-screen TV.” He glanced around the apartment. “Speaking of which, isn’t it about time you joined the modern world? That Trinitron is a joke. My Game Boy has a better picture.”
“TV looks better small. If I want big, I’ll go to a movie.”
Rollo looked at his reflection in the computer screen, tugged at the soul patch under his lower lip. “You think I should grow back the goatee?”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
“This girl I met yesterday said I have a weak chin. A goatee might help cover it up. Or I could grow longer sideburns.” Rollo nodded, tilting his head. “Yeah. Distract attention from my chin.”
Jimmy fumbled with the cell phone. “Could we leave the make-over for later?”
“I’m looking for an opinion here. I trust your judgment, man.”
“I think you should quit eating burgers and fries every night. I think you should get outside more. Work on your tan. Play in the ocean. I think you should go out with women who don’t tell you about your weak chin or your skinny legs or your sunken chest. At least on the first date. I think—”
Rollo gingerly touched his pectorals. “What do you mean, sunken chest?” He grabbed the phone from Jimmy, pressed some numbers, and handed it back. “The access code on all the clones is six six six. Cool, huh?”
Jimmy pushed a few pages of numbers to Rollo as he listened for the dial tone, keeping the most recent ones for himself. “We’re going to have to share the reverse directory.”
“Books are old tech. I don’t mess with them,” said Rollo, hooking up one of the clone phones to his laptop, establishing his wireless Internet connection. He punched numbers into another phone while he waited for his computer to load. “Hi,” he said into the receiver, “this is Richard Burns, from Travel Associates, and I’m pleased to inform you that you’re the lucky winner of an all-expense-paid trip to Reno, Nevada. For legal reasons, what is the correct spelling of your first and last . . . Hello? Hello?”
Jimmy looked down his own list of numbers, making notations. “Before you start randomly dialing, you might try scanning the sheet for recurring numbers. No way Walsh could camp out in that trailer for a few months without calling the good wife.” He ran a finger down the list. The last two entries were identical, although made a day apart. He flipped through the reverse directory and found that the number was the main switchboard at the California state prison at Vacaville, Walsh’s last-known residence before the trailer in Anaheim. Jimmy worked his way backward up the list and checked the next number in the directory, then reached for one of Rollo’s phones.
A woman answered on the first ring, her voice sultry. “Wild Side Spa, can I help you?”
Jimmy was poised over his legal pad. “This is Garrett Walsh, W-A-L-S-H. I’m concerned that someone has been using my credit card at the spa. Could you tell me the last time it was—”
“I don’t do billing,” said the woman on the other end, annoyed. “Take the matter up with your credit card company.” She hung up.
“What was that all about?” asked Rollo.
“One of Walsh’s last calls was to a spa in Santa Monica. A massage parlor, maybe, or a phone-sex joint.”
“Maybe he knew he was going to get smoked,” said Rollo, clicking away on his laptop. “One last jerk-off before the long walk. That’s what I would do. I wouldn’t have to spend seventy-five dollars to do it, either.”
“Interesting you have the price right at your fingertips,” said Jimmy, going back to the list. “Cross-check your databases and see if you can find the home number of Mick and Samantha Packard. I haven’t had any luck on my own.” He peered at the list. There were more calls made to Vacaville, plenty of them over the last couple of months—Walsh was probably leaving messages for old cellmates. Released cons always had a list of requests from buddies still inside: families to contact, girlfriends to remind to visit, lawyers to prod into another appeal. Most requests went forgotten as soon as the con hit the city, but Walsh had evidently followed through on his promises.
Rollo’s fingers flew over the keyboard, the sound like a host of maniac woodpeckers beating their brains out. “Sorry, nothing listed or unlisted for Mick Packard.” He looked up at Jimmy. “You have the wife’s maiden name? They use that sometimes.”
“I’ll ask around tomorrow. Let’s keep going.”
“Where
are
we going?” said Rollo, bent over the keyboard again. “I mean, if you think Mr. Walsh was murdered, that’s good enough for me. But what’s in it for us?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.
Nothing.
” Rollo’s eyes never left the computer screen as he tapped away. “This lady you’re worried about—the good wife—what do we care what happens to her? We don’t know anything about her. She could be somebody who bakes chocolate chip cookies for shut-ins or sets puppies on fire when she’s bored.”
“You don’t have to help.”
“How can you care about somebody you don’t even know? That’s all I’m asking. You read about a bus going off a mountain road in Pakistan, do you give a shit?”
“I care about finding who killed Walsh. I care about finding the good wife. If you’re not interested, I understand. I’ll let you know how things turn out.”
Rollo pushed back his glasses. “All I’m saying is that I’d feel a lot better if there was some payoff.”
“Other than maybe saving somebody’s life?”
“That ain’t no payoff.”
Jimmy smiled. Rollo was a crook, but he was honest. “How about the satisfaction of finding the man who murdered Walsh? The same man who murdered Heather Grimm.”
Rollo pushed back his glasses again, his watery brown eyes as sincere as a bridegroom’s. “Mr. Walsh and Heather Grimm—they don’t care what we do.”
“Just think of this as doing me a favor.”
“I can live with that.” Rollo went back to the computer screen. “Mr. Walsh put a lot of calls in to pizza joints and Chinese take-out restaurants. Can’t blame him. The idea of a genius like him sweating over a stove—where’s the justice?”
“Try under the J’s.” Jimmy punched in another number on his cell phone.
“Universal Pictures, Mr. Duffy’s office,” said a woman.
“Thank you, wrong number.” Jimmy clicked off, then continued through his list, making notes beside the three other times Walsh had called the studio. Like Walsh had said, he had tried every major player in Hollywood. Every studio had been called at least five or six times, every major production company and talent agency. Walsh had been passed along from office to office, starting at the top and working his way downward. He probably got stalled at the assistant to some powerless VP, some Hugo Boss smoothie who was forever “in a meeting” when Walsh was on the line.
Jimmy imagined Walsh sitting around that stuffy little trailer in the afternoon heat, drinking beer and waiting for a callback that never came, ordering pizza and listening for the sound of tires on gravel. Paranoia hadn’t helped him. The ME had found no skin under what was left of Walsh’s fingernails, no bruises, no signs of a struggle. Walsh had been taken by surprise, taken by a professional, someone who knew how to make a killing seem like an accident. With Walsh’s luck, the call for his big meeting, the lunch that would turn everything around, would have come in while the fishies were nosing around his fresh corpse, the cell phone ringing until the battery ran down.
“Did I tell you I got a call from a new reality TV show?” said Rollo, his nose practically touching the computer screen. “Not another
Survivor
clone, either. I told the assistant producer, ‘Rollo don’t sweat, Rollo don’t eat rats’—”
“Rollo keeps talking about himself in the third person, Jimmy’s going to throw his ass out the door.”
“I’m saying that winning the scavenger hunt made me famous. I’m trying to thank you.”
“The Monelli twins got some work out of it too. I saw them on the set of
Slumber Party Maniacs II.
”
“No wonder those two stiffed me,” said Rollo. “I asked them out for a date last week, told them I didn’t care which one, they could decide. You would have thought I had a sign on my forehead, ‘Warning: Anal Warts!’”
“Women—you flatter them, and they turn on you. It’s not fair.”
“Exactly.” Rollo got up and grabbed another Mountain Dew. “You should get one of those refrigerators with an automatic ice-maker.”
“Let me know if you find any calls made to a motel,” said Jimmy, still going through his list. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s probably not the Peninsula.”
“Nino has an ice-maker in his limousine,” said Rollo, his head in the refrigerator.
“Which reminds me, what are you doing passing off a chunk of lava as a moon rock? Nino isn’t the kind of guy you fuck around with.”
Rollo turned from the refrigerator with a can of Mountain Dew in one hand. “I didn’t hustle him.”
“You gave Nino a real moon rock?”
“Duh.”
“Where did
you
get a moon rock?”
Rollo popped the can of Mountain Dew. “There was this NASA engineer, a regular mission-control kind of guy.” He gestured with the can. “I guess things were different in the early days—space, Jimmy, the final frontier. Why shouldn’t this guy bring home a little chunk of history from the office?” He took a long drink. “This engineer, he died last year, but he had a kid, smart kid too, fix anything electronic, but you know how it is—bad grades. High school, man, it should be illegal the shit teachers get away with.” He took another drink, and the Mountain Dew foamed out and down his hand, dripping on Jimmy’s carpet. Rollo idly rubbed it in with the toe of his shoe. “This kid. I kind of went into his high-school computer system and fixed his grades. Got him a scholarship to Caltech.” He sat down at the computer. “So he gave me the moon rock.”
“And you gave it to Nino?”
“I kept it for a while. It was fun. You know, holding it, thinking about it—like green cheese. But Nino, he’s into possessions, and I thought he’d really like it. I mean, it’s not like I was going to lay it off on the Smithsonian.” He tapped at the keyboard. “Hmmmm.”
“What?”
“I’ve got one, two, three, four, five calls to a motel just off Sunset, the Starlight Arms. According to AAA online, the Starlight is not one of your high-quality establishments. No phones in the rooms, no pool, no bathtubs, just showers. A fine selection of triple-X videos on cable, though.”
“What’s the number?” Jimmy looked up as Rollo gave it to him. “I’ve got it on my list too. Three days before Walsh died.” He reached for a phone.
Somebody took his time answering. “Yeah?” The man sounded like it hurt to talk.
“Is this the Starlight Arms?” asked Jimmy.
“Yeah. So?”
“Is Harlen Shafer one of your guests?”
The manager or whoever he was laughed so hard he coughed up a couple of chunks of lung tissue. “We don’t got
guests
here.”
“Is Shafer still checked in?” asked Jimmy. Silence on the other end, then a dial tone.
“Who’s Harlen Shafer?” Rollo asked as Jimmy hung up.
“What’s the address for the Starlight Arms?” Jimmy waited while Rollo jotted it down. “Shafer was in prison with Walsh. He used to visit him at the trailer, probably copped dope for him. Katz said his fingerprints were all over the place.”
“Let’s go over there now,” said Rollo. “I’m tired of playing phone tag, and this motel—I know that area. There’s a great Thai restaurant not far from there—” He jerked at the knock on the door, ready to bolt.
Jimmy beckoned him quiet, walked to the door, and checked the peephole. He smiled, then opened the door.
Chapter 14
A jumpshot from Kobe Bryant at the buzzer, and the Lakers and Houston were in double overtime. Yes! The Butcher sat in his car, pumping his fist as he watched the lady climb the stairs of the apartment complex, the cheers of the crowd reduced to a fuzzy whisper through the blown speakers of the radio. The rain was gusting, and he followed the lady’s progress through the rain that was spattering the windshield, wondering what a finely dressed woman was doing in surfer and secretary heaven. Jimmy’s apartment was just past the Huntington Beach oil field, close enough to the oil patch to hear the grasshopper derricks creaking away, close enough to the beach to catch the salt air when a storm was rolling in.
The fancy lady had parked just down the street, walking to the building with a controlled swivel, her purse held close against her hip. All the thong queens and high-school honeys flashing it for free on the beach, but this lady with her power suit and self-control got him stoked. He had been tempted to turn on the wipers to get a better look at her as she crossed the street, but he didn’t want to give away his position.
Shaq got fouled taking a shot, which bounced around the rim before rolling out. The air went out of the arena—the Butcher could feel it as acutely as if he were really there. He pounded on the steering wheel, the heavy plastic vibrating with the blows. Shaq was a dominating center but a brick foul-throw shooter.
The lady kept climbing, caught for a moment in a stairwell light. The Butcher checked out her tight ass for a moment until she moved higher, into shadow.
Shaq’s first foul shot was an airball. The arena crowd was silent. The Butcher had to resist the impulse to tear the steering wheel off and beat someone to death with it.
The lady reached the third-floor landing, looked around, and then turned right. Unbelievable. She was knocking on Jimmy Gage’s front door. Up until that moment the Butcher had been considering going one on one with the lady, but that ruined it for him. Chalk it up as one more thing Jimmy was going to have to answer for.
The rain beat down suddenly on the roof of the car, and the Butcher jerked. When he peered through the windshield again, the lady was gone.
Inside.
The Butcher adjusted his seat, trying to get comfortable, the busted springs groaning under him. Ridiculous for someone his size to be stuck driving around in a junked-out Geo Metro anyway. Twenty-nine years old, and the Butcher was driving a toy car. The best gas mileage on the market and every penny counted, but it still added up to shit car, shit life. Do the math.
The Butcher—that wasn’t really his name, it was just something Jimmy Gage had stuck him with. No matter how much the Butcher tried to ignore the name, threatening those who used it, the tag had stuck. Soon enough he was going to take his real name back. Take his life back too.
Shaq bounced the ball prior to taking his second foul shot.
Bounce
bounce bounce.
The announcer was so tense he sounded like he was going to cry.
Bounce bounce bounce.
Take the fucking shot, Shaq!
Shaq did. The Butcher closed his eyes, seeing that perfect arc. The radio squawked, and the Butcher opened his eyes.
“Nothing but
net, ladies and gentlemen!”
The Butcher watched Jimmy Gage’s front door, hearing the crowd cheer over the radio, feeling the blood pounding in his temples. Lakers up by one. That was sweet, but for the kind of money Shaq was paid, he should have made them both.