The Chinese Beverly Hills (27 page)

“Oh, Jack, you so valiant. My honor very delicate. Those
hombres
just drunks. That not even got Alligator shirt. Bad copy.”

He felt himself still breathing hard, and his chest ached with it. Indigestion? “What’re you doing here, Tien?” he asked.

She lifted an eyebrow. “Business in Pasadena. Maybe I buy the city, maybe just half. This old hotel mighty good place for tryst, huh?”

He made a face.

“I got President Suite. Teddy Roosevelt stay. Come see the view. Come play with me. I see you got tight windup tonight. Come relaxate.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Tien.”

“It
my
idea. All my idea good idea. Time to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?”

“Big strong Jack and weak Tien. Perfect team. Hey, I got nothing under this
ao dai
but me.”

He never had figured out whether she’d been a top-of-the-line hooker in Saigon to buy her way out, as she’d once hinted. His imagination was feeling her body beneath the silk.

“I know what you need.” She reached across him and discreetly tapped his erection through his slacks. “We go up in lift now. Whole world is easy.”

*

Ellen lay terrified on the metal floor of the windowless panel van that was hammering her hip. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back, her ankles duct-taped together, and her mouth thoroughly muffled with duct tape that circled her head twice. The primeval feeling of helplessness pushed away any rational calculation. She’d started out trying to memorize the turns and straight stretches, from the spot on Baltimore Avenue where Beef had grabbed her, but her reckoning had quickly fallen apart.

The van slammed to a stop and she slid forward so her shoulder rammed a seat. A gust of wet wind blew in as Beef stepped out. He hadn’t blindfolded her, but she couldn’t sit up to see a thing. All she heard was drumming rain on asphalt and the idling truck engine. Concentrate, girl. For all that white noise, the world was far too quiet—no traffic, no wind against houses.

The van rocked a little and the door slammed. “Stay still. Fun later.” He drove onto a much rougher surface and got out again. A squeal of metal. Closing a gate, she thought. A fire trail! Oh no!

“Stop squirming back there or I’ll come back and paddle your ba-dink-a-dink.”

She would have to gather all her wits to survive this. Ellen shifted around to resist being thrown back and forth.

The van slowed. “I said stop squirming. Am I making a mistake being kind to you?”

She bleated through the gag, hoping it would seem compliance.

After several more minutes of rough driving, he hit the brakes hard. “Fucking shit.”

He sounded like a child balked. She heard a few thumps, maybe his hand pounding the steering wheel angrily.

“Zook, you ain’t supposed to
be
here!”

He was silent for a long time, then got out.

“Sit and wait, girl.”

She gave another mild bleat to appease the gods of the insane.

“Don’t wander away.” He leaned over the seat quickly and snapped her picture with his cell phone. He followed this by emitting a very male braying. It was profoundly disturbing but was probably meant to be a laugh.

*

She sat on a pillow and waited. Why was she doing this? She had a perfectly satisfactory inner life, she had her painting--and she had at least a semester before UCLA and her dad caught on that she was AWOL from most of her studies.

The swami’s assistant brought a bottle of Amstel. “Enjoy. Evolve.”

“Have you evolved?” she asked.

“It would be immodest to say.”

“Does the swami like boys, too?” she asked.

His smile collapsed and he fled. The swami entered from too far away for him to have heard her impertinence.

“Are you comfortable? An ordinary Western chair can be brought. Minor things like that are insignificant.”

“I’m a minor thing, too.”

He made a palms-almost-together gesture of reverence, bowed slightly, and settled onto the floor. “Please relax. Open the direct passage from your ears to your core being.”

*

Tien Joubert hadn’t spent a lot of time showing him the view in the Presidential Suite.

“Just like that, Jackie! Higher now. You the best, the best, the best!” She emitted that amazing cry, a small, wild animal, and then bucked hard against him, almost chipping his tooth. He ended up on the floor, rubbing a cramp in his shoulder.

“Recharge battery now,” she said. “Not so long, though.”

There was a tangle of bed linen off the cushy bigger-than-king bed. There was also a .38 snub-nosed revolver within her reach on the head table—a first for the Presidential Suite?
Nothing
, she’d said.
Just protect from business that maybe go a little southern
. Her meeting was with representatives of a Hong Kong triad, he’d discovered. Jesus Christ.

But he’d been hibernating a long time deep in an emotional cave, and she sure could pep him up.

*

Paula Green ordered another diet Coke and sat back down in the isolated chair in the Tap Room. The ritzy place was jumping. She’d been hit on by two white-shoes hopefuls and sent them packing, and she’d had to badge a hard-eyed ex-cop from Long Beach who was part of the hotel’s “security matrix,” as he’d put it. It might even be flattering that they’d all assumed she was a trolling hooker.

She conned the desk into telling her that Jack had gone up to the Presidential Suite with a very rich Asian woman. Everyone refused to reveal the name, but Paula would find it out before she left.

It was possible Jack had taken Gloria literally about a fling, but Paula gave him the benefit of the doubt. He might be on the job here.

The Tap Room was filling up with affluent-looking couples, dressed down for an L.A. evening with their carefully laundered, torn-knee jeans, rock-n-roll tour t-shirts, and Prada tennis shoes. Bring it on, white folks. Me and mine dress up for real on weekends and dance to jazz and blues.

*

“Zook, man. We missed you.”

“What you doing at the cabin, Beef ?” Zook said.

The big man stood blinking in the blast of hot air coming out the door.

“Jeez, man. I thought we shared. All for one and all on one. I need the cabin for a date.”

“Last time you had a date, you were waving your kielbasa at a room full of college girls.”

“Don’t be mean, Z. I got my date with me.”

“I ain’t going to no motel tonight.”

“Zooker! I
need
the place.”

“Good for you. This is my family’s cabin. I need it for me. Ah, shit—you really got to show it off for some cooze, take her in the back and close the door.”

“Thanks, Zookiesticks. You’re my hero.” Beef hurried back toward his van.

A thinking man looked out for the ones who were a few marbles short, Zook thought. But his refuge had been wrecked for the night. He settled back in his swing chair and set aside the book Jack Liffey had given him, still fighting with the section on women. He wondered what sort of date Anthony Buffano could muster up.

Who would want Beef? Honestly. Zook was expecting a gap-toothed old skank who’d make him want to wipe down every surface she’d touched. But the date Beef carried into the cabin under one arm was a terrified young Asian with short blue hair, gagged with duct tape and handcuffed.

“Fuckin’
A
!” Ed Zukovich leapt to his feet as Beef slammed the door. The big man was also dangling a persuasive-looking .357 revolver. “What the fuck are you
doing
?” Zook said.

“Mind your own beeze. And stay out of my grill tonight. You can have a turn later, you want.”

“Not in this life, man. That ain’t no date. You don’t handcuff a date.”

The girl squealed urgently.

“It’s part of the game. Don’t be no slope-lover, dawg. I gotta do what I gotta do here. This the bitch been following me around wantin’ it.”

Zukovich knew he couldn’t face Beef down, not when the guy had his hormones up. Just hit the road in the Studebaker now, Zook, and don’t come back no more no more. The big guy had always been damaged goods. They’d known it all the way back to Macy Intermediate, when they’d saved him time and again from his worst self—flashing the little girls, torturing pets.

An inner voice reminded him: You’re a serious man, Ed Z. If you walk away from a defenseless girl, you’re on the way to becoming an expendable fart on this planet. The serious man has to stand up.

“Girl, just hold on,” Zook said softly, with more authority than he felt. “It ain’t gonna be.” This is maybe the fight you got to ride until the wheels fall off, he thought.

Beef kept moving the pistol in small increments, staring at it blankly then at other things in the room, no particular target in mind as far as Zook could determine.

*

Tien snored loudly, aflop beside him. He was pleased to have worn her out, but he had very little energy reserve himself. There was a burning in his chest under the sternum and Jack Liffey lay very still willing it to subside. Probably the French onion soup.

He rolled to his side and looked out the curtainless window. The rain was on pause, and southeast a million crystal-sharp points of light stretched away for miles. Pinholes through the skin of the city to the white-hot reality underneath.

Tien’s sleep t-shirt hung over a chair. A monogram said G.O.D. He’d asked about it, expecting a religious joke, but then wished he hadn’t asked. Goods-of-Desire—an import company she owned, but really it was Hong Kong slang for the massive Chinese industry of counterfeiting Western luxury goods. Corrupt army officers ran the plants, but the triads ran the export. Tien hoped to be their outlet for much of North America.

She’d told him she wanted to become the world’s first Vietnamese billionaire. But if she put her foot wrong, she might end up a cardboard box of truculent ashes.

*

The swami’s mesmerizing voice was well into his spiel and Maeve followed his instructions—closing her eyes, letting her mind drift.

“The reconstruction of memory happens faster than thought, faster than reality formed the memory.”

Maeve’s mind drifted away to worry about Gloria and her dad. You could only stay focused so long.

Then his hand rested high on her thigh and she was back in the mundane present.

“Are you comfortable, Maeve?”

“Tell me what to do to become comfortable.” This was the test. Bunny had warned her.

“Your jeans are far too tight to sit like that. Loosen the top button.”

She popped the button, and then undid a button of her blouse, too. How absolutely crass.

“If you’re warm, you should take off your shirt,” he said mildly.

She opened her eyes and saw him staring hard at her breasts. “Sir, you can help me evolve or you can play with those. It’s your choice.”

*

Paula Green had a clear view of the elevators from the bar. It was approaching midnight and she felt her stakeout determination weakening. She’d be thrown out of the bar at two a.m., and she wasn’t going to spend the wee hours in a wet bush.

Abruptly an elevator slid open to disgorge Jack Liffey. Don’t stop for a nightcap, please. There were only two others in the bar.

Disheveled, he hurried right past the Tap Room. She was astonished to see he was weeping like a child.

Ellen drew her body into a fetal position on the cabin floor. It was the thunderous gunshot nearby. The dogboys had been snapping and barking at one another, testosterone overload, when it happened. Upward she saw a ragged hole in the roof the size of a fist. Rainwater was coursing through the gap to splash the floor near her.

This was a hell of a cloudburst, a real storm-of-the-century, she thought, trying to find something she could concentrate on to calm herself. The trembly panic was impossible to control.

Ellen wriggled around to watch the big guy. That type seemed to be all over the landscape in America, big-boned and red-faced, with cold, piggy eyes. They had no inner reflection, and they always hated women.

“Shut up, Zook! Just shut up!”

“Look wat’cha done to the roof! You never had any sense! All the way back when you was on double Ritalin.”

“Zookers! You’re my only friend!”

“Give me the gun. I’ll trade you for a beer.”

“I got to protect me tonight. They’re after me!”

“
They
is…?”

“I seen cops looking at me.”

“Everybody looks at you, dude. You’re a guy people look at.”

“Well, let Miss Kung-fu look at this.”

Ellen heard a zipper and screwed her eyes tight. Oh, no.

“Beefer, mellow out!”

He kicked her in the back and she gave a muffled yelp. “Open them slant eyes, fortune cookie. You ain’t never seen this on no bamboo guy, I promise. Open or I kick your head.”

Rather than get kicked, she opened her eyes. Antonio Buffano stood astraddle her, waving something out his fly like a foot and a half of limp pink fire hose. No wonder he had a rep. It just wasn’t possible for a human penis; it was some freak of nature, a repulsive mutation.

He haw-hawed away. “She can’t believe she gonna get the big beef injection.”

“Later for sure. Here’s a beer, B. Give me the damn gun and climb off your horse.”

“Back off, man!”

She heard another earsplitting gunshot and clamped her eyes tighter, hoping against hope that the smaller one hadn’t been shot. A scream of pain disabused her.

*

Seth Brinkerhoff, wearing silk pajamas, stood dazed in the downpour in front of his house. His wrists were manacled behind him, his bare feet freezing. “Look, I’m an attorney. I want to see the warrant again.”

“You saw it,
puto
. You have the right to remain silent. Use it.”

Four officers from the San Marino Police Department in rain overcoats had forced his gate and then burst into his big Spanish Revival home, while two others shoved him outside into the rain. He was soaked and very annoyed

Seth had looked first for the judge’s name. David Corbett, okay, and the signature looked legit. He’d read as far as:
Affidavits having been made before me by
—some name he didn’t know—
who has reason to believe that on the properties
—when they’d yanked it away.