And for perhaps the hundredth time that evening, I wished with all my heart that Cindy was sitting across from me. I missed her laugh, her smile, her scent. Her everything.
When the bill came, I quickly paid it and we left. As we exited the restaurant, Mrs. Williams looped her arm through mine. I think I shuddered a little.
I walked her to her car, where we stood awkwardly for a few moments. I wanted to leave but she wouldn’t release my arm. Above, the tiny sliver of moon reflected the hollow feeling inside me.
“I had a great time tonight,” she said.
Her words took me by surprise. What date had she been on? I had been miserable.
“We should do it again sometime,” she added.
I nodded dumbly and just wanted to leave. Finally she released my arm and surprised me again by planting a big, wet kiss on my lips. She pulled away and grinned warmly, then got in her massive SUV and drove off.
I stood there in the parking lot, watching her go.
I wanted to run to Cindy.
But I didn’t. Instead, on the way home, I bought a case of beer and drank the night away.
Chapter Forty-eight
I went on a seven mile jog the next morning. I kept an easy pace, and my leg only hurt a little, which was encouraging. I showered and shaved at home, then headed for the office, where I kept my office door locked and the Browning on the desk next to me.
I called Donna Trigger. A girl answered and told me that Donna had classes this morning but I could try later in the afternoon. I said I would, she said cool, popped a bubble and hung up.
Next I called Sanchez on his cell and asked him to run Bryan Dawson’s name through his data base and see what turned up. He said no problem and that if it weren’t for me he wouldn’t have shit to do, nevermind his caseload of homicides to solve. I hung up on him in mid-rant.
I sat back in my chair and realized I had no real clues or suspects, other than two lecherous men with a fondness for young girls. This was so depressing that I felt it necessary to take a nap. I usually don’t need much convincing when it comes to naps.
***
The phone woke me. It was just before noon.
“Hi,” said a soft voice. My heart lurched. It was Cindy.
“Hello.”
“Can I see you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
I hung up and sat at my desk for a minute or two until I realized I was holding my breath. I let it out slowly. Within the next few minutes the course of my life would be set. Amazingly, it was out of my hands, and in Cindy’s alone.
***
I stood off to the side of my window, looking down onto Beach Blvd, the blinds partly open. Hauling ass down the street and turning dangerously in front of a white pickup, Cindy arrived in her silver Lexus. I could hear the pickup’s angry horn from here.
And trailing behind Cindy was a blue Taurus. Not normally a big deal, granted, but sitting in the driver’s seat was my friend the hitman. He continued on past my building and made a left and disappeared.
He made two mistakes: the first was that I made his plate. The second was that he had involved Cindy.
My phone rang. I grabbed it.
“You’re girlfriend’s cute. Back off, or she’s dead.” The line went dead.
I immediately called Sanchez and got his voice mail. I left the plate number for him to run. Now I was going to owe Sanchez another dinner. So what else was new?
Next I unlocked the door and paced before my couch, trying like hell to get the killer out of my mind and focus on Cindy. To focus on us.
Moving along the cement walkway, heels clicking rapidly along, I could hear Cindy coming.
My hands were sweating; my shoulders were knotted. I resented her for putting me through this. We had been serious for eight years. She knew the dangers inherent to my profession, but she also knew that I could handle them. The only new twist was my interest in resuming my football career; well, and the drinking.
The door to my office opened, and she stood there holding a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers. She came in and set the flowers down on the desk, then threw her arms around me. Her lips found mine and we kissed like lost lovers, which, for a few days, we were. We fumbled our way to the couch, and there we made up for lost time.
And the direction of my life became clear again.
Damn clear.
Chapter Forty-nine
Nestled between a Rite Aide and a laundromat was a little Italian place that I liked, called Frazzi’s. Cindy and I were heading there now for lunch, holding hands. The mid-day sun shone straight down on us, but lacked any real heat, just a bright ornament hanging in the sky.
“So why is Italian your favorite food?” asked Cindy. I sensed she was feeling happy. The weather was nice, and we had just made love, and she wanted to keep things light and fun, at least for the moment. We still hadn’t talked about the heavy stuff, which was fine by me.
“I’ve discovered in the course of my considerable dining experience and extensive travels that a food joint has to work pretty damn hard to screw up Italian food. It’s usually a sure bet.”
“I’ve screwed it up before,” she said.
“Actually, we screwed it up together,” I said.
“Which is why we no longer cook.”
“And why we eat out.”
“Except for you and your damn cereal and PB&Js.”
“Cereal and PB&J’s are my staple. They keep me alive.”
“I know. I think it’s cute.”
Frazzi’s was a narrow restaurant with checkered table cloths and red vinyl seats. We found a booth in the back and sat ourselves. By now Cindy knows to allow me to have the best view of the restaurant, where I keep my eyes on the front door, the butt of my gun loose and free. There wasn’t much for Cindy to look at other than me. Lucky girl.
The waitress came by and we ordered two Cokes.
“So can I say a few things?” asked Cindy.
“Of course.” Here it comes.
“Your drinking worries me. Actually, it’s not the fact that you occasionally get drunk, it’s that you feel you need to drink secretly.”
“Well, it’s not a pretty sight.”
“How long have you been getting drunk?”
I shrugged. “Off and on since I broke my leg.”
“The broken leg was the catalyst?”
“Yes.”
“And nothing else?”
I reached out and took her hand from across the table. She needed to be reassured. I looked at her steadily in the eye. “It’s the only reason.”
“Nothing about me?”
“No.”
“Can I ask you a favor?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Will you try to stop for me? I’m not asking you to give up drinking altogether, but I’m asking you to stop getting drunk whenever we are away from each other, to stop destroying your liver, to stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself.”
“I might need help.”
“I’ll help you.”
Our drinks came, along with some fresh bread and oil.
“The usual, Jim?” asked Mama Lucco. She was Italian and in her mid-forties. I’d been coming here for four years, ever since I set up my agency down the street.
“Make that two,” I said.
When Mama Lucco had moved off, Cindy asked, “What’s the usual?”
“Lasagna, of course.”
“I should have known.”
“So what else is on your mind?”
She took a sip from her Coke, and then tore a piece of bread off, dipped it in oil and gave it to me. I took it, and she repeated the process for herself.
When she was ready, she said, “I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, too, admittedly. I asked myself why couldn’t I have a boyfriend who has a normal job, a job in which his life isn’t threatened by a hired killer, a job that didn’t require you to deal with the dregs of society.”
/> She paused. I waited.
“But then I realized that you are so goddamn good at what you do, and someone has to set things right in this fucked up world. And if you are willing to do it, then the least I can do is stand by your side, and give you my support.”
I digested this, then asked, “What about football?”
“I don’t know what to make of this football business. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
“Fair enough.”
“And I’ve come to the conclusion that if I go back to you now, I will forever accept you, just the way you are, and deal with whatever comes our way, together. I had a taste of life without you this week, and it was horrible. Just horrible.” She paused and took my hand, and looked me in the eye. “Will you take me back?”
“Yes,” I said.
She kissed my knuckles. “You’ve got me forever, Jim Knighthorse. Or for as long as you can stand me.”
Chapter Fifty
Later, with Cindy teaching an afternoon class, and me wondering how I was going to stay off the booze, Sanchez called.
“I got an address on that plate.”
“Swell.”
“You say it was an older model blue Taurus?”
“Uh huh.”
“How about a green ‘89 Taurus?”
“Green, blue, same difference.”
“Christ, Knighthorse. Can’t you tell the difference?”
“No,” I said. “Greens and blues are tough.”
“That could be the difference in apprehending a felon.”
“We all have our handicaps,” I said. “Mine is coloration. Yours is unattractiveness.”
“Fuck you,” he said, chuckling.
“Perhaps if you were better looking.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Convince the killer to stay away.”
Sanchez was silent. “You’re going to kill him,” he finally said. It wasn’t a question.
“No other way to convince a hitman to stay away.”
“You need help?”
“Wouldn’t that be against the law?”
“Yes.”
“No, thank you. He made it personal. Be better if you stayed out of it, in case something goes wrong.” I paused. “I owe you.”
“Fucking eh, you do. You can start with dinner tonight.”
He gave me the name and address, and hung up. Johnny Bright. I stared at the name for some time.
He should have left Cindy out of it. Would have been healthier for him.
***
Next I called Washington state, and this time got hold of Donna Trigger.
“Who’s this?” she asked. Her voice was soft.
“My name is Jim Knighthorse, I’m a private detective down in Huntington Beach. I’m following up on the murder of Amanda Peterson.”
There was silence. Not even a hiss of a connection. “What can I do for you, Mr. Knighthorse?”
“Can I ask you about Bryan Dawson?”
Another pause. “What would you like to know?”
“What was your relationship with Mr. Dawson?”
“He was my band director,” she said evenly. “And my lover.” She caught me admittedly by surprise. But I am a professional, and just as I opened my mouth for the next question, she continued: “And, in the end, my stalker.”
“Could you elaborate?”
“On what?”
“On everything,” I said.
***
She did, and when we hung up I had a much clearer picture of Bryan Dawson. And I had no reason to doubt her.
Dawson had approached her during her junior year, and she had been flattered because she had always considered him cute. All of the girls did. It began after band camp when he offered to give her a ride home. One thing led to another and they didn’t make it home and she had been honored that he had chosen her out of all the girls. She was seventeen and had been a virgin. She saw him secretly during the next year, but he became possessive and physical and she ended the relationship. He was relentless in his pursuit to win her back. Soon he was following her home, standing outside her windows, calling her repeatedly. And when she began dating someone else, a senior at their school, that someone was brutally attacked one night, leaving the kid with a fractured skull and permanent semi-blindness.
But the stalking had abruptly ended when he found a new girl.
A replacement.
Amanda Peterson.
Chapter Fifty-one
Sanchez and I were across the street from my pad, upstairs at the Huntington Beach Brew Pub.
“Why am I always coming out to O.C. to meet you?” he asked.
“Because I’m worth it,” I said. “What’s Danielle doing tonight?”
“She’s taking a class. Going back to school to get a degree in finance. She’s hit a ceiling at work, needs the degree.”
“It’s about time you let her have a life you chauvinistic Latino pig.”
“Hey, I’m only half Latino.”
We were both drinking the blond house draft, a light, sweet beer.
Sanchez said, “Why is it the blond beer is the lighter beer, and the darker beer gets you drunk faster? Thought blonds have more fun.”
“How long you been thinking that one up?”
“Just came to me. I am, after all, a UCLA-educated Latino.”
Our food came. And lots of it. I had ordered from the appetizer menu, running my forefinger straight down the list and rattling off anything that sounded good. And it all sounded good. Now, plates of nachos, chicken wings, calamari, southwestern eggrolls and even an artichoke were arriving steadily at our table.
“Someone in the kitchen must like you,” said Sanchez, “because they gave you a green flower.”
“It’s called an artichoke, you oaf.”
“Well, your arteries are going to be choking after you eat all that shit.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
“What can I say?” Sanchez said. “I’m on a roll. Can I have any of that shit?”
“Get your own food.”
“Can’t; you cleaned out the kitchen.”
We drank from our beer. The Lakers were playing the Jazz. Shaq was unloading on them.
“So I’ve got news on Pencil Dick.”
“Who’s Pencil Dick?”
“Your teacher friend, Bryan Dawson. Anyone poking high school students is called a pencil dick.”
“I see; what’s the news?”
Sanchez leaned forward on his elbows. “Pencil Dick was involved in another murder up north. In a city called Half Moon Bay.”
“So tell me.”
“A student of his, a band student, disappeared. They found her floating in the San Francisco bay. Pencil Dick was a suspect, but they couldn’t pin anything on him. He quit his job and came down here.”
“Well, then, what do you think we should do?” I asked.
“We tail him. With Amanda gone, he might be looking for new blood.”
Chapter Fifty-two
I found the allegedly green Taurus parked in front of a small woodframe house in Santa Ana. It was 9:00 p.m., and the Taurus still looked blue to me.
Santa Ana is mostly Hispanic and its residents are perhaps the poorest in Orange County. In fact, downtown Santa Ana looks as if it had been lifted whole from Mexico City.
Johnny Bright, as a Caucasian, would stick out in Santa Ana like a sore white thumb.
But one question remained: was Johnny Bright the same guy who took a potshot at my ear? The vehicle could have belonged to a friend. In that case I would follow the friend. Either way, with a paid killer on my ass, I preferred to be proactive in my involvement with him.
I waited in my car around a corner, with a clear view of Bright’s front porch. My own vehicle had nicely tinted windows, and from behind them I watched the house through lightweight high-powered binoculars. I didn’t have many tools of the trade, but this was one of them.
I was listening to Will Durant’
s Story of Philosophy on tape. The 5 Freeway arched above the housing tract. Freeway noises, especially the rumble of a Harley, cut through the drone of the tape. I was on my third tape, marching on through Voltaire and the French Enlightenment, when four gang members stopped by the Mustang and looked it over, not realizing I was inside. I rolled down my window and reached under my seat and pulled out a fake police badge.
Another one of my tools....
“Can I help you gentlemen?” I said, flashing the badge.
The first one, a skinny kid with a black bandana tied around his head, shot his hands up as if I had pointed a gun at him. When he spoke he had a long, drawling Hispanic accent, punctuated by jerky hand movements.
“Don’t shoot me, officer, I didn’t mean to look at your killer set of wheels.”
“You can look but don’t touch.”
“Waddya doin’ here?” asked the kid, their obvious leader.
“Watching you boys.”
“Are you gay, too?”
His buddies slapped each other high fives.
Behind them there was movement in Bright’s house, but I couldn’t see because the gang members were in my way. I heard a screen door swing open and slap shut.
“Beat it,” I said.
The three of them waited for their leader. The leader squinted at me and seemed to recognize me. I get this kind of partial recognition a lot. Probably because at one point in their lives they had seen me on their TV screens, or in their newspapers, or sports magazines. But this kid was young, perhaps too young to know of me. But you never knew.
He jerked his head. “Let’s roll,” he told the others.
They sauntered off. One called me a pig. They would be potential witnesses; that is, if the police tried very hard to investigate the murder.
Murder?
Yeah, someone’s going to die tonight.
Across the street, Fuck Nut, with his slicked-back graying hair visible from even here, opened the door to his Taurus and got in.
Chapter Fifty-three
We drove through Santa Ana. I tailed him using tricks gleaned from my father. Once, at a red light, I even turned into a liquor store parking lot. When the light turned green again, I pulled out of the parking lot and continued tailing him.
At least I was amusing myself.
He pulled into a Taco Bell, and I waited across the street. He went through the drive-thru, and when he exited I followed him back to his house.
Across the street, I waited for him to finish his tacos, since it was his last meal. As I waited, I listened to the beating of my heart, filling the silence now that the book on tape had been turned off. The thudding filled my ears, and I focused on that rather than what was about to come. What had to come. I didn’t think of myself as a killer, but sometimes you had to do what you had to do. I needed this guy off my ass and away from Cindy.