Murder-a-Go-Go's, page 39
Lou-Lou’s done nothing but sleep. She’s lost all track of days, doesn’t know how long they’ve been there. The room is kept dark, the threadbare curtains always drawn.
She feels sticky, uncomfortable, still dressed in the clothes they fled in. She’s packed a bag, a small one, but she’ll change once they’re out of town, once they’re safe. What she really wants is a shower, but the head of the one in their bathroom is rusted and looks as liable to spray cold sewage as clean water. The sheets she’s wrapped up in were dirty before she sweated into them.
The guy who checked them in was fat and stoned, his eyes barely open. What was left of his hair was plastered across his balding scalp, moist with sweat. The front of his desk was scrawled with phone numbers that promised a good time and crude drawings of genitalia. On the wall behind him hung a calendar turned to the wrong month, an image of a redhead on her back with her legs over her shoulders, fingers at her shaved pussy, prising it open. She had an angry look on her face, like she was daring the observer to try and fuck her.
Lou-Lou watches Leon. With his eyes closed, with his shoulders perfectly still and his breathing shallow, he looks calm, a Zen monk deep in meditation, but she knows he isn’t. She can almost hear his heart pounding in his ribs, like it’s ready to explode. If they stay at the motel much longer he’s liable to have a coronary.
Lou-Lou whispers. “Hey.”
Leon opens his eyes. He tries to force a smile, struggles with it, fails. “Hey, girl.” His voice is hushed. “You all right?”
“I’m holdin up.” She feels sick with hunger, but doesn’t want to tell him, otherwise he’ll put on his baseball cap, stick the gun in his waistband, and creep out to the vending machine, come back with a handful of candy bars and a couple of soda cans. All the sugar they’ve consumed has probably contributed to her sickly feeling, but it is the jagged nerves she suffers through while he is away, the worry something could happen, that he might not return, that keeps her from saying anything regarding her current appetite. “You should sleep. You look like hell.”
“Soon’s we’re outta here, baby. I’mma sleep for a week, promise.” His smile looks a little less forced now, talking to her.
“I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t worry about a thing.”
“Can’t help it.”
He nods toward her stomach. “You feel anythin?”
“It’s too soon for anythin like that. He’s only gonna be about this big.” She holds up her thumb and index finger, about an inch apart. “Probably smaller.”
“He?”
She grins. “Mother’s intuition.”
“Well you let me know when you feel somethin.”
“I will. But it’s gonna be a while yet.”
“I’m a patient guy.” He winks. “The sickness is holding off, at least.”
“Yeah. Something’s gotta be on our side, right?”
“You just lay your head down, close your eyes, go back to—” He falls silent, holds up a hand for her to do the same. He turns his head toward the door, alert. Footsteps on the gangway. Leon’s right hand moves to the gun. Lou-Lou can see the muscles in his cheek dance, his jaw clenching hard. The steps are slow, zigzagging. They pass by. A shoulder brushes the door. Leon’s hand shoots out, settles on the gun. He pauses. The body outside keeps moving. A drunk most likely, dragging himself along, looking for his room to sleep it off, or somewhere to continue the party.
Leon breathes, removes his hand from the gun. Lou-Lou notices he’s shaking. He turns back to her, tries to smile again and fails.
“When’s he gonna call?” Lou-Lou says.
“I don’t know. Soon, maybe. I don’t know.”
“He didn’t say when?”
“Said to wait a coupla days, hide out, keep low.”
“We shoulda left town straight away. Just cut loose and got the fuck out.”
“Your dad’s got a lot of friends, he coulda closed down the roads.”
“You overestimate him.”
“You underestimate him. Look, I ain’t takin any chances, okay? This is the best way.”
Lou-Lou thinks about her father. She thinks about Tommy. “I don’t like this. I don’t like the waiting. I don’t like him.”
“Tommy?”
“I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t know him.”
“He could be sellin us out.”
“He was gonna do that, you don’t think he’d’ve done it by now?”
“Why do you trust him?”
“We go back. We’ve done a lot of shit together. We’re tight.”
Lou-Lou bites her lip, unconvinced.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll wake you when he gets in touch.”
“I ain’t tired.”
“You need to rest.”
“I’ve done nothin but rest since we got to this shithole. How do I look?”
“You look beautiful, baby.”
“Am I glowing?”
“Thought you said it was too soon for anythin like that.”
“I’m sweating a lot, that could double for glow. How’s my hair?”
“You want the truth?”
“I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
“You got dark bags under your eyes and your hair’s real nappy. Them curls you got? They’re gettin all tangled together. By the time we’re outta here, you’re gonna have a head of dreadlocks.”
“I always wanted dreads. You think they’re gonna suit me?”
“Everything suits you, baby.”
“Then I’ll keep them.”
Leon freezes. His face drops. His left hand goes to his pocket and settles there. Lou-Lou can hear the buzz. His phone. He pulls it out, checks the screen, then answers. “Yeah?” He stands, moves away from the door so he’s not talking next to it. He motions for Lou-Lou to take his place, to listen. She does so, keeps one ear to the door and the other to his conversation.
“Uh-huh. Then what’re you callin for?” Leon takes a deep breath. He peers outside, through the curtain. Harsh light from the streetlamps momentarily spills into the room, then he drops the curtain back into place. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Sure. Okay.” Leon sighs. “Yeah, I get it. But quickly man, a’ight? Fast as you fuckin can. Yeah, yeah. I appreciate it. A’ight.” He hangs up, returns to the door.
Lou-Lou raises her eyebrows.
“That was Tommy.” He takes her gently by the elbow, like she needs assistance getting back to the bed, then resumes his post. “He’s having trouble getting us a car.”
“What kinda trouble?”
“He didn’t specify. Says he’s workin on it. Two more days at the max.”
“Two?” Lou-Lou doesn’t feel relief at the news. When the phone rang she’d hoped that was their call to get up and get out. If anything, a new kind of tension has taken a tight hold in her chest. “This is taking too long,” she says. “Did he say anything else? About the search?”
“Just what I told you. About the car. If there was anythin else to tell, he woulda said.”
Lou-Lou looks to the corner of the room, the two bags stacked there, one for her and one for him. Yet to be unpacked. They sit, ready to go.
“Just close your eyes, baby. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”
“I couldn’t sleep before, I ain’t gonna sleep now.”
Leon stands, crosses the few steps toward her. He puts one big hand on her stomach, the other on her cheek and presses his lips to her forehead. “You gotta rest up and grow that baby big and strong, okay?” He looks at her, the whites of his brown eyes bloodshot. “Okay?”
She smiles at him, puts her hand over the one at her cheek. “Okay.” She lies back and closes her eyes, stays that way until Leon returns to the chair and takes up his position again. She rolls onto her side and stares at the wall. She can see a handprint under the window frame, just one. The left hand. It doesn’t belong to either of them. Some former lodger.
She doesn’t sleep.
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Chapter 1
San Francisco
The door to the construction shack swung open and banged against the wall, causing the overhead florescent lights to stammer off and on for several seconds.
Kurt Thorsen snapped his head around and saw the hulking figure and scowling face of Benny Machado, his lead foreman.
Thorsen jumped to his feet and slammed his coffee mug to the desk sending a spray of hot coffee onto the project blueprints. He was a tall, well-built man in his early sixties, his once blond hair now a silvery gray and worn in a lion’s mane style. “What’s up, Benny?”
“You better come with me, boss. I think we got us a problem.”
Thorsen grabbed a hardhat from a peg near the door and followed Machado out to the construction site.
It had been a cool summer, interrupted by a tropical storm from the Mexican coast that dropped several inches of rain on the city. Dark, cauliflower-shaped cumulous clouds dominated the sky. The bay waters were the color of gunmetal. The wind, stronger than it had to be, tossed food wrappers and old newspapers around like wounded birds. The air was filled with the smell of diesel smoke from the tractors, backhoes, and trucks lined up to haul away the mud Thorsen’s crew was moving to enable the placement of underground parking garages and foundation pillars.
Thorsen had to hand it to his employer, Cinco Construction Company, for having the guts to build a sprawling fifty-seven-story Art Moderne-style complex, featuring a hotel and conference center, along with retails stores, office space, and high-priced condos, in this undesirable section of the city—eleven acres of raw, deserted land, parts of it running right alongside the bay, consisting of crumbling, rat-infested piers that were once attached to thriving shipyards, abandoned commercial hot houses with every single pane of glass missing, and railroad tracks that had sat idle for fifty years.
Before accepting the job, Thorsen had checked out Cinco with people he trusted in the construction game. Cinco had built complexes similar in size and scope to this one in cities up and down the East Coast. Six months ago, the firm was taken over by a man by the name of Henry Chung. Chung was Chinese, via Brazil, having run a construction firm in São Paulo for several years. He was a nervous nail-biter who spoke Cantonese, Portuguese and English with equal ease. According to Chung, Cinco was well-financed and committed to the project. There would be no worries of work stoppages from banks or insurance carriers due to a lack of funds.
Thorsen hurried to catch up to Machado. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, Benny, or am I just supposed to guess? Don’t tell me it’s another garden snake.”
His last big job, a high-rise on the peninsula, had ground to a halt when a single garden snake, an endangered species, the size of a licorice stick was found under a rock.
“No snakes, boss. Bones. Lots of them. Over on section A-six.”
The construction site was divided into sections. A-six skirted the bay’s shoreline.
“Bones? What kind? Cats? Skunks? What, Benny?”
Machado, a hatchet-jawed man with a thick neck and the heavily muscled shoulders of a wrestler, increased his pace, the hammer in his tool belt slamming against his thigh like a cowboy’s six-shooter. “Human.”
A ring of workers—laborers, carpenters, electricians and plumbers—were standing around the end of a ruler-straight foundation trench, four-feet wide, ten-feet deep, stretching out some fifty yards. The dark green backhoe that had been digging the trench stood silent, the tilted digger-bucket at the end of the two-part articulated arm looking like a yawning, prehistoric animal.
Thorsen peered down into the trench and swore silently. There were several ravaged bones and small skulls lying in the clammy, foul-smelling mud. He sat down and dangled his feet over the edge. “Give me a hand, Benny,” he said, holding his arms above his head. Machado grabbed both of Thorsen’s wrists and lowered him into the trench.
Thorsen landed in a heap, dropping to his knees before righting himself. All three sides at the very end of the trench were layered with bones of various shapes and sizes, exposed when the backhoe had taken its last gulp of mud. There was no sign of coffins—just bones. He looked up at the ring of faces staring down at him like mourners at a funeral. Only these guys weren’t mourning for the dead. It was for their jobs.
Thorsen removed his hard hat and slapped it against the trench wall. “Okay,” he shouted out. “We’re through here for the day. You’ll all get full pay for your shift. I’ll get in touch with you and let you know when we can get back to work.”
He squatted down near one of the skulls. It was small, mud crusted, no sign of teeth. He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants.
There was a thudding noise and Thorsen turned to see Benny Machado placing the butt end of a ladder down into the trench.
“I got a hunch,” Machado said from above. “This many bones, I think they’re Indians. A burial ground maybe.”
“Indians? Like in cowboys and?”
“Yeah, but from before the cowboys. The Bay Area was home to a lot of Indians—then the missionaries came around and killed them. I worked on a job in Oakland and we found an Indian burial ground there.”
“What happened to the job?” Thorsen wanted to know.
“Scratched. Some tribe from up north claimed the land. I think it’s a trailer park now.”
Thorsen took out his cell phone and began snapping photographs. The mass of bones hadn’t been buried very deep. Three feet, maybe less. He was about to climb up the ladder when something caught his eye. He moved cautiously, then dropped to one knee and gently massaged the mud from one long bone, a leg, with the foot still attached at the bottom of the ten-foot-deep dig. There was a thin link chain encircling the ankle. As he picked away at it with his fingernail he realized it was gold. An ankle ID bracelet? He moistened his finger with his tongue and carefully wiped at the piece until he saw two initials: a V and an A. Thorsen didn’t know much about native Indian tribes, but he was certain they weren’t into gold ID anklets.
He took several more pictures and then climbed up the ladder and onto relatively solid ground.
A sudden crack of arrowy lighting was followed by a drum roll of thunder. Raindrops the size of nickels began falling as Thorsen headed back to the construction shack.
“What are you gonna do, boss?” Machado asked.
“Call Henry Chung, call the cops, and get drunk. But maybe not in that order, Benny.”
“Chung’s already here. I saw his car coming through the gate when I went back for the ladder.”
“Good, I’ll let him handle the police.”
Chapter 2
Beverly Hills, California
San Francisco Police Department Homicide Inspector Rick Jarnac pulled the airport rental car into the same Reserved for Guests stall at the Carlomont Nursing Home that he’d parked in earlier that morning. It was evening now, a few minutes after six.
He opened the car door and was greeted with a wave of heat. He straightened up and rubbed both hands against the small of his back. Jarnac was tall and slender, with a lean, angular face and strong jaw. He was in his shirtsleeves, which were rolled up to his elbows. His collar was unbuttoned, his tie at half-mast. He sighed, rolled down the sleeves, slipped into his suit jacket, buttoned his shirt and cinched his tie. It was oppressively hot, but he felt the least he could do was look professional when he delivered the news to an elderly woman that her missing daughter’s remains had been found and that she had been murdered some forty years earlier.
Jarnac walked along a herringbone patterned brick path bordered by a head-high privet hedge. He noticed an elderly man in a light blue bathrobe leaning back against the hedge, one hand cupped around a cigarette. He had a bald pate and his face was a grainy white color, like boiled rice. He inhaled with cheek-sunken concentration. His eyes got that deer-in-the-headlight look when he spotted Jarnac.
Jarnac nodded a hello and the man held a vertical finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh,” before giving Jarnac a conspiratorial wink.
The front entrance to the pink stucco, four-story nursing home was guarded by a stand of towering royal palm trees.
He trotted up the steps and into the lobby. The walls, ceiling, and the carpeting were in various shades of beige. Plush chairs and couches in pale floral designs sat empty. The smell of freshly popped popcorn hung in the air. The only person in sight was a young dark-haired woman sitting behind the check-in counter.
Jarnac figured her to be in her late twenties. She was wearing a beige blouse with a plastic tag on the pocket that identified her as Sherry.
“Can I help you, sir?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m here to see Janine Ashcroft.”
“Oh, how nice,” the woman said. “Are you a relative?”
He slipped a business card from his coat pocket. “I was here earlier this morning and spoke with Mrs. Ashcroft.”
“Is there something I can help you with?”
“No. I just have to speak to her again.”
Sherry picked up a phone and did some whispering. After she cradled the phone she took a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Ashcroft is on the east patio.”
Jarnac found Janine Ashcroft sitting comfortably in a wicker chair that was positioned next to a small glass-top table. Misting fans situated under the veranda overhang sprayed tiny droplets of water into the air which evaporated immediately. She had a tall iced drink in one hand. When he’d spoken to her at nine-fifteen that morning it had been in her two-room suite, which had a view of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. She was eighty-six years of age—a thin, elegant looking woman with snow-white hair. It was obvious that she’d once been very beautiful, but now her sun-damaged face was stitched with wrinkles.
