Girls in Pink Page 24

  State Street was hushed. The offices were shut, the stores were closed, and the sidewalks were still. The daytime cars and people were as gone as if they’d never been there. It was too early for the drinkers and the haunted women to crawl out of wherever they came from, and across the street the Schooner Inn entrance gaped dark and empty.

  The light was gold, and the air felt wintery, at least as wintery as it ever got in Santa Teresa. I smelled something sweet and cold blowing from the ocean. I stood with one hand on the car door and looked up at the window of my office. All of a sudden, I didn’t want to go there, so I stood and waited to see if anything was going to happen.

  I saw motion on the corner, and a familiar green convertible with a tan roof nosed into the intersection. The car sat for a moment, as if it was thinking. Then it turned toward me, came slowly looking, and pulled in behind mine. I walked back to meet it.

  Annie Kahlo looked up at me from the driver’s window.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. “There are men in front of your house watching out for you, and you're out here. Think you could stay home for a day or two?”

  She didn’t answer. She took off her dark glasses and tossed them onto the seat beside her. A peach and yellow scarf covered her hair. It went well with the car. A gust of air brought the faint sweetness again, and she turned her face to it.

  “Do you know what Mock Orange blossom is?” she asked. “Can you smell it?”

  I nodded. Across the street, a saxophone started up. Someone in the bar blew a few notes, getting ready for the evening. It was an upside down reveille, and I halfway expected the night people to suddenly appear, but the street stayed quiet.

  “The fires will be out soon,” she said. “The air smells different.”

  “I have my own fires to put out,” I said. “Things start to look like they’re happening too fast, and then it gets too quiet, much too quiet. I’m caught between Cleveland’s people and the cops, and I don’t have a printed program. I didn’t stay alive this long by feeling my way in the dark.”

  “Maybe that’s exactly how you stayed alive this long,” she said. “Maybe feeling your way in the dark is what you do best.”

  She smiled at me, and I smiled back in spite of myself. She had that effect on me. I pulled out my package of cigarettes, looked at it, and then put it back.

  “I wanted to tell you something,” I said, and started to have trouble with my voice. “Or ask you. When this is done, will we... ”

  I felt foolish, and stopped. We looked at each other for a long time. Her face was motionless and absolutely serene, but her dark eyes were liquid. Like I always did, I found myself looking for color and movement in them. She startled me when she finally spoke.

  “You've changed, Nathaniel Crowe. You've moved back toward how you began, before things went wrong for you. You're not the same man who came to my house for a piece of birthday cake.”

  The cool air smelled like perfume, and the fragrance of orange made me almost unbearably sad.

  “Will we go on after this, you and I?” she murmured. “Together? I see things that aren't there, and sometimes I even see things are coming, but I can't see that. I think maybe we will if we want to.”

  I felt a flood of relief. Maybe she could see things, after all. Hell, maybe she could even be invisible like she said.

  “I'll settle for that,” I said. “That sounds like a pretty good deal.”

  She gave me one of her lovely, dark looks. She had a smile I would die for, I thought. I hoped I wouldn't have to.

  Danny Lopez came by to check on his men, and we met in my front yard.

  “A meeting...for what?” Lopez asked.

  “I don't know,” I said. “Cleveland is asking for a meeting. Maybe he wants to negotiate some kind of peace before anyone else gets killed.”

  “Negotiate,” he scoffed. “When does a man like that care about people getting killed? It doesn't make sense. He could send fifty guns onto your street any time, finish both you and the woman, and your annoyances would stop. Why would he negotiate with you?”

  “You're around now,” I reminded him. “You and your men change the odds by a lot.”

  “It's a trap,” he said.

  “Maybe not. Maybe he just wants to find a way to make me go away.”

  “You said out loud you would break him for what he did to his wife. Someone has killed three of his people. As far as he's concerned, that was you. It makes little sense it could be anyone else, unless it's a wild coincidence.”

  He gave me a chance to respond, and when I didn't, he went on.

  “You have sworn yourself as his enemy,” he said. “You said you were going to avenge his wife's murder, since the police would not arrest him. Why would you even consider such a meeting?”

  I went into the house for my cigarettes, and when I came out Lopez was squatted down to look at the dirt in my front yard. He rubbed the soil between his fingertips like a lady examining a dress fabric.

  “Nothing will ever grow in this again,” he said. “The earth is poisoned with all the years of walnut shells. It's too late.”

  “I don't plan to grow anything,” I said. “I'm fine with it the way it is.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  His look sharpened, and he held my eyes. “A thing that might seem a little...discourteous?”

  I shrugged my assent.

  “Are you feeling like yourself?” he asked. “Are you well? I've known you a long time, amigo, and stupid is one thing you never were. I never knew a time you would walk into a death trap like this. Do you want to hurt yourself...and me? Is your judgment gone?”

  “You don't have to go.” My face got hot. “I'll go myself. Forget it.”

  “I won't let you do it,” he said. His voice was mild. “I have my own interest in this now. I think I want you to look at yourself in the mirror, because you may be a danger to yourself and everyone around you.”

  “How so?”

  “You are distracted,” he said. “You are driven by emotion now, not logic. I can see it in your face and hear it in your voice. Men like you and me do not survive very long when they allow emotion. Something has gotten under your skin and changed the way you think. What has happened to you, my friend?”

  I couldn't answer. I resisted what he said, but the kindness in his voice was making my throat tight. I thought about Charlene Cleveland, dead in her pretty pink dress behind the wheel of her smashed convertible. I remembered the little girl, another pink dress, dried out and silent in the barn. I thought about the photograph of the Mexican women, caught forever in the glare of a flashbulb, all of them long gone to whatever horrors had waited for them.

  Most of all I thought about Annie Kahlo, more beautiful than any woman I had ever known, haunted and frightened by things I couldn't even see. My voice choked.

  “This isn't even a case,” I managed. “I don't have a client and I'm not getting paid. I resolve things, maybe not always the right way, but that's what I do. I resolve things. I keep pulling on the loose thread, and it gets worse and worse. Sal Cleveland is in the middle of everything, and I can't see the end of this. I can't see a resolution.”

  Lopez put a hand on my shoulder. It was almost fatherly, and not the kind of gesture characteristic for him to give, nor the kind I usually accepted.

  “There may be only one resolution,” he said. “A bullet for Sal Cleveland might be the only thing that ends this, and it might be a thing that gets done without answers. You might not have a chance to be judge and jury in your own mind, and without more answers than you have, you might not pull the trigger.”

  He took his hand from my shoulder and looked at the street.

  “I have no such reservations,” he said. “I've seen enough, and the very existence of that photograph, twenty-five years old though it might be, is justification enough for me. I want you to know that, and be ready for it. I will go with you to this meeting, and understand that if opportunity presents itself
I am going to kill him.”

  “At least one of us knows why he's going,” I said. “One of us has a general plan.”

  “I think you have a plan, too, even if you do not let yourself say it out loud.”

  He still held a handful of dirt in one closed fist. He opened it to show me. The earth looked wet and black.

  “You are a romantic,” he said. “You think you are hard, but you are not any such thing.”

  “I'm the furthest thing from romantic,” I muttered.

  “Something good is growing in dirt that is poisonous. It has almost no chance of survival, but as long as it grows and is alive, you will do anything to protect what small chance it has. What is itself hopeless has given you hope.”

  “If you say so.”

  He let the black soil trail from his hand to the ground. “I will see you tonight,” he said. “We will walk together into la boca del lobo.”

  His face creased into a sunny smile, and I saw what he must have looked like as a young man in Mexico. He left me and made his way slowly to the truck at the curb, and the illusion of youth vanished. One of his men waited behind the wheel. I had a flash of worry. I hoped I wasn't getting him into something that might get him killed, too.

  What is itself hopeless has given you hope.

  I thought about trying to take a nap. I wouldn’t get much sleep tonight, and I would need any edge I could get, because Danny was right. We were doing something stupid—we had accepted an invitation to go right into the wolf's mouth.

  “Something happened to me when I went for my walk last night.” Annie said. “It was a wonderful vision, everything I needed. Something bad came first, though.”

  We were strolling along Cabrillo Boulevard, looking at the ocean. The smell of salt water was strong. The sun was edging up toward noon and was hot, even with the breeze that blew in off the water. Colored flags fluttered on the tops of the hotels, and the sound of surf and gulls washed over everything. Ranks of king palms marched down the boardwalk. We passed under one of them and the huge beard of dry fronds rattled high above us. Annie looked up.

  “I love the sound of that,” she said. “The wind in the palms.”

  I didn’t think just air did the rustling. The trees were full of rats, but I didn’t see any percentage in mentioning it to her.

  “I went to the cemetery to feel safe,” she said, “like I always do. I was surprised to see the big gates standing open. I went in and closed them behind me.”

  A black Cadillac passed us very slowly, headed in the same direction we were. Its windows were up. The brake lights flickered, and it nosed into the curb a half-block away and stopped. Against the bright colors of the beach it looked faintly obscene, a spill of night-time on the blue-and-gold day.

  “There was something very mean there,” she continued. “I felt it…very near, and even though I couldn’t see anyone, I blamed it on Sal. I turned around to leave. It upset me.”

  “You think it was his people?” I asked, watching the black car. She nodded.

  An ice cream truck parked across the street, on the beach side. I caught snatches of the music playing from the speaker on its roof. I remembered the tune, but not the words. I looked up the street at the Cadillac again, and gently took Annie’s elbow.

  “Want some ice cream?” I asked, and she nodded again.

  We waited for a break in the traffic and then crossed. Up close, the melody from the loudspeaker competed with the drone of the freezer unit. The truck was spotless, as was the driver. He stood at the small window and waited for us. Dressed in white, crisp and clean, his small bow tie was black, matching the brim of his hat. The slashes of black-on-white reminded me of the hands on a clock.

  Annie stood on tiptoe at the window to talk to him, and he leaned down to hear her. A gust blew off the water, and she reached up with one hand to hold her hat. All light cotton and tanned skin, it struck me again how cool and lovely she was. I turned and watched the water with one eye, and the black car with the other.

  “What’ll you have, pally?”

  The ice cream man stared at me. Annie held a cone filled with pale green that matched her dress. She had a tiny taste and smiled. A list of flavors had been painted on the side of the truck, covering most of it from top to bottom. I saw the usual chocolate, vanilla and strawberry, familiar Neapolitan and Tutti Frutti, but below them the menu offered cola, eggnog, orange, and black licorice.

  “I didn’t know Good Humor had flavors like these,” I said. “I never saw them before.”

  “You see a Good Humor sign on my truck, pal?” he asked. “You see that anywhere at all?”

  I glanced one last time at the black car. I had the sense it was getting ready to do something. I moved closer to Annie. The wind blew harder, and it was time for us to go.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Vanilla. Give me vanilla”

  “Everywhere you go, there's gotta be some kind of wise guy,” he grumbled, and turned away to get it.

  “Sal Cleveland wants a meeting,” I told Annie. “At the Star-lite, after it closes...three in the morning. I'm going to end it tonight, if I can.”

  She tasted her pale ice cream and nodded absently, looking up the street. I followed her gaze to the black Cadillac. As if it sensed us looking, it started with a puff of blue smoke. The brake lights flashed and it pulled into the traffic and drove away.

  “The dark things are getting closer and closer,” she said. “The cards say so. June told me that I'm not going to live through this.”

  “June is dead, Annie. She isn't real. The things she tells you aren't real.”

  Her eyes were vacant, lost. I felt a sharp jolt of alarm, and turned her toward me.

  “Of course you're going to live through this,” I said. “I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you.”

  “You have to,” she said. “If you love me, you have to let bad things happen to me.”

  “I won't, though,” I said. “Let me send you away, until this is over. It won't be for long.”

  She touched my face. Her fingers were light and dry, barely a brush, but somehow painful.

  “Don't you believe in happily-ever-after?” she asked. “Don't you read the stories?”

  I didn't answer, and after a moment she nodded as though I had. The ocean air caught at the ends of her hair, and she brushed them back off her face and turned her attention back to her ice cream.

  “If you want happily-ever-after, play the cards as they land,” she murmured. “Just play the cards.”

  -Twenty Six-

  The Star-lite Lounge was all lit up. The blue flood lights washed the walls, and the neon script across the front of the building glowed a slightly brighter blue. It all made me feel more tired. I shut off the car. Danny and I sat quietly and studied the building for a moment. The place looked haunted.

  We got out and walked across the empty parking lot to the front entrance. The place had been closed for an hour, but a large man still sat on a stool beside the door. I couldn't say for sure if he was the same one who had been there the last time I was here. If he recognized me, he didn't say hello. He hoisted himself from the stool with a grunt. I saw the gun under his arm before he straightened his coat. It looked as big as a cannon.

  The lounge was as silver and blue as it had been the last time I saw it. A couple of women were sweeping up and stacking chairs on the tops of the tables. A pall of smoke still floated and drifted in the colored light. I wondered if it ever completely went away. The bartender waited at his post in front of the racks of bottles, and he watched us go by with an expression I didn't like. He looked like a guy on the inside of a big joke.

  I thought about stopping to ask him for a drink.

  “Bar's closed. You'll get drinks inside.”

  He stopped at the door of Cleveland's office and looked inside. When he was satisfied with something I couldn't see, he gestured for us to go in. The room was full of people. Sal sat directly in front of us, behind his immense green-topp
ed desk. The lamp lit his face. Everyone else seemed to be in gloom, and I wondered if he'd arranged it that way deliberately. There were two empty chairs directly in front of him. He gestured at them and we sat. Two gunsels occupied the shadowed corners of the room on one side. They leaned against the walls, Tommy guns at the ready. The opposite corners were empty. They had obviously thought about cross-fire, which was disappointing.

  Captain Earnswood had pulled a chair up to the desk, on Cleveland's left, close but outside of the lamp's circle of light. Fin sat on the other side, his face set in a sort of pleasant bemusement.

  “Evening, Earnswood,” I said. “Or I suppose I should say good morning. I feel a lot safer knowing that Santa Teresa's finest is on the job here.”

  He stared at me, face immobile, and said nothing.

  There was a rustle beside my chair, and I looked up as the bartender put a glass full of bourbon and ice into my hand. He had another glass for Danny Lopez, and when he had finished serving I heard the door latch closed behind me. I tasted my drink. It didn't taste as though it had been doctored; in fact, it tasted swell.

  Cleveland was as freshly combed and shaved as if it was the beginning of the evening, not the end. His collar was crisp, and his tie was knotted tight. He didn't look nervous. I was struck by his good looks, and the knowledge that Annie Kahlo had lost a part of her heart to him. He idly fingered the customary spread of playing cards in front of him. From time to time, he glanced up at me.

  “So?” he asked.

  “You called me here,” I said. “I assumed it was because you had something to say, not so I could watch you play solitaire.”

  “Not in the mood for small talk?” He smirked. “You have plenty of time for cracking wise when you're on your own street.”

  “The last small talk I made with you, you started crying,” I said. “It embarrassed me. I'd rather just get to the point.”

  His face flushed, and he put a hand flat on the desk. His eyes went wide, and a tic started up in his cheek. Fin leaned forward, touched his arm, and said something too quiet to hear. Cleveland settled back and visibly brought his face under control.