And so it went on, year after year, a succession of powerful and greedy men. Another Mafia lieutenant, then a motion picture studio head, then a director, then a record company executive who was robbing his partners blind. She was with him when she met Wes, who was doing a show in Vegas. It wasn’t much money, but at least it would take him through the bad period after his second series had been canceled. He was looking for private action, too, so he’d gotten himself invited to this poker game at the Las Vegas Hilton with a group of big money players, Solange’s record exec among them. During the long, grueling game Solange had sat behind the man; Wes remembered she had had a bruise on her cheek. Anyway, the guy’s luck had started turning bad and went downhill; after he’d lost the first thirty thousand or so, he’d taken Solange into a back room and whaled the shit out of her, then brought her in again and shoved her back in her chair. Her eyes were swollen and red; the record exec was really starting to sweat. After another three hours the game had pared down to just the two of them: there was a stack of red chips in front of Wes and a look of animal fear on the record exec’s face. But he’d wanted to play on, and so it continued until he had no more chips, nor money, nor keys to his robin’s-egg-blue Cadillac. Wes was willing to leave it there. “SIT DOWN!” the man had screamed. “I TELL YOU WHEN TO LEAVE!”
“You’re through, Morry,” one of the onlookers said wearily. “Give it up.”
“SHUT UP! Deal the cards…COME ON!”
“You’re cleaned out,” Wes said. “The game’s over.”
“No, it’s not!” He’d turned and gripped Solange’s arm with a crushing hand. “I’m putting her up as security!”
“What? Forget it!”
“You think I’m kidding, Richer? Listen, punk, this bitch is worth her fucking weight in gold! She can suck your cock right out of the roots; she’ll fuck your eyeballs out with tricks you never even heard of!”
“Now listen, I don’t think…”
“Come on, you lousy little punk! What do you have to lose? You’re floating in my cash!”
It was the second use of that word that got to Wes. He paused for a moment and looked at the beautiful, battered woman behind him. He wondered how many times she’d had to endure this man. Then he said, “I’ll accept her as security on five hundred dollars.” Solange had responded with a slight nod.
And ten minutes later it was all over as Wes sat facing a beautiful royal flush. The record exec had leaped to his feet and grabbed Solange’s face, squeezing her jaw so hard she whimpered. “Back off, you sonofabitch!” Wes had said quietly. “You’re marking up my merchandise.”
Then the guy had really turned ugly, making all kinds of threats about how Wes would never have a series again because he had connections with all three networks, and as for recording, forget it! Someone gave the poor bastard a drink and ushered him out of the room. For a long time Wes sat looking at Solange across the poker table, not knowing what the hell to say or do. She broke the silence: “I think he chipped my tooth.”
“You want to find a dentist?”
“No. It’s all right. I’ve seen you on television before. You’re the comedian,” she went on. “I remember now, I saw your face on the cover of TV Stars.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I made that cover and a lot more. There was an article on me in Rolling Stone, too. I’ve got a couple of comedy albums out.” He stopped, feeling foolish for tooting his horn in front of a woman whose right eye was swollen and blue and whose left one was an odd shade of yellow. Still she was beautiful: it was an exotic, cool beauty that had made Wes’s pulse gallop ever since she’d walked in.
“You’re working here now?”
“That’s right. But my agent’s hot on a deal for a new series next season, and I may do a bit in the next Mel Brooks flick.” He cleared his throat nervously. “How long have you been…his mistress?”
“Almost a year. He’s a very unkind man.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I cleaned him out, didn’t I?” He stared at the wad of bills and the big money IOUs that sat in front of him. “Christ. There’s a lot of dough here.”
“It’s late,” Solange said. “Why don’t we go to your room now?”
“Huh? Oh. Listen, you don’t have to…”
“Yes I do. You own me now.”
“Own you? Abe Lincoln freed the slaves in case you…”
“I’ve always belonged to someone,” she said, and Wes thought he heard fear in her voice. “I made his luck go bad. I can make yours good.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
She stood up and reached out her hand for him. He took it. “Your room,” she said.
That had been almost a year ago. Wes put the orange juice back into the refrigerator. He knew he should be getting dressed because Jimmy might be coming over this afternoon to talk over some figures on that Mel Brooks movie, a spoof on trendy department stores called Quattlebaum’s. When he walked into the living room, Wes paused over the Ouija board for a moment, wondering how he could get away with throwing the thing in the garbage. He didn’t believe in those spirit tales that Solange liked to tell, but one thing had bothered him ever since he’d brought her back to Hollywood with him. Less than a week after he’d made the down payment on this house, he’d seen Solange at the pool in the middle of the night, slowly twisting the arms and legs of a GI Joe doll. Then she’d dropped it into the water and held it under for several minutes. Two days later her old record exec was found drowned in his own kidney-shaped pool. Variety ran a short squib on his death; the doctor who’d examined the body said the guy’s muscles were all cramped up into knots.
I’ll throw you out later, you bastard, Wes mentally told the Ouija board, and then he went back to his bedroom to put on some clothes.
FIVE
Palatazin was in the den, watching the Steelers crawl all over the 49ers at two o’clock when the telephone rang. Jo got up to answer it. “Come on, get him!” Palatazin said to the television screen as Terry Bradshaw evaded not one but two stumbling linesmen and cocked his arm back like a piston to pass. “Don’t let that guy score again! Oh, for…!” He slapped his thigh as the pass was completed for thirty-four yards.
“…Yes, I’ll get him,” Jo said from the kitchen. “Andy?”
“Okay.” He hauled himself out of his La-Z-Boy and took the receiver from Jo. “Yes?”
“Lieutenant Reece, captain. We’ve got somebody in here who’s seen the guy on that artist’s composite.”
“I need more than that. Maybe he just likes hookers.”
“I’ve got more. The young lady in here says he told her he was going to take her to a motel but stopped instead in a vacant lot on Yucca Street. She got scared and took off, but he chased her in his car. The car was a grayish Volks, and she remembers part of the license plate.”
“Keep her there. I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.” He felt Jo’s disapproving stare as he replaced the receiver. “I have to go,” he told her as he started for the front door.
“I heard. Will you at least be home for supper?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged on his coat and kissed her cheek. “I’ll call.”
“You won’t be home,” she said. “And you won’t call.” But by then he was already out the door and gone.
SIX
As Palatazin was hanging up his telephone, Rico Esteban was climbing a long series of stairs in an East L.A. tenement, where sunlight took on a muddy pallor as it streamed hotly along the hallways through dirty windows. The steps creaked underfoot, and in some places there was no railing; Rico could look down four floors to the cracked yellow tiles in the entrance hall. Garbage had spilled from cans on the stairway landings, a sheen of smelly liquids making the stairs as slick as if they were carved from ice. Rico still wore the same clothes he’d been dressed in the night before, only now the back of his shirt was damp with sweat. His eyes, now somewhat sunken due to lack of sleep, were veined with red. Around him the building swelled with clashing noise—a toilet ch
ugging as water strangled a clogged pipe; a man and a woman both shouting in Spanish, trying to outcurse each other; a baby howling to be fed and a mother’s desperate “Quiete!”; someone coughing violently, the cough finally falling to a rattle of phlegm; transistor radios and televisions battling for dominance with the thump-thump of disco, a Spanish news broadcast, or the gunshots from a cowboy or detective movie.
Along the fifth floor hallway the heat was sickeningly oppressive. Rico’s shirt was glued to his chest and back like a second skin by the time he’d stopped before the door he sought. He paused, his heart racing. He was afraid of the woman who lived in that apartment; she was crazy, there was no telling what she might do to him. Once old lady Santos had sworn to get a gun and blow his balls off if he ever got her daughter into trouble. So now he hesitated, unsure whether to knock or just retrace his steps out of this sweltering pigsty. What if Merida had gotten back last night and told everything to her mother? he wondered. Then there would be hell to pay. But what if Merida hadn’t come home at all? What if something had happened to her on the jungle strip of Whittier Boulevard? The uncertainty filled him with a dull sense of dread. That Roach dude was still on the loose, wasn’t he? And there were plenty more dudes a whole lot meaner than Roach, too. Or, on the other side of the coin, Rico could find Merida inside with tear-streaked cheeks and an enraged madwoman with a Saturday Night Special aimed at his groin. Madre de Dios!
But he couldn’t leave without knowing; he couldn’t stand it for a minute longer. He reached out, balled his fist, and knocked on the door. Almost immediately another door down the hallway opened, and an elderly Chicano man stared out suspiciously.
“Who’s there?” The words spoken in strident Spanish made Rico jump.
“Uh…it’s me, Mrs. Santos. Rico Esteban.”
There was a long, uneasy silence. Shit! he thought, suddenly overcome by panic. She’s gone for her gun! He was going to run when she said from behind the door, “Eh? What do you want, you little bastard?”
“I’d like to talk to Merida. Please.”
“She ain’t home.”
A knot of tension burst like shrapnel in his stomach. He could sense Mrs. Santos behind the thin layer of scarred wood with her ear pressed to the door. “Do you know where she is?” he asked.
Then the door came open, and Rico took a startled step backward. The woman peered out through a crack, her black, snake eyes staring at him disdainfully from a leathery, deeply creased face. “What do you want to know for?”
“I have to find her. It’s important.” He couldn’t see her hands and thought she might have a damned gun behind her.
Mrs. Santos regarded him in simmering silence for a moment. “I know she’s been sneakin’ around behind my back, thinkin’ she’s gettin’ away with somethin’! I know she’s been seein’ you, filth! I figgered when she didn’t come home last night she was with you.”
“I…picked her up in front last night,” he said with an effort. “On Whittier she…she jumped out of my car, Mrs. Santos, and I tried to find her all night, I went everywhere I could think of, I only got about two hours sleep in the back of my car, and I don’t know where else to—”
“WHAT?” she screeched, her eyes going wide and wild. “My Merida’s been out on the boulevard all night? You bastard, you let my Merida stay out there all night? I’m callin’ the cops on you right now, you don’t get outta here!” Her eyes blazing with black heat, she started to slam the door in his face. But instantly he braced it with a hand. She looked at him open-mouthed, fear beginning to glimmer deep in her gaze.
“You’re not listening to me!” he said, almost shouting. “If Merida didn’t get home last night, I don’t know where she is! She could be in trouble!” She’s already in plenty of trouble, he thought grimly. “Where else could she have gone?”
Mrs. Santos was frozen, and he knew what she was thinking—Merida was a good girl, loyal to her mother; she’d never stayed away from home all night before, and she wouldn’t run away either.
“I’m afraid for her,” Rico said softly.
Her voice began in a whisper and started to rise. “I told you to leave her alone, didn’t I? I warned my Merida about what was out there! You’re trouble and you always been trouble, even when you was a smart-assed punk runnin’ with the Cripplers! Now only God knows what badness you’re doin’!”
“Look, I didn’t come here to fight. I don’t care what you think about me. I just want to make sure Merida’s okay…”
“Why? ’Cause you tryin’ to talk her into walkin’ the streets for you? Everythin’ you touch turns filthy! You touched my Merida, and God saw it, and because He knows you’re filthy evil He…wait a minute! You just wait a minute!” She spun away from the door, and Rico started in after her, his face flaming with anger. She crossed the cramped, dirty apartment and opened a drawer next to the sink and hot plate. “You just wait a minute, you filth!” she shrilled, and then she turned upon him with a butcher knife clamped in her hand. “I’ll kill you for what you done to my baby!”
“Please!” he said, backpedaling for the door. “I only want to find…”
“This is what you goin’ to find!” she shouted and came toward him with the knife aimed for a killing blow.
“You crazy old…fuck!” Rick yelled back at her; he wheeled through the door and was able to slam it shut before she could get to him. Then he was running headlong down the hallway, hearing the dry, amused chuckle of the old Chicano man. Rico got to the stairway and started down; behind him the building seemed filled with Mrs. Santos’s screams and threats. Her screech of a voice—just like an old harpy’s, Rico thought—drowned out transistor radios, squalling babies, and marital cursing bouts. But then it began to grow faint, and Rico knew with a surge of relief that she wasn’t following him from the fifth floor. Still he hit the entrance hallway at a run. When he got outside, sweat was rolling off his face. A couple of small kids were trying to pry off his wheel-covers, and he sent them running with a kick and an oath. They stopped in the middle of the street to give him the finger, and then they were gone.
He was about to go around to the driver’s side when a cool, childish voice said, “Hey, Rico! You shoulda let those punks alone, man!”
Rico turned. Merida’s twelve-year-old brother, Luis, was sitting in shadow on the steps of the tenement building next door. There were two other kids with him, neither older than eleven, but already their eyes seemed hard and haunted. They were playing cards, and Luis was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. “Yeah?” Rico said, walking back to the curb. “Why?”
“They need the bread they coulda sold those shoes for on the street. Two cards.” He picked up the two cards dealt to him and snorted with disgust. “Their old man’s got a fifty-dollar-a-day habit, gettin’ worse all the time. You think just ’cause you move up to the Strip everythin’ changed around here, man?”
The words, spoken so calmly from the mouth of a child, stung him. “What do you know about anything?” Rico said. “You’re just a kid yourself.”
“I know a lot of things.” He looked up from the game. “Like my sister was with you last night, and she never came home. My old lady’s been pacin’ the floor all day. She says she’s thinkin’ about puttin’ out a contract on you with the Homicides.”
“Who’s going to cut my throat? You, Luis? For how much? Five bucks? Yeah, you’re even beginning to think like a Homicide, aren’t you? Man, you keep hangin’ around those dudes you’re going to wind up either gut-stabbed or in the slammer.”
Luis dealt the next hand and smiled like a fox. “Too bad we all can’t be big like you, Rico. Man, you so big you outgrown the barrio. You’re a giant now up on Sunset Strip, ain’t you?” He made a farting sound with his lips, and the other kids laughed. “Maven could tear your ass up with one hand! Why don’t you get off this street? You don’ belong here no more!”
“Maven? He’s still prez of the Homicides?”
“That’s right. Dealer takes o
ne. Alllllright, amigos!” He disregarded Rico until the hand was over, and the next cards were dealt. “What’re you doin’ comin’ outta my buildin’, man? You let my old lady see you, she’ll come after your ass.”
“I already saw your mother,” Rico said. “She’s ready for la casa de locos. I’m trying to find Merida, Luis. I don’t know where the hell your sister could be!”
Luis looked at him sharply. “What do you mean, man? She was with you all night!”
“No, she wasn’t. That’s what I was trying to tell your mother. Merida jumped out of my car on Whittier and ran off. I looked for her almost all night. Now where else could she be?”
“You left her alone?” Luis said incredulously. “Out on the boulevard all by herself?” The cards dropped from his hand, a couple of grinning kings and a joker. “Man, you livin’ so far away from here now you don’ know what’s goin’ on? The Vipers are tryin’ to move into Homicide territory! Three blocks from here it’s a goddamn battle zone! The Vipers are hittin’ on every Homicide they can find. Last week they got Hotshot Zasa, Paco Milan and Juan Morales!”
Rico’s heartbeat quickened. “Killed them?”
“Nobody knows. They just vanished…poof!…and Maven figures the Vipers ambushed ’em and dragged the bodies away somewhere. On Friday Maven’s girl Anita was missin’, and yesterday Paulo LeGran’s little brother, Benny.”
“Jesus!” Rico said, fear crackling through his brain. “You think maybe…the Vipers got Merida?”
“They woulda known she was my sister.” Luis rose to his feet, his gaze smoldering; his face was that of a battle-hungry man, but his chest—bare behind a cheap leather vest—was that of a child’s, his skinny ribs jutting. He ran the back of a hand across his mouth. “Yeah, they could’ve got her. They could’ve been waitin’ for her in an alley and jumped her. Sonsofbitches could’ve raped her right there and dragged her off somewhere.”