Angel of Vengeance (3 page)

“Dirty huh?”

“The dirtier the better.”

I call the bartender over and order her drink. He notices Reesa smoking and starts to put the kibosh on it, but I cut him short, telling him he’s got it all wrong again. This time a flicker of doubt crosses his face. That’s the problem with the hypnotic gaze. It’s a nice tool to have, but some people are more receptive to it than others. It usually correlates with intelligence. I wonder if I’ve already over-used it with this fella, and if the situation is about to become awkward, but then the troubled look in his eyes disappears and he goes to mix the drink.

“So, you’ve been here before?” she asks.

I nod. “But it’s been a while.”

“Ever catch my show?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I don’t think you were doing the show last time I was here, but I’d’ve been back sooner if I’d known what I was missing out on.”

She likes this. It earns me a smile.

“This seems like your kind of place.”

“Yeah?”

It’s her turn to nod. “I mean, this place is old school and you seem like an old school kinda guy.”

I smile wryly. “Old school. That’s me all right.” Emphasis on the old.

“I like old school,” Reesa assures me. “It’s a compliment.”

“Then that’s how I’ll take it.”

We smile. The drinks come. I enjoy seeing the perfect imprint her full bottom lip leaves on the rim of her martini glass.

As much as I’d like to make this about pleasure, it’s about business, so I get to the point and ask her how I can help her.

“I want you to find my fourteen year-old sister, Raya. She’s gone missing.”

“How long?”

“A couple months now. She was living with me and my boyfriend, but she ran away.”

I smell a lie in there somewhere, but I let it go. Everybody lies. I’m more disturbed by the fact that she has a boyfriend, if you want to know the truth.

“And no one’s looking for her?”

“The cops say they’re looking, but they haven’t found her. What’s one more teenage runaway to them?”

“Why was she living with you instead of your parents?”

“If you knew my family you wouldn’t have to ask. Let’s just say my dad put the fun in dysfunction and let it go at that.”

I nod. “So she was living with you and your boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend. I left him a week or two later.”

Hearing it does my heart good. “Mind if I ask why?” I’m prying. So sue me.

“You want the short list or the long?”

“Just gimme the highlights.”

“Well, on top of being a complete shitbag of a human being, it turns out he was fucking everything he could get that little pecker of his into.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk like that. It’s not ladylike.”

“No one would ever mistake you for anything but a lady,” I say, cashing in on another smile.

“Anyway, it’s my own fault. I broke my rule about never dating anyone with anything to do with Hollywood. I know better. Of course the icing on the shit cake was his endearing meth addiction.”

“He was a tweaker, huh?”

Reesa nods, absently pulling a red curl out and letting it spring back into place as she speaks. “We both were. That’s part of why I left. I was sick of it. I hated living that way. I wanted to clean myself up. So I left. Went into rehab. When I got out six weeks later I tried to find my sister, but... ” She shrugs helplessly, shakes her head.

“No dice,” I finish for her.

She shakes her head again. “So, do you think you can help me, Mr. Angel?” Holding her martini glass in both hands, Reesa drinks, watching me with big gorgeous doe-eyes as she does it.

“I could, but I’ll be honest, I don’t come cheap. I charge five hundred a day plus expenses.”

“Money I’ve got. A girl can make a pretty good living taking her clothes off, or hadn’t you heard?”

I match her smirk for smirk and take my notepad out and flip it open to a blank page. “Have you talked to your ex since you left?”

“Do you call the warden after you break out of prison?”

“Good point. But I should talk to him. Your sister lived there with you. Maybe she forgot something when she left and went back for it. Maybe she’s tried to call and get in touch with you. Anyway, it’s a place to start. What’s his name and number?”

Reluctantly she gives them to me. I chicken-scratch the name Vin Prince and two numbers in my pad—one for a cell, the other for his production company. “Address?”

“I don’t know,” she tells me. “We lived in Los Feliz when we were together, but last I heard he’d moved to some fancy-schmancy place up in the Hills I’m sure he can’t afford.”

“I’ll find it,” I say. Then I ask for the names and numbers of anyone else who might know something about where I can find Raya, along with the addresses of places she frequented. Reesa’s embarrassed at how little she can come up with, proving once and for all that the best parenting doesn’t get done on crystal meth. In the end I’ve got the name of an eighteen year-old boyfriend of Raya’s and the name of a Hollywood Goth club they went to together, and that’s all I’ve got. It’ll have to do.

The last thing I ask for is a picture of Raya; something I can show around. Reesa says she thinks she has one in her dressing room and goes to get it. I watch her go. I’m reminded of the ocean. I light a cigarette. I wait.

When she comes back she hands me a snapshot of an attractive fourteen year-old girl with dyed black punk-cut hair caught in the act of rolling her eyes at the camera. The resemblance to Reesa is undeniable. I pocket it.

Though I want to linger, my own addiction is tightening the leash, so I tell Reesa I will look into it, drain my drink, and stand to go.

“Don’t you want some money up front?” she asks, batting her lashes at me playful-like. “I thought that’s how it worked.”

She reaches inside her robe and takes a stash of hundreds from somewhere I don’t dare think too long about, being as I’m standing up and all.

“Will a thousand do to start?” I want to tell her to put it away, to keep it ’til I get some results. That would be the classy thing to do. But I don’t. I take it. I take it and hide it in my pocket like something shameful. “It’ll do.”

“Aren’tcha gonna count it?”

“I trust you,” I say.

“But you don’t even know me.”

“I don’t have to. I know where to find you.”

One last smile. One last look. I try to acid burn the image of her into my memory. I want to be able to remember her exactly when I fantasize about being that barstool later. I turn and retrace my steps to the door, a cigarette smoke snail-trail the only evidence I came and went.

3

I
go back to the car. I fix. I fire up the engine. I drive. Every store, every street that flashes past holds a memory for me of an earlier day, and as always, I find myself reconciling the landmarks of the ghost-of-L.A.-past with that of the present. The dry-ice inland fog that’s come smoking in from the Pacific makes the town look all the more spectral.

I hang a right at Fairfax and head south. In the rearview, a set of constant headlights begins to make me wonder if maybe I’m being tailed. Feeling a nervous tightness form in my chest, I take the next left just to see. The headlights, which belong to an older-model Ford pickup, blow past without so much as a hiccup. My chest loosens. I shake my head and fire up a smoke. Maybe I’m getting paranoid in my old age, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years in this business it’s that paranoia pays.

I U-turn and continue down Fairfax and pull into the small lot behind the big Canter’s Delicatessen sign. I used to love Canter’s back when I could still digest solid food. I would go and eat there after shows way back in the thirties when the deli was still located over in Boyle Heights. I got the pastrami sandwich every time. I liked theirs because it was so lean and rare. I guess I liked things bloody even then.

I get out. I go in, not in search of a pastrami sandwich, but a pay phone. It’s bright and busy at this hour. The smell of greasy cooked food washes over me, making my delicate stomach roll uneasily. I swallow hard and make my way over to the phone. Times like this make me rethink my stubborn refusal to adopt a cellular.

I flip my notepad open, drop some change in the slot, and punch up Vin Prince’s number. His assistant, a perky skirt by the name of Barbara, picks up. I give a fake name, something Jewish-sounding, and ask to talk with the boss-man, but she tells me he’s incommunicado all night. I act all pissed off, telling Babs her boss and me were supposed to get together for drinks to discuss a picture I wrote. I tell her that I’m at the restaurant, that I don’t like being stood up, and that if this is how Prince deals with writers I’ll just take my script to the next production house down the block because the goddamn town’s full of them. Babs gets all flustered-like and explains that Mr. Prince probably just forgot because of some big shindig he’s throwing up at his house in the Hills tonight. I ask the address and she tells me before she can think the better of it. Then she asks my name again and I hang up because I can’t remember what I told her. Doesn’t matter. I found out what I wanted to know. These days this sort of thing is called social engineering. In my day we just called it bullshitting.

I scratch the address down in my pad, cradle the phone, and exit Canter’s, leaving the smell of greasy food and my queasiness behind.

Fancy-schmancy is right. Prince’s house is a sight to behold. From a parking spot thirty yards up the winding street at the top of Beachwood Canyon I smoke and take in the splendor of the vintage 1920s home. Nestled in under an oak tree canopy, the expansive Spanish tile roof rests on the tired shoulders of two-story bone-white stucco walls. I can tell at first glance it’s too good for a Hollywood asshole like Prince. How do I know he’s an asshole? Simple. He works in Hollywood.

From my vantage point I watch as a stream of waxed and gleaming Lexus, Limos, Benz, and Beamers pull up to the wrought-iron gate that surrounds the compound. Leaning out of their windows, evening-attired guests flash gilded invites at the guard who in turn presses a button, causing the automatic gate to Frankenstein-lurch open. Once in, the guests pull around the circular flagstone drive, which has been movie-lit to show their luxury automobiles off to best advantage. There, red-vested valets open their doors, and the guests spill out, moving like royalty along the ridiculous red carpet that runs like a tongue from the mouth of the house. Looks like I won’t be getting in that-a-way. Sure, I could drive up and parlor trick my way in, but I can’t stand the idea of letting those valets put their grubby paws on my gal. She deserves better. I’ll have to look for a back entrance.

I make a firefly of my cigarette butt, exit the Roadster, and start along the twist of road back toward the house. When I reach the property, I duck into the California scrub along its perimeter. Set into the side of a steep Hollywood hill, the long rocky slope is slick as ball bearings on black ice beneath my patent leather shoe soles. I have to use the rough metal rungs of the ten-foot high fence just to keep from bobsledding down on my ass.

A deeper fog sleeps curled in the ravine at the base of the property. Through spaced wrought-iron bars and carefully landscaped foliage, I look back up graded hills to see partygoers mingling atop two large redwood decks that hang off the back of the house and around the illuminated pool and spa below. Jazz music dances in the waterlogged night air. It comes from the gazebo set to one side of the pool. Maybe I have misjudged the host. No one who appreciates jazz enough to hire a band can be all bad. I decide to go in and find out firsthand.

Times like this it would be nice if the stories about vampires being able to turn themselves into bats or mist were true. It would certainly make getting in and out of places a whole lot easier. It’s all crap though. At least so far as I know. No one gives you an instruction manual when you get turned. But if that sort of thing is possible, I sure as hell don’t know how to go about it.

On the other hand, it is true that vampires are exceedingly strong, a fact I think is only partially due to enhanced supernatural strength. From my experience, all of a vampire’s senses are greatly heightened, except for one—touch. Dead, bloodless limbs simply cannot experience the same sensitivity to pressure. The result is a disquieting full-body numbness. On the bright side, less nerve endings mean a much higher pain threshold. Where living flesh would give up under the influence of severe pain, dead flesh won’t. The less pain you feel, the more you are capable of enduring. The more you can endure, the stronger you are. So there you go.

I decide to get by on brawn. I grab hold of two wrought-iron rungs and pull. One breaks. The other bends. It’s enough. I squeeze my gaunt frame through the gap, careful not to snag my best suit. Feeling tired and dizzy at the expended effort, I brush off and climb the tiered green banks of grass to join the party.

I step through coved French doors into a set-decorated room of another era. A better era. My era. Across the room, over the talking heads of the guests who mingle in the dramatic step-down living room, I see a turreted entryway and a spiral staircase leading up. Expensive prints—they can’t be originals—cover the walls. Most of the furniture has been moved out of the living room, but I step down into it to get a better look at a tile fireplace with an interesting Mayan motif which is tucked back into one wall. My head swims. The Tropicana, Reesa, Canter’s, and now this place. Everywhere I go tonight, I seem to find myself hunting ghosts.

Oblivious to the magic of the place, and the lesser for it, guests mingle and drink under the high barrel ceiling. So far as I can tell, they are a bland gumbo of Hollywood screenwriters, directors, producers, executives and semi-recognizable actors, each of them believing themselves vastly more interesting than they actually are by virtue of working in the movie biz. I shake my head. This is California. Where’s a good earthquake or mudslide when you really need one?

I snare a flute of champagne from the tray of a passing cocktail waitress. Sipping it, I walk up to an aging, Botoxed actress who stands gazing sadly out of a nearby picture window on the distant city lights. I only recognize her because she happens to be the daughter of an actress I used to have a bit of a thing for. Her face poisoned into a death’s-head grin, I smile, hoping my eyes don’t reflect the horror I feel. She smiles back, but then she doesn’t really have a choice.