Dead Ringer (6 page)

“
I don’t know anything about it.” Gay sighed, she didn’t like Margo’s ex. She didn’t know anybody who did.

Bruce walked into Margo’s apartment without knocking. Gay followed. They were in the living room, making themselves at home. The Hispanic one sitting in one of the rattan chairs had his hair pulled back into a ponytail. The other one, the albino, was sprawled out on the sofa. Gay could spot a cop in a crowd any day, but these two would’ve fooled her.

“
Mr. Kenyon.” The one in the chair got up, hand extended to Bruce, but it was the albino on the couch who didn’t get up that caught Gay’s attention. He seemed too relaxed, too at ease, as if he had every right to be where he was, as if he were sitting in his own home, in his own living room. She wondered if anything ever fazed him.

“
How’d you get in?” Bruce took the offered hand, shook it. Gay saw the look on Bruce’s face. Contempt.

“
Alvarez, Jesse Alvarez. Homicide, Long Beach. That’s my partner, Abel Norton on the divan.”

“
I asked how you got in,” Bruce said again, voice tough, like he was brow beating a witness on the stand. Lawyers, Gay didn’t like them, never had.

“
Door wasn’t locked.” Norton made no move to get up. The albino had shoulder length white hair, whiter skin and pale grey eyes. A pair of hippy cops.

“
You have a warrant?” Bruce said.

“
We need one?” Norton shifted on the sofa, caught Gay’s eyes, smiled. It was sincere.

“
If you don’t, you’re gonna be looking for a new job.” Bruce had a sneer in his voice now.

“
Relax, counselor.” Alvarez tapped his chest, indicating he had the warrant in his inside coat pocket. “We’re covered. As we were when we came in the other day and looked around.”

“
You were here Monday,” Gay cut in, “but you didn’t go in her house.”

“
We came back Wednesday, about 2:00, 2:30, something like that,” Alvarez said.

That figured, she thought, Danny’s day off. He’d have told her, had he known. “We were at the movies, me and the girls. My daughter and Jasmine.”

“
Say again,” Norton said from the sofa. He looked so relaxed in his rumpled cord sportcoat, brown over a plain yellow shirt and faded brown Dockers. The other one seemed uptight in a three piece suit.

“
You got a hearing problem?” Bruce said, confrontational. He was a big man, probably a bully when he was in school, Gay thought.

“
Sorry,” Norton said. “We thought your wife and daughter had disappeared. Now I hear your daughter is still around and I’m curious.”

“
Nobody’s disappeared.” Gay clenched her fists again. None of the men noticed. “It’s Spring Break, so Margo doesn’t have any classes. She’s spending the holiday up in Big Bear. Jazz is staying with me.”

“
Doing what?” Alvarez wanted to know.

“
She’s on a writer’s retreat.”

“
Boy, you guys are stupid!” Bruce Kenyon said. But Gay knew he hadn’t known where Margo was either. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have shown up at her doorstep like he did every Saturday afternoon to annoy her by taking his daughter for whatever was left of the day. Had he known she wasn’t home and Jazz was staying next door, he wouldn’t have bothered.

“
Don’t fuck with us.” Norton smiled when he said it. The effect was ghostly.

“
Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” Bruce said.

“
I think he’s serious,” Alvarez said to Bruce.

“
Fujimori raped that little girl two weeks after you got him off,” Norton said. “How’d you feel about that?”

“
The DA didn’t have a case.”

“
Yeah, well you lost on the second one.”

“
Can’t win ’em all.”

“
He got paroled last month.”

“
And you guys let him get killed. Some police force.”

“
That’s it.” Norton was up quicker than Gay thought a man could move. He grabbed Kenyon by the arm, spun him around, cuffed him and slammed him face down on the sofa he’d just vacated. “Frisk him!”

“
Pleasure.” Alvarez ran his hands over Bruce, checking everywhere. He wasn’t gentle. When he finished, he pulled him up by his shirt collar, turned him and set him down on the sofa, hands behind his back.

“
You guys are off base here.” Bruce didn’t seem so arrogant anymore.

“
Maybe. But we got a couple witnesses say you were in a car parked outside when Fujimori was shot. Everyone knows how crazy your wife was about him getting out,” Norton said.

“
I was following Margo. She went in the store after Frankie. I didn’t have anything to do with him getting shot. Besides, she’s the one who wants the bastard put away, not me. I’m his lawyer for Christ’s sake.”

“
Your wife didn’t take off before the police showed up. You did. You haven’t been cooperating with us, she has,” Alvarez said.

“
Did she tell you I was there? Is she the one?”

“
Get him out of here,” Norton said.

“
Get up!” Alvarez grabbed Bruce by the arm, jerked him off the sofa, dragged him toward the door.

“
I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.” He was whining. “I didn’t have any reason to talk to the cops. I was just trying to catch Margo harassing Frankie, so I could get a restraining order against her.”

“
You make me sick.” Norton turned as Alvarez led Kenyon away.

“
He’s a jerk,” Gay said. “But he didn’t kill anyone.”

“
I know,” Norton said. “But he was there.”

“
How’d you ever get a judge to sign off on an arrest warrant?”

“
He’s a good lawyer, but he’s a prick. Winning isn’t good enough, he’s gotta rub your nose in it. That’s never a good strategy, because someday the attorney you creamed in court, then ridiculed in the press, might become a judge.”

“
You didn’t read him his rights.”

“
What for? He’ll be out by this afternoon. Still, I enjoyed it.”

“
So did I,” Gay said. “Thank you for letting me be here.”

“
No problem. Thank you for clearing up the whereabouts of Mrs. Kenyon for us.

“
Glad to be of service.”

“
Appreciate it.” The albino smiled at her again, tapped his forehead in a two fingered salute. Then he left.

* * *

Jazz had seen her dad go into the condo with Gay. She was afraid he was telling the police her mom was unfit to be a mother. Yeah, that’s what he was doing. They were gonna take her away and make her go and live with him. She hated that he’d tried to get her in court, because he didn’t want her, not really. He only wanted to hurt her mom. He hated her mom. How could he be so cruel?

They were coming out. Her dad and one of the cops. Good, they were leaving. She sighed. Then her dad looked right up at her. She could feel his eyes, like he was looking deep into her. Any second he could come charging across the lawn, then up the steps after her. She had to get out. Now.

She took her fingers away from the blinds and ran to the door. She had it open in a flash.

“
Jasmine!” her dad called out.

She was outside now, charging for the staircase. Holding onto the rail, she flew down the steps, skipping every other one.

“
Jasmine!” her dad yelled out again.

Halfway down, she stopped, turned toward him and was shocked to see him between the two policemen. They were holding onto his arms. His hands were handcuffed behind his back. He wasn’t going to come up and get her, after all.

“
It’s my daughter,” he said.

“
It’s okay!” The Ghost said as he let go of her father’s arm, but Jazz didn’t believe him.

She looked around. Mrs. Emerson from 1210 was putting her key card into the beach gate. Jazz didn’t need an invitation. She waved, hoping to fool the policemen. She started down the steps, keeping her eyes on Mrs. Emerson as she pulled her card out of the slot.

“
Hey, lady,” the Ghost yelled out. He must have seen where she was looking.

“
What?” Mrs. Emerson started to swing the gate open.

Jazz took the remaining steps as fast as she could, then hauled out at a dead run for the gate as Mrs. Emerson opened it ever wider.

“
Close the gate!” The Ghost was waving his arms now. He had Mrs. Emerson’s attention. “Don’t let her get away!”

But Jazz was already at the gate. She grabbed the card from the startled Mrs. Emerson and pulled the gate closed after herself. Then she dashed along the bike trail that paralleled the chain link fence separating the condominium complex from the public beach.

“
Stop!” The Ghost, unable to get out, was running along the sidewalk on the inside of the fence, but he was no match for the blur in blue jeans running as fast as her almost eight-year-old legs could carry her. “Come back!” the Ghost called out when he reached the end of the property, but Jazz turned left and ran across Pacific Coast Highway toward Main Street.

She weaved between the cars on the highway and ducked into Jerry’s Surf Shop, panting like she’d just finished a marathon. She caught her breath in the Hawaiian shirt section. The big Coca Cola clock behind the register said it was 4:15. She needed to hide out till dark.

“
Can I help you?”

“
Oh, hi,” Jazz said to a girl wearing a “Guns ‘n’ Roses” T-shirt. She had bright orange hair and was frowning at Jazz through a face full of freckles.

“
I’m gonna get a tuna sandwich at the juice bar in back,” Jazz said.

“
Where’s your mother?”

“
I don’t need my mom to get a sandwich.”

“
Do you have any money?”

“
What a stupid question.” She had thirteen dollars in her back pocket.

Jazz bought the tuna sandwich and had a glass of Jerry’s special tropical juice blend to go with it. She nursed them for the better part of an hour. Then she ordered carrot cake for desert. She had to stay out of sight till her mother returned, because with her father arrested they might not let her stay with Gay anymore. They might put her in a foster home. She needed somewhere to hide, then she thought of the movies.

* * *

“
I wish Jazz would come back.” Sonya was sitting on the edge of her mother’s bed, while Gay changed from the clothes she wore at the salon into jeans and a San Francisco Giant’s T-shirt. Jasmine had been gone for almost an hour. She saw the sun, an orange ball going down over the ocean. It would be dark soon.

“
Me too,” Gay said, “but I wouldn’t worry. She knows her way around.” But Gay was worried.

* * *

Two hours after ducking into the theater, Jasmine went outside to a dark night. She was out of money now. The sandwich and cake at the Surf Shop and the movie had taken it all. But she couldn’t think of a better place to hide then the fourth row center. Besides, the movie took her mind off her father.

She crossed Pacific Coast Highway at the Main Street light and continued on to the bike trail that ran through the beach. She still had Mrs. Emerson’s key card, so getting in would be easy.

“
Hey, look out!” Someone shouted and Jazz jumped aside as a couple of older kids flew by on mountain bikes.

“
Watch where you’re going!” she shouted after them, but they didn’t hear. She watched till they were out of sight in the dark, then she was alone on the bike trail. Spooky. And there was no moon. Real spooky.

She’d lived by the beach all her life and she’d been on the trail lots of times after dark, but never alone. When she was alone, she always came home the front way, straight across PCH at Main Street, then past the guard shack. She looked through the chain link fence when she reached the condos. Everything inside seemed normal. No sign of the Ghost. And no sign of her dad. It looked safe. She ran her hand along the fence till she got to the gate. She keyed the gate and slipped in without a sound.

She dashed to C building, was about to take the stairs up to the clubhouse, when she heard footsteps. She leaned back against the building, arms at her sides, palms against the stucco wall. Her hands were cold, her feet sweating in her running shoes. She inched along the wall till she was under the stairs.

Someone was just the other side of the building. Then all of a sudden that someone was in front of her, standing at the foot of the stairs. The outside light from an apartment on the second floor shone down on Gay, making her face glow like an angel’s.

* * *

Gay dropped to her knees and held her arms out. Jazz burst into tears and ran into them.

“
It’s okay. I’m here.” The child looked like she’d been living on the run, like a homeless waif. She was scared.

“
Don’t let him take me away. Please don’t let him.” Jazz was trembling, covered in cold sweat.

“
Don’t worry.” Gay hugged her tight, killing the shivers. But could she kill her fears?

“
He’s horrible, promise!”

“
I promise, Jazz.” Gay hated to say it, but she agreed with Jasmine. Her father was horrible. She wondered what Margo had ever seen in him.

“
You mean it?” Jazz pulled back, looked into Gay’s eyes. “Really?”