Hard Rain (16 page)

The room had two other white walls, but no more Picassos, no more paintings of any kind. The fourth wall was sliding glass. Jessie slid it open and stepped out onto a balcony. Foggy orange night. With an automatic movement, she pulled back her sleeve and glanced down to check the time. Her watch was gone.

One level below hung another balcony, somewhat bigger, extending eight or ten feet beyond the railing of hers. Far below that lay the ocean. A cabin cruiser swung gently off a mooring, bow pointing to the horizon, stern facing her. No name.

Her heart fluttered. Fresh blood washed some of the lethargy from her legs, but made her head hurt more. She reentered the white room, crossed it and tried the door. It was unlocked. She opened it very softly. A staircase, carpeted in more deep pile, led down. Jessie followed it.

She came to an arched doorway. Beyond it spread a big room with a marble floor that matched the Picasso. A fire burned in a pink granite hearth. In front of the fire was a glass table; on it lay the taped-together pieces of Pat's blackboard with the restored message in white chalk. “Toi giet la toi.” A gray-haired woman knelt by the table, studying the blackboard, her back to Jessie.

Jessie took a quiet step, off the carpet and onto the marble. The gray head snapped around. Sunglasses. Wraparounds.

“You're up early, dearie.” It was the bag lady. She had a funny voice, high but full of male sounds. The combination made Jessie's stomach slide. “We're not quite ready for you.”

Jessie's body got ready to bolt. She fought against it. “Where is Kate?” she said; her voice sounded cracked and thin.

“You do like to ask questions,” said the bag lady. “But you'll have to wait your turn. First we've got some questions for you.”

“What questions?”

The bag lady pointed her heavy chin at the blackboard. “Like what you make of this, for example.”

“I don't know what to make of it. Why is it important?”

“There you go with another question.” The bag lady smiled a patronizing smile. She had good teeth. “What did other people make of it?”

“What other people?”

“Your friend the police lieutenant, for starters.”

Jessie stared into the wraparound sunglasses. All she saw was her tiny, distorted self. “Did you kill Barbara Appleman?”

“What a thing to say!” The bag lady rose; she was tall and heavy. “And yet another question. You're an unruly young woman, aren't you?” The bag lady took one step toward her. Blue shadow showed on her upper lip. “What have you heard about Woodstock?”

“Woodstock? I don't know what you're talking about.” Her tiny distorted self gestured feebly in the wraparounds. The sight made her angry. “Why have you brought me here?” she said, her voice rising. “Who are you?”

The bag lady moved closer, reaching into the pocket of her dress. “You really are difficult,” she said.

Jessie lost the struggle with her body. In an instant, she jumped back, spun around and ran up the stairs to the bedroom. She closed the door, but couldn't lock it: no key. The bag lady's steps clicked on the marble. Jessie ran out onto the balcony and looked over the railing. She'd never dived from higher than the ten-foot board; this was more like fifty, if she could clear the lower balcony.

Jessie turned and started back into the room. Too late. The bag lady came in. She had a gun in her hairy hand. “Let's not be hasty, dearie.”

Jessie glanced around. There was nothing to throw but the Picasso, hanging on the wall beside her. She flung it at the bag lady, ran across the balcony and climbed onto the railing. She didn't think; her body had taken over. Behind her the bag lady called, “Mickey!” The high notes had disappeared from her voice.

Mr. Mickey appeared on the lower balcony, looked up, saw Jessie. Jessie's body coiled; she sprang off the railing with all her strength. Mr. Mickey rose up at her, reaching; his fingers raked the front of her body, scratching, ripping; but her momentum bent him backward, over the wrought-iron railing, and carried him with her.

Mr. Mickey's hands found Jessie's arms, clamped onto them. They fell: a long fall, locked together like lovers. She saw murder in his pale eyes.

Mr. Mickey was underneath when they hit the water. The impact knocked his breath out in one grunt; she felt it on her face. Then the clamps released her, and she plunged down in the cold sea.

The water slowed her. Plunging turned to sinking. She sank, stunned and limp, and kept sinking until something slimy touched her face. Then, instinctively, she kicked up and away from it, legs scissoring, frantic. Her head broke the surface. Blackness closed around her, darker than the night; the world shrank away. She fought for air, sucked it in through wide-open lips, filled her lungs with it. The world came back.

A cone of yellow light cut through the fog; it ended in a yellow circle. The yellow circle zigzagged across the water. It swept over Jessie's face, paused, returned. She squinted up into the cone. From above came a cracking sound. Something slapped the water, a few feet away.

Jessie ducked down.
Slap
, just above her head.
Slap, slap
. Her legs panicked; air bubbled out of her throat. She clenched her jaws and tried to make her legs kick in strong, smooth strokes.
Kick, kick, hold on. Kick, kick, hold on
. Another bubble of air escaped, then another. Her legs panicked. She couldn't hold on any more. She shot to the surface; her feet touched bottom—she was standing in water up to her chest.

Jessie gulped in air and started running—out of the water, across a beach, into a palm grove. She ran, not toward anything, simply away from the sea. The night was full of shadows; she dodged them and kept going. For a while she heard nothing but her own panting. Then a dog began to bark. It quickly barked its way from suspicion to rage. The barking came closer. Jessie veered away from the sound, trying to run harder. The shadows parted. She'd come to a road: a broken white line divided the night. But as she ran onto it, something cut her across the shins, and she went down.

A voice in the trees said, “You are trespassing on private property. Do not move.” The voice said it again in Spanish, a treble voice, blurred with static. Jessie stayed where she was. The barking came closer. The voice said, “You are trespassing on private property. Do not move.” The voice was halfway through the Spanish for the second time when Jessie realized it was recorded. She scrambled up and started running.

Too late. Jessie hadn't taken two steps before a light shone in her eyes, blinding her. Another voice spoke, “Move and you're dead.” No treble. No static.

She froze. A growling form hurtled out of the trees, hitting her from behind and knocking her down. Paws scratched the tarmac for traction; the light swung across the road, found the animal—a Doberman, big and black. It turned and charged Jessie. “Heel, Sonny,” shouted the voice. The dog halted, saliva dripping from its bared lips, msucles taut. “Heel.” The dog's muscles quivered for a moment. Then it trotted past Jessie, not even looking at her, toward the source of the light. “You are trespassing on private property,” said the bilingual voice in the trees. “Do not move.” Sonny growled.

Footsteps appproached. “Get up.” Jessie got up. The light ran over her body—down, up, down. It was only then that she realized she was naked. Two eyes gleamed behind the light. They liked what they saw. With the light off her face, Jessie made out the contours of a heavy, balding man, wearing some kind of uniform, and beside him the dog, leaning on a taut leash.

“Hands up,” said the man. “Not like that—on top of your head. Yeah. That's nice.”

The man knelt by the side of the road. A trip wire glinted in the beam of his flashlight. He followed it to a post a few feet away, stuck a key into a hole in the post, turned it. The voice in the woods stopped talking. He rose. “Okay, start walking.”

“Where are you taking me? I've been kidnapped and assaul—”

“Shut up.”

Jessie turned and started walking. She felt the light on her back. Sonny growled, low in his throat.

Jessie walked along the broken line: a woman's shadow in a wobbly yellow oval, followed by a dog's and a gun's. The sound of the sea grew fainter. “You—”

“Shut up.”

The road met another, slightly broader road. A gatehouse sat in the intersection, light glowing within. “Hold it right there.” She stopped. “Sit, Sonny.” Sonny sat, but he kept growling.

The man went by her and pushed open the door to the gatehouse. “Inside.” Jessie hesitated. The man put the flashlight in the small of her back and pushed her in.

“Don't touch me.”

“Well, la de dah,” said the man, but he didn't touch her again.

The man sat behind a metal desk. There wasn't another chair. Jessie stood. A magazine lay on the desk.
Big-Titted Mamas
. The man saw her eyes on it and swept it into a drawer.

He folded his stubby hands on the desk and gave her a level stare, but only for a moment—he had trouble keeping his gaze from sliding down. “You're in big trouble, baby,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Trespassing.”

“I haven't been trespassing. I was kidnapped in Santa Monica tonight. I don't even know where I am.”

“You can do better than that.”

Jessie looked at him carefully for the first time: a middle-aged man with a paunch above his belt and a smaller, naked one under his chin. He wore a green uniform with a name tag on his chest: Hubble. He also had a security-guard patch on one arm: Mille Flores Estates—somewhere in Malibu, she thought, surprised she was so close to home.

“Or what?” she said. Looking carefully made all the difference. Or maybe it was just that whatever had been added to the Armagnac was wearing off.

“Or I'll call the cops.”

“Call them.”

Hubble squinted at her. The conversation had taken a turn he didn't like. “That won't be so good for you.”

“What's my choice?”

“Well, now, maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement. You and me.”

“Call the cops. In fact, why don't you call Lieutenant DeMarco in Santa Monica?”

“DeMarco?”

“Yes,” Jessie said. “Homicide.”

Hubble's hand moved slowly toward the phone, hovered in mid-air; he really preferred some kind of arrangement.

“My name's Jessie Shapiro. He'll want to know that.”

Hubble picked up the phone, dialed, and took it outside. When he came back in, he opened a locker, removed a blanket and tossed it to her. “Here,” he said.

She wrapped it around her and sat on the floor. Hubble opened his mouth to say something, closed it. They waited. It wasn't long before headlights arced through the gatehouse windows. Sonny started barking. “Shut up, Sonny.” Sonny stopped barking. A car door closed. DeMarco came in, wearing a stained fisherman's sweater and a two-day growth of beard, but he looked like Fred Astaire next to Hubble.

“Let's have it,” he said.

“Well, Lieutenant,” Hubble began, “I apprehended this—”

“Not you,” DeMarco said. “Her.”

Jessie rose, pulling the blanket around her. “I was—what time is it?”

“Quarter to one.”

“Friday?”

“What else?”

“It seems later, that's all. I was kidnapped tonight. Around nine. I think they gave me some kind of sleeping drug.”

“Who?”

“A man named Mr. Mickey. Or maybe just Mickey. And a woman, or maybe a man, who might have been his boss. They took me to a house, somewhere near here. Are we in the Colony?”

“Near it,” DeMarco said. “What did these people look like?” Jessie described them. “Anyone around here like that?” DeMarco asked Hubble.

“Huh—a woman or maybe a man who might have been the boss of someone named Mr. Mickey or maybe just Mickey? She stoned or what?”

“I'll do the thinking,” DeMarco said.

“She was the one who mentioned drugs,” Hubble said. “Just trying to help.”

DeMarco ignored him. “Describe the house,” he said to Jessie.

She described it—the balconies, the pink marble floor, the long drop to the sea. “Recognize it?” DeMarco asked Hubble.

“Sounds a little like the Blugerman house,” he said. “But it's been empty for a year. He sold it.”

“Who to?”

“I don't remember I ever heard,” Hubble said. “But I got a list of property owners.” He opened a drawer, shifted
Big-Titted Mamas
aside and consulted a directory. “D. C. Investments, Limited.”

“What's that?”

“Dunno.”

“Do they own any other property here?”

Hubble ran his eyes down the list. “Nope.”

“Is there an address?”

“Just says Panama.”

“Okay,” DeMarco said. “Let's go.”

“Where?”

“To look at the house.”

They got into DeMarco's car, Jessie in front with DeMarco, Hubble in back with Sonny. “Can't you get him to stop growling?” DeMarco said.

“That's just purring. He likes riding in the car.”

Hubble directed them up a hill to a bluff overlooking the sea. They parked beside a high wall. Through a wrought-iron gate, they could see a long drive leading toward a house. There were no cars in the drive; the house was dark.

“Told you,” said Hubble.

“Is that it?” DeMarco asked Jessie.

She pulled the blanket closer around her; the fog was lifting and the night growing cold. “I don't know. I didn't really see it from outside.”

DeMarco turned to Hubble. “Got the key?”

“Well, now,” Hubble said, “I really got no author—”

DeMarco turned from the gate and looked at Hubble. “Don't give me that.”

Hubble's lips moved, but he didn't speak. Sonny growled. “Shut up,” DeMarco said. Sonny stopped growling. “Okay, pal,” DeMarco said: “How much?”