House of Smoke (54 page)

She’s never seen anybody die in the ocean but she’s heard stories.

The surfer flushes out under the last crashing of water against shore and slides against the sand, hard, coming up for air, the water receding behind him, going back out to sea. As he picks up his board he turns and faces her.

She recognizes him from his mug shot.

Shaking the water from his body, Wes Gillroy picks up his board and walks across the beach to the parking lot. Kate follows him, not worrying that he might see her. He doesn’t know who she is.

He jumps into a ’55 Chevy Nomad, a classic surfer’s car, Kate notes, and drives off. She follows. They cruise through the streets until he parks in an alley next to a surf shop. Leaving his board in the station wagon, he disappears inside. She waits a minute, until she feels cool and calm. Then she goes in.

“Wes Gillroy.” She calls his name, a bit loudly for the size of the place.

He’s dressed now: baggy shorts, T-shirt, flops. He looks up from behind the counter, where he’s tallying some sales slips. A prototypical aging surfer, now that she can see him up close, skin like leather, washed-out blue eyes ringed with crow’s feet.

“Yes?” he asks, blinking and squinting against the sun through the door behind her, silhouetting her in backlight. Women her age don’t usually come into surf shops like this one. Wes would figure her to be somebody’s mother come in to buy her son or daughter a cool present, to be hip with her kid.

“I’ll be right with you.” He turns his attention back to his paperwork, temporarily dismissing her.

She looks around. Nice place, must do good business, although at the moment she’s the only customer in the place. Getting on to happy hour.

A woman emerges from the back of the store. Striking-looking: her hair bleached white, her figure almost a parody, it’s so contoured—huge bust, tiny waist, hard tight behind.

It’s Morgan what’s-her-face, Kate realizes with a jolt—Rusty’s girlfriend, the other woman on the boat along with Laura. Laura’s description fits her to a T.

“How can I help you?” she asks Kate in a high-pitched voice that goes perfectly with the Dolly Parton figure.

“You’re Morgan?” Kate asks in return.

“Yes.” She looks at Kate. “Do I know you?”

Two birds with one stone. Not only won’t this be a wasted trip, but she’s won the bonus prize as well.

“No,” Kate responds. “But I know you … rather, who you are.” She takes one of her cards from her wallet, lays it on the counter so that Morgan can see it.

Morgan picks it up, reads it. “Private investigator? Santa Barbara?”

Wes snaps to, looking up at Kate with a start. He takes the card from Morgan, looks at it, digesting the information, then at Kate again, this time paying attention to her.

“Who are you?” he asks suspiciously.

“What it says on there,” she tells him, pointing to her card. “Laura Sparks is my client,” she adds. “I’ve been looking for you, Wes.”

“What for?”

“Information. I think you can help me get it. Maybe you can help, too,” she says to Morgan.

Wes throws up his hands. “Sorry, lady. I’m looking at ten plus in a state pen, so I’m not talking to anyone.” He hands her back her card. “Take a hike,” he tells her rudely.

She puts the card back into her purse. “Fine by me,” she shrugs nonchalantly, snapping the purse shut. “You don’t have to talk to me. You can chat with the local sheriff instead.” She pivots as if to go.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he calls out, stopping her as she knew he would.

She turns back to him, a bit dramatically for effect, for him and Morgan both. Morgan has retreated two steps behind Wes and is looking intently at Kate, her head cocked like a bird’s.

“You’re in violation of your bail, ace,” she tells Wes. “You didn’t let the court up in Santa Barbara know you’d moved. That’s a major no-no. Tomorrow this time you’re going to be sitting in the Santa Barbara slammer eating Spam and eggs with a spoon.” She turns on her heel again. “See you in court.”

“Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute!” He comes running out from behind the counter, steps in front of her, blocking her exit. “You don’t have to tell on me, damn it!”

“I’m a state-licensed investigator,” she says. “If I know a law’s been broken, I have to report it whether I want to or not.”

“Look,” he says, pleading, “I was going to. It was a couple of days ago, I hadn’t gotten around to it, that’s all.”

“According to your next-door neighbor, it was a month ago. The one you were balling,” she adds quietly, so Morgan won’t overhear.

He blanches, glancing over his shoulder at Morgan, who’s staring at the two of them.

“All right. All right.” His tone is contrite now, his demeanor subdued. “What do you want from me?”

“Somebody hired you and Rusty. Who was it?”

He blinks. “Frank Bascomb. I thought that was common knowledge.”

She shakes her head impatiently. “I don’t mean Bascomb. Who paid for the whole shooting match—the money man? The same person who made your bail, I’ll bet.”

“I can’t help you with that. It was Rusty’s deal—he set everything up with Bascomb. I was another set of arms.”

“What about your bail? Somebody put up a million-dollar security to spring you.”

“Don’t know.”

“That’s hard to believe, Wes.” She smiles. “I think we should do this by the book after all. I’ll get in touch with the local authorities and you can deal with them however you have to.”

He grabs her by the arm. “Don’t!”

“Then stop bullshitting me.”

“I’m not, I swear. I’m sitting in my cell the next morning, they come get me, take me to court, I’m told my bail’s been made and I’m free to go until my trial.”

“And nothing was mentioned to you about who made it?”

“No. I even asked the bondsman. He smiled at me like a Cheshire cat and said I had friends in high places, which I didn’t get, since I don’t know anyone up in Santa Barbara.”

“Someone didn’t want you around,” she says, her mind spinning. “Sitting in a jail cell and thinking about talking.”

“I guess.” He shrugs. “Except I didn’t have anything worth talking about. Still don’t.”

“Whoever paid for your bond doesn’t know that. They think you knew who the moneyman was, like Frank and Rusty must have.”

“I never thought of that,” he says, thinking about it now.

“Which means they still think it,” she continues.

“They’re thinking wrong. I swear.”

“I believe you,” she tells him. “But whoever had Frank murdered in his cell doesn’t.”

He whistles, a low breath of air. “That was a hit?” he asks, in a tone of voice that says “Don’t tell me the answer.”

“I’m convinced of it,” she says.

“So I might be in line,” he says.

“I’d say the odds are better than even.”

He looks at her as if seeing the scars for the first time. “Somebody did a number on you. Was there a connection to this?”

She nods.

“Motherfucker!”

Morgan comes up to them. “What’s going on?” she asks. “Wes, you look like you just saw a ghost.”

“He did,” Kate tells her. “His own. Look. I think I can help you. But you’ve got to help me.”

“What’s this all about?” Morgan asks again.

“Rusty,” Wes tells her. “And Frank Bascomb.”

“Oh.” Her mouth forms a perfect circle.

“How do you think I can help you?” Wes asks Kate.

“I need to find out who’s behind all this,” she says. “If I can trace the money I’ll know who set it all up—the dope deal, Frank getting killed in jail, everything.”

Wes shakes his head. “But I already told you …”

“Maybe there’s some information sitting out there,” she says. “Some documentation, something on paper that Rusty would have had. He was the one with experience, who would have known who to buy the grass from, where, all of that. The money person would have had to have dealt with him, I’d bet on it.”

“Something at his house?” Morgan interjects.

“Maybe. Do you know where it is?”

Wes shoots Morgan a blistering look, but she ignores him.

“I live in it,” Morgan says. “I was living with Rusty.” She hesitates, blushing like a girl caught playing with herself. “Wes lives there, too—now.”

Stands to reason, Kate thinks. Besides, who is she to pass judgment on anyone else? “Now I understand why you didn’t want anyone to know where you’d moved to,” she says to Wes.

“Yeah,” he answers, dully.

“Rusty kept his shit all over the place,” Morgan volunteers. “He was a world-class paranoid, which he was right to be, given all-what he was into. He even kept some of his records in the bathroom closet; he figured no one in their right mind would ever look for shit in a shitter.” She laughs self-consciously, nervous as hell.

The shop closes in an hour. They’ll meet Kate at the house at seven; they give her detailed directions.

“I’ll be real angry if you’re not there,” Kate warns Wes.

“Don’t worry,” he promises her. “We’ll be there—both of us.”

An hour to kill.

She walks along the sidewalk, past a local bar. A beer would be nice, help her kill the time. But alcohol’s the last thing she needs to indulge in, she has to be clean, sober, and alert. After it’s all done, on the way home.

As she’s about to get into her car and head out towards the address they gave her she thinks of one thing that could be important: she’s going to the house of a man who was a principal in a huge drug bust, shot and killed by the police, his accomplice is living in the house now, and she may remove information that shouldn’t be in her possession, if she finds what she’s looking for. She should not be in that house; but since she’s going to be, she definitely should not leave any sign that she’s been there, in case it ever comes up.

She ducks into a Thrifty’s Drug Store and makes a beeline for the section where they sell Ace bandages and knee braces, snatches a package of latex gloves from the shelf—the type dental technicians use when they’re cleaning a patient’s teeth. Whether or not she finds what she’s looking for—an admitted longshot, particularly since she isn’t sure what precisely it is she’s looking for—no one except Wes and Morgan will ever know she was there, which is a chance she’ll have to take.

She gets lost finding the place. She’s three freeway exits past the proper one before she realizes she’s gone too far, and has to double back through traffic.

The house is on a block of small post-World War II tracts bordering a low bluff overlooking the ocean. She cruises down the street, searching for the address Wes and Morgan gave her.

It’s dark now, the moon rising low across the hills to the east.

A dim yellow mosquito bulb flickers over the front door. Inside, a few lights shine through the windows, which are covered with old-fashioned curtains. Probably belonged to the original owners, she guesses, and Rusty never bothered modernizing the place.

She hopes they’re home—she’s antsy already, doing this, if she has to wait for long she’ll be the one who chickens out.

She could park in front, nobody here knows her, but there’s a nagging itch about any kind of unnecessary visibility—she was surveilled before, by Miranda Sparks and who knows who else. If Miranda wasn’t behind the attack on her and Laura—which she tends to accept, Laura being Miranda’s daughter—then there was another party tailing her; and although Louis Pitts has given her a clean bill of health, she has to play this real cautiously. A good detective doesn’t trust anyone, as Carl is wont to remind her. You may not have too many friends, but you’ll live longer.

She drives down the street, turns onto a narrow cross lane, and parks partway down the block facing forward, her car hidden in the gloom under a large eucalyptus tree.

Glancing at her watch. Seven-twenty. She’s late.

One last precaution. She takes her loaded pistol out of the glove compartment and slips it in her purse. Quietly, she slides out of her car, locks the doors. Keeping to the shadows, she walks down the street to the corner and turns in the direction of the house.

Now that she’s actually doing this she can feel her heart beating. In her chest, her throat, down to the ends of her fingertips.
Ka-boom
,
ka-boom
, loud and hollow like a kettle drum.

Go back to your car, she tells herself. Get in and drive home as fast as you can. This is not your life anymore. Leave it be.

Running across the street in her heels which she wishes like hell she hadn’t worn, she hits the pavement, forcing herself to slow down, to walk as naturally as possible. No big deal, just a woman taking a walk along a street. Going to a friend’s house, going home, just going her merry, innocent way.

The air around the house is still. Out back, down a short weed-infested concrete driveway, there’s a garage, the door up. The Nomad is parked inside.

She walks up the path to the front of the house, up the two steps to the narrow wood-slat porch. She could sing out “Avon calling,” but levity doesn’t seem appropriate.

The door is open. A few inches, no more. “Wes?” she calls out softly.

There’s no answer. Maybe they’re in the back and didn’t hear.

That’s bullshit. Something is wrong inside—her detective’s and woman’s intuition both ring the same warning bell. She stands stock-still, listening, the loudest sound her own heartbeat thumping like a conch shell echoing in her ears.

If there’s anyone inside they’re frozen in position. Lying in wait for her, maybe? But who could it be, for that matter how could anyone know she’s coming? Unless Wes or Morgan tipped someone off, which doesn’t make sense.

She removes the latex gloves from her purse, slips them on, her hands shaking so badly she almost rips one with a fingernail getting it on. Then she takes her gun out, flicks the safety off, and pushes the door open with her elbow.

There’s blood on the walls. There’s blood everywhere. Wes lies on the floor, sprawled against the sofa. His head is matted with blood where the bullets exploded against the bone.

Her hand goes to her mouth, an involuntary reflex, but she can’t stop the retching, she throws up on the floor, three fast heaves.

Don’t step in it. Don’t step in the blood, which is still oozing out onto the floor. The room has been trashed, torn apart. Papers strewn all about, a chair overturned, the cushions ripped open with a knife. Someone was desperately looking for something.