Strip (21 page)

Kapak said, “Hello, Colby.”

Colby only nodded and said, “Mr. Kapak.” His manner was slightly cooler than it must have been when he had pulled speeders over in the old days. Kapak liked it, because it seemed to him to indicate a kind of integrity. Colby had spent twenty years watching people like Kapak very closely, and he hadn’t liked them. Now that he was left with an inadequate pension and had to work for one of them, he didn’t pretend he had changed his mind. He spoke to Kapak with the respectful formality that cops used to speak with people they considered enemies.

Kapak passed through the door at the other side of the room into the inner office, where Ruben Salinas, the manager of Wash, was expecting him. As soon as the door was closed, even the muffled beat of the music in the club was almost undetectable. Salinas stood up and came around his desk. He was young, and he dressed like his customers in tight designer jeans and a T-shirt, but he had the dead eyes of a fifty-year-old business executive. “Nice to see you, Mr. Kapak. Everything all right out there?”

Kapak was aware that it wasn’t especially nice to see him, but said, “Nice to see you too, Ruben. Everything seems fine. I’m pleased.”

“Thank you.”

“Have we heard from our friend yet?”

“I just saw two of Rogoso’s girls come in the front door on the monitor. It should only be a minute or two.” He pointed at the monitor mounted on the wall where he could see it from behind the desk.

Kapak stepped up beside him and turned to look where he was pointing. There were two young women with long, straight black hair, short skirts, sandals, and tank tops like all of the two hundred other female customers. They both had big leather purses with the straps over their left shoulders and clutched under their left arms. Kapak was happy with them. If Salinas had not pointed them out, he would never have seen any difference between them and the others. He watched them make their way across the crowded dance floor, sidestepping or turning to avoid dancers as they came. Their movements had a graceful, playful quality, as though they were dancing their way through the crowd, half-unconsciously giving in to the rhythm, even though the world knew that there was nothing unconscious about the way twenty-year-old girls looked.

They reached the line for the ladies’ room, stood watching the dancers and the lights and appraising the men who had noticed them and had not looked away. Kapak saw the other girl now, the blond who worked for Salinas. She moved in close to them, and he could see she had a purse that was identical to the purse one of Rogoso’s girls carried. They leaned in close and talked for a few seconds, and then she turned and stepped away from them.

“Something’s up,” Salinas said.

“What?”

“She’s supposed to switch purses with the taller one in the ladies’ room, and bring the purse in here. She’s coming in, but I didn’t see a switch.”

They waited, watching the monitor. The two girls waiting in line for the bathroom went in.

There was a knock on the office door, and Salinas stepped to open it and let the blond woman inside.

“What’s wrong?” said Salinas.

But she looked at Kapak. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kapak. They want you to go with them to see Mr. Rogoso.”

Salinas stood completely still and watched Kapak, but Kapak sighed. “Ruben, you’ll need to count the take for the night and fill out the deposit slip. Don’t put in a date. Leave that blank. Drive it up to Siren and give it to Voinovich, and he’ll put it in the safe. I guess you’d better call the office at Temptress and tell them to do the same thing. I’d like all the money locked in the safe at Siren tonight.”

“You’re not actually going with those girls, are you?”

“Rogoso wants to talk to me. Maybe he’ll tell me something I need to know.” He turned to the blond woman. “Where do these two want to meet me?”

“In the back of the building by your car.”

“All right.”

Salinas frowned. “Aren’t you a little … worried?”

“No,” he said. “Just take care of the money, and things will be fine.” He turned and went out through the security office and into the noise of the club. It was after midnight now, and the crowd was as big and active as it would be tonight.

He had lied about not being worried. Rogoso was a savage. He was a man without any sense of how a human being was supposed to behave. A couple of years ago, he’d had his first difference of opinion with him. Rogoso had sent a delivery of money to be mixed in with Kapak’s nightly take, and when Kapak had opened the bag, he had found blood had soaked into the top thirty or forty bills in each stack and dried. Kapak had met with Rogoso and returned the stained bills to him.

Rogoso looked down at the pile of reddish-brown paper, some of the bills stuck together and some not. “It’s just a little blood. You’re supposed to be the money launderer, aren’t you? Wash them.”

Kapak sat quietly without moving for a few seconds. “There’s no such thing anymore as just blood. It’s
somebody’s
blood. As soon as they do a couple of tests on it, they know who it belongs to. I’m assuming the cops already have the body this came from.”

“Could be.” Rogoso appeared bored and uninterested.

“I’ve already deposited all the bills that were clean in the bank, but not these. If this makes you short for the week, I can help you out. And I’ve already made out the check for the rest.” He took it out of his coat pocket and held it out to Rogoso.

Rogoso reached out and took it, then tore it up. “Don’t act like I’m some small-time guy. I can make my payrolls.”

“Do I need to know whose money this was?”

“He was my brother-in-law.”

Kapak had asked no more questions. He had simply passed over the topic and taken the first opportunity to go home.

Kapak knew he was being watched, so as he walked through the club past the surging crowd, he looked up at Takito the DJ in his glass booth and waved, and Takito waved both his arms and grinned. Takito was an almost unnaturally skinny Japanese man of undeterminable age. Each night he took off his shirt to reveal his stringy muscles and the impression of bones, tied a headband around his forehead, and began to play a selection of music that the customers seemed to think could not be heard anywhere else, all the while dancing behind the glass and shouting down at the customers. Takito already had enough notoriety to get lots of other jobs at after-hours clubs and parties, so he probably would be moving on before too long. For this moment—these few seconds—he and Kapak were useful to each other. Takito looked good, and Kapak looked brave.

Kapak stepped out the front entrance into the line of young people waiting to be admitted and made his way around to the back. The two girls were leaning against the hood of his car, waiting and smoking cigarettes.

He pushed the remote control on his key chain, and the buttons popped up and the door locks opened. The two girls dropped their cigarettes on the asphalt, opened the rear doors, and got in, so Kapak had to sit alone in front like a chauffeur. “All right,” he said. “Where are we going?”

The one over his left shoulder said, “We have to go the long way and make some turns to be sure your people aren’t following us. Okay?”

“I guess it’s all right, but I don’t want to be out all night, because I have things to do. You tell me where to turn, and I’ll do it.”

“Left up at the light.”

He glanced in the rearview mirror to find her. She was looking straight ahead, but the girl beside her was on her knees on the seat staring out the rear window, watching the traffic behind them. The taller girl had him make three turns in rapid succession, then told him to head west.

“Are my people following us, Maria?”

“My name is Ariana, not Maria.”

“Well, hello, Ariana. People call me Manco.”

“We know who you are, Manco,” she said irritably. “We came to pick you up.”

“Oh,” he said. “That means you two like me, doesn’t it? Do I make your hearts beat faster? Do you get butterflies in your stomachs when you see me?”

The two girls laughed, and then the other one said, “Stop making fun of us.”

“Oh!” he said. “What voice is that? Ariana, aren’t we alone?”

“You know we’re not. That was Irena.”

“Is Irena your imaginary friend? A lot of children have imaginary friends.”

“No, I’m not her imaginary friend,” Irena said. “I’m just as real as she is and more real than you are.”

Kapak took his hands off the wheel, pretended to knock his right fist on his head, but made the loud rapping noise by tapping the dashboard with his left. “Hear that? It seemed real to me. How could you be more real than I am?”

“Nobody’s taking me to see Rogoso. Pretty soon you could be a ghost.”

“Irena!” said Ariana. “That’s not funny.”

“Are you both afraid of Rogoso?”

“Yes.”

“None of the people who work for me are afraid.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’m just making conversation,” said Kapak. “A lot of the time that means comparing one thing with another, or talking about the way things could be if they weren’t the way they are. How far do we have to go to find Rogoso? Remember, I said I have some other things to do tonight.”

“He’s at the beach.”

“What beach?”

“You know, the beach. Malibu.”

“That’s quite a drive.”

“Irena! We weren’t supposed to tell him that ahead of time.”

“Oh, who cares?”

“What if he decides he doesn’t want to drive out there? Rogoso will have Alvin and Chuy beat the shit out of us. At least.”

“Oh my God. You have a gun. Nothing has to happen that you don’t want,” Irena said.

“It’s not very smart to say that either.”

“Well, it’s true.” Irena sat facing forward. “Manco. Drive west to PCH and go north. Ariana will tell you where to stop. Okay?”

Manco shrugged. “I guess it’ll be okay. I hope you were kidding about me being a ghost, though. I don’t think I’d like that much.”

“She was kidding.”

Kapak drove toward Santa Monica, and when he got there he took the exit down the incline onto Pacific Coast Highway. To his right was the high bluff and to the left was the ocean, shining black at this time of night. “See the moon?” he said.

He heard the two moving around to see it. “Beautiful,” said Ariana. “I love to see it shining on the ocean like that.” Almost immediately after she said it, the first of the houses cropped up on the left. After that, for a time the view consisted of a succession of garage doors and high gates, the houses shoulder to shoulder as though they were trying to hide the whole Pacific Ocean.

“Sometimes I don’t think anybody ought to be able to own something like that—put something up so he can see the ocean, but nobody else can,” said Irena.

“I wouldn’t say that if I were you,” said Ariana. “You know who owns a house here.”

Irena sighed.

“Okay, Manco,” said Ariana. “We’re almost there. When we go by it, you’ve got to hang a U-turn and pull forward to stop in front of the garage. There’s no other place for a car.”

“Okay, but watch for cops.”

“See the big white place up there, the one that’s about three stories?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s it. Now go past. Turn around. There. Nice. Now pull up there.”

Kapak stopped the car, looked into the rearview mirror to be sure nothing was coming in the right lane, and then got out and stood at the back of his car and watched the two girls get out. He studied their bodies closely while they weren’t aware of it and decided there was no place for a gun on either of them except their purses. When they came closer, Ariana said, “He’s waiting.”

She went to the front door and opened it, and Kapak followed the girls inside. Rogoso came into the foyer from a brightly lighted living room. He was not as tall as Kapak. Although he was at least forty-five, he looked no more than thirty-five years old, with thick dark hair that seemed to sprout from halfway down his forehead, just above his bushy eyebrows. He wasn’t smiling.

Kapak said, “Nice house, Rogoso. How are you?” and held out his hand.

Rogoso kept his hands at his sides. “I’m not happy, Kapak.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve been hearing all kinds of stuff about what’s going on with you.”

“What?”

“This Joe Carver guy is robbing you blind and killing your men, and you’re too scared to go to the bank to move money around, and there’s a police lieutenant downtown making a full-time job out of watching you.”

“Who told you that?”

“Everybody!” he shouted. “Every-fucking-body!” He spoke more softly. “The whole town knows all about it like they were all there at the time and saw you get robbed, and people are saying that you’re too old to do this anymore. That you’re weak.”

Kapak laughed. “I don’t feel weak. Do you want to arm-wrestle?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, none of my men has been killed. One of them got clipped by a ricochet off the sidewalk. It was a girl just firing wild all over the place, and she managed to get him a flesh wound down by his calf with like ten shots. He’ll be fine. I got lots of other guys. And Joe Carver is nothing. There are guys like him all the time. Always have been. They come from some unknown place that they’re goddamn glad to get out of, and they show up here and cause trouble for a little while, and then it gets too hot for them and they go away. I’m putting some pressure on him right now, and he’ll either turn up or go someplace else. Don’t worry. He can’t hurt you. He doesn’t even know about you.”

“But he’s got the cops watching you all the time.”

“Not really. I just drove out here, and your girls can tell you that nobody followed us.”

He looked at Ariana and Irena, standing a few feet to his right. Their dark, heavily mascaraed eyes watched Rogoso warily, waiting for him to turn to them.

“They’re just a pair of drug mules. What the fuck do they know?”

“Probably more than we do. If they had ever let themselves be followed, they’d be dead or in jail.”

“That’s not proof of anything.” He extended his arm and looked around him. “Take a look at this place. I just bought it a month ago. You know who owned it? Nick Criley.”