Strip (32 page)

He caught sight of one of the gardeners across the front yard and waved his arm. They always tried to do their work unobtrusively, like stagehands in a theater, but now and then, on a rare day when he was awake in the morning, he would glimpse one or two of them from a distance. He seldom saw the cleaning crew either, but he noted that their van was parked at the curb this morning.

He went inside and listened. He could tell that the cleaning women were working in the kitchen end of the house, so he went the other way, to his bedroom suite. The room was finished, with everything in order, the floor polished, and the bed linens replaced. He turned on the television set and found the local news, and tuned his ears to listen for the words
Rogoso
and
Malibu.

It was nearly eleven, and he was getting hungry. This was before he usually had his breakfast, but he’d been up most of the night and then was up again at 6:30, so his body wanted something. He knew it was ridiculous that he was intimidated by the thought of going into the kitchen and having to talk to the cleaning women while he made himself a sandwich.

He supposed they had a very specific idea of how he lived, and had opinions about it, but that only bothered him if he had to go in there and think of things to say to them.

He lay on his bed, closed his eyes, and listened to the 11:00 news. There was an Asian Pacific festival, a report from the USGS that a huge new fault had been found under the northern part of the city capable of generating massive earthquakes. There was always some kind of festival to celebrate some other country, always a series of threatening reports from scientists about what people ate or where they lived. There was a police shooting in one of the southside cities, where the police had mistaken a thirteen-year-old for an armed fugitive. Then he heard “A fire in the Malibu home of a local man with a record of narcotics trafficking,” then the words “After this.”

He sat up, propped a pillow behind him, and watched the commercials. They went on and on. There were cars, then a motorized wheelchair that the government could be called upon to pay for. There were more cars, a clothing store, and then a diet drink that melted off the pounds.

At last he saw the burned ruin he’d seen this morning, and the coroner’s white van with the blue stripe and the words
LAW AND SCIENCE SERVING THE COMMUNITY.
The reporter was the middle-aged black woman they always sent when somebody died. She stood in front of the charred pile and the ocean beyond.

“Sheriff’s deputies say that sometime after midnight last night, an intruder shot and killed three men in this Malibu beach house. He then set the house ablaze. By the time the fire trucks arrived, no more than ten minutes after the first call, the three-story house was fully involved. Firefighters managed to remove two of the victims from the building, but both were dead on arrival at County-USC Hospital. The third body was in a stairway that firefighters couldn’t approach. He is believed to be the owner of the house, Manuel Rogoso, age forty-five. The other victims were reported to be employees of his. The house, which had recently been purchased for fifteen million dollars, was a total loss.”

As she stepped back from the camera, it panned to survey the pile of blackened wood on the charred, cracked foundation. “The police have no theory as to the cause of the triple murder-arson. They ask that anyone with any information call the nearest police station.”

Kapak aimed the remote control at the television set and the screen went black. He lay back and stared up at the ceiling. He had killed them in self-defense, but he knew that was a technicality. The killing had been the end of a disagreement among criminals engaged in a scheme to launder drug money. There were no innocent parties, only some dead criminals and a living one. Even if he could have argued that he’d had no choice, that argument vanished once he had burned the house.

Marija entered his mind. She would have glared at him and said, “See? That’s the kind of man you are.” No, but the idea of her would have, the Marija inhabiting his memory. The real woman would have denied to all bystanders that she’d ever known him, and then hurried away. She had wanted no part of the shame he brought her.

He was sure she had told his children things that had kept them from trying to see him. If they were people of ordinary curiosity they would have come to see who he was, at least. If they were like him and most of his relatives, they would have come looking for him to see if he had serious amounts of money.

He was sure that she had not even hinted at the truth. She had probably told them he had died when he was in jail. That way, when she had started going to bed with the periodontist who had lived next door, she wasn’t a faithless whore, she was a pretty young widow who had found a reliable, respectable man to protect her children. Her children. They
were
her children, not his. He had not gone to claim them. When he got out of jail, he had been so angry that he wanted to imply to her that he no longer believed he had been the one to conceive them.

If he were to search for them now, he would have no clear path to them except through her, or if she was already dead, through the hated periodontist, Dr. Felder. He had no idea what city they’d been living in all this time, or if the children had kept his name or been given the name Felder. All he knew was that he had stayed in Los Angeles and kept the name Kapak. If they had ever wanted to see him, he would not have been hard to find.

Thinking about Marija and the children was like thinking about people in another century. It seemed to have taken several lifetimes for him to change from Marija’s young, foolish husband to the man he was now. He thought about what he had done. He had obtained money. That was good, but not as good as he had thought it would be when he was young. And now the business itself was not the same. Last night, when he’d had to kill his most important and oldest ally, he had felt a change.

He had chosen nightclubs because so much of the money that came in was cash, and he could use that legal cash to hide a stream of illegal cash. Laundering money for drug dealers had made him a potent and dangerous man, someone with connections. But now he had killed the source of the illegal cash and the power. If he wasn’t going to be laundering money anymore, what was he doing? Was he going to spend the final years of his life just running some honest bars? What for—to add a few more dollars to the bank accounts that would go unclaimed after his death?

He reminded himself that he was winning. The ally who had turned on him was dead and he was alive. There was still Joe Carver out there somewhere, but soon Carver would be dead too. There was no need for anybody to think too hard about who won and who lost. The winners were alive and the losers dead.

J
ERRY GAFFNEY AWOKE
just after 11:00, his usual hour, but he didn’t feel quite right. There was a distinct tightness in his right arm—more like a pain—and he wondered for a second whether he’d been stabbed. No, it wasn’t as bad as that. He tried to roll to his back and realized what was wrong. His wrists were handcuffed behind him, and that was a feeling he’d felt before.

He drew in a breath in a gasp and sat up. He swung his legs, then realized that he was being restrained. A rope was tied around his ankles and then to the bed frame.

“Good morning.” It was Sandy Belknap’s voice.

The relief he felt was like a cool breeze touching his sweating forehead. She was still here. If this was serious, she’d have left him like this, gone somewhere else, and called the cops. He could still talk her out of this. “Good morning,” he said. “This is an interesting development.”

“Yeah. Interesting.” He still couldn’t see her, because she was somewhere behind him.

He said, “I assume these are my own handcuffs.”

“Yes, they are. Nice girls don’t have their own sets of handcuffs, I think. If they do, none of them ever told me about it.”

“Well, this is a pretty cute trick.”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re looking pretty cute over there, all bare-naked and trussed up. But I’m thinking that the joke has been on me all along.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Well, there was a part of my conversation with Joe Carver this morning that you didn’t hear. It wasn’t on the speaker.”

“What did I miss?”

“He knew that two men with red hair, one bright red—that would be you, the bright red—talked to me about a month ago at Wash, and that what we talked about was him.”

“So why have I got handcuffs on?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said. She walked around the bed and he could see she was dressed in blue jeans, running shoes, and a University of Missouri T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail. “The other thing he said was that these two men were brothers, a pair of thugs named Jerry and Jimmy Gaffney, who work for a gangster named Manco Kapak.”

He looked at her in disappointment. “Well, of course, when we’re investigating a series of class-one felonies we don’t always go into crowds of unidentifiable people waving badges and using our real names.”

“It’s pretty amusing to watch you sitting there making all this stuff up, and I’ll bet you could say more of it than I can listen to. But I’ve been up since that call, thinking.”

“Good. Can you please unlock these handcuffs so we can have a real discussion about this?”

“Want to know what I thought?”

“Sure I do, but I’d like to have these handcuffs and ropes off first.”

“Sorry. What I was thinking was that the way you and your partner treated me, and the way you treated my ex-boyfriend, well, it was kind of overbearing. The word Joe Carver used was ‘thug.’ I wouldn’t have used that word, but I might have said ‘bully.’ And then I thought, ‘Would a cop do that?’ and ‘Would a cop really sleep with me?’”

“Have you walked by a mirror lately? Ninety percent of cops wouldn’t be able to help themselves. The others are straight women. As for your boyfriend, I was doing my duty. A police officer, even if he’s just made what’s technically an error in judgment, sleeping with a witness, can’t let a contact with an angry civilian turn into a free-for-all, with everybody having an equal right to throw punches. We don’t hold debates or try cases. We have to take charge and remain in control.”

“Wow. Did you see that on TV?”

“It’s part of standard police training.”

“So is not getting citizens to sleep with you.”

“I admitted I made a mistake. Rules are rules, but you’re the strongest temptation I ever came across, by a mile. I know it was against regulations, but at that moment, I honestly didn’t care. Right now I feel sorry that I failed, but I’d do it all over again.”

“You’ve got the Oscar wrapped up, so don’t overact.”

“Why are you suddenly being so cynical?”

“While you were asleep I decided to do some checking. Your name is Detective Sergeant Allan Reid. That’s what it says on your ID. But your driver’s license, credit cards, and everything say Jerry Gaffney. Your badge says ‘patrolman.’”

“My police ID is accurate. My badge is the one I got coming out of the academy, because the number belonged to my father. I still carry it because it makes me feel like he’s looking over my shoulder.”

“You tricked me, and you used me. But I had fun with you yesterday and last night. And without intending to, you forced me to take a look at what I was settling for as a boyfriend. It’s something I needed. For those reasons, I’m not inclined to call the cops—the real ones—and have them come and haul you away like this. Instead, I’d like you to put on your clothes and skedaddle.”

Jerry Gaffney looked at his feet, then into her eyes. “I guess I’d be stupid not to leave, huh?”

“I have the impression that impersonating a cop is a felony.”

“It is. Want to unlock me?”

“You have to promise not to try anything.”

“All right. I promise.”

“I sure hope you’re not under the foolish, mistaken impression that I won’t have the heart to shoot you if you pull something. I’m a farm girl from Missouri. My dad is a gun nut. All the Belknaps are shooters.”

She walked around to the front of him, pressed the magazine release on his gun and took out the magazine, then pulled back the slide to eject the round in the chamber, closed it, and tossed the gun on the bed. Then she reached into her nightstand and took out a .38 revolver. “If I have to shoot you, I’ll use my own gun. I’m used to it.”

He smiled. “Shoot lots of guys?”

She looked into his eyes for a couple of seconds, as though searching for some sign of intelligence. Then she tossed his clothes on the bed, walked around behind him, unlocked his handcuffs, and stepped back, her gun in her hand.

Jerry Gaffney dressed, not slowly, but not making any unexpected or quick moves. When he was ready, he said, “Sandy, I apologize for lying to you. I regret it more than you know.” He stood and walked toward the side door.

“Wait.”

He stopped and looked back at her.

“Oh, this is stupid,” she said. “Never mind.”

“What?”

“I said never mind.”

He turned and went to the door, opened it, and stepped across the threshold.

“Wait.”

He stopped.

“Are you really a thug working for a gangster?”

“I’m a security professional working for Manco Kapak. He’s not a gangster. He owns Wash in Hollywood and a couple of clubs in the Valley. Once in a great while I’ve had to step in and physically prevent somebody from doing something foolish. I don’t think that makes me a thug.”

She sighed. “Better, but still not nearly enough. Don’t you see? I’m a daylight person. I can’t have a guy who’s even a little bit of a thug once in a while—a night person. Even dating a cop was going to be a bit over the line, but I kind of tried you on, because I thought you got your scars protecting people from bad guys, and if it didn’t work out, at least I gave a heroic guy a nice time. I could do that. But not somebody in a shady business, especially not somebody who’s a bit of a con man. I can’t be in a relationship with a guy and know there’s no particular reason to believe anything he says. So that’s that. You have to go. If I see you again, we’ll have to do the police thing again, using real police. If you come in the wrong way at the wrong time, I’ll have to shoot you.”