The Chinese Beverly Hills (16 page)

He noticed fingers of seared chaparral above the firebreak and worried that the cabin might have burned out. Nobody’d been up here since summer. It would break his heart. Not just the parties—he’d first read Nietzsche here. It was his sacred place to mull life over deep.

Coming around the last bend, he was relieved to see that the cabin was whole, though immediately he went on alert. A steady issue of smoke rolled off the stovepipe chimney. Two chopped Harleys and a bad-boy tricycle squeezed into the parking pad next to the stream. He got his back up. This was
his
, dammit.

Zook pulled just off the fire trail. He could tell that the metal music coming from the house covered any noise he could make, so he walked straight up to a window where the curtains were open. One of his kerosene lamps was flickering on the table and somebody had dragged an old party mattress into the main room.

A naked young girl, maybe thirteen, was kneeling on the mattress giving a reluctant blowjob to a man wearing nothing but a jean jacket, both his hands pressed to the back of her head. Tears were rivering down her cheeks. A fat man in denim with droopy eyes and a ponytail watched and encouraged. The fourth figure in the room, a blowsy-looking woman wearing nothing but an unzipped racedriver jacket, sat against the wall and seemed to be masturbating.

What a zoo, Zook thought. He knew the Thinking Man had to protect children whenever he could, but these animals could be the Gypsy Jokers, meth heads who’d kill you rather than walk around you. He manned up gradually and retrieved his Walther PPK from the glove compartment.

Okay, Nietzsche, he thought. We’ll see who I am. Pussy or man of action. He pulled the plank front door open, and the woman in the corner looked up and screeched. Zook lifted his Redwing boot and stepped on the buttons on the boom box. The silence was a relief.

“Who the fuck are you?” Ponytail said. The voice was both wired and slurred.

“If I wasn’t so classy, I’d shoot you all,” Zook said. He let them see his pistol but didn’t aim it. “I own this cabin.”

“Ah, shit. It’s the Zook.” That was the bare-assed man. He reached down and hauled up a pair of used-up jeans. “So where you been?”

“Attending to patriotic business.” He didn’t recognize the man, but might have met him on a ride.

“Let’s get a look at that piece you got.”

“Never you mind. It works.”

The little girl wrapped her arms tight around where her breasts were just developing. “I live in Santa Monica, on 1019 Ashland,” she gasped.

“Don’t be saying that!” the big woman demanded.

“Picked her up hitching?” Zook asked.

“Came to us and said she was real hot to trot,” the woman said. “But she ain’t.”

“Would you folks take the party down the hill? I’ve got a group coming in.” He wanted to find some way to help the girl, but there were limits to what even a stand-up guy could do. It was all a matter of odds. It would be a weird universe indeed if these folks weren’t armed, too.

“Dig it,” the man on the mattress said. “That PPK is just a little popper, Zook. If you want some heavy stuff, come see me. Tony Two in BP.”

Baldwin Park, an even rattier working-class outlier ten miles east. “How do you friends know my name?” Zook asked.

“Every swingin’ dick in the valley knows the Commandos.”

That was gratifying. The partiers gathered their clothes and belongings.

“Why don’t you leave the girl here, sort of like rent,” Zook said without any emphasis. “I could see having some fun myself.” The girl tugged on a t-shirt and shorts.

“We’ll take good care of her.”

That felt to be as far as the Thinking Man could push things. They pushed the girl out the door ahead of them.

“Watch your ass, man. I hear every cop in the valley is after you for that kegger.” Zook stood beside the doorway, the pistol limp in his hand.

Ponytail yanked the girl onto the bench seat of the trike. “Sit the fuck down or I’ll give you a flying lesson off yonder cliff.”

Zook bit his lip, the pistol’s unused force shaming him a little. Welcome to the big bad world, girl, he thought.

Before starting up, the trike man said, “Take it all quick, Zook. Ain’t no second chances.”

Zook’s inertia burned inside him. He needed to do some deep thinking.

*

The mother’s despairing wail had been unendurable, and Roski heard it even as he walked away from the Rohs’ house. He’d had to tell them about the body that had been seen in the fire zone, and then ask them to agree to DNA cheek swabs as soon as he could send out a lab crew.

Bump up, Rosk. Firefighters said that to one another—bump up—after the death of a pal. Toughen up and try to move on. Nobody ever said it to a civilian.

He checked his notes and was about to dismiss contacting this ludicrous “private detective” when he reminded himself that you never knew where the break might come from.

The phone number gave him a throaty woman’s voice.

“I’m trying to reach Jack Liffey,” he said.

“What’s he done now?”

“Can I just leave him a message? This is Captain Walter Roski, from the L.A. County Fire Department, Arson.”

“Captain,” she broke in before he could go on. “This is L.A.P.D. Sergeant Gloria Ramirez, Harbor Division. I live with Jack. I hope he hasn’t torched a nuns’ home.”

Her voice was so self-possessed that Roski laughed. “No, Sergeant. That’s pretty well excluded. But I need to talk to him.”

“You know, I do, too. He can be very entertaining.”

This was all inducing him to reassess the man he’d assumed was a plain screw-up. “Does that mean he’s away?”

“For the day. Can I tell him what this is about?”

“I usually don’t, but since you’re L.E….” How did he know she was actually law enforcement? Her confident voice? “It’s about the Sheepshead Fire, Sergeant, but I can’t say any more right now.” He gave her his cell number and got off before he could make a bigger ass of himself. Sometimes he could be a sucker for the ambience of things, and the woman sounded like somebody tough as nails whom he’d like a lot. He’d been way too long without a girlfriend. Or even a friend.

He looked over his list of missing girls and wondered if he should just double underline Sabine Roh and forget the others. All he really had was a mother’s abrupt tears at the sight of an amber rosary. He’d talk to this priest who’d known the girl.

*

Jack Liffey wiped his sweaty forehead on the silken sheet, like rumpled cloth of woven silver. His face was next to one of Tien’s tiny, perfectly formed bare feet.

“You in bad way, I can tell. How long you been needing big fancy boom-boom like this?”

He smiled to himself. Yeah, she’d learned some new tricks, all right. “I never need a five-dollah short time, Tien.”

“You say. But life all about short times. Love the one you with.”

Who’d sung that, he wondered. Those hopeful, horrible olden days. “Do you know about guilt, Tien?”

“No say that, Jack. You here right now with me. You know my pussy. My mouth know you.” Yes, he thought, and then there was the tongue stud she’d had installed, not a common Asian practice as far as he knew.

“I feel what I feel.”

“Don’t you go on-off like radio,” she said.

And what now for his intentions? Was this just a brief payback for Gloria’s affair? Or should he disrupt everything in his life and move himself into the egregious yacht out there? What a thought. He hated boats, but he did get a kick out of this formidable woman, several kicks. Her utter unselfconsciousness. Her focus on the immediate moment. Infinitely forgiving, wanting to please; her mind bustling, full of plans and backups and backups for backups. Never at rest. The perfect personality in a go-for-broke, dog-eat-dog country.

He readjusted to lie face to face. “I always worry about tomorrow, Tien. It’s who I am.”

She shrugged solemnly. “Dig it. Tomorrow we both dead.”

*

Somebody knocked lightly and didn’t wait for a reply before opening. Between the fingers of one fist, Bunny was strangling two Corona bottles. “G’day, Maeve.
Mea culpa
or something. I think I owe you big time.”

“Why?” As if nothing had happened. Maeve stood at a canvas, dabbing at the back view of a Francis Bacon-esque leg, working from a digital photo of a corpulent model from her life class. Bubbly thigh and cellulite butt—Maeve was doing her best not to find it repulsive. All life was sacred, all bodies.

“You been good about it, but it was my bad. That was really messed up. I’ll make it up. I’ll be happy to pose for you right now, if you promise no funny stuff.”

Maeve’s heart started to pitter-patter. Just glancing at Bunny’s luxuriant body, even clothed, turned her on immensely. “Sure, no funny stuff. I’ll do my best to separate desire from art, though I can’t tell a lie—your body is a real glory of nature.”

Bunny decapped the beers with the church key that hung on a string from the fridge handle. Maeve thought of showing off Gloria’s ostentatious pop-off chop some time, but decided she’d better practice in private.

“Imagination is fine,” Bunny said. “But be sure to knock on the door before you try to open it.”

Jeez, was that a tentative invitation?

“For sure.” Maeve brought out a fresh canvas already stretched and primed. Amazing, she thought. Two months ago she didn’t even know what stretching a canvas was, or gesso, didn’t know the difference between oils and acrylics. “You can undress behind the Japanese screen and come out with a towel.”

“No, I’m fine.”

Bunny seemed to toy with a private smile as she tugged off her bulky sweater with that lovely cross-arm maneuver, and Maeve wondered if undressing in her view was a way of Bunny teasing herself with forbidden thoughts.

“Please get comfortable and think about something neutral. I’d like to have you unconscious of your body. My teacher says too many women have internalized a male eye.”

The faint grin returned. “Then I’ll think of myself as a sight for a female eye.”

Maeve just about fainted as the underwire bra came off.

“The cool air feels good.”

“Knock knock,” Maeve said weakly.

*

“Can I have a Bentley, hon? That horrid narrow entrance scraped the Jag’s fender,” Adrianna complained. “It just
barged
at me.”

“How about I get you a driver,” Gustav Reik said. He was home, briefly, in his Fifth Avenue penthouse overlooking Central Park in the Seventies. He owned the top two floors of the Hewitt Building, and kept the lower one as office, probably worth more than his entire hometown of Verdigris, Oklahoma.

Adrianna was his arm candy, of course, bleach and scalpel and silicone, with the intelligence of an armadillo, but she had an art history degree from one of those SUNYs out in the sticks and could almost hold up her end at a New York cocktail party. He’d bought their way onto the boards of a dozen cultural foundations.

“Aww, Gusty.”

A lot of his Southern friends shook their heads in dismay that he’d chosen to live in Jew York, but you didn’t have to be a Jew to love good ballet and opera and art. And good food, which was not to be had below latitude forty. Roughly Washington, D.C.

He waved his hand toward Adrianna’s portion of the penthouse. “Addy, please turn left. I need to boil a hog for a few minutes.” It was his way of telling her he had confidential business on the telephone.

She nodded obediently and hurried away.

He speed-dialed his administrative assistant, Bernadette Crouch. The woman was indispensable to him, as sharp as anyone he’d ever met, and her politics were bang-on libertarian as far as he knew. If only she weren’t so buck ugly, he’d bend her over her desk more often. Why couldn’t we swap brains and bodies, he wondered.

“Berny, has anybody backed out of the retreat?” He never wasted time on howdies. Manners were for also-rans.

“Hi there, Gustav. Yes, my cancer biopsy was negative. Thank you very much for asking. Only a few of our stalwart capitalist friends have declined—Mr. X from the aerospace company, Mr. Y from brokerage, and Mr. Z from hedge funds.” They both knew about phone hacking, of course, including the government’s big Echelon, Prism, and Omnivore spy projects. Not to mention the fact that
Mother Jones
magazine had somehow obtained an audio tape of their last retreat and promulgated it word for word to make a number of tipsy Republican governors sound like Herman Goering.

“The lawyer from Southern California?”

“Not a peep from him. Why does that small beer lawyer worry you, Gus? You sent him the biggest pain in the ass in our planetary belt as a guest speaker.”

“I love all my children, each in his own way, Bern,” he said, but smiled privately. He knew, like Andor, he had an uncontrollable practical joker gene. “Even you. This year is going to be important. We need a billion more to fight the socialist president.”

“Good for us. I’m always invested in knowing that somebody who deserves it is going to end up crying.”

“Never us, for sure, kiddo. See you in two weeks.”

“But you should keep in mind that private wounds often reveal what is damaging on a much larger scale.”

He frowned as he hung up. Bernadette was always tweaking him, and he had no idea what the hell she was getting at. And her cancer scare, for Chrissake. Had she actually told him about that? He leched for her on sudden urges, but he couldn’t be expected to care about such a homely woman.

*

All roads met in Monterey Park these days. Jack Liffey was back on Garvey Avenue at a little sidewalk table in front of the wonderfully named Bon Mar Ché, and right across the street was The Sweet Blanket, whatever that was, tucked beside what must once have been a Dunkin’ Donuts but was now Wei’s Boba Teas.

Jack Liffey was still addled by his romp with Tien, but he did his best to calm down as he waited. He’d called home guiltily from her place, with some excuse that sounded lame even to him, and Gloria had completely ignored his fibbing and told him that a firefighter of some rank was urgently looking for him, and given him the number. It had to be about Sabine, of course. Too much at once. But that was the nature of life. The firefighter had picked the Bon Mar Ché.