The Deader the Better (4 page)

“Leo,” she said. It took me a
second. She held her hand my way.

“What?”

“Could I have my coat back?”

“Oh yeah, sure.” I fumbled as I
helped her on with the coat. We got back into the car, G driving this
time. I sat in back with Narva.

“So, who is it we’re supposed to
be?” Narva asked as G pulled to a stop. Two huge white barns at
right angles. Out across the pasture, some other structure. Couldn’t
make it out through the gloom. Twenty-five, thirty cars. Mostly
expensive and German.

“A couple of LA scene types. I
imitated that maybe you all could reciprocate with some similar
action old Spooner ever got down to LaLa Land. Said you all wanted a
party and maybe do a little threesome with something female and
springtime-fresh. Said you knew Angel from when he was down there.
Figured what with him subcontracting and all, his name be good.”

“What if he’s in there?” I
asked.

G hadn’t thought of that. He mulled
it over. “I guess, if that happen, you shoot the little bastard,”
he said, finally.

“Ain’t nobody likes that little
razor-totin’ motherfucker anyway.” He grinned. “Aw hell, Leo.
You a professional. You just got to remember that old saying.”

“Which saying is that?”

He tapped his temple with his index
finger.

“Discrepancy is the better part of
valor.”

I was still trying to figure out
whether he was kidding when Narva took charge.

“Let’s go.” She shouldered the
door open. I followed her out.

Halfway across the street, I took her
elbow. We stood in the middle of the empty street. Mercury-vapor
light filtering through the canopy of trees. Lavender. Above the
sound of moving water, I could hear distant music. She put her hands
on her hips. With the coat unbuttoned, the effect was stunning.

“Listen,” I said. “One last
time…you sure you want to do this?”

She cocked a hip. “You’re
beginning to bore me, Leo.”

“Okay then, here’s how this thing
is going to come down. Last thing people like this want is a lot of
noise. That’s our hole card. Faced with a big messy scene, they’re
most likely to let us walk. If we play our hand right, we ought to be
able to pull this off. No reason for them to have any more security
than what G says they got. Maybe a drunk gets out of hand once in a
while, but that ought to be the most trouble they’re expecting.
But…”—I hesitated—“when and if the action starts, we switch
roles, right? You stay close and do like I do. We’ll both do what
we’re good at.”

She agreed, talking as we crossed the
street and started up the driveway. “While we’re looking for the
girl and figuring out what to do, you do like G said. Just smile a
lot and do the strong silent type.” No problem.

She reached up and banged the brass
knocker. Three times. The sound of muted music was louder here.
Classical. Violins. Bald guy about six-five at the door. Black-tie
formal. Neck about the size of Narva’s waist. Harelip scar. A
Gunter all the way.

“We’re up from LA,” Narva said.

He took her in from head to toe. “And
you know who?”

He had a soft, almost childlike
voice, a couple of octaves higher than I expected.

I thought about telling him it was
whom
but decided against it.

“Mr. Monzon,” she said.

He pulled the door open and stepped
aside. We were in a narrow hall. Double doors left and right. Huge
central staircase in front of us. I had to admit, it did kind of look
like
Gone With the Wind
.

He gave Narva a leer. “Can I take
your coat?”

“I’m a little chilly,” she
said.

“Yeah,” he offered. “I can
tell.”

The drone of voices and the muted
clinking of glasses became a dull roar as Gunter pulled open one of
the doors on the left. Narva pulled me through the doorway. The first
impression was that of a nineteenth century gentleman’s club. Dark
walls and drapes, big chandelier casting a yellow light over banquet
tables and acres of overstuffed furniture lining the walls. Whatever
sense of propriety the furnishings might have provided was
immediately dispelled by the fact that the waiters weren’t wearing
pants. Or, more properly, that’s all they were wearing. Black
leather bow ties and tight latex briefs.

Gunter stepped into the room behind
us and closed the door.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll
find Mr. Spooner.”

I heard a yelp of pain followed by
scattered applause. The music changed to Chopin. Opus
something-or-other. Gunter walked past us, back to the door.

Spooner wore a monocle.

“Our new friends from the south,”
Spooner said. Narva offered her hand. Spooner took it and brought it
to his lips.

“Oooh,” Narva enthused. “And
all these wonderful boy toys.”

“We have a strap-on collection
second to none,” he assured her.

He was still slobbering on the back
of her hand. She leaned over and spoke into his ear. “Tonight,”
she said. “We had in mind…how shall I say…something…”

“Pristine,” he finished for her.

“Yes,” she said. “Pristine.”

“Of the female persuasion?”
Spooner asked. She nodded. Spooner leaned in and whispered in her
ear. I only caught the end of what Spooner was saying.

“…shouldn’t be much more than
an hour or so. We’ll have her fresh as the morning dew for you.”

I moved to Narva’s side. “In the
meantime,” Spooner was saying, “allow me to show you around our
little gathering.”

He took Narva by the ass and started
into the party. I walked along the center of the room. The furniture
had been moved off to the sides. Each grouping was afforded some
measure of privacy by a series of antique screens that shielded the
occupants from prying eyes. No compilation or description of the
carnal acts being performed within those walls could adequately
describe the scene. My mistake was to let my curiosity get the best
of me. Halfway down the room, I peeked around the corner of one of
the screens. The woman wore a white gown, kneeling on a chair, dress
thrown up over her head. Red shoes. I turned away. After that, I
minded my own business. Spooner had his hand down the back of her
panties as he steered Narva around the corner toward what appeared to
be the dining room. I took in a demonstration of Japanese rope
bondage being given in the library. There were three schools. One,
the artsy, was a triumph of style over substance, where it didn’t
matter what position the subject was in as long as the ropes and
knots were pretty. A second was all about making the victim as
uncomfortable as possible without obstructing entry. The third style
involved trussing the victim up like a rib roast, while placing knots
and braids at precisely those areas designed to produce the most
longterm discomfort. Narva jostled my elbow. She was alone. “Our
host was called away,” she said.

“A pity,” I said. “You two
seemed to be getting on famously.”

Narva smirked. A black woman in a
leather jumpsuit stopped by our sides. She put the tip of her finger
in her mouth and then traced it around one of Narva’s nipples.

“A ménage, perhaps,” she said.
“Something wet?”

When we allowed how we’d given up
those very acts for Lent, she moved on.

“The exotic stuff is upstairs,”
Narva said. I was horrified. “You mean this isn’t it?”

“Hardly,” she sniffed.

“How do you know?”

“He said we should enjoy ourselves.
Introduce ourselves to people before Gunter takes us upstairs.”

“Let’s go,” I said.

The house was laid out exactly like
my parents’ house before the renovation. Big central staircase
leading down to the front door. Another, smaller set of stairs
leading directly from the kitchen. Easier on the servants, you know.
Bedrooms running the length of the back of the house. Assuming that
the door at the end of the hall was the master bedroom, nine bedrooms
in all.

We got lucky. I don’t know how many
more doors I could have forced myself to open. The first one was
horrific. I pulled my head back through the crack and closed the
door. I must have looked bad. Narva stepped over, peeked in and had
the same reaction.

“Yuk,” she said.

Door number two. An older blond woman
in jodhpurs and riding clothes rode around the room on the back of a
younger man, flailing a riding crop at his naked buns. “Jump, damn
you,” she yelled as she swung. “Jump.”

Door number three was locked. Narva
raised a finger. Walked back to the equestrian events, pulled open
the door and took the old-fashioned key from the inside of the lock.
When I pushed it into the lock, I heard another key fall to the floor
on the inside.

He was struggling into a pair of blue
silk boxers when I pushed open the door. Looked like the Monopoly
man. Old, big white mustache. I’d have said distinguished if he
hadn’t been locked in a room with a naked thirteen-year-old girl.
“Now, see here,” he sputtered. “I was assured—”

I gave him everything I had. Got a
good hip turn and rolled my shoulder over, getting my weight behind
the punch. Hadn’t caught anybody that clean in years. He hit the
wall on the fly and then slid to the floor in a pile. Misty McMahon
opened her mouth to scream, but Narva was on her in a flash, kneeling
astride the girl, stifling the shout with her hand. “We’re
friends,” she kept saying as the girl thrashed about. I knelt on
the bed beside her struggling form. “Your grandmother sent me,” I
said. She stopped thrashing and turned her frightened eyes my way. I
gave her the abridged version. “Do you want to go home?”

She nodded and began to cry. Narva
removed her hand.

“They won’t let me go,” she
sniffled.

The Monopoly man flopped over onto
his back, groaning. He rolled into the thick red puddle his broken
mouth had left on the floor.

The only clothes she had were in
something of a Catholic school motif. Our Mother of Hollywood. Plain
white blouse. Knee socks, a plaid skirt barely long enough to cover
her ass and a pair of patent leather shoes with the strap across the
top.

While Narva got her dressed, I
checked the hall. “We’re going to march right down the front
stairs and out the door,”

I said.

“Angel will never let me—”

I reached into my coat and brought
out the automatic. Thumbed off the safety. Folded my arm across my
chest so most of the gun was under my arm. “You let me worry about
Angel or anybody else who gets in our way. You just stay close behind
me and do what I tell you, okay?” I didn’t like the look in her
eyes. She was wired to the ears. Meth, probably. Wouldn’t want to
waste good drugs on a kid. “Okay?”

She didn’t answer. I looked over
her to Narva. “Keep her between us and keep moving,” I said.

I checked the hall again, still
empty. “Let’s go,” I said. At the top of the stairs, I pushed
the red button on G’s pager and started down.

We almost made it clean. When the
front door first came into view, it was unattended. I checked over my
shoulder. Narva was close behind the girl, pushing her along. I took
Misty’s hand in mine and pulled her down the stairs behind me. Then
the voice. “So where’s dese players been usin’ my name in
vain?”

Gunter came into view. The sight of
us standing on the stairs stopped him. He lifted a hand to his coat.
I pointed the Glock at his forehead. The hand flopped back to his
side. I slid the gun back under my arm.

Angel Monzon was barely five feet
tall. He wore a stiff white shirt with a butterfly collar. Around his
neck enough gold chain to tow a Metro bus. Little ballet slippers
with bows across the arch.

He read Gunter’s face and followed
the frozen stare my way. Misty stopped moving her legs; I had to pull
her down a step to keep her behind me.

“What we got heeeere?” Monzon
said. “We got us a weasel. Think he gonna leave the coop wid a
chicken.”

“The three of us are going to walk
out that door,” I said. Monzon laughed. “You think you walkin’
outta here wid one of mine? You focking crazy or what?”

I left the gun hidden in my armpit.
“Maybe you ought to back off like a nice boy,” I said. “We
don’t want to get grease all over everything, do we, Monzon?”

He laughed again and put his right
foot on the first stair.

“We see about some grease dere,
cholo,” he sneered. I watched as he reached toward the back of his
belt, and then I pulled out the automatic and shot him through the
top of the shoe.

The foot exploded, sending a shower
of shoe and blood all over the foyer. Gunter looked down at the red
spots dotting his tuxedo shirt, pawed twice at his face and began to
back away. Monzon threw himself around the floor screaming, cursing
in Spanish. I reached behind me, grabbed Misty McMahon by the
waistband of her skirt and dragged her stiff-legged down the stairs
behind me. Gunter backed off. I pulled open the door and pushed Narva
and the girl out into the night. Behind Gunter one of the double
doors opened. Spooner’s head poked out. The sound of shouts filled
the foyer. I picked a spot about nine feet up the door and put two
slugs through the mahogany. The door slammed. I heard screams now and
the shuffling of many feet. Angel Monzon was groaning, holding his
foot, rocking on his spine. I pointed the gun at Gunter. “You stick
your head out this door and you’re going to have more than a funny
name and a bad lip.”

I yanked open the right-hand door and
stepped outside. G had both hands on his shiny little gun, sighting
over the top of the car. “Let’s roll,” I said.

FROM THE WALKWAY ABOVE THE MAIN DECK,
THE FERRY
Spokane
seemed to open its mouth and swallow the
dark water running headlong toward its bow. The huge vessel slid so
softly among the whitecaps that it seemed as if it were pulling the
water deep into its innards and somehow using the flow as a silent
means of propulsion. Despite the wind on my cheeks and the low
throbbing of the diesels, when I looked left or right, we appeared to
be standing still. Only by focusing my attention on the oncoming
escalator of green water was I able to maintain any sense of forward
motion whatsoever.