Unplugged (8 page)

“Are you sure?”

“It was a line in a play I auditioned for once.”

“Uh-huh. ’Cuz sometimes I feel like a banana.”

She gave me another smile. I felt my heart sink. I had asked her out in an attempt to convince myself that she wasn’t all that fond of Solberg—probably didn’t even really like him. Maybe she was just attached to his car. He had a hell of a car.

She took a minuscule bite of sorbet, then pushed it aside. “You ready to go?”

“You didn’t finish your . . .” I glanced at it. “Ice.”

“I’m full.”

“Sure. You probably had lots of air today,” I said, and rose to my feet before I asked if I could finish her dessert. I didn’t like sorbet. But I had once eaten a full bag of Cheetos in a single sitting. I hate Cheetos.

Seconds later, I was sliding onto the passenger seat of Laney’s vintage Mustang. It was primo, but it took a buttload of upkeep, or so said my idiot brothers. As it turns out, though, upkeep is no problem for Elaine. She has a herd of seventy-two grease monkeys who would give their spleens to do the work for free.

We jumped onto the San Bernardino Freeway, headed west, then zipped onto the 5. It was nine-thirty on a Sunday night, so there weren’t more than a million cars doing the highway bump and grind. At rush hour, it’d be more like a lap dance. Nearly devoid of actual movement, but heavy on perspiration.

Laney lives in a block-shaped apartment building in Sun Valley. It’s not a great section of town, but her landlord will periodically refuse to accept her rent. He’s about ninety years old, and it’s probably the sight of her that keeps him breathing.

“How’d the soap audition go?” I asked, and settled cautiously into a cane-back chair. She had decorated her apartment with lovingly selected primitive pieces, which meant the furniture might collapse beneath one’s weight at any given moment, especially after one has eaten her weight in high-caloric treats.

She waggled her head in a so-so motion as she poured two fluted glasses full of something that looked like pulverized seaweed. Elaine doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages . . . or eat, a nasty habit that goes back to our teens but has become exacerbated since our move to Movie Star Land.

“I haven’t gotten a callback. Kale and aloe,” she said, and handed me a glass. I had tasted her concoctions before—all reputed to be wondrously beneficial . . . by civilizations that thought bloodletting was medicinal gold. “But there’s another part I’m going to try for. I’d play opposite Brady Corbet.”

“That’s great.” I didn’t know who Brady Corbet was. But I’d be thrilled to see her opposite Pippit the three-legged wonder dog if that would make her forget about Solberg. “Do you need help running lines?”

“Sure.” She disappeared for a moment, then emerged from her bedroom with a few sheaves of paper.

I eyed the truncated pile. “Short movie?” I asked.

She gave me a copy. “Just a side,” she said. “They didn’t give me the whole script.”

“Ahhh.” I actually understood the lingo. It’s virtually impossible to live in L.A. without a little entertainment retardation rubbing off on you. “What’s the title?”

“Bronx Moonlight,”
she said, skimming the first page.

Wow. “So who am I?”

“You’re a crook.”

I thought about my actions over the past couple days. Mail theft, false identities . . . Seemed about right. “Okay.”

“Your name’s Hawke.”

“Great. Who are you?”

“I’m Sugar, your accomplice. It takes place during the Depression.”

“All right, Sweet Cakes,” I said, employing my best lisp. I’m not sure who I was trying to imitate. Cagney maybe, or a cockatiel with hearing loss.

“It would be best if you didn’t make me want to slap you,” Laney said.

“I’ll make a note,” I said, and read silently through my part. Now, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure the script would make
Gigli
look like a box office smash.

“So I was just apprehended,” she said, glancing at her papers. “By the coppers.”

“The coppers,” I repeated, using my Cagney voice again. “I like the sound of that. If this shrink gig don’t work out, maybe I’ll try acting.”

“Please don’t,” she said with feeling, then, “Anyway, I’ve been caught and they’ve knocked me around a little.”

“Bastards! Can’t trust no stinkin’ coppers.”

She gave me a flat stare. I thought my dialect was getting better. “Now they’ve caught you.”

“They’ll never take me alive.”

“They already did. So here we go: ‘Hawke,’ ” she said, her voice faint, as if she were short of oxygen and maybe a couple of brain cells. “No. Not you, too. Why did you come? You shouldn’t have come.”

I found my part with my finger on the line. “I couldn’t hardly stay away, could I, Sugar?”

“You can do anything you want, Hawke,” she murmured. “Always could.”

I chuckled where it said to do so. Whoa. Sounded bad, but the show must go on. “Just so happens I wanted to see yer mug,” I intoned. “How you doin’, doll?”

She tilted her head. “I been better. But just hearin’ yer voice . . .” She smiled wistfully and reached out as if to touch me. “I missed you.”

“I guess I sorta missed you, too.”

“Then blah blah blah. The cop says to take me away, then . . .” She paused and winced. “No!” she wailed. “Take me, too. I’m as much to blame as he is.”

“You stay, Sugar,” I said.

She stared into my eyes. “I guess we had a good run while it lasted, huh?” she mused, seeping drama from every perfect pore.

“All good things gotta come to an end.”

“All right,” Elaine said, her voice casual again. “So then we exchange a meaningful glance and whip into action.”

I looked up. “We do?”

“Yeah. We’re hardened gangstas.”

“Do we get away?”

“Of course,” she said, and took a sip of juice without even wincing. “Sugar was raised on the mean streets of New York.”

“Well, good for her.” I followed her example with the juice. It wasn’t going to replace champagne, but the Ipecac people were in for a horse race. “Would you do your own fight scene?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” She shrugged. “Wyatt showed me how to throw a punch.”

“Wyatt?”

She plopped down on the couch, tucking her feet up under her nonexistent thighs. “You remember, the self-defense guy.”

“Oh, yeah.” Wyatt had been a first-class hotty, and crazy about her. “Are you still seeing him?”

“No. Not since . . .” She stopped abruptly and fiddled with her script. “Not for a while.”

Not since Solberg, I interpreted. Shit.

I refused to fidget, and raised my so-called beverage. “Well, Sugar and I don’t need no stinkin’ Wyatt in our lives. I grew up with brothers.”

“Of course,” she said, and tried a smile. It was unsteady near the corners. Shit and damn. “The McMullen version of survival of the fittest.”

“Do unto others before they sober up,” I said.

That damned smile again. It made me want to cry . . . or hit someone. A million years of college and a Ph.D. couldn’t change my Irish ancestry.

She cleared her throat. I knew the question was coming long before she spoke the words. “By the way, you didn’t find out anything about . . . um . . . Jeen, did you?”

I didn’t know where the hell to begin. “Listen, Laney, I’m sure—”

“It’s okay,” she interrupted, and stood abruptly. “Really.” She brightened her smile a couple watts. “I’ve decided to move on.”

“Move on?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal, Mac.”

“What’s that?”

“The fact that Jeen dumped me.”

I felt my bicuspids grinding, but she smiled again. The expression didn’t reach her eyes. Hell, it didn’t get all the way to her nostrils.

“He probably met someone else.” She shrugged. “I can live with that.”

Maybe,
I thought.
But
he
can’t. Not if I find him.

“Still . . .” She finished off her drink. “I’ve been thinking.”

Dark premonition settled into my stomach. Or maybe it was the kale.

“Maybe I should go to Vegas.”

“What? Why?”

“Just because he . . .” She paused and set her glass aside. “Just because we’re not an item doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. I mean, what if he’s hurt?”

“Then my job’s done,” I said.

“What?”

“His job’s probably not done.” Clever cover, if Elaine was a concussed guinea hen. Unfortunately, she was a drop-dead gorgeous girl with a stratospheric IQ and a strangely fragile heart. A heart I couldn’t bear to see broken. What if she went to Vegas? What if she found Solberg? What if he really had lost his last marbles and was shacking up with some bimbo whose cup size was found at the latter end of the alphabet? What then? “Listen,” I said. “Don’t do anything rash, huh? I’m sure everything’s fine.”

She shrugged.

“Just give it a few more days. He’ll turn up.”

“You think so?” Her eyes looked misty.

“I’m positive,” I said, and swore on my brothers’ future graves to redouble my efforts to find the knobby little nerd.

6

Let us talk about oxymorons. Common sense, for instance.

—Sister Celeste,
first-hour English

I
T WAS WELL
past midnight when I arrived at Solberg’s house. Or, more correctly, when I arrived half a block down the street from Solberg’s house. I’d called him a couple dozen times on my cell phone on the way there, just to make sure he really wasn’t home.

Either he wasn’t or rigor mortis had already set in. No one could resist the phone that long and still be breathing.

My heart was pounding and my mouth felt dry when I turned off the Saturn, but damn it, no one dumped Brainy Laney Butterfield.

I was going to get to the bottom of this. In other words, I was going to find Solberg, and if he was still alive, I was going to kill him.

I sat in the dark and ruminated.
What the hell am I doing?
was the first thought that zipped through my head. But I was fueled with twelve thousand fat grams and girlfriend rage, so finally I pulled the keys from the ignition, shut off the dome light, and stepped silently into the night. Okay, “silently” might be something of a misnomer, since I dropped my keys on the street and they rattled like a fifty gun salute. But I did step into the night. Streetlights lined the curving boulevard, but it was still relatively dark.

I hadn’t returned home after Elaine’s. Instead, I had driven straight to La Canada after her horrific “I don’t give a damn” performance.

Luckily, I wear black as a matter of course. Not because it’s slimming. When you’re as naturally svelte as I am, you don’t have to worry about such mundane considerations. I just wear it because it’s chic. And God knows I’m nothing if not chic. I glanced down at my footwear. Reeboks. Can’t get classier than Reeboks. At least if you’re a prowler.

Little bits of gravel crunched under my shoes. I paused, listening, then continued on. I would have liked to cut across the lawn, but the sprinklers were at it again, so I stopped at the end of Solberg’s drive and glanced casually up and down Amsonia Lane. My heart didn’t jump out of my chest. Casual. Not a creature was stirring. Which meant the children must be nestled all snug in their beds.

The climb up Solberg’s drive felt like the ascent to Everest. Not that I’ve ever scaled Everest. In fact, I didn’t even like StairMasters, but still . . .

My heart was beating like a mixer on high speed by the time I reached his front door, but I put on my devil-may-care face and leaned on the bell. Inside the house, his chandelier was still blazing and his odd techno bell chimed.

There was no other noise. I tried again, holding down the button and counting to ten. Still nothing. The tinny song faded into oblivion. Maybe I was just trying to delay the inevitable when I pushed it a third time. But the results were the same.

I glanced around again. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have survived the shock if I had actually seen someone, but I was absolutely alone. All evidence indicated that I might also be insane.

I’d called the sheriff’s department and been coolly informed that the La Crescenta precinct was doing everything it could—which, I determined after about thirty seconds of conversation, was just short of nothing.

So, cranking up my courage, I stepped carefully into the bushes. From the half shadows, I studied the surrounding neighborhood again. The sprinklers whirred. A dog barked somewhere toward the rugged darkness of the San Gabriel Mountains. Besides that, nothing.

I swallowed my bile and went to work. I had read somewhere that over seventy-five percent of Americans keep a key hidden near their front door, but I wasn’t relying on that general assurance. Instead, I had spent a nauseating amount of time recalling everything I could about Solberg—every bray-infested conversation, every idiotic come-on—and sometime before retching I had remembered a sloppily delivered invitation.

He’d been drunk off his ass and precariously seated on a bar stool at the Warthog, where I had worked for a couple lifetimes.

“Anytime you need a little geek lovin’, babykins, I’ll leave the front door open.”

“Not worried about some cocktail waitress murdering you in your sleep, Solberg?”
I had asked.

He’d given me his donkey imitation. It was always good, but when combined with six Jack Daniel’s and a Sex on the Beach, it was damned near perfect. I’d refrained from drowning him in his whiskey.
“I’m a techno genius, Chrissy babe. Got me a security system could rule the world. Don’t matter how many keys I leave inside fake rocks, nobody gets past my HomeSafe.”

Okay. I stood sweating like a bucking bull on his front walk. True, that conversation had taken place a lifetime and half a continent ago, but according to old wives’ tales, leopards don’t change their spots. I was willing to bet vertically challenged techno dweebs didn’t either.