Shooting Elvis Read online

  He saw it all, he said, he was working that very street looking for raw materials, that was his business, called himself a raw materials trader, when a whole mess of police cars came barreling around the corner, led by one huge armored-looking vehicle. There was a film crew on the street filming the whole thing, thought it was a movie at first, then he saw this pretty newscaster he knew, saw it was just TV. The armored car, it squeals to a stop in the middle of the street, the doors spring open, and a couple dozen men come running out, all wearing flak jackets and baseball caps, carrying real big guns. Meanwhile, the police cars slide crosswise on the street, so nobody can make a getaway on wheels. The cops they draw their littler guns and point the business ends over the hoods of their cars. The guys in baseball caps are what they call a SWAT team, which he said was short for Soldiers that Whacks Assassins and Terrorists. And team is what they were. It all unfolded like a football play, with guys rushing here and there according to a plan looked like confusion to somebody who didn’t know better. They all run into this one building, some from the front, the rest from the back. He thought for sure there was going to be blood and gore because all of a sudden three big bangs went off and he heard a bunch of shouting coming from inside the building. But that was pretty much all that happened. No smoke or fire or bodies falling out of windows or nothing. It was pretty to watch, though, he had to admit, even if the ending came a little short of expectation.

  I gave him another dollar, said it was just like seeing the thing happen myself. Drove around for a while, finally headed up to the observatory at Griffith Park. I watched the city stir beneath its brown blanket of smog, the sunlight glint off the downtown high-rises and evaporate in the thick marine air to the west. Damn Billy b, it had to be him told the police about me. Probably in jail now, a pack of hungry reporters howling outside, ready to slash his name across the morning papers. Could have been Cass, too. I signed the contract with Wanker night before last. If I disappear, it means no headlines, no trial, no ending, no story. I get killed in a police shootout it’s gotta be good for ratings. The only way I’d learn exactly who it was betrayed me would be by pointing a gun at somebody’s head, asking direct.

  When I walked through the door of Steel Investigations, Ben wouldn’t look at me, he wore a floppy Gold’s Gym sweatshirt, held in his fist a quart-sized bottle of something orange, looked like carrot juice. People were changing all around me in those days, sometimes I felt like a brass ring people were grabbing at, but I never expected Ben to change because I’d never seen somebody seemed so stuck in bad habits before. I looked around the office, didn’t see any pizza boxes, saw instead a plastic bucket of lettuce on his desk.

  I said, “Ben, what’s the matter, you sick or something?”

  He reached into his desk drawer, counted out three hundred and fifty dollars, said, “Things used to be quiet around here, nothing to do but sit around, answer the phone, eat what I want, turn a quick buck or two on jobs for the Enquirer. Ever since you joined up all kinds of weird things started happening.”

  I swept the cash into my pocket, said, “What’re you talking about?”

  “Mike Fleischer is what I’m talking about. You know him?”

  “I heard of him.”

  “I got a call this morning, talked to him once or twice before, the guy always gets the hairs on the back of my head to stand on end. He said he was looking for somebody wheeling a big black case around, the way he described that somebody sounded a hell of a lot like you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Said I’d never seen you, but he has reason to think different. You remember when you first came here, you said you were sent by somebody, Pat Nolan it was? Nolan told Fleischer he met somebody looked like you, said he sent her to me.”

  Frick and Frack, they knew what I looked like since the day before yesterday, this Fleischer guy was calling everybody he knew, asking if they’d seen me. I didn’t know if I should tell Ben everything or nothing, decided I’d tell him nothing, not because I didn’t trust him, because I wanted to keep him out of trouble if I could. I said, “Don’t worry about Fleischer, I can handle him.”

  Ben got red in the face, just about shouted, “You can’t handle a guy like Fleischer. He wants something, don’t fuck around, give it to him. I knew somebody once tried to cheat Fleischer, he was sent home in boxes, one box at a time, one body part per box, kept alive until the thirteenth box was sent, the thirteenth box was his head.”

  I said, “Okay, I get it, the guy’s dangerous.”

  Ben took out his pack of Luckies, fumbled one out of the pack, lit it with his silver Zippo, said, “One other thing. Rachel called.”

  I put it together, the sweatshirt, the carrot juice, the lettuce. I walked up behind him, felt his muscles, tried to lift him out of his chair, said, “Feels like you lost some weight.”

  “Five pounds already, only seventy more before I’m down to two-twenty.”

  “You ask her out?”

  “She asked me. Said she understood what it was to be shy, said she was shy herself, thought it was time to have a little courage, give something a chance.”

  “When you going out?”

  “Next week. I’m scared shitless. I haven’t been on a date in. ...” Ben tilted his head back, tried to remember, asked, “Do prostitutes count?”

  I walked over to Hollywood Boulevard to use the pay phones, called the loft. The answering machine picked up on the third ring. I listened to Billy b’s taped voice, didn’t want to leave a message with the law on the other end, hung up saying nothing. I called L. A. County Jail next, said I was a friend of Billy b and Cass Mitchel, heard they’d been arrested, I needed to post their bail. The clerk looked it up, said they didn’t have any record of persons under those names.

  I dialed another number, waited to hear a voice.

  The voice said, “Hello?”

  I said, “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Baby, where are you?”

  “I’m in hell, Mom.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just fine.”

  “We’ve all been worried sick.”

  “Me too. Gotta go.”

  “Are you eating enough?”

  “They’re tracing the call, Mom.”

  “Wait, don’t go yet.”

  “Love you lots.”

  I hung up, walked around Hollywood until dark, couldn’t think of anything to do except eat what I wanted, look at things I had no reason to buy. I’d lived by my wits the past two weeks, seemed I was about to die by them. Fleischer knew what I looked like, was hunting me all over the city, I didn’t want to be around when he found me. The cops had to know what I looked like too, Billy b didn’t have to say a thing with Bobby Easter doing publicity. Staying on the run didn’t make much sense anymore. I was sure the cops had the case. Without the case, I had nothing to bargain with, no way to prove it was all a mistake. Could have been me the guilty one as much as Wrex, Frick and Frack, anybody.

  I stopped in a liquor store. Worrying about things wasn’t going to help much. I bought a pint of Jack Daniel’s, thought about doing two of my favorite things, then turning myself in next morning. Like that woman at the pay phone said, you can’t fuck your boyfriend in jail, figured I’d go find the closest thing to a boyfriend I had going.

  And there was Jerry, handsome as hell, had his boots up on Ben’s desk when I got in, listening to a cassette tape of Elvis Presley on the boom box. He grinned seeing me come in, like I just improved the day he was having a hundred percent. “Heartbreak Hotel” was what Elvis was singing. Jerry jumped up from his chair, sang along and wiggled his hips and swept the hair out of his eyes just like Elvis used to do. Just about every woman I knew growing up thought Elvis was the perfect man. Sensitive, brooding, talented, handsome as a god. My mom’s friends, half of them had pictures of Jesus Christ and Elvis Presley side by side in the living room. So many women have dreamed of making love to Elvis if this wasn’t a good Protestant country, he wou
ld have ascended to formal divinity when he died, be worshipped to this day as a fertility god. At the dead center of his divinity is a sexuality so intense it makes women give up their hearts and last bit of good sense. Seeing Jerry do Elvis made me want to jump all over him.

  I stripped the seal from the Jack Daniel’s, slugged down a shot, corked the bottle, tossed it to Jerry when the song ended. He nipped at it, not his usual chugalug, locked the pint in the top right desk drawer. Sex or no sex, the one thing I intended to do that night was drink.

  I said, “Where you putting that bottle?”

  “I need you sober tonight,” he said, and I resented the way he said it, like maybe I had a drinking problem, which maybe is true and maybe is not, but he wasn’t the one to point it out to me, not beer-a-minute Jerry.

  “Since when do you tell me when I can or can’t drink?”

  He opened the desk drawer, tossed the bottle back, said, “Drink away, I don’t care. But I have this job to do tonight and I said to myself you were just the person to help me.”

  I uncapped the bottle, took a taste just to make my point, asked, “What is it you want me to do?”

  “Drive,” he said, and the way he said it was real provocative, like he was talking about sex. He knew I was proud of my driving, couldn’t resist an opportunity to show off to him.

  “You’re not going to do anything illegal? No way in hell am I going to get involved in drugs or stealing or explosives or anything like that, and if you tell me one thing but it turns out you lied to me I swear to God Jerry I’ll cook your balls in a microwave.”

  He told me to relax, said there was nothing illegal to it. He had a car repossession to do. Needed somebody to watch his back, drive the van in case he had to get out of there fast or follow behind if he made the repo clean.

  “I don’t know, some poor stiff gets laid off his job, can’t make his payments, I’m the last one to come take his truck.”

  Jerry was insulted, said, “I’m not going to repo anything from a working man, no money in it anyway. Some Yuppie buys more Beamer than he can afford, some Hollywood hotshot gets a top-of-the-line Porsche to impress the babes, they’re just stealing from the system, and if you let them get away with it now, they’ll keep stealing until you get something like the savings-and-loan crisis. But a blue-collar repo, that I’d never do.”

  I said, “Give me the keys, let’s roll.”

  I wanted him to come over and kiss me, but he didn’t, he stood up like he was going straight for the door, so I warned him I was coming with a whoop, jumped up on his back and bit his ear. He grabbed my legs so I fit piggyback style, asked me what I was doing. I said he was my horse, I was going to ride him into the ground, said this while I was kissing and biting his neck. He asked me if I knew what horses did to get rid of their riders. I said go ahead and try, thinking he might buck a little. Instead, he stumbled backward, slammed me against the wall. I thought he was right, that was what a smart horse might do, try to wipe you out against a tree. My legs lost their grip and he spun around so we were face to face. His eyes went dark and it was like the darkness was his passion and it was pouring out all around me. I asked him what he was going to do now. Only it wasn’t a polite question. It was a taunt.

  His answer was to lift me off my feet. I wrapped my legs around him again, from the front this time. He walked me over to the desk, cleared it with a sweep of his arm. He dropped me on the surface and I pulled him down after, ripped at his shirt, his belt, his pants, at anything in the way of the rush of skin on skin. It was violent, the way we thrust against each other, it was power we were testing, who was the strongest, would end up controlling the other.

  Jerry drove the van over the hill from Hollywood, out to Encino. He said we were going to repo a new Mercedes 500SL convertible parked in the underground garage of a condo complex off Ventura Boulevard. No guard, the problem was getting around the remote-control gates. Once he got in the car, he’d find the beeper so he could get out again.

  I said, “I thought your thing was missing persons.”

  He answered it was a lot easier finding cars, people could hide almost anywhere, be almost anybody. He said, “A cute little runaway thirteen years old, after a year on the streets doing drugs and hooking, what with the change of hairstyle and color and makeup and hard life, her own parents wouldn’t even know her.”

  His smile at me was funny. I wondered if he knew, was playing along like he didn’t, waiting. Stupid of me to ask the question in the first place, like a dare. I was sure he didn’t know. Later that night, after making love again, I’d tell him. Wouldn’t be cute about it, wouldn’t make him guess. Just say it flat out.

  Jerry pulled off the freeway at Ventura Boulevard, the street was all storefronts and ad signs, another Southern California town where the entire culture revolves around going out and buying stuff. He turned left off Ventura, half a block up the hill he cut the engine, coasted to the curb. Across the street was the condo complex, I could see the drive curving down behind locked gates to an underground parking garage.

  Jerry said, “If something goes wrong, don’t be a hero. Play dumb. If I come out running, be ready to motor in a hurry.”

  A car door slammed, had that underground echo sound. The gates across the way rolled open, a convertible Mustang roared onto the street. Jerry skirted the edge of the drive, slipped inside the gate as it rolled shut, the dark of his black jeans jacket disappeared behind the first parked car.

  I worked the gear shift, got the feel of the synchros and throw from gear to gear. I was a little nervous, the excited case of nerves I get when it’s all a game, not like the shakes that run through me when business is serious. A sedan pulled onto the street up ahead, drove toward the condo complex. Its right blinker clicked on, like it was getting ready to turn into the underground garage. Just what Jerry needed, a car pulling up when he’s breaking into the Mercedes. I twisted the ignition, started the engine. The sedan drifted left, veered sharp to the right and spun sideways into the curb six inches from my front bumper. I thought it was trying to duck something crazy coming in the opposite direction, recognized the make too late. Chevy Caprice. My eyes darted to the side mirror. A second sedan slid sideways into the curb just behind me. I was pinned.

  I raced the motor, popped the clutch. The van lurched away from the curb, I jerked the wheel hard left. But they had me boxed good. I smashed into the rear fender of the first sedan, jammed into reverse, wrenched the wheel back the other way, but something came up fast from the side, and I got hit so hard I lost track of what I was doing.

  Next thing I knew there was glass all over, I was being pulled out of the van by my hair, I saw a gun out the corner of my eye and tried to push away but somebody jerked my hands behind my back. I kicked, screamed, tried to run, none of it did any good. They dragged me to the second sedan, threw me head first into the trunk, cracked my skull against the hinges. I twisted around, it was Frick and Frack I saw. Then the trunk slammed shut and I saw nothing at all.

  19

  No air, no light. We moved fast and steady on a smooth road, had to be a freeway. I kicked, banged my head against the steel side-panels, fighting did me no good at all, just soaked my clothes in sweat. I counted the seconds, the seconds to minutes, took slow deep breaths. It kept my mind from things I didn’t want to think about. I didn’t want to think about Jerry right then. I asked myself why would he pretend about repossessing the Mercedes. It would be easy to give me up by pulling out his gun, saying here she is.

  Counting calmed me. I counted until the car slowed, made a series of turns on what felt like surface streets. They were sure to slap me around some, that’s been my experience with men of that type. There was a chance they might kill me when they got what they wanted. I’ve never been that scared of dying. When it’s your time to go, it’s your time. But it grated to be pushed over the edge by a couple of assholes.

  The sedan coasted up an incline, slowed, inched to level ground. I heard the driver’s
door creak open, felt the shocks balance the load shift when the driver stepped out of the car. A key scratched against the lock, the trunk sprung open to the brother who looked a little older, had slivers of gray at his temples. The car had parked in the garage of a house, exposed beams and pitched roof overhead.

  The older guy, Frick, he dangled a strip of cloth in front of my face, said, “You try to scream or shout for help, we put this gag over you, understand?”

  I got this idea, said, “I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s a little embarrassing, but my period, it just started.”

  Frack came up the other side of the car, asked, “What?”

  “She says she just started her period.”

  “It’s not too much to ask one of you guys to go out and get me something?”

  Frack got this weird smile on his face, said, “We like blood.”

  They pulled me out, walked me into the kind of tract house you find all over Southern California, one-story, wall-board, cheap shag carpet. The door from the garage led to the laundry room, laundry room to kitchen, kitchen to dining room, dining to living room. The house smelled dusty, closed up for months. Paint yellowed and scuffed. The bedrooms were down a long hall. Black-out curtains draped the windows in the back bedroom. Frack shoved me into a wooden chair. Frick cuffed me to the back of it, said, “You thirsty?”

  I was. Frick looked at his brother. His brother left the room.

  “Cute trick with the dummy case, really fooled us good. It took an hour to get the case back, open it up in good light, discover the switch. You’re a smart little girl.”

  Frack came back with a glass of water, looked at his brother.

  Frick said, “Doesn’t hurt to be nice. Give it to her.”

  Frack walked over, threw the water in my face.

  Frick said, “What’d you do that for? Now she’s all wet.”

  Frack knelt in front of the chair, slapped me four, five times.

  Frick said, “Stop that. Why you hitting her?”