L A Woman Page 5

  I knew I wasn’t going to find her in the dark and I was sure neither would John Wesley or Magilla. I had a strong feeling that she was staying in the area along the Sunset Strip. That would narrow our search considerably, and give us a place to start tomorrow. I started up Shamu, and while I drove home, I imagined how headlines might read about tonight: STUTTERING PRIVATE EYE SAVED BY COMIC GANG.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next day I filled Hondo in on what happened.

  He said, “So she’s hanging around the Strip.”

  “Gives us a place to look,” I said.

  “Yeah, and it’s not like we have any other leads to follow.”

  I said, “Together or separate?”

  “Let’s take two cars,” Hondo said.

  An hour later, we reached Sunset, and Hondo went west while I cruised east. There were always people along the Strip, with many more after dark, but we felt there was no time to lose, so we were starting our hunt in daylight.

  Two hours later, and three passes up and back, I saw the girl walking on Sunset a couple of blocks from the intersection with Laurel. She was checking everything out but not being obvious about it: The buildings, the sidewalk, alleys, parking lots, billboards, anything within sight.

  Her hair was blond now, but I recognized her. She still wore the same cheap sunglasses from the 7-Eleven.

  As luck would have it, I was going the wrong way and had to go down and find a place to turn around to get on her side of the street. There were quite a few pedestrians walking in small groups and pairs so I lost sight of her occasionally, but always picked her up again.

  She walked slow, studying the doors and buildings as if trying to remember something, and every half block she looked back along the way she had come. Cautious, so cautious.

  I knew she didn’t know who I was, but she was so skittish that any little thing could spook her and if she took off running, I had no place to park Shamu and give chase. I thought about passing and waiting on foot for her to reach me, but decided instead to keep her in sight and call Hondo.

  My cell phone was on the seat and I hit two on the speed dial for Hondo, then glanced at my watch. That’s something I shouldn’t have done.

  She walked by the big picture windows on a storefront as a pickup going the opposite direction squealed to a tire-smoking stop and cut across the lanes of traffic to bounce up on the curb fifty feet in front of her. People scattered, except for the girl.

  John Wesley stepped out of the driver’s door and started toward her. He was greyhound lean and dressed like a cowboy: black hat, white long sleeved shirt, a black vest, boots and jeans.

  A college age preppie in a Yale tee shirt started to give John Wesley some crap, but the black cowboy hit him three times so fast the kid never got his hands up. The kid dropped to the concrete and John Wesley stepped over him.

  Thirty feet from the girl was a small space between two buildings, like a mini-alley.

  She looked at it, then at John Wesley, and cocked her head a little to the side.

  She wasn’t going to make it.

  I cut the wheels, gunned Shamu over the curb onto the sidewalk, and skidded to a stop with my passenger side toward John Wesley. The girl and I were ten feet apart. Her eyes locked with mine and I shouted, “Run!”

  The cowboy reached under his vest as if he was hugging himself and snaked out two semiautomatic pistols.

  She hesitated half a heartbeat to look at me, and then took off for the alley like a startled deer.

  She was beautiful.

  John Wesley changed targets in a blink and opened up on me, firing so fast it sounded like one rolling sound.

  I dropped to the floorboard as bullets plunked into the side door and shattered the passenger and front windows.

  Glass tinkled down on me as I opened the driver’s door and hit the sidewalk in a low running zig-zag, keeping the truck body between me and the shooter.

  The shots stopped for maybe two seconds, then both pistols started firing again. He had reloaded two weapons very fast. By the time he emptied his third and fourth clips and slapped in two more, I was fifty yards away, crouched behind a line of parked cars.

  I lay down and looked under them to see what was happening. I pulled my Kimber .45 and kept it out, but I didn’t want to shoot at this range.

  John Wesley walked to Shamu and glanced inside. He reached in and pulled out the Finding Nemo toy, looked at it, then down the street. His eyes lingered on the parked cars, but he didn’t walk over to check.

  Maybe he figured I could be armed, too. He dropped the toy and crushed it with his heel, then looked along the street like he was hoping for one more shot at me.

  The faint sound of sirens grew louder, and a few seconds later I heard John Wesley’s pickup start up and roar away in traffic. I rose and trotted over to where the girl had gone.

  Nothing. She had vanished. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and for some reason looked at my watch. The entire incident had taken less than three minutes. I picked up the crushed Nemo toy and looked in the direction the gunman had gone.

  “Well cowboy, you’ve pissed me off now,” I said.

  **

  Hondo arrived at the same time as the police, and so did Vick Best. Vick patted me on the shoulder, his hand shaking. He nodded, affirming to himself that I was all right. He returned to his grouchy self and said in a voice that broke a little, “You turd.”

  The other witnesses and I finished our statements to the police, and as the crowd thinned, several of the pedestrians came over to shake my hand and tell the officers that I had risked my life to save the unknown girl.

  Several crews from the local TV stations and the press got statements from them.

  I was interviewed by each of them, and I made it a point to give it the old, “Aw shucks, it was nothing,” performance and to smile and use body language and to be as photogenic and charming as possible. After all, Hondo got a gig and he did a lot less… well, at least as far as talking to the cameras.

  “You are shameless,” Hondo said.

  “What?”

  “You’re hoping a director or producer will see you and you can get an acting job.”

  “I was just being my natural self.” I tried to look innocent.

  Hondo laughed, “My ass,” He pointed at Shamu, “You want me to follow you to Gaylord’s shop?”

  “Yeah,” I wasn’t eager to hear Gaylord Parker’s smart remarks, which he made every time I brought Shamu to him for repairs. Maybe this time he wouldn’t.

  Fat chance.

  We pulled up to Gaylord’s Magic Auto Repair and the owner and resident smartass walked out to meet us. Gaylord said, “Baca, what do you do, loan this truck to gun ranges for contests, like Shoot the Truck in Half, win a teddy bear? Thing outweighs a friggin’ tank, it’s got so much lead in it.”

  “Har-har,” I said. “When can you have it ready?”

  “Well, I’ll have to call the freight company, have ‘em send in a truckload of Bond-O.”

  “Will it be ready tomorrow?”

  He looked at me like I was crazy. “Look around. See all these other cars that were here before you?” There were a lot of cars. He said, “I’ll need it for a week, at least.”

  “You have anything for a loaner?”

  He grinned, “I might have, just for you. Wait here.” He went into his office and returned with a set of keys. He tossed them to me and said, “You’ve been so good for business this last year, thought I’d give you the honor of driving Matilda.”

  Ohh, man, I thought as my heart sunk. Pictures of a rusty Yugo flashed through my mind. He walked me around the side of the paint shed and pointed. I was floored.

  “She’s cherry, rebuilt from the wheels up,” he said.

  It was a beautiful, dark green 1969 GTO convertible. He said, “Got the big engine, runs like a bat out of hell. I made one modification on it,” he waved me over to look in the interior and he pointed at the radio. “I rigged it without a
radio, but I put in an mp3 player. Got three thousand songs to choose from, all the good stuff from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and some eighties, but none of that disco crap. It’ll take you back, you drive this baby.”

  “I wasn’t even born when those songs came out.”

  “Yeah, but you appreciate good music, right?”

  Hondo said over my shoulder, “Right.” He’s been on a Classics kick for a while now.

  Beggars can’t be choosers and besides, the GTO looked terrific. “Thanks for the loan,” I said.

  **

  I tried for the Steve Stunning look as I took the long way back to the office, playing the old songs and driving slow by all the young pretties at the beaches and allowing them to stop me so they could come over to ohh and ahh about my car. They really liked the music, too.

  It took me an hour to get to the office. Hondo had been waiting fifty minutes when I arrived.

  “I was hoping you hadn’t wrecked it.”

  I said, “I wanted to get a feel for it, so I took it along the water.”

  Hondo said, “I would too, stop every fifty feet or so for the women.”

  “Yeah. They like that old music.”

  Hondo held his palms out like, What did you expect? He changed the subject, “So John Wesley was driving a different pickup than the one he used to knock her off the road.”

  “Uh-huh. I gave the police the license plate number, but I’ll bet it’s stolen, like the truck.”

  “He’ll change vehicles after every operation.”

  I nodded. “A pro. I just can’t imagine what she must have done to rate all the attention.”

  “What was she doing when you saw her?”

  “I think she was looking for a particular address, or maybe a particular location on the Strip.”

  “You don’t think she found it, though.”

  “She was still looking when all the action started.”

  Hondo said, “We can think on it, maybe take a drive back there and look around, see if something catches our attention.”

  “Sure, and there’s a good eating place near there where you can buy us lunch, too.”

  Hondo grinned and said, “We need to get you checked for tapeworms.” He thought of something else and said, “Did you see Magilla?”

  “Not before the shooting started, then I got a little busy. I didn’t see him after, either.”

  “We need to find him. Fast.”

  I knew what Hondo meant. Our girl was running out of time and luck.

  **

  The next morning we used our phones instead of our legs for the next several hours, but still couldn’t pin down Magilla, or John Wesley, or anything about the girl. We finally took a break at 2PM, walked to the Cow’s End, ate sandwiches, and drank more coffee to get a little afternoon pick-me-up. Emma Storm drove by us as we walked back and said she would meet us at the office.

  She hugged us both at the door, which surprised me since she didn’t acknowledge my existence at Hondo’s Budweiser shoot. She was excited, with a cute flush to her cheeks. She sat down and crossed her legs and the airborne foot wiggled nonstop. “Have I got something for you two,” she said.

  “Matched Tupperware?” I said.

  She frowned a little and said, “No, no, something really terrific.”

  “Aw, not Amway.” I said. Hondo made a small motion with his hand, asking me to stop.

  “Oh,” Emma said, “You were trying to be funny.”

  “I usually get a chuckle or two,” I said.

  She forced a smile, “Yes, I see the humor now.” She made an attempt at a small laugh. It sounded like a hiccup.

  Hondo said, “What is it, Emma?”

  “Well,” she said as she leaned forward, “I’ve seen the footage of you, Ronny, in what you did yesterday.”

  “Footage?”

  “Oh my, yes. A Japanese tourist across the street had his video camera and filmed the entire incident. You looked very heroic, and your video presence was impressive, even without adequate lighting or a competent director.”

  “Yeah, the director sucked on that take,” I said.

  Emma looked puzzled.

  Hondo said, “Emma, what’s your idea?”

  “Oh,” she came back on track, “Both of you are action oriented. Combine that with looks, working in a profession the public sees as sexy and the fact that your presence on camera comes through as almost visceral, well, that spells great ratings.”

  I said, “You’re losing me here.”

  She leaned over and patted my knee. “It will be the hit of the season, knock all those other pansy shows to the bottom of the ratings.” I raised my eyebrows as I waited for her to end the pause. She wiggled my knee with her hand, “We’ll do a reality show based on your exploits!”

  My stomach felt a ball of ice form in it.

  Emma said, “I’ve already got the title,” She turned to Hondo, “Lock and Load: The World of Wells and Baca, LA’s Top Private Dicks.”

  “You want us to make a porno film,” I said.

  “We’ll do it,” Hondo said.

  My eyes went big. “We will?”

  Emma clapped her hands together like a little kid. “I’ve already pitched it to my station bosses and they’re ready to go.”

  I looked at Hondo, “Are you sure about this?”

  He focused on Emma but said to me, “I’ll tell you later.” He smiled at her, “Think we can start this afternoon, maybe get some air time this evening or tomorrow?”

  “That is exactly what I was thinking,” she said. “We’ll shoot and edit today and have a next day showing. I’ll set it up and clear everything. Can we meet here around four or so?” Hondo nodded Yes. “That’s perfect!” Emma went around Hondo’s desk to hug his neck, then came to my desk and hugged me, too.

  She might not have a sense of humor, but she had a Grade-A huggable body complete with trophy rack. I enjoyed the hug even though I was thinking Hondo must have suffered a mild stroke to make him agree to Emma’s proposal.

  When Emma left, I propped my feet on the desk and crossed my ankles. I said, “I want to be comfortable because your explanation is probably going to take a long time.”

  “I want that girl to know we’re trying to help her.”

  “And a TV show is going to help that along?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I thought about it, “Okay, tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll see if it’s the same thing I’m thinking you’re thinking.”

  Hondo said, “It’s a reality show, so we, you and I, get to drive the action, what gets recorded. We’ll hunt for the girl, all the while making sure she knows we’re here to help her, and also to let her know how to contact us.”

  “That’s what I was thinking you were thinking.”

  “She’s staying in the area for a reason, and she’s getting information off the television, the local channels. That’s the only way she could have known who I was after I pulled her from the wreck.”

  “Sure, she watched the news, heard your name and the name of our agency.”

  Hondo said, “After your little dance today with John Wesley makes the air, I figure she will know a little more. If we can get on air tonight or tomorrow, then we’ve got a chance to communicate with her.”

  I thought a second. “We’ll also be communicating with the people who are after her.”

  Hondo nodded, “If we meet up with them, Emma will have some scenes that’ll make her day. I figure we’ll get a little action, maybe some fighting, some shooting.”

  I put my feet on the floor, “Listen, if John Wesley’s around, it might make the North Hollywood shootout look like a spitball fight.”

  “We’ll start carrying a little extra.” For me that meant an extra clip for my .45, for Hondo that might mean extra pistols, grenades, and a small nuke.

  I said, “What if Magilla’s there, too?”

  “He’s yours. I understand he likes it mano-a-mano.”

  “Well sure,
that’s a fun thought, going up against King Kong. I can hardly wait.”

  “King Kong was a wuss compared to Magilla.”

  Oh, great.

  **

  Emma showed up on time with three assistants and her one-person camera crew. She could barely contain herself as she told us of her meeting with the media brass. “They are a hundred and ten percent behind this project.”

  “I was hoping for a hundred and twelve or thirteen percent myself,” I said.

  The cameraman, a slender black man named Marcus, got it. Emma said, “A hundred and ten percent is all you can have. It’s the maximum.”

  “Oh, excuse me. I thought the max was a hundred percent, and then you said a hundred and ten, well…” I looked at Hondo out of the corner of my eye and he was wagging a finger at me like, Let up.

  Emma continued, “We’ve worked a nightly fifteen minute time slot that can be included in the studio’s local program allotment and the station is highlighting it as the newest, most hip, most right-now reality show on the air.”

  “Right-now reality, the next day,” I said.

  Emma said, “Exactly! Like it’s happening right now.”

  I said, “Sure, wouldn’t want to say something is happening now when it’s already history.”

  Hondo threw a paper clip at me and said, “Emma, go ahead. Ronny’s just excited.”

  Emma said, “I know what you mean, Ronny. I was talking ninety miles an hour when I pitched the idea.”

  Hondo said, “How do you want to work this?”

  “What we’ll do is have Marcus shadow you from morning to evening, then we’ll edit the best twelve minutes for air the next day, leaving the three additional minutes for commercials. It will be done as a combination show and news piece, with the drama of a reality show and the timeliness of current news. No other reality show has ever put their program on so close to when the actual events happened. Our JIT approach on this will be trendsetting.”

  “What’s JIT?” I asked.

  “Just In Time,” said Emma. It allows us maximum flexibility for scene placement. Of course we’ll do several rough cuts during the twenty-four hours before airing, in order to make best use of our time.”