Walter Mosley - Parishioner

“Why you think I’m in it with these dudes?” he asked.

“Not only are you in it,” Ecks said, “you killed twice as many as either one of them. A bullet through the eye and another in the chest. One at the surf shop down in Venice and the other on Marietta Circle three nights past.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“I don’t have to. Between Chick and Jerry, the cops, and an anonymous phone call, the only thing you’ll need is a lawyer and a whole Sunday full of prayer.”

The quart cup of soda was sweating on the plastic bench while Lou Baer-Bond bit his lip and scowled, looking for a way back to his heart-attack brunch.

“You bein’ straight with me?” he asked, expecting a lie to decipher.

“What do you think, man?”

“How do you know all this shit?”

“I got eyes in my ears, brother. I got a nose in every finger.”

“How much money you think Chick and Jerry were after?”

“I didn’t stay in school too long, but I believe that the number takes up the high range of six places, maybe seven.”

“Damn. Thing is like this, man. I mean, is that Benol girl really your cousin?”

“No. And even if she was, this is money here, real money.”

“So how do you know her?”

“I’ve been known, in a past life, to handle rough trade. She come to a minister and he asked me to help her out. I came to see you. I looked here and there and came up with what I already told you. Either Benol was lyin’ to me or she’s just too stupid to know what she was sittin’ on. Either way she’s out of it now.”

Lou was looking at Ecks as if the Parishioner’s words carried weight and form. He studied each one like a production line manager looking for flaws in his assemblers’ work.

“You got to understand, man,” Lou said, “I don’t know what it’s all about. I got information but not nearly enough to make the right connections. And if what you say about Chick and Jerry is true, then I need to get out. I need to get paid.”

Ecks could see the desperate man’s point.

“How much you lookin’ for, Lou?”

“Two hundred thousand sounds about right. With that I could get out to Australia.”

“I cain’t argue with that,” Ecks said. “If I get up near a million or more you deserve your dram. But the truth is, I’m broke and you got no reason to trust me. How do we work that into this payday of yours?”

Lou had gotten into the habit of looking over toward the door to his office building every thirty seconds or so.

“We should get away from here,” he said. “If the police come it’ll be over for both of us.”

Half an hour later the unlikely pair were seated in a booth at Loud’s Coffee Shop on Wilshire. Lou ordered a mocha coffee with whipped cream while Ecks had a black American blend.

“Just tell me one thing,” Ecks said to the detective.

“What?”

“What did Benol ask you to do-exactly?”

“All she wanted was for me to find that Brayton Starmon, who she said was born Brayton Welch.”

“Nothing else?”

“She said something about three boys that went missing twenty years ago. She said that she heard Starmon had information that would lead her to them.”

The walk up La Brea had been under the hot sun, and even though the heat hadn’t bothered Ecks, Lou was sweating like the soda cup he’d left on the bus stop bench. The detective was visibly relieved by the coolness of the café. Even Ecks found the air-conditioning restorative.

“The way I figure it is that you came across Martindale in your search,” Xavier said. “He’s a high-end operator. If Brayton got something on one of his break-ins that might have had worth, he’d come to Chick and make a deal.”

Up until then Baer-Bond was nervous, motile. His hands and face were in motion. He looked up at any movement in the room. But when Ecks started reenacting the detective’s investigation Lou got still and serious.

Ecks didn’t mind the attention. There was, after all, a burgeoning partnership between the two men. He needed to nurse the relationship along until it brought him to the place he had yet to define.

“This here is tricky, Lou. We both have our little secrets. And you know that I believe that there’s a big payday with nobody to claim the check. If I give you my knowledge you could run away with it. Same is true with you for me. But we got to come up with something.”

“Yeah,” Lou said, “yeah.”

“So maybe we could ask each other some questions and see if the answers open up a possibility.”

“Like what?”

“Do you know what the people who have gotten killed and who might still die have in common?”

Baer-Bond knitted his eyes and shook his head.

Ecks believed this to be an expression of truth.

“The surfer and mass-murdering boy,” Ecks said, “and one other were kidnapped by the man who lived on Marietta Circle.”

The detective’s eyes became elusive.

“Don’t be hidin’ your eyes from me, Lou. If we gonna work together then you got to prove that you can share.”

“How’d you find out about Sprain?”

“Benol told me.”

“How’d she know?”

“Uh-uh, Lou. Your turn.”

“The third man is called Leonard Phillips. He’s a pervert. Works for the porn industry out in the Valley. Got a job at Zebra Films but he never leaves the set. Lives behind a trash can like a roach in the wall.”

“Lenny O,” Ecks said with a nod.

“You know that too?”

“What I don’t know is why Chick and Jerry would think that they could make money from killin’ people ain’t got two sticks between the four of ’em.”

“They sure didn’t tell me.”

“But maybe they did and you don’t know it.”

Ecks’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket just then. The sensation caused him to smile.

“What’s that mean?” Lou asked.

“Maybe they had you lookin’ for something,” Ecks suggested. “Maybe you saw or heard something that stuck in your head.”

The sweat on Baer-Bond’s brow had dried into a sheen of salt. His eyes had found their range on Ecks.

“Look, man,” Lou said. “All this could just be smoke and mirrors-like they had on that TV show, that … that … that Mission Impossible . I got to check some’a this out and think it over.”

Ecks’s phone throbbed again.

“Gimme a number and I will call you later on,” Lou added.

“When?”

“I’m not gonna say when exactly but it’ll be in less than a day. If I don’t call by then I won’t. So unless you plan to shoot me or arrest me I’m gonna walk out of here and do some looking and thinking of my own.”

It wasn’t the ideal resolution of the meeting, but Ecks appreciated the bind Lou was in. He didn’t know whether his employers were really in jail. He didn’t know Ecks at all.

The Parishioner shrugged and wrote down the number of a throwaway cell that he kept in his safe.

“I don’t have no two hundred thousand, Lou. If I did I wouldn’t be sittin’ here talkin’ to you. But I could sell one of my vehicles and raise some cash. If you do decide to call me, and I haven’t found out the answers I need from somewhere else, then I’d be willing to give you enough for a one-way ticket to someplace where you might could be a beach bum.”

“A minister sent you to me? Really?”

“You go and do your soul-searchin’, brother. Do that and call me-or don’t. If you do, and I still need what you got, we can play twenty questions again.”

Lou Baer-Bond considered the words, realized that he had no choice, gulped down the rest of his sweet drink, and rose to walk away.

Ecks wondered what kind of wild card Lou would turn out to be. He was a ruthless, very efficient murderer. He didn’t feel guilt or remorse. For probably not much money he had killed two men. Now he was desperate because the little he had made had gone to chili dogs and whores. He would cheat Ecks out of reflex and kill him if he could.