Timothy Hallinan - Crashed

The card popped out and said Hi, and it was fine. Might have been better if it had been engraved, or professionally heat-transferred so the letters were raised, but it would work. It’s not like the guy who was going to look at it was a career printer. I printed five more so I had a convincing little stack and slipped them in my wallet. They said Wyatt Gwyon on them, and they announced that I was Regional Manager, a useful, all-purpose, essentially meaningless title. They matched the name on the bad driver’s license, and once I put on the stupid wig, I’d match the picture on the bad driver’s license, too.

I rummaged through the valise and pulled out the bare minimum. Carrying a bag didn’t seem appropriate, since I was going to have to get past a security guard. I’d seen the lock, so I knew what kind of picks it would take. The filing cabinets were nothing to worry about; I hadn’t paid attention to them, but there are only four or five manufacturers who sell widely, and the locks they use are pretty much just there for show. I could probably open most of them with a pipe cleaner.

Video surveillance was an open question because I hadn’t been looking for it when I was there, but I’d learned my lesson at Rabbits’s house, so I brought along a ski mask. Tonight, both sides of my profile were the dark side of the moon.

Thirty-five minutes later I was pulling into the office building’s underground garage, my adrenaline building to a nice natural high, when the phone rang and Louie said, “He’s moving.”

“Which way?”

“Toward the Hollywood Freeway. If you want a professional guess, he’s either going into town or else he realized he’s out of vodka.”

“He doesn’t drink vodka.” I hung a wide U, cutting through the empty parking spaces. There were only five or six cars in a garage that had been built to hold maybe sixty.

“Well,” Louie said, “there you are.”

“There I am what?”

“He’s on the onramp.”

“Here I come,” I said, hitting a speed bump on the way out. I turned right onto Ventura. “You guys are about three miles north of me, so I’ll be ahead of you as we head into town. Stay on the phone, okay? You’ve got to keep me clued so I don’t overshoot.”

“As a professional driver and everything,” Louie said, “let me make a suggestion.”

“What?”

“Stop the fuckin’ car. Take some deep breaths. Get a burger in a drive-through. What’s your nearest onramp?”

“Woodman.”

“I’ll call you when we pass Van Nuys Boulevard. You take your time, don’t drive like a crazy person, and you’ll be right behind us. That way we can do this right.”

“Got it.” I was too nervous to be hungry, but I idled along Ventura, much as Ellie Wynn had done a few hours earlier, and got the same audible wishes for peace and joy from the cars behind me. I made the left onto Woodman just as the phone rang again and Louie said, “Just passing Van Nuys.”

“I’m with you.” And, in fact, I was. As I pulled from the top of the ramp into the right-hand lane, Doc’s car whizzed past. Louie was four cars back, in a 1997 Oldsmobile that badly needed waxing. I caught a glimpse of the cherry-red coal on his cigar, and then I was behind him.

Straight on into town, doing about sixty all the way. Off at Highland and down past the Hollywood bowl, then across Hollywood Boulevard, freak city at this time of night. Two more turns and we’d be at the Camelot Arms, and I wondered whether Thistle had come back home after all, seen the wreckage, and called Doc for a little something to adjust her mood. But Doc slid on past Romaine and dropped south toward Santa Monica Boulevard before making a left into a little area of stucco boxes built in the thirties and forties and originally put on the market at about $5000. Another left took him, and us, back up toward the Camelot Arms. I was beginning to think Doc had accidentally overshot when he pulled the car to the curb and got out.

He stood behind his car, hands on hips, looking back at us. I passed Louie and pulled up next to Doc. He leaned in through the open passenger window and said, “Quite a coincidence.”

“Seven million people in this city,” I said, “and here we are. If that don’t beat all.”

He nodded. “Would you like to explain your thinking?”

“I was busy. I had Louie-that’s Louie, back there in the Detroit dinosaur-stay with you in case Thistle called you to do a delivery. I’d like to find her, make sure she’s okay.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to ask me to call you if I heard from Thistle.”

“You want the polite answer or the honest one?”

“I think the honest one,” he said. “See whether I’ve got the cojones to handle learning I’m not trusted.”

“I’ve figured out a lot of stuff today,” I said. “And the more I figure out, the less I know about what’s actually happening. I know some of the whos of what’s going on, but I’m weak on the whys. And I’ve made a personal commitment about Thistle, which makes it a little trickier to know who’s actually on my side.”

“What commitment is that?”

“Well, that’s a problem. Since I’m not really sure who’s dancing with whom, so to speak.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Doc said. “Look at me. I’m a doctor. I fucking radiate moral fiber. If you think what you’re doing is the right thing, I’m probably on your side. In fact, how about this: I’ll tell you what you’re doing. You’re not going to let Thistle make this movie. Is that right?”

I said, “Yeah.”

Doc stuck a hand through the window. “Shake,” he said. “I’m also not going to let Thistle make this movie. Now why don’t you park that thing and let’s see whether we can’t find out where she is.”

“She hasn’t called,” he said as I followed him along a cracked-concrete driveway past a dilapidated little frame house, its windows thankfully dark, heading for what had originally been a garage. The driveway was an example of the old design made up of two narrow, parallel strips of concrete, one for each tire, created for much better drivers than I. Grass had probably been planted between the concrete tracks several neighborhood demographic changes ago, but it had long since given way to hip-high weeds, which I was knocking down with a certain amount of negligent brio as we went. “Of course,” he added, “she hasn’t got a phone.”

“What’s here?” I asked.

“Friends.”

“Didn’t know she had any.”

“Counting you and me, I can think of four,” Doc said. “The other two live here.”

He led me around to the right of the garage. In the center of the wall was a crappy-looking door, warped, blistered wood and four panes of glass, which had been painted an opaque color that looked like Wedgewood blue, with a lot of gray in it. Doc waved me to the left-hand side of the door, put a finger to his lips, and knocked.

No answer.

He knocked again, in a pattern this time: three fast, two slow, then two fast. A moment later, a high female voice said, “Who?”

Doc said, “Doc.”

“Hold on,” said the female voice, and in a few seconds the door opened. “I brought a friend,” Doc said, and I came around the edge of the door, just in time to see it start to slam closed. I got a foot wedged in there, and looked down at the eight- or nine-year-old whom I’d chased out of the Camelot Arms that afternoon.

Up close, she was even smaller than I’d thought. She had fine, flyaway blond hair that had been chopped into some semblance of an intentional haircut, a high, narrow nose, and wide, very startled blue eyes, which were staring up at me as though Charles the Child-Eater had just materialized in front of her.