Timothy Hallinan: Everything but the Squeal

I'd parked Sweet Alice, my car, on Cherokee, about halfway between Tommy's and Jack's. I won her in a game of chance that had begun in Malibu, not far from where I live, and ended in Pacoima. Her flamboyantly mustachioed owner, one Jaime, had painted her an indelible shade of iridescent horsefly blue, lowered her so far in front that she would have bounced going over a pack of Luckies, and hung a surrealistically large pair of furry dice from her rearview mirror. I'd removed the dice by way of expressing my individuality. Other than that I'd kept her, as they say in the used-car trade, as is. I patted her on the fender as I passed her and headed on up to Jack's. The sodium lights of Hollywood Boulevard gleamed luridly against the low-hanging April clouds. Jack's and the Boulevard were up the street, and Easter was around the corner.

Jack's squats on what L.A. realtors call a corner lot. Hollywood Boulevard runs vaguely east-west, and Gardner, the north-south street, culminates to the north in what the same L.A. realtors call a cul-de-sac. In English, that's a dead end. Normally, a cul-de-sac is regarded as an especially safe configuration by couples with young children. There weren't many couples on that little stretch of Gardner, but for the children who patronized the place, it was a terrific place to shoot up.

A heaviness in the air told me that it was about to drizzle. The week's weather had been all over the map. Normally in L.A., the weather is as orderly, and about as interesting, as a family tree: warm blue day breeds warm blue day. But this April, counting down toward Easter, was made up of days that arrived like runaways from other climates. The week had begun as clear and cold as North Dakota and then turned warm as a mass of tropical air wheeled up from Baja. Wednesday was marked by a chilly rain that had obviously made a wrong turn on its way to San Francisco and then decided it liked L.A. long enough to hang around through Thursday.

The drizzle started as I hit the Boulevard. At this hour, probably eighty percent of the people in Hollywood were holding, loaded, on illegal errands, or all three. There was the usual complement of parked bikers sneering on their black-and-chrome hogs, surrounded by the usual flock of biker girls. They were there day and night.

“So?” said Muhammad, the counterman. Unlike Tommy's, where there is a Tommy, there's no Jack at Jack's. The place was bought by Koreans several years ago, and the help is all either Hispanic or generically Middle Eastern. Muhammad was a generic Iranian.

“Coffee,” I said, sitting down. My back hurt. I was getting old for this stuff.

“How many sugars?” Muhammad said. Junkies eat a lot of sugar.

“Four,” I said, trying to turn my wince into a smile.

“You want fudge, say so,” Muhammad said. It was his standard rejoinder. I was too frayed for standard rejoinders, so I leaned across the counter and took his skinny black tie in my hand as he turned away. He jerked his head back to me, looking alarmed.

“If I want fudge,” I said, “I'll mug the Good Humor man. Give me a coffee with four sugars, and clamp the stirrer between your teeth until I leave.”

“Jesus,” Muhammad said, tugging at his tie, “what's with you tonight?”

“Lip,” I said, giving the tie a little yank. “There's too much lip on Hollywood Boulevard.”

“So call the Lip Squad,” he said. He wrapped the tie around his fist and pulled it free. Against my will, I laughed, and he gave me a bleak smile. “I'm tired too,” he said. “If I rub my face one more time tonight I think I'll hit bone.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Make it a large coffee. And hold the sugar.”

The smile went wise. “Knew you were a cop,” he said.

I gave up and drank it. Five years ago, no one would have taken me for a cop. I was obviously getting older. Behind me a fifteen-year-old girl fought fuzzily with her pimp. “I left them in the jar by the bed,” she said. “You didn't have to take them all.”

“Girl,” the pimp said, “there wasn't enough for both of us. You should be happy they made me happy.”

“You're a pig,” she said.

I heard a gagging, snuffling noise and turned to see the pimp push the girl's dish of soft ice cream into her face. He clamped the back of her head with one hand and held the dish over her nose and mouth with the other while she choked and kicked her feet under the table. “You want a extra mouth,” he said, “open the one you already got one more time.” He sat back and regarded her. Ice cream ran down her chin and neck, onto the lavender cloth of her cheap blouse. She began to cry.

I leaned forward onto the counter, rested my head on my arms, and listened to my heart beat in my ears. It almost drowned out the sound of the girl's sobbing. Once I might have wrapped the pimp's chair around his neck. That was a long time ago, four full days. After four days spending time with kids who had an average life expectancy of only three more years, all I wanted to do was drink my coffee and go home.

The girl kept on crying while the pimp finished her ice cream. I rubbed my chin bristle and felt sorry for myself. Four numbing days and nights, and not a glimpse or a whisper of Aimee Sorrell.

2 — Over the Rainbow

T hey called each other Mommy and Daddy, but it was sheer force of habit. The tone of voice into which the marriage had finally settled was scratchy and raw, a couple of light-years on the wrong side of polite. Basically, they were restraining the impulse to begin their remarks to each other, Oki-Burger style, with “ HEY !”

They'd showed up at the bottom of my driveway six days before I'd made my first unconvincing appearance at the Oki-Burger, and the weather had just begun its runaway act. It was gray and crappy outside, neither raining nor not raining. Wood snapped and sputtered optimistically in the stove that heats the place. Mommy and Daddy, faced with a slate-gray day and a private detective with dubious credentials, were both trying to be good. They were working overtime to project the public image of their marriage, the image that satisfied their country club in Kansas City, and it was obviously something of an effort.

She had the ironclad serenity that comes with years of putting up with things. He had the kind of enforced control that builds permanent knuckle-size muscles in the corners of the jaw. You sometimes see them in military men. The muscles were well on the way to being thumb-size, even though I'd cleaned up the place before they arrived. If I hadn't, they'd probably have stuck out like Boris Karloff s neck plugs. He also had wet-looking hair, a rawboned bunchy face, and a tiny disapproving mouth. Mommy was smoother and probably tougher, although she didn't look it. She looked like hugging her would be like falling into a tub of very good butter. “Her name is Aimee,” she said, spelling it just like that. No shortcuts here. They'd used all the vowels they could think of, and thrown in a couple extra for good measure.

“Ah,” I'd said, wishing they would leave. “Coffee, anyone?” I was on my fifth cup. Three to fuel the effort of cleaning the living room and two to deal with Mommy and Daddy. Missing children are not my specialty, not by a long shot. If they want to stay missing, they will. And even if you hit enough dumb luck to find them, how do you know whether you should send them home? Home is a generic word. It can mean where the heart is or where the horror is. Looking at Daddy, I wasn't ready to guess which it had been for Aimee.

“No coffee,” Mommy said, pushing down gently on my wrist. I put the cup back on the table, and she allowed her hand to remain on mine. “And don't blame me for the name.” Despite the gentleness of her touch, as she turned her gaze to Daddy there was enough acid in her tone to etch glass. “ All their names begin with A. His name is Alan, you see.”