Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

Junko got into two more cars while I sat there growing progressively more irritable. He had to come sooner or later. It wasn't smart to leave your walking meat on the street with too much money. Somebody might take it away from her. Or, less likely, she might figure she finally had enough in her purse to go home to Mommy. I wondered briefly about Mommy.

It was almost eleven when he showed up. He cruised to the curb, concentrated cool, in a vintage ’67 Chevy convertible with the top up against the weather. Junko handed the money in through the window and went back to eyeing the traffic.

If it hadn't been for the old Chevy's distinctive vertical taillights, I would have lost him. He passed Jack's, weaving in and out of traffic, swung up onto Franklin, and then cut left toward Sunset. I ran a light to keep up with him and then followed him onto Sunset, heading west, and then south onto a nothing little street called Sierra Bonita. I killed the lights as he made the turn so he wouldn't spot me. He pulled in to the curb halfway down the block, in front of the last of the old double-decker apartment houses, now flanked by four-story stucco affairs with balconies that were edged by waist-high hollow pipe railings that looked like the railings on an ocean liner. All that was missing were the life preservers. They wouldn't have worked in Hollywood anyway.

His car sat there at the curb, still dark, so he hadn't cracked open either of the doors. I took a repulsive-looking little.32 automatic, eight shots, out of the glove compartment and climbed out the door on the passenger side. I didn't have to worry about Alice's interior light: it had burned out decades ago.

I landed on my knees on the parking strip, feeling dried grass and weeds crackle underneath me. There was also an empty tin can, which collapsed with a squelching sound. Someone had thoughtfully parked a van behind the man's car, so I could stand up as I passed behind it. A carload of black kids careened by, Prince blaring from the radio. They shouted something at me in Urban Black. I used the noise as cover as I came up behind his left-rear fender.

I waited. I heard a sharp sniffing noise through the open window on the driver's side of his car. In another thirty seconds or so I heard the beginning of another sniff. I was at his window before it was over.

“Don't breathe,” I said, sticking the barrel of the gun up his left nostril. “Not in, not out. Otherwise, this thing might go off.”

“Yurk,” he said, glancing frantically up at me. The knife scar at the corner of his mouth twitched, a thin white line with a life of its own. He was holding a girl's pocket mirror just below his chin, and on it was a generous quantity of white powder. I leaned forward and blew the powder off the mirror. It settled, like the snow in one of those water-filled balls you shake up, onto the front of his greasy jeans.

“Remember me?” I said, pushing the gun another centimeter into his nostril. He started to shake his head, but I shoved the gun barrel a little further and he began to nod. “I thought so.” I looked past him at the old two-story building. “This is where you live?”

He started to shake his head again and thought better of it. Very carefully he nodded.

“Good,” I said. “We're going in. Get out slowly and sweetly. Pretend your mother's watching and you want her to be proud of you.” I opened the door and pulled the gun back, aiming at his left eye. He climbed out very slowly, staring into the barrel of the gun like a man who sees his future unfolding before him and doesn't like the look of it.

When he was standing, I took his arm, pushed the gun into his neck, and turned him gently toward the curb.

“Sure hope you cleaned the house,” I said. “I get real edgy when things aren't just right.” He caught the toe of his shoe on the edge of the curb and stumbled slightly.

“Look out for the dog-doo,” I said. When he looked down, I reversed the gun and slammed him with the handle, just beneath the base of the skull. His legs collapsed beneath him and his forehead cracked on the sidewalk with a pleasing sound. Just to make sure, I clipped him again with the handle of the gun. He let out a wet little sigh and his legs twitched.

I tucked my fingers under his thick leather belt and lifted him, and he folded at the waist, knees and elbows dragging on the sidewalk. I hauled him like a badly packed garment bag up the block to Alice.

There she was, looking even dirtier than usual in the blue glare of the streetlights. I dropped Prince Charming on the grass in the parking strip, opened the back door, and yanked on the edge of the army blanket. A human being rose up from the floor of the car. I almost put a bullet through it.

“Hi,” Jessica said. “Where are we?”

I leaned my forehead against Alice's roof and listened to my pulse pounding in my ears. “You idiot ,” I said. I'd nearly killed my own goddaughter.

“You can't talk to me like that,” she said indignantly.

“You're in Hollywood,” I said, straightening up and trying to catch my breath. “The next bus home is leaving in about ten seconds. Up there.” I gestured with the gun toward Sunset.

“Who's the basket case?” she asked.

“He's a guy who likes to use knives on little girls. How did you get here, anyway?”

“I went upstairs and then came down the back way and got into your car,” she said, looking at the pimp with the kind of fascination most of us save for scorpions and tarantulas. The pimp moaned and started to move. “Um,” Jessica said uncertainly, backing up.

“The tape on the seat,” I said. “Give it to me.”

She felt around for a moment and then handed me a roll of electrician's tape. I took it, put the gun on Alice's roof, and bent down over the pimp, who had begun to turn his head from side to side. I yanked his hands behind him and taped his wrists together. I taped them tightly enough to cause gangrene.

“Do you do this a lot?” she asked, watching.

“You're lucky I'm not doing it to you.”

“You're weirder than Blister. I don't really have to take the bus home, do I? Daddy says it's dangerous.”

I almost laughed. “No. But you ever do this again, and I'll have the goddamn bus run over you. Also, you're explaining this to your parents.”

“That's another day,” she said with the nearsighted assurance of youth. I was getting heartily sick of youth.

“Get out. Bring the blanket with you. No, no, on the other side. Come on, make it quick. He won't be out forever.”

Grumbling, she climbed out and came around to my side, dragging the blanket behind her. I lifted the pimp by his belt and heaved him into the back seat. He emitted a reflexive sigh as his midsection hit the edge of the seat. Lifting my right leg, I kicked him down onto the floor behind the front seat. He was on his stomach, hands taped behind him. I gave him a once-over, feeling like I'd forgotten something, and then tossed the blanket over him.

“Let's go,” I said. “Into the front seat.”

Alice started with unusual self-assurance, and we made a U-turn back onto Sunset. At Highland I turned left, heading up toward the reservoir.

“He's a bad guy, huh?” Jessica was as high as a kite, loving every moment of it.

“He's the lowest form of life since the slime molds,” I said. “Have you ever cleaned out the refrigerator and found stuff with green, smelly hair growing all over it, and it dissolved in your fingers when you picked it up?”

“Yuck,” she said. “Yes. Mommy made me do it the second time I went out with Blister.”

“Well,” I said, steering left, “on the Great Chain of Being, he's two steps below that.”

“Just above yellow snow,” she said.

“Right about there.”