Robert Crais - The Monkey

“Sitting on a rainbow.”

“Is it almost over?”

“Yep.”

“Is she keeping it together?”

“She’s doing okay.”

“I could come over.”

“Not a great idea.”

“She might need me to do something.”

I didn’t say anything. Ellen looked suspicious and uneasy and not anxious to talk. But that could have been my imagination.

Janet said, “Maybe there’s something I could do. She might have dry cleaning. She might have a prescription. She forgets things.”

I held out the phone to Ellen Lang. “For you.”

Ellen made the blowing gesture again and took the phone. She cradled the receiver into her neck beneath her jaw and said, “Hello?” She listened a while, then said, “Actually, I’m fine. How’re the girls?” Not thrilled. Definitely not thrilled.

She said, “I don’t know that yet. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive or what.”

She did not look faded or uneasy or intimidated.

“I should go now.”

She looked angry and bored.

“No, I’ll call you.”

She hung up. She did not do so lightly.

I took the two Evians out onto the deck. After a while, Ellen joined me. She said, “Janet,” as if she were going to follow it with a lot more, but then she fell silent.

An hour and forty minutes later Pike was back. Ellen and I were sitting on the edge of the deck, listening to a Lakers game and not talking about Janet Simon. The Lakers were out at Washington playing the Bullets. It sounded like a physical game. The Evian water was warm.

Pike unloaded a large green duffel bag and two olive-green guitar cases from his Jeep and carried them toward the house. Ellen went over to the side rail to watch him.

“Do you know Segovia?” she asked.

“Rock ’n roll,” he said.

He brought his things into the living room through the front door. Ellen went in, then came out a few minutes later, looking distant.

“Those aren’t guitars.”

“Nope.”

“He has guns.”

I nodded. The Lakers were down by four but Kareem had just scored six straight from inside.

She said, “You seem so calm.”

“I’m working at it.”

“I know this is what we have to do, but it seems so unreal.”

“Unh-hunh.” Fantasy in fantasyland. She said, “It’s like a war, right here in Los Angeles.”

I nodded some more.

After a very long time, she said, “I hope we kick their asses.”

I looked at her. I drank the warm Evian water. Kareem made it eight in a row.

It began to rain again just after four the next morning, a slow leaking drizzle that fell out of silver clouds, lit from beneath by cityglow. Pike sat at the dining table in the dark, sipping at a finger of bourbon in a tall glass. He said, “It’s about time you were up.”

I went into the little bathroom without saying anything and dressed. Levis, gray Beverly Hills Gun Club tee shirt, CJ Bass desert boots. A client had given me the Gun Club tee shirt, but I’d never worn it. When I went out to the kitchen Pike looked at the shirt and shook his head.

There was coffee in the pot and a plate of dry toast, and Pike’s big Coleman thermos, also filled with coffee. I got out a loaf of white and a half loaf of whole wheat and laid out bread for nine sandwiches. There were two packs of pressed ham, most of a pack of processed chicken, and two ham hocks left in the refrigerator. Enough for nine. I wrapped sweet gherkins and jalapeno-stuffed olives in foil, put them in a Gelson’s bag with napkins, then put the sandwiches on top. In another sack I put two six-packs of RC 100, a plastic bottle of water, cups, and some Handi Wipes.

When the food was ready, Pike took the bags out through the kitchen door and put them in his Jeep. Cold air came in through the open door. While he was out, Ellen Lang, dressed in her jeans and one of my sweatshirts, came down and sat quietly on the stairs, elbows on knees.

“How ya doing?” I said.

She nodded.

“Want some coffee?” I poured half a cup and brought that and a slice of the dry toast to her. “It’s good to have something in your stomach.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Nibble.”

From the entry closet I took out a slicker for Ellen and a nylon rain shell for me. I put Pike’s duffel bag and the two guitar cases by the couch. The duffel bag weighed a ton. I shrugged into my shoulder holster, checked the load in the Dan Wesson, and snapped the catch. I went upstairs, found my clip-on holster, and took a 9mm Beretta automatic from the drawer beside my bed and two extra clips. Each clip held fourteen hollow-point hot loads. Pike had made them for me a long time ago. Illegal. But what’s that to a tough guy like me? With the rain shell on, you couldn’t see either gun. It wouldn’t be easy to get to the Dan Wesson, but I didn’t expect to have to quick-draw walking out to the Jeep.

When Pike came back, he was wearing the cammie field jacket. He opened the first guitar case and took out a Weatherby Mark V. 30-06 deer buster with an 8-power Bushnell scope and a box of cartridges. He fed four into the gun, locked the bolt, then stood the gun against the arm of the couch. When he opened the second case, Ellen Lang leaned forward. She said, “What’s that?”

“Heckler and Koch. 308 assault rifle,” Pike said.

“Pike shows it to people to scare them,” I said. “It doesn’t really shoot.”

Pike’s mouth twitched. The HK was entirely black. With its Fiberglas stock, pistol grip, carry handle, and flash suppressor, it was an ugly, mean gun. Pike snapped the bolt, then took a sixty-shot banana clip from the duffel bag and seated it. He sprayed the external metal parts of each rifle with a mist of WD40, then wiped each lightly with a greasy cloth. His hands worked with a precise economy. Finished, he stood up, said, “Whenever,” and brought the big guns and the duffel out to the Cherokee.

I gave the slicker to Ellen. “Put this on.”

She put it on.

I put the foil brick into a third shopping bag and gave it to her. “Are you scared?” I said.

She nodded.

I said, “Try to be like me. I’m never scared.”

She carried the dope out to the Cherokee. I watched her climb into the backseat from the kitchen, then stood around, wondering if I’d forgotten anything.

The cat walked in and looked at me. I fed him, poured out a saucer of beer, then locked the door. We drove to Griffith Park in a rain so light it was very much like falling dew.

At ten minutes before six, the park was dark and empty and cold, with only light traffic passing the entrance off Los Feliz Boulevard. We turned in and cruised to the back of the park toward the tunnel, past the picnic tables and green lawns and public rest rooms that are habitat for bums, muggers, and homosexual mashers. An old Volkswagen microbus and a Norton motorcycle were parked in the spaces past the rest rooms, but there was no sign of life.

Pike had the radio tuned to the farm reports. To the best of my knowledge, Joe Pike has never been on a farm in his life. Ellen sat in the backseat, the dope on her lap, her eyes luminous in the glow from reflected streetlights.

At the tunnel the road split, one fork disappearing into the tunnel, the other taking a hard right to climb into the mountains up to the observatory. A steel pipe gate blocked the fork that went up. I said, “There’s a fire road about a half mile ahead that’s good for us.”

Pike nodded.

I got out, picked the Yale on the pipe gate, let Pike through, then swung the gate back across and relocked it. It was colder here in Griffith than in my own canyon, with clouds pushing down out of the sky to touch the mountains above us, and my breath fogging the air as I worked against the gate.