Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

I sat down at my own desk to complete a few field reports while Mallahan grabbed his coat and hat and headed out for his lunch break. Always the same time; always the same place—Philippe’s, on Alameda. Bought the same cheap beef sandwich, the same nickel cup of coffee.

After he returned, thirty minutes later, I spent the rest of afternoon with my theodolite on La Brea, taking measurements on a lot somebody wanted to turn into a department store. The tar pits were behind me. I know it isn’t possible, but I swear I could feel the heat of the prehistoric goop on my back.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about Bonnie.

Her lips.

Her skin, as fragrant and soft as jacaranda trees.

At exactly 1:55 a.m., I stepped into Ray’s Café. The carousing was still happening full steam ahead, even though last call had been announced. I ordered a beer and drank it quick, my eyes watching Bonnie as she glided around the tables, picking up empty glasses and settling tabs.

At 2:05 a.m., she finally came up to me. “Ready to go?”

“Sure. Where to?”

We took my dark-red Lincoln Continental up the Cahuenga Pass to Mulholland. I hugged the curves until she told me to pull over at a lookout over the San Fernando Valley. The moment I hit the brakes she was in my lap, mashing her lips against mine. I could taste the same whiskey she’d given me earlier in the day. She had a small bottle in her purse. We passed the bottle back and forth until the lights down in the valley were a blur. We kissed some more and then she told me she wanted to see the ocean. I thought we should stay put, considering how much whiskey we’d knocked back, but she insisted.

“I want to dip my feet in the Pacific.”

I should have casually glanced at my watch and said something about the time but didn’t. Instead I put the car in drive and sped down Mulholland.

The crack-up happened a few miles later.

I took a curve and braked to make sure we didn’t skid off the edge of the cliff. The guy behind me wasn’t as cautious. Bumper kissed bumper, metal was bent, and we spun out a little. But otherwise, nobody got hurt.

The other guy turned out to be drunk, too, and didn’t seem to be in a mood to throw around any accusations. The flesh on the top of his balding pate was hot pink; his eyes were droopy. So we all sat there up on the side of the mountain, convincing each other that we didn’t need to involve the police. The balding man acted strangely. He seemed furious, but also eager to not bother with any formal complaints. I quickly sobered up; Bonnie drank more from the bottle in her purse. Every now and again she’d slip her tongue in my mouth. The other guy would turn his head away, as if he were both embarrassed and angry at the same time.

By the time we sorted it all out, the sun was creeping up over the horizon. The Lincoln was fine to drive, so I took Bonnie back to Ray’s. She lived in an apartment nearby. I didn’t see which one, because she insisted on me letting her out in front of the bar. I didn’t argue. By that time I was already late for work.

“Come for me tonight,” she said.

“How about dinner?”

“No. Ray’s, right before closing. I’ll get another bottle. You’ll be there, right?”

God help me, I was.

This went on for a while. Late-night dates. Drinking. Mulholland. Feeling wasted all day long. The occasional fender bender, all of them caused when Bonnie surprised me with her tongue in my mouth, or her hand on my lap, or her fingers across the back of my neck. The Lincoln was the only thing I owned that was worth anything, a college-graduation gift from my parents back in Cleveland, and it was slowly taking a beating.

But I didn’t care.

And if Mallahan noticed the dark circles forming under my eyes, he didn’t say a word. I cruised the empty lots as usual, making my measurements, partly daydreaming about Bonnie from the night before and partly in mortal terror that I’d make a numerical slip, and that Shep would catch it, and that would be the end of me at the Greater Los Angeles Title Co., Downtown Division.

Some primal part of me, however, said it was worth it. Cars were nothing but lumps of metal and wiring and hydraulics; Bonnie was flesh and blood. Warm flesh. Warm blood. Her lips, mashing against mine.

I never questioned why.

Why she’d only meet me late at night, toward the end of her shift. Never dinner. Never lunch, certainly. As if she didn’t exist during the daylight hours.

Why she never showed me where she lived, even though I lived downtown, too.

Why she turned down all invites to my place, even though it would be more comfortable than the front seat of my Lincoln or a scratchy blanket from my messy trunk.

I just went along with it.

Her warm lips and the scent of jacaranda trees, which is the smell that first hit me when I moved to Los Angeles, and will forever remind me of the place.

Then one night she canceled.

“I can’t,” she said, tears in her eyes, before disappearing into the back room at Ray’s.

I sat there in the café for a while, nursing a warm glass of beer. She never came out. I finished my beer then went back out to the Lincoln. Made it home in ten minutes. Went to bed, consoling myself with the thought that I’d be reasonably rested and sober for work the next morning.

But I couldn’t sleep.

The next day I told myself to get over it. The fling with Bonnie was fun while it lasted. Had to end sometime. She clearly had trouble, and it was probably the kind of trouble you didn’t need in your life. She was doing me a favor, really. I needed a few good nights of sleep in a row so that I could focus on my job again. I’d been lucky so far, but sooner or later I was bound to slip, and Shep was bound to catch me. When he was sober, he was a math hawk. That afternoon I was surveying a lot out in Culver City. My chest felt lighter, my head clearer, than it had been in weeks. I felt like I’d been given a gubernatorial pardon.

And that very night I was back in Ray’s Café, at exactly 1:55 a.m.

No tears in her eyes this time. Instead, I got a brilliant megawatt smile.

“I knew you’d come back for me,” she said.

“What’s the trouble?” I asked.

“Nothing. Not a blessed thing, now that you’re here.”

We drove out to the beach via Mulholland as usual, and, though she claimed otherwise, I knew something was wrong. The smile was there, but not the smile behind the eyes. She was working out some kind of problem back behind her gorgeous Pacific Ocean blues. Every so often I’d pull my lips away from hers and look at her, trying to seeif by some miracle I’d brought her back. No such luck. She was as distant as Japan.

A lot of hemming and hawing later, she finally told me:

“I need six thousand dollars by tomorrow night or someone is going to hurt me.”

The story she told me doesn’t matter. She told it to me under the moonlight, on the beach, and with Scotch whiskey running through my veins. She kissed me while telling the story, as if her lips were drowning and my face was the life preserver. The story, if you must know, involved a wayward brother who fell in deep with the sharks preying on the illegal gamblers in the back of Ray’s Café. It also involved broken promises and pawning every last thing the brother owned and then pawning every last thing Bonnie owned and garnishing tips and wages and finally had devolved to the threat of garnishing flesh and what the hell else God only knows…

If six grand were not thrown to the sharks by midnight tomorrow.

Like I said, the story really doesn’t matter. Because fact is, I was convinced. This was not just a hard-luck story. Listening to her tell it out there, with the Pacific licking at the shoreline… I’m telling you, it was like listening to a lost book of the New Testament.