Robert Crais - The Watchman

Pike said, “When was this?”

“Not so long. We had just come out with the tea.”

An hour ago. No more than an hour.

Pike said, “The Armenians. Where do they live?”

The woman jabbed her cigarette to the side.

“Next door, there. They are all cousins, they say, cousins and brothers. Armenians all say they are cousins, but you never know.”

The old man said, “Armenians.”

The house the old woman pointed to was dark, and the BMW was not on the street. She seemed to read Pike’s thoughts.

“No one is home there. They all drive away.”

“You hear them say where they were going?”

The woman tipped her chair back and craned her head toward the open window.

“Rolo! Rolo, come here!”

A boy wearing a Lakers jersey pushed through the screen door. He was tall and skinny, and Pike figured him for fourteen or fifteen.

“Yes, Gramma?”

“The Armenians, what is that place where they go?”

“I don’t know.”

The old man seemed irritated and flipped his hand in a little wave, saying stop kidding around.

“The Armenians. That club where you must never go.”

The old woman cocked a brow at Pike.

“He knows. He talks with those Armenian boys. The young one. They have this club.”

Rolo looked embarrassed, but described what sounded like a dance club not far away in Los Feliz. Rolo didn’t remember the name, but described it well enough-an older building north of Sunset that had been freshly whitewashed and had a single word on its side. Rolo didn’t remember the word, but thought it was something with a “Y.”

Pike found the building twenty minutes later, just north of Sunset where it was wedged between an Armenian bookstore and a Vietnamese-French bakery. The sign across the top of the building read CLUB YEREVAN. Beneath it, a red leather door was wedged open. Three heavy men stood on the sidewalk outside the door, talking and smoking, two in short-sleeved dress shirts and one in a gleaming leather jacket. A smaller sign above the door read PARKING IN REAR.

Pike turned at the corner. An alley behind the storefronts led to a parking lot, where a parking valet in a tiny kiosk guarded the entrance. It was still early, but already the lot was filling, with one valet waiting at the kiosk while another parked a car. A small group of people was gathered at the club’s back door.

Pike didn’t waste time with the parking lot or attempt to find the BMW. She would be here or she wouldn’t, and if she wasn’t he would move fast to continue his search. Pike pulled over behind the Vietnamese bakery and got out of his car. The valet at the kiosk saw him and hurried across the alley, waving his hands.

“You cannot park there. Parking there is not allowed.”

Pike ignored him and pushed through the crowd. The whine was back, and louder than ever, but Pike didn’t notice. He shoved past young women with brown cigarettes and smiling men whose eyes never left the women. He stepped into a long narrow hall where more people lined the walls, shouting at each other over a booming hip-hop dance mix that still could not drown out the whine. He shoved open the men’s room door, looked, then shoved open the women’s room. The people around him laughed or stared, but Pike moved on without paying attention.

The hall turned, then turned again. More and more people were packed in the hall as Pike neared its end, and the music grew louder with a throbbing bass beat, only now the beat was underscored by the crowd. The people were chanting, their palms overhead, pushing with the beat as they raised the roof, chanting-

GO baybee, GO baybee, GO baybee, GO-!

Pike threaded between the sweating bodies that spilled into the main room, and saw her. Larkin was up on the bar, peeled to her bra, playing the crowd like a stripper as she rocked her ass with the chant. She made a slow turn, running her hands from her hair to her crotch as she squatted toward the bar, making the nasty smile, and all Pike saw was the dolphin, jumping free over her hips, screaming to be recognized.

The girl saw him as he reached the bar, and stopped dancing as abruptly as if she were a child caught being naughty. She straightened and stared down at him, looking guilty and scared. Pike stopped at her feet, and in that moment they were the only two people not raising the roof.

Pike shouted over the pounding bass.

“Get down.”

She didn’t move. Her face was sad in a way he found confusing. He didn’t tell her a second time. He wasn’t sure she had heard him.

Larkin did not resist when he pulled her off the bar.

Pike turned away with the girl, and the crowd did not know what to make of it, some laughing, others booing; but then the two oldest cousins and a thick man with a large belly fronted him, the oldest cousin stepping close to block Pike’s way as the thick man grabbed Pike’s arm. Pike caught the man’s thumb even as it touched him, peeling away his hand, rolling the hand like water turned by a rock, snapping the man face-first into the floor like a wave exploding on shore.

The people around them pulled back.

Pike had not looked away from the oldest cousin, and did not look away now.

The crowd surrounding them edged farther away. No one moved. Finally, when Pike felt they understood, he led the girl out of that place.

The people crowding the hall and the back door had not seen her dancing or what happened at the bar, but Pike pulled her directly to the car. She got in without a word. He backed out of the alley fast, then jammed it for Sunset, all the while deciding what to do about the cousins, and whether or not they should go back to the house. Pike was angry, but anger would only get in the way. His job was to keep her alive. He didn’t speak until they were two blocks away.

“Did you tell them who you are?”

“No.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Mona.”

“What?”

“My name. They had to call me something. I told them Mona.”

Pike kept watch in the mirror, checking to see if they were being followed.

“Did anyone recognize you?”

“I don’t-how would I know?”

“The way someone looked at you. Someone might have said something.”

“No.”

“The questions they asked. A comment.”

“Just dancing. They asked if I dance. They asked what movies I like. Stuff.”

They were four blocks away when Pike pulled to the curb outside a liquor store. He cupped her jaw in his hand and tipped her face toward the oncoming headlights.

“Are you drunk?”

“I told you I don’t drink. I’m sober a year.”

“High?”

“A year.”

He studied the play of light in her eyes and decided she was telling the truth. He let go, but she grabbed his hand and kept it to her face. He tugged but she held tight, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

She said, “Take off those stupid glasses. Do you know how creepy this is, you with the glasses? Nobody wears sunglasses at night. Let me see. You looked at my eyes, let me see yours.”

She had wanted to see his eyes up in the desert when they met. She had been all attitude then, but now she was angry and frightened.

Pike said, “They’re just eyes.”

He opened her fingers and took back his hand. Gently, so he would not hurt her. Not like with the man at the bar.

“What you did could get us both killed. Do you want to die? Is that what you’re doing?”

“That’s stupid-”

“Tell me what you want to do. You want to go home, I’ll take you home. You want to live, I will end this.”

“I didn’t-”

Pike clamped both her hands in his.

“I will sell my life dear, but not for a suicide. I will not waste my life.”