Robert Crais - Sunset Express

I looked at her, but she still wasn't looking at me. I went back to the road.

Lucy said, 'I mean, it's none of my business. We've never talked about other people.'

I nodded. I looked at her again, but she still was focused outside. 'I went out twice in the month after I came back from Louisiana. Once with a woman I'd seen several times before, and once with a waitress I met in the Valley, and both times went poorly.'

'Oh.' She didn't sound disappointed.

'I was with them, but I was thinking of you. Then you and I started talking about going to Cancun. I haven't been out with anyone since then. I don't want to go out with anyone else.' I was looking more at her than the road, which isn't smart in the hills.

Lucy Chenier looked at me, then nodded once and turned back to the window.

I said, 'Have you been seeing anyone?'

She shook her head. 'No.'

I thought about it and what it meant. 'Good.'

Without looking at me, she put out her hand. I took it. We drove like that the rest of the way to the Budget office, where I dropped her off and began another exciting day in the employ of the Big Green Defense Machine.

After I dropped Lucy off I stopped at a diner on Hollywood Boulevard and made more calls. Of the remaining names on my list, two were in El Monte, one in San Marino, and one was in Pasadena, all of which were on the eastern rim of the Los Angeles sprawl.

I called a Mr James Lester first. A woman answered, sounding young and whiny, and told me that he was sleeping. She said that he didn't have to go in until noon, so he always slept late. I told her that I would be in their area later, and how about I call back then. She said, 'Mister, I don't give a rat's ass what you do.' Nothing like starting off your work day with a bang.

No one was home on my next call, and then I phoned Ms Mary Mason of San Marino. A woman with a low, breathy voice answered on the third ring. She identified herself as Mistress Maggie Mason and told me that Mary was her sister. When I told her why I was calling she said that Mary would be available shortly and gave me directions to their home. One for three.

Mary Mason lived on Winston Drive in a stately well-kept home set back from the street. It was an older place, built of heavy stone and stucco. I rang the bell three times, knocked twice, and was just getting ready to leave when the door opened and a tall, statuesque woman in a black leather teddy, net stockings, and six-inch platform shoes stepped out. A twined cobra was tattooed on her right thigh. She said, 'May I help you?' She had long black hair pulled back tight against her head.

'Are you Mary Mason?'

She smiled nicely. It was a friendly smile, relaxed and personable. 'No, I'm her sister, Maggie. I spoke with you earlier.'

'Ah.'

'Come in and I'll get Mary.'

The living room was tastefully decorated with minimalist Italian furniture, a spherical saltwater aquarium, and custom bookshelves lining three walls. The bookshelves were African teak and must've cost a fortune. Maggie Mason said, 'Wait right here and I'll get her.' She was bright and cheery, not unlike a Girl Scout troop leader from Nebraska.

I waited. The house was so quiet that I could hear neither street noise nor passing cars nor the sound of Maggie Mason getting her sister. I looked at the books. Short fiction by Raymond Carver and Joan Didion. Asian philosophy by T'sun T'su and Koji Toyoda. Crime novels by James Ellroy and Jim Thompson. Science fiction by Olaf Stapledon and Jack Finney. Eclectic and impressive. I had finished reading the titles on one wall and was starting on a second when Mary and Maggie Mason returned. Twins. Both were tall, but where Maggie was dressed in the teddy and the fishnet, Mary wore a smartly tailored business suit and conservative low-heeled pumps. Her face was very white and her lips were liquid red and her black hair was cropped short and oiled to severe perfection. I said, 'Mary Mason?'

Mary Mason sat next to the aquarium, crossed one gleaming leg over the other, and said, 'Four payments. I want the first payment now, another when there's an arrest, the third on arraignment, and the final on the first day of the trial. That's the only way I'll do business.'

I said, 'Business?'

Her sister smiled politely. 'If you'll excuse me, I have something to take care of.' She left without waiting for either of us to respond.

Mary Mason leaned toward me. 'I hear things.' She arched her eyebrows, which, like the rest of her, were perfect. 'I know the identity of James X. I can help Teddy Martin.'

I gave her the same news that I'd given Floyd Thomas, that there would be no money until a conviction.

Mary Mason said, 'Bullshit.' When she said it, a muffled crack came from the back of the house.

I looked past her. 'What was that?'

Mary Mason leaned closer and put her hand on my knee. 'Pay something as a sign of good faith. Five thousand dollars, and I'll give you a physical description. How about that?' There was another dull crack and then a whimpering sound.

I looked past her again. 'I can't do that, Ms Mason.'

She squeezed the knee. 'Three thousand, then. Teddy Martin can afford it.' She ran her tongue along glistening lips, and then a man in the rear of the house moaned something about being called a dog. The voice was muffled and far away, and I thought that maybe I'd heard him wrong. Then the man howled.

'Thanks for your time, Ms Mason.' I walked out, wondering if it were too late to change professions.

It was twenty-eight minutes after ten when I left the Mason twins and dropped south out of San Marino to San Gabriel. I pulled into a strip mall, made two more calls, and on each of the calls got an answering machine. That meant I was back to James Lester, who may or may not be awake. I called his number again anyway, and this time a man answered. I said, 'Mr Lester?'

A woman was shouting in the background. Lester shouted back at her, 'Just shut the fuck up, goddammit,' and then he came on the line. 'Yeah?'

'Mr James Lester?'

'Who wants to know?' One of those.

I told him who I was and what I wanted.

'You're the guy from the lawyer, right?'

'That's right.'

'Okay, sure. C'mon over.'

I went over.

El Monte, California, is a mostly industrial area north of the Puente Hills and south of Santa Anita, with small working-class neighborhoods to the south and west. James and Jonna Lester lived in a poorly kept bungalow on a narrow street just west of the San Gabriel River in an area of postwar low-income housing. The lawn was patchy and yellow from lack of water, as if the Lesters had given up against the desert and the desert was reclaiming their yard. Everything looked dusty and old, as if there were no future here, only a past.

I left my car on the street, walked up across the dead yard, and a guy I took to be James Lester opened the door. He was average-sized in dark gray cotton work pants, dirty white socks, and a dingy undershirt. His hair was cut short on the sides and on top, but had been left long and shaggy in back, and he looked at me with a squint. He was thin, with knobby, grease-embedded hands and pale skin sporting Bic-pen tattoos on his arms and shoulders and chest. Work farm stuff. I made him for thirty, but he could've been younger. He said, 'You're the guy called. You're from the lawyer, right?' A quarter to eleven in the morning and he smelled of beer.

'That's right.'

I followed him into a poorly furnished living room that wasn't in any better shape than the yard. Stacks of magazines and newspapers and comic books were piled around on the furniture, and no one had dusted since 1942. A tattered poster of the Silver Surfer was thumb-tacked to the wall, four darts growing out of the Silver Surfer's chest. Lester dropped into a battered, overstuffed