Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

Pete had allowed them to get on their flight together, since it was her charge card that was financing the venture. They took the fast train to Heathrow, found the Virgin flight to LAX, and Pete proceeded to ignore him again. She took the window seat and fell asleep, or at least pretended to, as soon as they were in the air.

Jack decided the only antidote for his hatred of being locked inside a large metal lipstick tube suspended above the earth was to get as drunk as the twenty quid in his wallet would allow, and flagged down a flight attendant.

He drifted in and out, and when he woke for good, the plane had touched down and they were on the tarmac at LAX.

Pete climbed over him and got her carry-on bag. “Been fun,” she said, and got ahead of him, cutting herself off with a herd of slow-moving passengers.

“Yeah,” Jack muttered, shouldering his own bag. “Like getting teeth pulled in the middle ages.”

LAX was interminable, moving walkways shunting along herds of people, most of whom were wearing sunglasses. Coming from a place where the sun was a luxury, if not an outright oddity, and if you wore shades you never wore them indoors, Jack decided they were all cunts.

He got through customs, got out to the curb, and found himself facing a wasteland that went on as far as the eye could see. Palm trees poked above the landscape here and there, and the roar of jets competed with the drone of the nearby freeway.

“Christ,” Pete said at his elbow. “It’s a bit 1984, isn’t it?”

“I think you’d need a few more government billboards and few less birds in midriff tops for that,” Jack said. He looked down at her. “You ditching me, then?”

Pete kicked the dirty concrete. “Look, Jack. I was really angry, and I still am, but…” She drew a deep breath, and then made a face. “Even the air here tastes dirty. Anyway, I think the thing to do is stick together. At least until great swaths of the UK don’t want us dead any longer.”

“I really am sorry,” he said quietly. He was, too. He wasn’t sorry often. Sorry was for people who lived their lives looking for something to regret, and when you’d gotten as many friends killed as he had, you could be sorry straight down to the bottom of a whiskey bottle or the point of a needle full of smack. There was no future in being sorry for every fucking thing.

But this was Pete. And he was sorry, for both of them.

“Save it,” she said. “I don’t want you to pity me. I just want you to stop walking around like a kicked puppy.”

“Then stop kicking me,” Jack snapped. “I know your life plan didn’t include a kid, Pete. I know it didn’t include me, and I know you’re slagged off that you have to put up with either of us. I know you blame me. Fuck it, I blame me. I know it all, that you’re done with me soon as the sprog makes an appearance. So until then, can we just agree that’s how it is and leave off kicking a dead horse in the balls?”

Pete blinked, and Jack let himself imagine that for a moment, she’d wanted to deny what he was saying, but then she nodded. “Sounds good. We’re colleagues, nothing more.”

“Fantastic,” Jack agreed. He’d protect Pete until the baby came, and then he’d go his way and she’d go hers. And that would be that. No need for crying or hair-pulling on either end.

He knew he’d never believe that one, but Pete wasn’t leaving him much of a choice.

A long, low convertible, in a shade of yellow Jack would describe as “violent sunshine,” pulled up in front of them, and Pete took up her bag. “That’ll be Mayhew,” she said. “I told him to meet us here.”

“Christ,” Jack said. “If I’d’ve known he was bringing a boat, I would’ve worn a life vest.”

“Behave,” Pete muttered, moving to shake hands with the car’s driver. Mayhew was short, but not too short; fat, but not too fat; with a smile that was sincere, but only just. Completely average and utterly unremarkable. He must’ve made a hell of a cop.

“Pete, great to see you,” he said, although the words didn’t match his face, which was sweaty and pinched.

“Yes, same,” she said. “Shall we?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mayhew said. He chugged around the car and picked up Pete’s bag, noticing Jack for the first time. “Hey, man,” he said. “Thanks for coming, both of you.”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jack said. He held out his rucksack until Mayhew took it. “Cheers,” Jack said, and slid into the back seat. Pete shot him the look, the one that meant he was being a cunt, but Jack ignored it.

The interior of the car smelled slightly sour, whether from Mayhew’s sweat or the plethora of fast food wrappers crushed under Jack’s boots, he didn’t care to speculate. Plush dice dangled from the rearview mirror and a small plastic hula dancer undulated her hips from the dash when Mayhew pulled away from the curb.

“So,” he said to Pete, “first time in LA?”

“For me,” Pete said. “Jack’s been.”

“Oh yeah?” Mayhew hooked a look back at him in the mirror. “You like it?”

“Not particularly,” Jack said, and fished a cigarette out of his pocket.

“Oh, sorry,” Mayhew said. “Can’t have you smoking in Lucille. The upholstery is original.”

“You can’t be serious,” Jack said, and got the look from Pete again.

“’Fraid so,” Mayhew said. “Believe me, I understand. I polished off a pack a day when I was LAPD. Quit a year ago and I’ve never felt better.”

As they drove past warehouses, used car lots, and cheap airport motels and merged onto a freeway roughly the width of the Thames, Jack felt a marked urge to reach over the seat and bang Mayhew’s head against the steering wheel.

He stabbed his fag out against the car’s door panel instead, then rubbed the sooty mark in with his finger. Small and petty, yes, but Mayhew was already up his nose and he’d barely spent ten minutes with the man. Jack bet with himself that Mayhew’s “problem” would involve teenage Satanists in store-bought robes and missing neighborhood pets.

“You named your car?” Pete said, sliding closer to Mayhew on the sofa-sized front seat. Mayhew immediately forgot about Jack’s existence.

“Sure did. This is my baby Lucille. Sixty-five LeSabre—restored her myself.” He ran his hand across the dash in the proprietary manner with which most men touch women’s thighs.

“Really,” Jack said. “You pick out the color?”

“Hey, this is LA,” Mayhew said. “Land of big tits, good teeth, and primary colors. Takes some getting used to if you’re from a place like London.”

Pete twitched but she jumped in front of the bullet again. “It take long? Fixing this thing up?”

Mayhew shrugged, an aw-shucks gesture that clearly implied yes, normally, but not when you were a special sort like him. “A while. Supposed to do it when I retired in twenty years, but what the hell? Being a PI is a lot of waiting around, and I like to keep busy.”

Jack slid down on Lucille’s slippery plastic seat and shut his eyes. Mayhew was trying to do the civilized equivalent of pissing a circle—his car, his city, his eyes all over Pete’s tits. Jack wished him good luck with the last one. Pete didn’t need white knighting—Mayhew would find out soon enough, with a knee in his balls if he was especially unlucky.

As to LA, he could have it. The sun penetrated Jack’s eyelids and made his head throb, and he threw his arm up as Lucille crested a rise and revealed a glimpse of the downtown before Mayhew veered off onto another freeway. Who needed a concrete-covered, haze-choked hellhole full of women with silicone sacks in their chests and men like Mayhew, whose biggest concern was his motor and getting into a dick-measuring contest with everyone he met?