Burn (9 page)

“Those were back wages, ” Andrew said. “Compensation for time served.”

“Yeah, well, the way I heard it, Mama Mingo called it your hide. You may be dumb, but I don't think you're so dumb you expected that big greasy psycho to let a thing like that slide.” Larry arched his eyebrow. “And I know you ain't so dumb to think I'm the only guy bright enough to figure the most likely place to start looking for your dumb ass.”

What remained of the money still waited in the safety-deposit box at California Federal. Every last large bill of it, neatly bundled and stacked. Andrew had convinced himself he'd needed it if he really planned to make a fresh start, convinced himself he deserved it for all the earnings Henrietta Mingo had gouged from his cut over the years.

But he still didn't know what had possessed him to take the money with him. Probably the same reason he'd risked putting Caroline in harm's way, coming here to hide.

There had been a time not long ago when Andrew simply had not been thinking clearly.

“Call me sentimental, ” Larry said. “But I didn't let you keep breathing just so that fat bag Mingo could save you the trouble.”

“Am I supposed to know what you're talking about?”

“All you need to know is some business got settled. We can leave it there.”

Some business got settled.
Andrew didn't know what that meant. He didn't know if he wanted to know. As he stood there, looking at Larry, sudden waves of conflicting sentiment began to lap at his conscience. He knocked back the whiskey in his glass and poured a refill.

“I never asked you to settle my business.”

“What are friends for?”

“Jesus.”

“Nah. Just me.”

Andrew looked into the bottom of the glass and pondered the amber liquid there. For some reason, just then, the bourbon reminded him of nothing so much as kerosene. He stood there looking at it for a long while.

“By the way, ” Larry said. He peered inside his own glass as if wondering what was so interesting. “Last time you and me saw each other, wasn't really the time and place, right, but just so you know. I was … shit. I was sorry to hear about your ma.”

It was the last thing Andrew expected to hear out of Larry at that particular moment, and it caught him off guard.

“Thanks, ” he said.

“She was some lady. Shoulda had more time.”

“Yeah.”

Andrew didn't know what else there was to say about it. She'd had a bad heart, that was all. It was
hardly a surprise. God only knew it had been broken enough times.

“Things had been different, I would have been to the funeral, ” Larry said. “Whatever. Stopped by the cemetery once, paid my respects. You picked her out a nice stone.”

“You should tell Henrietta Mingo, ” Andrew said. “She paid for it.”

Larry chuckled at that.

“She always wished you and me had patched things up, ” Andrew told him. He didn't know why he suddenly felt the need. “Mom. She told me that once, toward the end.”

Larry nodded. Then he just sat there for a minute or two.

“Wanna ask you something, ” he finally said.

“Yeah.”

“That the reason you decided to come down the docks that night like the dumbest mutt in the free world?”

“Does it really matter?”

Larry shrugged. “Not really.”

They sat awhile longer, listening to the surf, the hum of the refrigerator motor kicking in. Somewhere beyond the walls, they heard the brief distant Doppler effect of a car shooting PCH with its top down, stereo system pumping a drum-and-bass line like an amplified pulse. Neither of them said much of anything.

Andrew finally looked Larry in the eye.

“This business you settled. How much territory did it cost you?”

“Enough.”

“I want to know.”

“That ain't important.”

“It is to me.”

“Then you and Cedric got at least one thing in common.” Larry grinned and drank. “Which brings us back to that favor you owe me.”

Andrew sighed and finally took a stool. He reached for the bottle, poured another for each of them, and asked the same question once again.

“What are you doing here, Larry?”

One of these times, he figured he was bound to get an answer.

But Larry only said, “Hey. You been to Disneyland yet?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I was just thinking about that ride they got there. Too bad I don't have more time. We could go check it out for laughs.”

As he took a fresh sip, Larry began humming a tune. When Andrew finally placed the melody, he shook his head, crossed his arms, settled in.

And waited for Eyebrow Larry to explain exactly how it had turned out to be a small world after all.

“HELLO?
”

“Guess what day it is?”

On the other end of the line, she cleared her sleep-croaked throat. It sounded like music.

“Hello?”

“Heather.” He gave her another moment to absorb his voice. “I woke you.”

“Todd?”

“Hey sleepyhead.”

“What time is it?”

“I have … let's see … midnight-oh-two. Sorry: oh-three.”

“Is there news? Todd? Did somebody hear from David?”

At the bedside phone in his Westwood condo, Todd Todman sipped Beaujolais. He said, “Sweetie, I'm sorry.
There's no word. I didn't mean to put you on pins and needles.”

In the pause on her end, he could hear the rustle of bedsheets. Satin? Silk?

“Todd?”

“Right here.”

“Why are you calling me?”

“Hey. Somebody around here has to remember a girl's birthday don't they?”

“Tell me you're joking.”

“Did you really think I'd forget?”

“You? Todd, even forgot I was thirty today. Thanks for waking me up just to depress me.”

“Forget that, ” Todd said. “Thirty is sensational on you.”

Her yawn: a symphony.

“You're sweet, Todd. I'm going back to sleep now.”

“You do that, birthday girl. Just do me a favor: when you wake up, remember that you have plans for the evening.”

“Mmm. Me, a tub of Häagen-Dazs, and a stack of John Cusack DVDs.”

“Sorry. I'm taking you out.”

“Are you, now?”

“Well, I would have brought your birthday present to you, but it was already booked.”

“It's a little early in the morning for riddles, my friend.” Another yawn.

“Okay okay have it your way, I'll blow the big surprise.” He sipped more wine. “I was going to get you that Sam Phillips box set you wanted, then I found out she's playing Royce Hall this week. So I got tickets instead. Double C, right in the middle. We'll have some food at Le Dome first. What do you think?”

“I think my father pays you too much.” Her voice had gone drowsy again. “If you're wasting your money on my stupid birthday.”

“Listen, these past couple of weeks have been a hell of a strain for everybody. I know. But it's your birthday. I'm not going to let you spend it alone.”

“Mm.”

“I'll pick you up at the house around six. Okay?”

Heather Lomax said nothing.

He waited.

Silence.

Todd listened closely. After a few moments, he understood why Heather wasn't answering. He could just hear her on the other end of the line; her breathing had grown deep and regular.

She'd fallen back to sleep.

He took this as a yes. Todd smiled.

“Sweet dreams, ” he whispered.

Then he hung up the phone, finished his wine, turned out the lights, and slipped into dreams of his own.

“Luthe, you know, it ain't much fun for either of us if you ain't even gonna
try
and win your money back.”

When Luther failed to acknowledge him, Denny Hoyle finally gave up and slouched over to the booth. He planted his pool cue in front of him and leaned on it.

Around them, there weren't but three or four other bodies taking up space, all of them regular as the furniture. Except for the usual chatter from the crappy television mounted on the wall behind the bar, and a little Marvin Gaye on the jukebox in the corner, the place was mostly quiet. Rudy's, being the shithole it was, was
mostly quiet most of the time. Which was one of the reasons Denny and Luther came mostly to Rudy's when they wanted to have a few pops and shoot some pool at the end of a long day on the job.

God only knew they didn't come for the billiards. Denny was willing to bet that if they tried their hardest, they wouldn't be able to find a pool table in all Los Angeles County in worse shape than the scroungy off-sized, coin-op beast Rudy Watson claimed. It had cigarette burns in the felt and cracks in the slate. You had to put bar coasters under one of the feet to account for the tilt, and you had to replace them every other game. Plus all Rudy's cue sticks were warped.

But Luther always picked Rudy's because it was close to his apartment in Inglewood, and Denny didn't usually care enough to argue about it. The fact was, on any kind of table, any kind of night, he could generally make an evening out of whipping Luther's ass when it came to shooting pool.

Except Luther wasn't doing much shooting tonight. For the past hour he'd just been sitting there in the booth, bulging in his tight blue cycle shirt and black Nike track pants, hunched over some kind of project involving the strangest bunch of materials Denny had seen anytime recently.

He finally had to ask. “You ever gonna tell me what exactly you're doing?”

Not a word.

“Come on, man, it's been your turn for like half an hour. You're solids. I spotted you two.”

Luther just held up a narrow strip of leather and looked at it. He turned the strip this way and that way. Then he put it down in front of him and went back to work on it.

“Luthe.”

“My stick's busted.”

Denny looked at the cue stick Luther had left propped against the end of the booth. “Hell, it ain't either.”

Without looking at him, Luther swung out from the table, grabbed the stick, took it in both hands, and snapped it in half over his knee with one quick crack.

From over behind the bar, Rudy stopped telling stories about the last Malibu fire, glared toward the back, and said, “Goddammit, Vines, I told you to quit that. That motherfucker's going on your tab.”

Luther sent back a dark look that caused Rudy to scowl, mutter something, and turn back to his fire stories and mug wiping.

Luther handed the pieces of the busted stick to Denny. “Happy?”

Denny rolled his eyes and gave up. He went over and racked his own stick, tossed Luther's broken cue onto the table, came back to the booth, and slid in the other side. He debated commenting on Luther's mood but decided against it. He folded his arms and watched quietly.

Earlier in the day after work, they'd walked to get tacos from the mobile stand they'd noticed the day before, one of those private rigs that had gotten a permit to come in and serve the workers at a construction site near the club. On their way past the barricades, Luther had noticed a hardhat sitting upside down on the packed dirt next to a Thermos bottle, presumably left there by one of the
her-manos
gone off to the nearby row of porta-crappers. For some reason Denny couldn't fathom, Luther had held up. He'd told Denny to keep a lookout while he went over, ducked under the chain, grabbed the hardhat, and carried it with them to the taco stand.

First thing he did with the hat was put it on his head
and score a Steelworkers Local #412 discount on a chicken chimichanga combo plate.

But that, apparently, wasn't why he'd wanted the hat. Denny didn't really start to figure this out until after they'd finished eating and headed back to the club for Luther's car.

Luther carried the hardhat all the way back with them and tossed it in the trunk of the Buick. Before heading over to La Cienega and taking it south, he swung by the Ralph's on Sunset and picked up two items: a slender chain-link dog leader with a leather loop for your wrist, and a roll of duct tape.

Into the trunk they went, alongside the hardhat.

On their way to Rudy's, Luther swung by a hardware store for a few more things: a utility razor, two pairs of pliers, a pop rivet set, and a rotary punch.

All of which now littered the scarred table between them. Denny looked at the scuffed yellow hardhat, which Luther had discarded after ripping out the adjustable plastic head strap from inside.

“Seriously. What you doing?”

“Ain't done doin’ it yet.”

From what Denny could see so far, Luther had used the utility knife to cut the leather loop from the dog chain into two equal lengths. Using the punch and the rivet tool, he'd already attached one of the leather pieces to the hardhat liner. Denny watched quietly as Luther attached the other leather strip directly opposite the first, creating what looked to Denny like a halo brace with sideburns.

Luther held up the whatever-it-was and checked it over. He gave a hard tug on each leather strap. Seeming satisfied, he grabbed the big roll of duct tape, skinned off a long strip, tore it with his teeth, and started wrapping.

Denny called over to the bar and ordered himself another beer.

He got the feeling they were going to be there awhile.