Cracked (11 page)

And I would find whoever took her life, and took the boys. I promised Ginger that, as we rode to the hospital.

Obviously a slow day in the E.R. I was seen right away, and it was determined that I did not, in fact, have a concussion or any other brain damage.

“Can I get that in writing,” I said to the doctor. “About the brain damage, I mean. I might need to prove that some day.” The Cleary sense of humor: my nephews have been kidnapped and my twin sister murdered, but I will still crack wise. Inappropriate coping mechanisms? Me?

The doc looked at me. Apparently, he wasn’t used to our brand of humor.

“I will of course forward copies of our reports to your family doctor,” he began, and I stopped him.

“Not necessary. Let’s get this whole payment thing out of the way so I can get out of here, sweetie. Okay?”

Darren had said that he would pay, but I wanted to try something. At the front desk, I pulled the plastic wallet I’d found at Ginger’s out of my purse. I handed the billing secretary “my” American Express card. She swiped it through a scanner next to her computer. There was a short pause, during which I realized that I hadn’t put on deodorant after my shower that morning.

“Thank you, Ms. Cleary,” the woman said, glancing at me politely as she handed me back my card. “You have a nice day now.”

“I surely will,” I answered in my best California accent. Being in Orange County always did that to me. “Thank you so much.” And with that I walked out the emergency room door and into a cab someone was just getting out of. Good luck for me – taxis in Orange County are a rare occurrence. As I opened the back door of the car, I saw two cops enter the emergency room. I figured they might be looking for me.

I settled in, and sighed. A taxi. My home away from home.

“Can you take me to a bar, please?” I said to the driver. “Something within a couple of blocks of the Sunny Jim Motor Inn.” The driver looked at me in the rear view. So did I. I didn’t look all that bad, considering. Sleep and food on one side, getting conked on the head and throwing up on the other. It might have been a draw, but I think the sleep and food had won out.

We drove for about ten minutes, out of the stretch of office buildings where the hospital was located. I had no idea where we were. I had been down here more than a dozen times in the years Fred and Ginger had lived down here, but we didn’t tend to do the hospital tour.

Soon we were out of Newport, somewhere in Santa Ana, maybe. Definitely not as pricey as the palatial digs I had just left. More my territory, really. Small strip malls, all with adobe roofs. Lots of fast-food joints and Korean nail places. Target. K-Mart. 99 cent stores.

The sun was bright but not directly overhead. It was mid-afternoon by now, I guessed, but I didn’t wear a watch, and the taxi didn’t have a clock.

“How much further?” I asked the driver, just as he made a sharp right turn. We passed a bail bonds place, and for one of the first times in Orange County outside of a parking lot, I saw people on the street. Mexicans, mostly. A couple of girls who might have been hookers, fanning themselves, laughing, and pointing at something I couldn’t see down an alley.

“Here we are,” the driver said. He pulled up in front of the Sunny Jim without pulling in. “Lots of places to go around here.” He pointed up the street. “There is a nice place,” he said. “Have a sandwich and a
cerveza
, and nobody bother you there. You are a girl,” he said, looking worriedly in the rear view. I like people who state the obvious. Bless.

The fare was twenty-five bucks, and I gave him two of the twenties from the plastic wallet. Share the wealth and all that.
Noblesse oblige
.

“
Gracias
,” the driver said, when I indicated that I didn’t need change. “But, lady,” he said. “You sure you want me to leave you here? You meeting somebody? Your man?”

“Don’t you worry, Jorge,” I said, reading his name off his cabbie license. “I’m meeting my sister.”

* * *

I stood in front of the motel where my sister had died. Other than police tape over the door to one room, the Sunny Jim looked to be business as usual. I stopped at the office entrance for a second, considering taking a room, but I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. First, I wanted to take in some of the local color.

If Ginger had died here, maybe she had hung out around here. I had drugs in my purse, and money to rent a room. I badly wanted to be high, to erase everything and watch sitcom reruns and drift away.

But here I was, and this was more important.

I walked in the direction Jorge had indicated. An old Mexican man stood on the street, cowboy hat shading his eyes as he gazed into the distance at something I couldn’t see. My head was pounding again now. The doctor at the E.R. had given me nothing stronger than two Tylenol, which hadn’t even dulled the pain. I was used to stronger painkillers. I passed another bail bondsman. A pawn shop. Then, Lucky’s Bar and Grill. I was glad it wasn’t a Grille. I didn’t like Grilles, but I was quite fond of Grills. I was pretty sure that this wasn’t the place that Jorge had been pointing to, but either way, somebody in this place was getting my business. Closest bar to Sunny Jim’s, as far as I could tell, and I looked enough like Ginger – particularly the Ginger who had apparently been trying to look like me, according to the fake driver’s licence – that my presence might provoke some reaction. Either way, I could use a drink.

I wished I had thought to stick my sunglasses in my purse. I’d grown unaccustomed to daylight. I like my face covered. Note to self: buy shades.

Lucky’s was the kind of place that didn’t have windows. I understood places like this. A lot of women would be nervous, walking into a strange dive bar, in a strange, down-and-out neighborhood. But this? This is what I was made for.

It took me a few seconds to adjust to the dark interior after the harsh sunlight outside. I paused in the entrance, for effect. I knew I looked okay, and patted myself on the back, metaphorically, for wearing what I had. Any worse, and I could have been mistaken for a whore. Any classier, and I would have been a target, a rich
gringa
who’d gotten lost on her way to Laguna Beach. As it was, in my little black sleeveless top and skirt, I could be anything. It was all up to me.

I was on. Showtime.

Once my eyes adjusted, I saw that there were half a dozen people at the bar, one woman among them. The bartender was Caucasian, and big. Mean-looking biker-type. Two of the guys at the bar were white, two, from what I could see, were Mexican, one black, and the woman? I couldn’t see her well enough yet.

But well enough to know it wasn’t Ginger.

I made my way to the bar, confidently but not like I owned the place. The bartender looked at me.

“Jack and seven, please,” I said, pulling a twenty out of my purse. I put it on the bar and lit up a cigarette. Nobody else seemed to be paying much attention to the smoking bylaws here, so who was I to argue? I wasn’t a full-time smoker despite the crack addiction, but put me on a barstool and I’m Joe Camel.

The bartender slid an ashtray my way. Good start. If he’d pegged me as a cop, he would’ve told me that there was no smoking in his establishment.

My drink was weak, but it would do. I stirred it with the straw once or twice, then chugged it back in one. Let it sit for a minute.

“Let’s do that again,” I said, pushing the twenty a little further across the bar. He hadn’t taken it yet. He made me another. I rested my forehead on my fingers like I had had a long day, or a headache, which I did. This, I had to approach with caution.

The two white guys were stealing glances at me, then talking quietly to each other. Nobody else had spoken a word since I came in, but I didn’t have the feeling that it was because of me. There probably wasn’t an overabundance of witty banter flying back and forth here. Maybe the happy hour crowd provided more amusement, but somehow I doubted it.

“Miss,” one of the white guys said after about ten minutes of all of us staring at the same football game. “Miss?”

“Sorry?” I said, as though he was disturbing me from a deep reverie. In fact, this was what I had been waiting for.

“Can my friend and I buy you a drink?”

I looked at them. Both about my age, early thirties-ish. Blue-collar, if they had any collar at all, which I doubted. They seemed respectful. They weren’t assuming I was a pro, just maybe hoping one of them would get laid.

“That’s nice of you guys,” I said, smiling earnestly. “But I’m not sure I’m the company you’re looking for.” This way, I thought, I could weed out the potential johns. “You know how it is.”

“Troubles,” the other guy said, nodding into his beer.

“Troubles,” I agreed. You don’t know the half of it, brother. We all sat silently for a couple of minutes. Good. Nobody was going to hassle me here. Within fifteen minutes, I was part of the woodwork. If I stayed on this stool long enough, I’d be a regular.

I sighed heavily, as if regretting my anti-social behavior, and ordered another drink. “And a round for those guys,” I said to the bartender. “Thanks, guys. Thanks for not pushing me.” I let a tear roll down my cheek. I was officially an expert at the crying thing now. I rooted around in my bag for a tissue, and one of them lit my cigarette for me, as though I was his sister.

That was it. We were friends now. Ten minutes later, I was shooting pool with Dom and Dave. I figured I’d give it a bit. If Ginger had been in here, I thought these guys would maybe have mentioned something to me about our similar appearance, if the photo on the fake driver’s licence was anything to go by. And even if they didn’t know her, they must know the ’hood.

But as a stranger in a dive bar – which are almost always populated by regulars, no matter where in the world you go – you don’t start getting nosy right away. Not good for one’s health.

For someone who has spent as much time in bars as I have, it’s amazing that I don’t have better pool skills. I was a pretty good baseball pitcher in high school, and more than a good volleyball player. I had fantasies about being a female MMA fighter, if I could ever get past the crack thing and rebuild some muscle.

But pool? Forget it. For whatever reason, I could barely break the balls. As it were.

Dom and Dave forgave me, though. They were old school. Women were mothers, sisters, girlfriends, or whores. I was none of those, but once I was out of the whore category, as far as they were concerned, I could have been any of the other three. The others at the bar barely glanced over at us. Good.

The boys each beat me handily, of course. “I know when I’m outclassed,” I said, pulling up a chair and putting my feet on another, watching them play. Dom went into the bathroom every ten minutes or so, returning a bit more animated each time. Ah. A kindred spirit.

Cocaine. Where there was coke, crack couldn’t be far behind. And maybe, just maybe, Ginger had scored in here, in her – what? Quest to become more like her twin? Ease her own pain, despite anything Fred had said to me in jail? Suddenly, watching Dom bouncing back from the men’s room in his Vans, doing some kind of pseudo-thug walk, I felt as though I needed to know that nearly as much as I needed to find who killed her. Why had Ginger come to places like this? Why was she wearing fake eyelashes, for God’s sake? I had never once even seen her in mascara.

Dave, however, didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength. He wasn’t going to the bathroom with his buddy, and he wasn’t talking a mile a minute either. I wondered if he knew about his friend’s habit. Far be it from me to break it to him. I bided my time. At one point I excused myself and went to the ladies’, which surprised me by being much cleaner than I had anticipated, and did a couple of quick bumps of coke off the back of my hand.

I had to stay sharp, after all.

Then on impulse, I locked myself back in the stall, took all the money out of the plastic wallet, quickly separated it into denominations, and put it into my own wallet.

Finally, they finished a game when Dave sunk the eight ball and went to the bar to order another round for us, then waved that he was going to the can.

“Dom,” I said. “Cut a girl a break?”

“Sure,” he said. “Can I do for you, Big D?” They had taken to calling me this, because even at 5’10”, I was taller than both of them.

“Got a little bump for me?” I didn’t need it, of course, but Dom didn’t need to know that. And there’s nothing like sharing narcotics to bond people. I figured if I could get Dom away from Dave, smoked or snorted a bit with him, he might know something about Ginger. Anything. At least he would have heard gossip, right? A woman being killed days ago in the motel practically next door? And if she was into any kind of drug scene around here, he could be useful.

Dom sat up straighter and looked at me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He glanced around the bar nervously.

“I’m not a cop,” I whispered, smiling into his eyes. “I’m just a girl with some troubles, and you know I’m not from around here.” I stopped smiling. “Look. For all I know,
you
could be a cop. But I’m telling you straight here, Dom – I prefer the rock, it’s been a few days, my sister is dead and I need it.” My nails were making crescent moon shapes in my palms. Dom wiped his palm across his mouth.

“Dead?” He patted my knee and shook his head. It’s hard to look sad, though, on cocaine. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I’ll see what I can do to hook you up. But not around Dave. He’s pretty straight, and I just got out of a program,” he explained. He looked closer at me. “You got cash?”

“Some,” I said. I was wary. He seemed like a good enough guy, but the cash in the plastic wallet might just disappear if I advertised it. And I hadn’t even had a chance to count it yet.

“Where you staying?”

“The Sunny Jim,” I replied, without hesitating. “I mean, I will be.”

He looked more closely at me. “You don’t seem like a Sunny Jim kinda girl,” he said.

I shrugged. “The Four Seasons is full,” I said. He laughed.

“Here comes Dave,” he said. “Be cool.”

“Cool is my middle name,” I said, grinning, happy happy happy. Oh, happy day. Dom giggled and all of a sudden I trusted him again.