Dead Ringer (8 page)

Tires screeched around a corner.

Horace turned toward the sound. Damn, Virgil had the brights on. Was he trying to wake up every cop in Long Beach? The breeze picked up, tickling the back of his neck. The blue-grey light of a television flickered in the house next to the bar. The porch light came on as Virgil pulled up to the curb.

“
The fuck’s the matter with you?” Horace said when he got in the van.

“
You said you were in a hurry.”

“
Turn off the brights.”

“
Yeah, sorry.”

“
You made so much noise, you got some couch potato across the street to get off his ass and turn on his porch light. Probably watching us right now.”

“
I won’t do it again. I’ll be careful. You’ll see.”

“
Okay, okay.” He paused. “Look, I gotta get the woman with her husband, so I can serve them the subpoena at the same time, otherwise it don’t count. But she knows that, see. That’s why they never get together.” Horace was making up his story as he went along.

“
So, what are we gonna do?”

“
We’re gonna grab her, handcuff her and put her in the van. I got cuffs in the glove box. Then we drive to her husband’s place where I serve them the subpoena.”

“
Isn’t that kidnapping or something?”

“
Not really. Process servers got special powers. We’re allowed to do stuff like that, because we’re acting for the law. Without us, nobody could ever get sued, then where would America be? All the lawyers would be out of work.”

“
How we gonna get her?” Virgil didn’t even think of questioning what Horace said. He believed it just as if he’d seen it on TV.

“
You get down to the water and scare her, so she goes the other way. Think you can keep up with her?”

“
She’s a girl, Horace.”

“
Right. Chase her back to the pier. She’s gonna have to turn right after she passes the pool. I’ll be waiting there with the van. Then we got her.”

* * *

The effects of the alcohol seemed gone now. Sweat rippled through her hair, down her neck. She was a train, her bare feet on the wet sand the wheels going over the tracks, her breath a steam engine chugging through a canyon. She could go forever.

Someone was up ahead. A man. She noted his size as she closed the distance between them. The white of his T-shirt stood out like a beacon even on this dark night. All of a sudden she knew who it was. She flashed on the image of the big man in the supermarket. Ferret Face coming into the Lounge had been no coincidence.

Maggie stopped, panting. Breeze cooled her sweat, prickly rivulets of cold. She looked around. A pair of joggers were behind the man, going the other way. She could scream out. But why? The man hadn’t done anything. She remembered him from the store. He’d seemed slow. Anyway she could out run him if he started anything. But what if he had a gun? And where was Ferret Face?

The big man started to move. Coming toward her at a walk. He was still quite a distance away and she couldn’t see his face yet, but she knew it was him.

Maggie backed up a step and the man stopped. She stopped too. Had he come here for her? Why? He’d certainly known her in the store. Or at least he thought he had. What was it he’d said? Saw you in the newspaper. She’d been afraid then, a little. That’s why she’d left the cart.

Again she thought about shouting out, but the joggers were farther away now. Almost out of sight, out of hearing distance.

“
Wanna come to the van?” the big man called.

“
I’m outta here,” she muttered.

“
What?”

Maggie spun around and poured on the speed. The man was nuts, she thought as she ran back toward the pier. She looked up toward Ocean Avenue on her right. There were people up there. A two minute sprint across the sand and she’d be safe. But Ferret Face might be up there, too. Waiting.

She kept on, running strong. She looked left, out over the sea. She saw the lights on that sailboat. It was inside the breakwater. She was a strong swimmer, but could she get into the water before the man was on her? She didn’t think so. She kept on.

There was a country and western bar at the foot of the pier, just past the pool. There’d be people there. Rednecks. A shout for help and that guy would be toast.

Maggie was fast, but the man behind was gaining, wheezing his breath in and out. He was a train, too. She pumped her arms faster, forcing her legs to match the rhythm. But still he was gaining. His breath, louder now, churning up the tracks.

She felt like she was going to explode as she pumped her arms still faster. She was sprinting all out toward the dark stretch of sand between the pool and the pier. She couldn’t let him catch her there. She turned and started chugging up the sand toward the bar, sucking air, lungs about to burst.

The pool was a thing out of a horror story, Dark glass and concrete climbing three stories out of the sand, blocking out Ocean Avenue, blocking out help. She was alone in the world with her pursuer, the distance between them shrinking.

She saw the bar. She was going to make it. The door opened on a black van parked under a streetlight in front of the bar. She was about to shout out for help when Ferret Face stepped out of the van.

He had a gun.

Virgil was almost on her.

She dropped to the sand.

“
What?” Virgil shouted as he tripped over her.

She scrambled to her feet and was off, sprinting like she was running the hundred yard dash back in high school. She was so exposed, her back a wide target. She made for the pier. There was someone under there. Scary probably, but someone.

“
Get her!” Ferret Face shouted out.

The space under the pier was a dark tunnel to the sea. Waves whipped around the pylons, echoing through the blackness like a hurricane swirling through her soul. She kept her speed up, dodging the pylons till she stumbled over something.

“
Hey,” someone shouted as she fell. She hit her head on something hard, but she didn’t have time to worry about what it was, because she was tangled up with a man. Rancid breath, hairy. She pushed away from him and sprang to her feet.

“
I’m guessing you came here looking for safety.” Laughter. Maggie turned. It was a black man, wiry hair akimbo, beard to his chest. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed, ever.

“
Men after me.” Maggie panted. “One has a gun.”

“
We know,” the man she’d tripped over said. He was white, but you could hardly tell through his dirt covered face. His hair stuck out like he’d been electrocuted, his great beard was matted. There was a smell here, Maggie could easily imagine it coming from that beard.

“
Come on out of there,” Virgil said. “We ain’t gonna hurt you.”

“
Yeah, right,” Maggie muttered.

“
Get under there and get her,” Ferret Face said.

“
I ain’t going under there.”

“
Come on.”

“
You go,” Virgil said.

“
Come on in. We’re waiting.” The black man’s quiet voice was like a gunshot through the night.

“
Shit,” Ferret Face said.

“
Bring yourself on in. We haven’t eaten yet,” the white man said.

“
Fuck, there’s two of ’em,” Horace said.

“
Let’s go,” Virgil said.

“
Yeah.”

Maggie held her breath for what seemed like forever.

“
They’re going,” the black man said.

Maggie exhaled. “Thank God.”

“
A lady shouldn’t be out alone after dark,” the white man said.

“
But I’m not alone.” Maggie Laughed. “I’m with you.”

“
You look like you could use a drink.” The black man handed her a bottle.

“
Thanks.” Maggie took a swig. “Shit, that’s awful.”

“
Ain’t it though.” He laughed as she handed it back.

“
Thanks, you guys were great.” Maggie dusted the sand from her Levi’s.

“
Darley.” The black man extended his hand. “Darley Smalls.” Maggie took the hand. Hard, calloused, but gentle too. He didn’t have anything to prove any more.

“
Theo Baptiste,” the white man said. “It’s French.” He held his hand out as Darley had.

“
Maggie Nesbitt.” She took it. He had a firm grip, but not as firm as it could have been. He could have crushed her with his giant paw.

“
Pleased to meet you,” Baptiste said.

“
You guys weren’t afraid,” Maggie said. “Those men had a gun.”

“
Gun or no, they were cowards,” Darley said. “We weren’t worried.”

“
How could you tell?”

“
They were chasing a woman,” he said. “Real men don’t have to do that.”

“
No, they don’t,” Maggie said.

“
They were gonna take you,” Theo said. “They had that van parked and waiting. It was you they wanted, not just any pretty woman happened to be out after dark. They set you up.”

“
I saw them earlier today, then the one with the gun later, at the Lounge up on Second Street. I thought he was a policeman because I saw the gun.”

“
He was no policeman,” Darley said.

“
I guess not.”

“
You live with that news guy. Maybe he was poking his nose in a story where it doesn’t belong,” Theo said.

“
How do you know who I live with?”

“
We rest here after dark,” Darley said, “but we have to be gone by sunrise or the lifeguards run us off. So we spend the days wandering the alleys, poking through the trash, checking out what people like you toss away. You’d be surprised what we find and what we know. Show us a face and we can put it together with an address. We’re not your average bums.”

“
How do you live?”

“
We got places to sell the stuff we find,” Theo said. “We get by.”

“
I gotta get my shoes.” All of a sudden Maggie wanted to be home. These men could be every bit as dangerous and the men they’d scared off. She backed out of the dark.

“
You get in trouble. You remember us. We don’t take to men chasing after a woman,” Theo said.

“
Not at all,” Darley said.

“
I’ll remember,” Maggie said. Then, “I gotta go.”

“
I think we’ll walk you back to those shoes,” Darley said and they followed her out from under the pier.

They walked the distance in silence. Maggie’s impression had been that these men might be dangerous, but they didn’t seem so now, not exactly safe either, but she didn’t feel threatened by them.

“
That them over there?” Darley pointed.

“
That’s them.”

“
You’ll be okay now,” Theo said. “They’re gone.” And without even a goodbye, they turned and started back toward the pier.

Chapter Six

Maggie walked into the Whale out of breath. She took a quick look around, spotted Gordon sitting in one of the booths by the pool tables, playing chess with one of the two men sitting across from him. It was obvious the two were a couple. Good. Gordon hadn’t found anyone yet.

“
What happened to you?” Jonas, the Swedish bartender, was a big man, sometimes gruff and closing on sixty. But despite the appearance he tried to give off with his plaid shirts, work jeans and lumberjack boots, his heart was as big as he was and it kept his wallet as thin as a beggar’s.

“
I fell down while I was running on the beach.”

“
Bummer.” He pierced her with his water blue eyes. “Nick go home early again?” Sometimes on their walks home from the Lounge, Nick came in with Maggie and Gordon, sometimes not, as he had to get up early on Sundays for his magazine program, “Newsmakers with Nick.”

“
I’d rather not talk about Nick. Just give me a rum and Coke and let me wallow in my misery.” She climbed up on a barstool, reached for a bowl of pretzels, pulled it to her, took one out and licked the salt off it as she stared into those blue eyes that saw everything and missed nothing.

He nodded, ran a hand through his thick hair. Like most Swedes, he was blond and old as he was, he had no grey. He pulled a bottle of Bacardi Select off the top shelf behind the bar. Reaching the bottle would have been a problem for Maggie, not Jonas. He was a tall man.

Maggie looked around the bar while he made the drink. Poster size black and white photos adorned the walls. John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mohammed Ali, others. Jonas owned the bar and it was clear where his politics lay.

Both pool tables were busy. Five or six people clustered around the two pinball machines. Real machines, mechanical, the kind you could get to know, not the computer kind. Gordon loved them. Maggie was starting to.

“
On the house, because you look like you need it.” Jonas set the drink in front of her.

“
Do I look that bad?”

“
You look like you went ten rounds with him.” Jonas pointed to the picture of Mohammed Ali. “If that’s what running does for you, maybe you ought to seriously think about giving it up.”

“
I’ll take that under advisement.” She looked over at Gordon. “He doing okay?” She wanted to change the subject.