High Life (32 page)
They giggled and kept walking.
“No, come on, I’m serious. Look at the car. You think we’re maniacs or something?”
Ryan was half leaning across me, speaking in a light friendly voice I’d never heard before. The girls whispered to each other and stopped. Ryan nudged me.
“We just come in from outta town. We got plenty of money. Wouldn’t mind spending some of it on a couple of girls as good-looking as you two. You know how to have a good time?”
“How much money?”
“Hey, whatever it takes.”
They whispered together. Getting into a car with a couple of men wasn’t a problem, it just had to be priced right.
“Five hundred,” one of them said, like maybe she was asking for too much.
“Each? Sure. But what do we get for that?”
“Anything, but we gotta be home by six.”
Into a motel on the edge of Hollywood where no one gave a shit about questions of age difference. Coke, booze—the chicks got wild and naked. Their bodies were smooth and slim, the hair on their cunts was silky. Ryan was right, every guy wants to.
We fucked one each. Mine had long blond hair and a few zits on her chin. She looked good, though. She looked like she spent a lot of time at the beach. I couldn’t believe how firm her body felt.
Afterward, Ryan wanted entertainment. The girls were coy, but he named figures until they agreed to take a dump on the bathroom floor. We jerked off over them while they were straining. My come was thick this time around and stuck to the back of the other one, a little way up from her ass.
“Jesus, I feel loose.”
The girls were in a cab somewhere, counting their money, and we were in Ryan’s obscene car gliding downtown to Powell’s apartment.
“Don’t you worry about doing stuff like that? I mean, they were pretty young.”
“Shit, Jackie, you oughta spend more time in the real world. Another birthday or two, they’ll be standing on street corners. Ungrateful fucks.”
“What?”
“Forget it.”
I glanced at Ryan. He had a bitter look on his face that didn’t make sense after the fun we just had back at the motel. He stayed silent a while, concentrating on driving. Left off of Fairfax, then Wilshire all the way. Somewhere around La Fayette Park he took a heart pill and started speaking again.
“Kids think they know everything. They see how they think something should be, and they never forgive you if you can’t make it that way for them. No point trying to explain life ain’t simple like it is on TV, they won’t listen. Those two cunts are probably the happiest they’ve ever been right now—two grand between them and laughing about how pathetic it is some old fart gets off watching them shit. But give ’em a few years and a social worker, they’ll be moaning how being whores is all Daddy’s fault, like they woulda been nurses or something if he loved them better.”
“What’s this, your PhD in child psychology coming out?”
“I had a kid once.”
“Bullshit.”
He stared through the windshield at the evening traffic, but he wasn’t seeing it.
“Whatever you say, Jackie.”
Only someone as rabid as Ryan would drive a convertible downtown after dark. Even so, he parked in the basement rather than on the street. I’d handed over the keys Bella gave me and he used one of them on the elevator. We stood in the middle of it and watched the numbers change.
“Beauty seems quite gung ho for this idea of Powell being the killer.”
“What do you expect, that she should take the fall herself?”
“Not if she didn’t do it. But there’s usually a bit of reluctance between family members.”
“If they like each other in the first place. They don’t. He’s hung up on her cunt, and she hates his guts. It’s not what you’d call a happy-family scenario. Plus, she blames him for her mother’s death.”
“There better be more to this than some payback kick for Mommy getting scrunched.”
The apartment was empty and quiet, its décor an exact copy of Powell’s suite at Malibu. I followed Ryan around while he tossed the place, praying for a miracle. It came in two doses.
In the drawer of a writing cabinet we found a Polaroid—a dog cut open, a dick dropping seed into the bleeding split, held by a hand that looked old enough to be Powell’s.
“See? Exactly how it happened to Karen. She was cut open and someone—”
“I don’t need it explained, Jackie.”
Ryan looked at the pic for a moment then held it out to me.
“You like this kinda thing. You want it? No?”
He smirked and put it in his pocket.
A room with a big-screen TV gave us the clincher. A selection of videos—a duplicate collection of the ones we’d already seen in Powell’s Malibu suite and Bella’s video room. Plus one more. A tape that was new to both of us. It showed Karen nude on her side, a back view, one leg pulled up, ramming a dildo in and out. In front of her on the wall there was a mirror that reflected occasional glimpses of the front of her body as her movements rolled her in and out of it’s range. The angle of the shot was tight, but there was enough wood paneling and olive carpet around her to make the location of the scene unmistakably the apartment in which we now stood.
The plastic cock looked slippery and her hand moved fast. Sometimes the crack of her ass pulled open and showed her hole. It was obvious she was into what she was doing. It was also obvious from her glances over her shoulder that she was performing to turn someone on. But I found myself incapable of reacting sexually to this scene of my dead wife having a wank. Karen had changed from something human to a counter in a game, a piece of a puzzle, the solving of which would determine my future. Her image on the screen held about as much interest as a documentary on animals in Africa. Until something on her wrist shifted and caught the light. I almost yelped.
“She’s wearing a bracelet.”
“So?”
“It’s the same one she had last time I saw her. It has to be the one Bella told us about.”
“The goodbye present.”
“Bella said she gave it to her when she left Malibu, the last time they were together. But she’s wearing it now, in a video that was shot in this apartment. The only way that could be is if this show happened after the operation.”
“Maybe she wanted to give Beauty something to remember her by.”
“But that’s it! Bella doesn’t have a copy of this tape; if she did, we would have found it with her others.”
“Who says?”
“You saw the stuff she had—me fucking her, Powell fucking her, even her goddamn donors fucking her. If she was going to hide anything, she would have hidden all of that as well. She was in love with Karen. This would be top of her playlist, for fucksake.”
“So after she got her kidney cut out, Karen just dropped around to give the old guy a thrill?”
“She would have spread her legs as soon as he opened his wallet. You know she would. Maybe it wasn’t the first time, maybe they had history. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this tape shows there was some connection between her and Powell
after
the operation.”
“It ain’t conclusive.”
“Look at the way she’s fucking herself. She’s got to be pretty well recovered, and that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time between when this was shot and when she was killed. I think she had the operation, got well enough to leave Malibu and come back to see me—we had an argument and sometime later, whether she had anything going with him before or not, she connected with Powell. After that there’s two ways it can go. Either she tried to put the bite on him and his solution to blackmail was to kill her. Or, what I think’s more likely, he figured as long as she was on the scene his access to Bella was going to be threatened—she was always going to be taking his daughter away from him. Either reason works.”
“If Powell shot this tape, why is there no camera here?”
“Jesus fuck, Ryan, it could be in his car, it could be somewhere at Malibu, he could have thrown it away. Does it matter? You said before, if there was something to connect Powell with Karen then it’s possible he could have killed her. What do you call this? It’s a fucking connection, for Christsake.”
“Calm down, Jackie.”
Ryan rewound the tape and played it again. He watched it silently and I held my breath.
“Something about this bugs me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but something feels wrong.”
He rewound and played it a couple more times, searching the screen for whatever it was he thought he ought to see.
“Can you imagine how grateful she’s going to be, Ryan, if you make all this murder hassle go away?”
“You’d love it to be him, wouldn’t you?”
“And you wouldn’t?”
Ryan stared at the TV for a little while longer then killed the set.
“Okay, we’ll see what the old fuck’s got to say for himself.”
“You agree it could be him, then?”
“The only way we’re gonna know is if we DNA him against the spunk in Karen.”
Back at Malibu I split from Ryan. He was waiting like an expectant schoolboy for Bella to come home so he could get a bit of action in, but I knew with a donor she wouldn’t be back for ages. I fired up the Mustang and headed for Lorn’s place.
I felt good on the drive over. The tape we’d found at Powell’s was better than anything I could have hoped for. It was going to make all my problems go away. Ryan would have his killer and wouldn’t be able to lay the murder jive on me or Bella anymore. And with Powell out of the picture I’d be free to mine his daughter for all she was worth. The only remaining hassle, of course, would be Ryan’s presence at Malibu. But, same as I knew Powell’s spunk would match what they found in Karen, I had a feeling that this situation would resolve itself too.
Lorn was in the lounge watching tapes of herself when I got there. She was a little distant at first, still low-level pissed at me for saying she couldn’t sleep over at Willow Glen. But after a while I managed to smooth the evening out. We talked about work and movie stars then fucked on the floor. Later we watched
Pumping Iron
and lost ourselves in a firestorm of envy at Schwarzenegger’s rise.
It was a nasty scene, four of us in a room full of books and leather furniture out at Malibu—me, Ryan, Bella, and Powell. Three ganging up on one. I hadn’t bothered with this room before, there was no TV and the books weren’t about Hollywood, but right then it seemed perfect for the job at hand: closed and quiet and waiting for shit to happen. It was raining outside, nighttime. Our only light was an open fire. Shadows moved around the walls like birds of prey.
Bella’s donor must have been recovering without complications because she’d come home before dawn. Daddy, after a phone call from her, followed in the late afternoon. There had been arguments in Bella’s suite through the rest of the day, the horrible sound of Powell begging for a physical comfort his daughter would no longer give. Now he sat slumped in a large chair gazing malevolently at the fire. He’d been gone from the house so long he looked out of place, a superfluous individual that nobody wanted around anymore. He knew something was coming. He’d been told who Ryan was and how he’d been augmenting his cop salary recently, and only a retard would have figured the evening’s gathering to be without purpose.
Ryan and I had drinks. I listened to the fire and to the rain and waited for the beginning of Powell’s end. Ryan stared silently at him for a long time, but the old junkie was too dosed to squirm like a clean man would. After a while my favorite policeman got pissed off with the game and prodded him with the toe of his shoe. Powell’s head swiveled slowly around.
“I don’t like being kicked.”
“Something else you’d prefer?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“You bet. And I’m good at it, ask Jackie here.”
“You’re a thug.”
“Tell me about Karen.”
Powell looked uncertain and flicked his eyes at Bella, but her helpful switch was off.
“She was a donor.”
“And?”
“And she was my daughter’s lover for a time.”
“What exactly was it made that time end?”
“These things run a natural course. I assume they tired of each other. What are you driving at?”
“I’m driving at her turning up dead after she sold her kidney to you, you old fuck.”
Ryan’s voice got louder, he leaned forward in his chair like he was having trouble not jumping on Powell. I figured it must have been an interrogation technique, it seemed out of place otherwise. Powell looked a little frightened.
“She was healthy enough and the operation was performed successfully. It would not have resulted in her death.”
“I know losing her kidney didn’t kill her, fuckhole. I’m talking about what happened later, that second operation where you took out everything that was left then dumped her in the park.”
Powell started to get out of his chair. Ryan pushed him back down.
“Uh-uh, pops, we got a way to go yet.”
“Bella …”
Bella’s voice corroded the air about her. “He knows what you did. I know what you did. You couldn’t bear to see me with someone else, so you killed her.”
“Bella, darling, what are you saying? You know I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Karen and my mother. You killed them both, you sick bastard. Now tell him what he wants to know.”
“I was jealous of the girl, I admit that, but I didn’t kill her. And your mother … Haven’t you forgiven me for that?”
“Never. And I’ll never forgive you for Karen. You cut her up like one of your dogs and threw her away as though she were so much garbage.”
“Bella, no!” Powell was fast becoming distraught. “You know about the dogs, they don’t mean anything. Tell him. They don’t mean anything.”
When Bella spoke next her face was cast in steel, like she was daring him to defy her.
“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Powell worked his mouth, but closed it without saying anything and Ryan took the reins again.
“I’ve got proof.”
“That’s impossible.”
Ryan lurched out of his chair and stood over Powell, breathing heavily, his fists balled.
“Why? Because you did such a good job? You figure with all her guts gone nobody’d know she’d had an operation? And if nobody knew that, they wouldn’t be able to trace it back to you? Is that what you’re telling me, motherfucker? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Powell swallowed his fear and spoke calmly and clearly, making an effort to appeal to Ryan’s rational side. Too bad no one had told him Ryan didn’t have one.
“I’m telling you it’s impossible you have proof, because I didn’t do it.”
“Really. Let’s talk about home movies. One in particular—Karen doing a turn with a dildo. Nice angle on her ass. Taken, coincidentally, in your apartment.”
“I know the one.”
“You oughta. You fucking made it.”
“I copied it from one of Bella’s. She’ll tell you.”
“What Bella tells me is she never had a tape like that.”
Powell looked past him at Bella.
“Bella, please … The man is trying to crucify me. Tell him it was your tape.”
“It wasn’t my tape.”
“Oh my god, I see what’s happening. Please, he can’t have any proof either of us is involved. It’s a bluff. Don’t say anything. I promise you, we’ll be all right.”
Bella stood and left the room. When Powell called after her his voice broke, but she didn’t stop or even look over her shoulder. The door closed behind her and I felt vaguely frightened. Everything now seemed irrevocable, a string of events charging like a locomotive toward some unknown, but unalterable destination. And I had set it in motion.
Ryan chuckled.
“It don’t look good for you, pops. But you got one last chance. Roll your sleeve up. You got any usable veins left?”
“What are you going to do?”
Ryan took a syringe out of his jacket pocket, twisted the cap off.
“I want some blood to DNA against what we found in the body.”
“You found something in the body?”
“Are you going to cooperate or not?”
“Of course I will. The test will prove I’m innocent.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He sucked blood out of Powell’s right arm, then capped the syringe and put it back in his pocket. Powell rolled down his sleeve and made a move to stand, but before he could get upright Ryan produced a pair of handcuffs and locked his arms behind his back.
“Until I get the word on your blood, Daddy-o, I want you where I can find you.”
Ryan and I half walked, half dragged him down to a storage room in the basement. The door didn’t look particularly strong so Ryan took the cuffs off, looped them behind an exposed pipe, and put them back on again. Powell seemed to have retreated. When we left he didn’t look up from where he was crouched at the base of the pipe, and he didn’t say anything.
On the ground floor. I walked with Ryan to the front door.
“That was pretty brutal.”
“If a thing’s worth doing …”
“Handcuffing him and locking him up isn’t going to look good when you get him to court.”
“You let me worry about that side of things.”
“Are we just going to leave him down there?”
“What do you want to do, suck him off?”
“He’s a junkie.”
“A few days ago fucking him up was your mission in life, don’t start acting like a pussy now the shit’s coming down. If you’re that worried, give him a shot.”
Ryan split to give the blood sample to whatever police lab technician he had leverage with. I went upstairs and fucked Bella, we didn’t mention her father. When she fell asleep I sat in front of a TV and watched cop shows until I passed out myself.
Around three in the morning I woke and went to check on Powell. The storage room was puke free, he hadn’t reached that stage yet, but the place smelled bad with his sweat and it looked like leg cramps weren’t far off. He told me where his stash was. I got it from his suite and cooked him up a shot. After the smack had taken hold he tried to talk to me, but I didn’t stick around to listen. I didn’t want to know anything more than I already did.
Upstairs again I looked in on Bella, but Ryan had come back and was grunting away with his head between her legs. I found a bed somewhere else in the house and lay awake wishing I could take something. But I was shooting in the morning and I couln’t afford to oversleep.