Suicide Hill (11 page)

Bobby giggled and said, “Pie like in hairpie?” and Rice saw red. He was cocking his fists when Joe jumped up from the bed, frowned and said, “Sixty-four hundred on the nose. That's really sh—”

Bobby shoved his brother aside, moved to the bed and began recounting the money. Finishing, he spat on the pile of bills and turned to look up at Rice. “Slightly less than you figured, huh? Like twenty-five K less. Like Little Bro and me just risked ten to life for
three fucking grand
?
” He paused, then whispered, “You holding out on us?”

Knowing that fire full was the only way out, Rice said, “I'll chalk that up to disappointment and a bad temper, but you say it again and I'll kill you.”

Joe stood perfectly still; Bobby gripped the mattress with both hands, his jaw trembling, saliva starting to creep out the corners of his mouth. Seeing more fear than anger, Rice threw him back a chunk of his
cojones.
“Listen, man, I'm just as pissed about it as you. And it's my fault. I should have realized that the real money was left in the vault. But we're still on for the next—”

Bobby screamed, “You're fucking crazy! These bank fools are leaving out peanuts to pilfer, and I'm not risking my ass again for another three grand!”

Thinking, macho counterpunch, Rice smiled and said, “I'm going to make Eggers go into the vault for us. The same hostage plan, for twenty times the money. I'm going to intercept him in person as he enters the bank, then force him to call you guys for confirmation that you're holding his bitch. If he agrees to hit the vault, I'll tell him to sit tight at his desk with his hands in view, and I'll go across the street and keep him eyeball pinned. When the guard and tellers arrive and the real money comes out, Eggers grabs what he can carry on his person and goes across the street to meet me. He figures out a cool way to do this, or his bitch gets chopped. Then I walk him to his car and tranq him.”

Grinning like a macho ghoul, Bobby said, “Suppose he don't agree?”

Rice moved to Joe and threw a rough arm around his shoulders. “Then I kill him then and there and take the teller box money. But he'll agree. He always wears a baggy suit. Lots of room, and I'll tell him c-notes only. You in, partners?”

Bobby whooped and jumped up and down, dunking imaginary baskets; Rice tightened his grip on Joe's shoulders. Joe twisted free and stared at him, and Rice snapped to the fact that he was the smarter of the two. Joe's eyes pleaded; Rice whispered, “Two more days and it's over.” Joe looked at Bobby, who was throwing left-right body punches at his reflec tion in the wall mirror. Rice stuck two fingers into his mouth and forced out a loud, shrill whistle.

The noise brought the scene to a halt. Bobby leaned against the mirror and said in exaggerated barrioese, “Thirty-two hundred. Come up green, homeboy.”

With an exaggerated shit-eating grin, Rice moved to the bed and began a slow-motion recount of the money, dividing it first in half and shoving that part under the pillow, then separating the remaining half into two portions. Finishing, he offered Joe the first handful of bills, Bobby the second. Both brothers jammed the cash into their front and back pants pockets, then stuffed the overflow into their windbreakers. When the last of the money was stashed, Rice gave them a slow eyeball and shook his head. His crime partners looked like two greedy greaseballs with elephantiasis; like a world-class dose of bad news.

Bobby cracked his knuckles; Joe looked at Rice and blurted, “What about the recon job, Duane? You gonna tell us now?”

Rice leaded back on the bed and shut his eyes, blotting out the bad news. “Yeah. I was thinking that maybe Hawley and Eggers know each other. Remember, we don't know who originally scoped out the heists, how he knew, who he knew, that kind of thing. I'll be watching the papers to see if they mention Hawley and Issler, and I want you guys to keep a loose tail on Eggers and Confrey, see if the cops or feds are nosing around. If they are, we have to call the heist off. I'll call you late tomorrow night. If there's no heat, we hit Friday morning.”

Bobby popped his knuckles and said, “What kinda recon you gonna be doing?”

Rice opened his eyes, but kept them away from the brothers. “A little added terror angle, in case Eggers gets uppity. I'm going to trash his pad and steal some kitchen knives, then bring the knives with me when I brace him. That way, I can tell him you're gonna chop up his bitch with a knife with his prints on them. That and the fact that his pad's been violated ought to keep him docile.”

Bobby whooped and jumped up and touched the ceiling; loose bills started to pop out of his pants pockets. Rice said, “What was your record as a fighter?”

“Eleven, sixteen and zero,” Bobby said. “Never went the distance, knocked out or got knocked out. My tops was seven rounds with Harry “The Headhunter” Hungerford. Lost on cuts. Why you asking?”

“I was wondering how you survived this long.”

Bobby giggled and shoved Joe in the direction of the door. “Clean living, anonymous good deeds and faith in Jesus, Duane-o,” he said, kneading his brother's shoulders. “And a good watchdog. Don't you worry. I'll keep a good tail on Eggers and his mama.” He unlocked the door and waggled his eyebrows on the way out. Rice could hear him giggle all the way back to the parking lot.

With the money under his pillow, Rice tried to sleep. Every time he was about to pass out, the staccato beat of the Vandals' gibberish number “Microwave Slave” took over, and Vandy jumped into his mind in the frumpy housedress she wore when she performed the tune. Finally, staying awake seemed like the easier thing to do. Opening his eyes, he saw the ugliness of the room merge with the ugliness of the music. The frayed cord on the hot plate; a line of dust under the dresser; grease spots all along the walls. A lingering echo of Bobby Garcia's psycho/buffoon act was the final straw. Rice packed the money and his shaving gear into the briefcase and went looking for a new pad.

He found a Holiday Inn on Sunset and La Brea and paid $480 for a week in advance. No grease spots, no dust, no senile boozehounds clogging up the parking lot. TV, a view, clean sheets and daily maid service.

After stashing the bulk of his loot, Rice drove up to the Boulevard and spent a K on clothes. At Pants West he bought six pairs of Levi cords and an assortment of underwear; at Miller's Outpost he purchased a half dozen plaid shirts. His last stop was the London Shop, where a salesman looked disapprovingly at his tattoo while fitting him for two sport jacket/slacks combos. He thought about buying a set of threads for Vandy, but finally axed the idea: after he got her off the coke, she'd be healthier and heavier and a couple of sizes bigger.

Now the only white-trash link to be severed was the car. After dropping off his clothes at the new pad and changing into a new shirt and pair of Levi's, Rice drove to a strip of South Western Avenue that he knew to be loaded with repo lots.

Two hours and six lots got him zilch—the cars looked shitty and none of the sales bosses would let him do under-the-hood checks. The seventh lot, a G.M. repo outlet on Twenty-eighth and Western, was where he hit pay dirt, a bored sales manager in a cubicle hung with master ignition keys telling him to grab a set of diagnostic tools and scope out any sled he wanted.

Rice did timing checks, battery checks, transmission checks and complete engine scrutinies on five domestics before he found what he wanted: a black '76 Trans Am with a four-speed and lots of muscle—good under the hood and even better looking—a car that would impress any crowd he and Vandy sought to crash.

The sales manager wanted four thou. Rice countered with twenty-five hundred cash. The sales manager said, “Feed me,” and Rice handed it over, knowing the joker made him for a non-Boy Scout. After signing the purchase papers and pocketing the pink slip, Rice walked over to the street and saw an old wino sucking on a jug in the shade of his '69 Pontiac. He tossed him the keys to his former clunker and said, “Ride, daddy, ride,” then strolled back to his sleek muscle car. When he got in and gunned the engine, the wino was peeling rubber down Western in the Pontiac, the bottle held to his lips.

Now Vandy.

Rice drove north to the Sunset Strip, savoring the feel of his Trans Am. He avoided putting the car through speed shifts and other hot-rod pyrotechnics; he was now technically a parole and probation absconder, and traffic tickets would mean a warrant check and instant disaster.

Street traffic on the Strip was light, sidewalk traffic lighter—schoolgirl hookers from Fairfax High turning a few extra bucks on their lunch hour, bouncers sweeping up in front of the massage parlors and outcall offices. Rice turned off Sunset at Gardner and parked. The lavender four-flat that housed Silver Foxes looked bland in the daylight, like just another Hollywood Spanish style. He walked over and rang the bell beneath the sexy fox emblem.

A young man in white dungarees and a Michael Jackson '84 Tour tank top opened the door and blocked the entranceway in a hands-on-hips pose. Rice sized up his muscles and figured him for a bodybuilder who couldn't lick a chicken; strictly adornment and a little jazz for the fag trade. “May I help you?” he asked.

Rice said, “Some friends in the Industry said this was the place to go for female companionship. I'm in town for a week or so, and I haven't got a lot of time to hit the party circuit. Indently paying for it isn't my style, but you were
very
highly recommended.” He sighed, pleased with his performance—not a trace of Hawaiian Gardens and Soledad in his speech.

The youth flexed his biceps and imitated Rice's sigh. It came out a pout. “Everybody pays for it somehow, this is the herpes generation. Who were these people who recommended us?”

Rice pointed to the office he could glimpse past the youth's broad shoulders. “Jeffrey Jason Rifkin, the agent, and some buddies of his. I can't remember their names. Can we go inside?”

Nodding, the youth stepped aside just enough to let Rice squeeze through the door sideways. Their arms brushed, and Rice felt his stomach turn over when the kid let out a little grunt of pleasure.

The room was all white, furnished in Danish modern/High Tech—white walls and carpeting, metal tubular desk, bent-wood chairs with white fabric backing. Scenes from rock videos were hung on the walls: Elvis Costello in fifties garb superimposed against an A-bomb mushroom cloud; Bruce Springsteen hopping a freight train; Diana Ross drenched to the bone at her Central Park concert. Rice sat down without being asked and watched the kid flip through a white Rolodex on the desk, moving his lips as he read. Thinking of him coupled obscenely with Bobby Garcia kept his revulsion down and gave him an edge of frost.

With a sighing pout, the kid looked up and said, “Yes, we've done business with Mr. Rifkin. In fact, we've sent over lots of foxes for his theme parties.”

“Theme parties?” It was a reflex blurt, and Rice knew immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.

The youth hooded his eyes. “Yes, theme parties. Many of our foxes are aspiring actresses, and they enjoy theme parties because they get to act out more than they would on a straight assignment. You know, playing slave queens or topless cowgirls, that kind of thing. What do you do in the Industry?”

Rice said, “I'm a talent scout,” and knew from the young man's puzzled expression that it was an outdated term. “I've been out of the Industry for a while,” he added, “and Jeffrey Jason is helping me get rolling again. It's a tough racket to get back into.”

“Yes,” the young man said, “it is. What kind of fox were you looking for?”

Rice stretched his legs and smoothed his shirt front, then said, “Listen, I'm very choosy about my women. If I describe exactly what I want, can you check out your files or whatever and take it from there?”

The young man said, “We can do better than that. We've got
au naturel
photographs of all our foxes.” He dug into the top desk drawer, and pulled out a white plastic binder and handed it to Rice. “Take your time, sweetie; it's a fox hunter's candy store, and nobody's rushing you.”

Rice opened the binder, feeling a crazo sensation of being ripped upward from the crotch. The first page was a spiel about rare breeds of foxes and fulfillment of fantasies, scripted on lavender paper; on the second page the women began. Posed nude in identical reclining postures, they were all outright beautiful or outright gutter sensual, superbly built in the skinny model and curvy wench modes. White, black, Oriental, and
latina
, they all fire-breathed
sex.

Rice turned the pages slowly, noticing blank spots where other photos had once been pasted; he read the hype printed below each girl's first name and physical stats. “Aspiring actress” and “aspiring singer” were the usual subheadings, and next to them were lurid sex fantasies, supposedly written by the “foxes” themselves. The ridiculous accounts of three ways and four ways made him want to retch, and he flipped through to the end of the binder, looking only for the body he knew by heart. Not finding it, he glanced up at the young man and said, “Is this all your women?”

The youth nodded and flexed his biceps. “You're really hard to please. Those foxes are the
crème de la crème.
”

Rice thought about mentioning former “foxes,” then got an idea. “Listen, do you know most of the girls who work out of here?”

“Some. I've only been dispatching for a little over a week. Why?”

Rice said, “I was looking for a chick I saw walk out of here the last time I was in L.A. About five-six, one hundred ten, blond, skinny, classy features. Preppy clothes. Ring a bell?”

The young man shook his head. “No … I'm new on the job, and besides, the owners wouldn't let the foxes dress preppy—no sex appeal.”

Another idea clicked into Rice's head. “Too bad. Listen, since I didn't see that particular girl, I'd like you to give me a recommendation. Brains turn me on. I want a smart chick—one I can talk to.”