The Killing of Bobbi Lomax (21 page)

He had got there early, walked up and down the Boulevard. Not far, just back and forth a couple of times between LaBrea and Vine. Sanford was right, it was a flea-pit and it wasn’t even dark but the tourists who’d come to stare at the stars’ hand- and footprints were already being replaced by panhandlers, hookers and their pimps. As Clark had waited to cross the road, one guy walked past him and, under his breath but just loud enough to be heard, mumbled, ‘Eight-ball for a ten-spot.’ It had taken a few seconds for it to register and when Clark looked around the guy was still walking, but looking back towards him. Clark shook his head, the guy turned his head back and just kept walking.

Dougie was right though, that section had real potential and Clark was glad he had invested. He would make a great return on the building alone. Not that he wanted to sell. He was in for the long haul. A franchise in every city all over the world.

It had started to rain, so he’d gone into a mom and pop café across the street from where their store was being built. He could see hoardings surrounding their corner of the block and not much else. There was activity behind them. In the falling light, he could see a couple of arc lamps throwing down light onto whoever was working underneath them. He couldn’t see in. Not from outside the site, or from across here. Or get in, it was all locked up. At least it was well protected. Dougie had sent the plans through, and it was certainly a good spot. That and the influx of tourists year-round, there couldn’t be a better spot in all of LA. Dougie had chosen well.

It was dark now. Clark was on his second cup of coffee when he looked up to see two guys right outside the site. Dougie and Sanford. Finally. He got up fast, left a ten-dollar bill, and jaywalked fast out into the street, weaving through the lanes of stationary traffic. When he reached the other side of the road one of the guys was already in a car, lights on, the second guy, taller and burlier than the other one, was just getting in. It wasn’t Dougie and Sanford, just a couple of construction workers. ‘Hey man, I’m waiting for Dougie. He inside?’

The burly guy shook his head, no. Looked to his buddy. The buddy shook his head.

‘I’ll just wait. When’s the build get finished?’

The second guy was in the car now. ‘Probably eight months.’

Dougie had told him three to four months.

‘What’s the delay?’

The man looked at him, what’s it to you. Shrugged. ‘That’s the schedule we have.’ He grimaced at Clark, closed the door, and the car joined the traffic.

Clark almost flipped them the bird.

He went across the street and paged Dougie with the number of the payphone and then waited by the phone. The rain was getting worse. It was six o’clock by the time he realized he must have made a mistake. They were going to meet at Sanford’s place first, then head over to the site later, take a peek inside. It would be better without all the work going on around them. That made more sense. The rush-hour traffic, red and white light trails, was backed up East and West. Great. In this traffic it was going to take an hour’s drive to get to Sanford’s.

He had the
Peter Pan
in the trunk of the rental, that and a few other pieces. He’d spoken to Dougie on the phone. Dougie was pretty cool about it, especially when he explained to him that Lomax had some problem on his site. Soil or something. Dougie said he could probably give him $100K of his money back for the
Peter Pan
and the others. Then, once he had done his ‘big deal’ – he hadn’t told Dougie what it was – he could pay the $100K back into their store investment account so he still had $500K invested. That way he wouldn’t lose out. Clark had said to Lomax he’d have the money for him within a week. Lomax didn’t say it, but it was obvious some of his investors must be leaning on him, trying to shoehorn their money out of him. That meant they had an inkling that things were not going to pan out too good on that development. Maybe that’s why Gudsen had left the firm earlier that summer. Clark was glad he hadn’t invested in that scheme.

Clark couldn’t have Lomax working himself into a frenzy, panicking. He could ruin everything. Lomax was starting to become the meltdown type. A man whose reason could soon desert him. Hadn’t he married that cheerleader, barely out of high school? Want, want, want over reason.

The other day when he’d called to try and get some of his money urgently back off Clark, Lomax had told him he thought his ex-wife might have reported him to the Feds. Clark figured that was probably revenge, but whatever it was he didn’t want the Feds at his door. And if they were at Lomax’s then it would just be a matter of time before they were at his.

Almost an hour later, and a couple of wrong turns, Clark was over the other side of the canyon, outside Sanford’s. He still hadn’t gotten a page back from Dougie, but through the railings and shrubbery he could see lights on downstairs, so someone was home.

The pedestrian gate was closed, although the gate to the drive was wide open, but there were no cars in the drive and none out on the street except for Clark’s. Shit, don’t say they’d headed down to Hollywood just as he was coming here? He knew he should have paged them he was en route. He wasn’t driving back down to Hollywood, not in that traffic – he’d only miss them again. He’d ask the house-boy, Raoul, wasn’t that his name, if he could just wait inside, maybe use the phone and page them again. Besides, Sanford might even have one of those portable phones Raoul could reach him on. Clark would have loved one of those. It would have been so useful when he was standing out in the pouring rain.

Even over this side of the canyon it was raining. Hopefully the sun would be shining tomorrow. What’s the point of LA without sunshine? Clark didn’t want to wait in the car in case the security patrol came past. He wanted to keep as far below the radar as possible. He was a few feet from the house when he noticed light bleeding out onto the path from the slightly open front door. Clark didn’t want to just push it open, so he rang the bell. It sounded like a jackhammer. He listened. No one was coming. He pressed it again. When it had drilled through his head one more time, he heard a strange moaning. Deep moaning, coming from somewhere near the door. Clark pushed the door open a tad, peeked around it. Sanford was lying there in full tennis whites, feet towards the door, face down in a pool of blood that ran out from his head onto the white glossy floor.

‘Jesus, Sanford! Sanford?! It’s Cliff. Don’t move. Don’t move.’

Sanford tried to move.

‘Just stay still. You got a towel in here, man? I’m just gonna get a towel . . .’

Clark yanked open the zipper on Sanford’s sports bag, pulled out packs of tennis balls, half-empty bottles of Evian. At the bottom he could see some small tennis towels. He pulled them out and scooted over on the floor towards Sanford’s head.

‘Sanford, you got to stay awake.’

Clark pressed the towels, one after the other, onto Sanford’s skull until they were too soaked with blood to use.

‘You’re gonna need some stitches in that, man. We gotta get you to a hospital.’

‘No hospital.’

‘You need the hospital.’

‘No hospital. Dentist.’

‘Dentist! Sanford, you need to get checked out. You’re not making any sense.’

Sanford was pointing off into the living room. ‘Book.’

‘What book? I need to dial 911.’ Clark was already making his way over to the hall phone. ‘Did you trip, coming in? Hit your head on this?’

Clark looked at the marble hall table. There was no blood on it, no signs of it having moved, or anyone having struck it with their head. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed something sparkle. He looked closer now. There was a short trail out of one of the doors off the corridor. A trail of glass.

He was over at Sanford again now, phone in hand, pulling the cable out as far as it would go, so he could call and sit next to him in case the dispatcher asked him any questions about his condition. ‘Did someone hit you with something, Sanford? A vase? A glass vase?’

Sanford shook his head, splattering blood everywhere. ‘Dentist.’

‘OK. OK. I’ll call them.’ Clark moved to the living room. On a side table, next to another phone, was a large address book. Maybe they were a relative or something. He flicked through to D, Dentist. Eric Davies. It was the top entry.

He went back out to Sanford, who was still clutching the towel to his head, but he was sat up now, cross-legged, like a Buddha in the blood. ‘I’m calling the dentist. And when I do, I’m gonna call 911 right after. See if they’ll send an ambulance, and maybe the cops.’ Clark thought he’d peel away if the cops were coming. Just leave Sanford there. ‘Where’s Raoul?’ Sanford still had blood running down his head and into his mouth. ‘Press harder.’ He pushed Sanford’s hand down harder against his skull. His face was getting paler. Jesus. Clark grabbed the box of tissues from the hall stand and started wiping Sanford’s face clean, see if there were more injuries under all the blood.

‘Raoul, day off. Thursdays. Off.’

‘What the hell happened here, Sanford?’

Sanford was staring off, following the trail of glass.

‘You’re lucky I came back this way. I was waiting for you and Dougie. Now I know why you weren’t there. Where’s Dougie? He’s not at the building site.’

‘Building site?’ Sanford’s body started shaking. First his shoulders, then his torso, so much so he started rocking back and forth. Clark thought he was crying with the shock and then a great laugh, accompanied by yelps of pain, rose up from deep inside Sanford’s Buddha belly.

‘Stay still, buddy. We don’t want to make this worse.’

‘There is
no
building site.’

‘What do you mean? I was just there. I met two of the construction guys. There’s definitely a building site.’

‘Not ours.’

‘Sanford, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you should just keep quiet for a while.’

‘Not ours! They took my money. Took yours.’

‘Took our money? What do you mean? Who took our money?’

‘Dougie.’

‘Dougie?’

‘And Travis!’

‘Sanford, you should really rest.’

‘And they stole
Alice
.’

‘You’re just messed up, Sanford. Talking nonsense.’ Clark didn’t want him to talk any more, didn’t want to hear.

Clark’s gaze followed Sanford’s towards the door off the corridor. Broken glass crunched underfoot. Oh no.

Sanford pointed to his head, ‘Who do you think did this?’

Clark was getting a real sick feeling at the pit of his stomach. ‘Dougie and TJ? How do they even know one another enough to do something like this?’

‘Juvie.’

‘Juvie? Dougie and Travis?!’

‘Thirty years ago. Ow.’ Sanford pushed the towel into his head.

‘Thirty years? Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘I thought they’d gone straight.’

‘Jesus, Sanford. What the fuck were you thinking? Obviously, they’re pretty fucking far from straight!’

‘They’ve got
Alice
.’

‘Fuck
Alice
, Sanford! Just fuck
Alice
! They’ve got
my
money.
All
my money.’ Clark took a breath. Now his head was hurting. ‘Really, Sanford? Really?
All
of it?’

Sanford nodded, wincing. ‘All of it.’

‘You don’t have any? Nothing?’

Sanford shook his head. ‘They got mine too. Cash. A mil.’

‘Jesus. Where do you think they’ve gone?’

Sanford shrugged. ‘They took my cars. Both of them. That’s why they hit me. To get the keys for them and
Alice
.’ He stared at Clark out of glassy eyes, as the blood kept dripping down his head. He grabbed Clark with his other hand, pulled him in close. ‘They stole
Alice
!’ And then he started to sob, deep heartbroken sobs.

Clark sat staring at him, unable to believe what he was hearing. And then he thought back to the auction, TJ showing off his address on the outside of the catalogue, but he was an auction regular who should really have known better. Never kid a kidder. It wasn’t Clark who had conned TJ, it was Clark who had been conned. The way Dougie just appeared like that, from where? Clark had been watching the room. But they had obviously been watching him and Dougie must have been stood behind him in the auction room, or even on the payphone outside running up the price of first Clark’s lot and then TJ’s, the one Clark had bid eighty K on. Eighty K! It was too much of a coincidence that TJ got up and moved away like that at the end of bidding on Clark’s item. So theatrical. ‘Peter Pan, the little boy that never grew up, like all of us.’ Isn’t that what he’d said? The douchebag. Clark had been a fool, a total fucking fool. He had made himself a mark, even dog-earing the catalogue page and wandering around the auction house with it open on that page and gazing at the
Peter Pan
lot in its glass case just a few feet away from his own lot. The way Dougie had drawn him back to Sanford’s. Shown him how the other half live, high on the hog. Showed him
Alice
. That was Dougie’s prompting. It hadn’t been Sanford’s idea at all.

Want. Want. Want. Over reason.

Clark just wanted to scream at Sanford, smash him over the head with something else. How could he not have warned him? The only good thing about the sorry mess was that Sanford Winkleman, for whatever reason, perhaps loyalty to his crook of a brother, or maybe because he’d bought
Alice
with money he didn’t want the IRS to know about, whatever the reason, didn’t seem too keen on involving the authorities. Clark just had to ensure it stayed that way. But he had to get out of there and fast whilst keeping Sanford placated and totally on side. No one back in Abraham City or in the books world could ever hear about this. If they did, Clark was as good as finished. This was bad, but not unsalvageable: he would hear from the Faith in the next forty-eight hours to confirm their purchase of the Letter of Accession, and the collection of accompanying letters. They had agreed a tentative price of $2.2 mil. But if Clark got embroiled in the mess Dougie and TJ had left behind, it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that news would travel back to the Faith and kill that deal dead. The Faith did not embrace scandal.