Total Immunity (19 page)

All over, in a second . . .

They crept down the hall, past a weird-looking picture of a clown on the wall, a clown that looked like it was made from one of those velvet materials which Kevin always associated with horror movies.

Killer clowns, he thought.

Flyboy was just ahead of him, walking into the master bedroom. Kevin was looking at his back . . . and then he heard a gasp.

“What?” Kevin said.

Flyboy moved out of the way so that Kevin could see what was in front of him.

What it was, was a man. A big man with cold white hair and what looked like an old .38 revolver in his hand.

“Hey,” the man said. “Look what we got here, thieves. Or possibly killers. Were you two going to kill me in my sleep?”

“I thought you worked on Thursday,” Flyboy said.

“Used to,” White said. “But I got laid off for knocking down on the cash register. So here I am asleep in my own house, and trash such as you see fit to rob and maybe maim me.”

“Hey, no, Johnny,” Flyboy said. “It's not like that. We were just screwing around. I rang the doorbell and nobody answered, so I seen the window was up, and we just did it.”

“An impulsive act of friendship?” Johnny said. “Should we chalk it up to that?”

“Yeah,” Flyboy said. “Like that.”

“An impulsive act,” Kevin said.

“Fuck you!” Johnny White said. “I'm going to kill both of you little fags and plaster your bodies up in the wall I'm putting in for the owners downstairs in the basement. Now get over here.”

Terrified and shaking, Flyboy shuffled around the side of the bed.

“Before I kill you both, though, I'm going to make sure you butt-fuck each other and lick me off ,” Johnny White said. “Isn't that nice of me? I see it as honoring your last request. I'm generous of spirit that way.”

That was all Kevin needed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the screwdriver, and hurled it across the room at White. The tool struck White in the cheek, leaving a hole, out of which blood surged.

White looked at the screwdriver, then leaped up from the bed, howling like a wounded animal.

Kevin turned and ran down the steps, raced to the front door, and realized it was still locked.

He ran to the still-open window and dove through to the porch.

In seconds he was down on the street, racing for Venice Boulevard. He turned and saw the crazed, screaming Johnny White behind him.

“You cocksucker! I'm gonna fuck you to death now. You don't deserve a bullet!”

Kevin pumped his legs in a sheer fear-based adrenaline rush, but as he turned to look again, he could see that it wasn't enough. The madman was gaining on him with every step.

He turned up a street he didn't know and looked to see if there was a place to hide, but the block was short, with only an empty lot and a torn-down old home.

No good place to get out of sight. He felt bile come up in his throat. He was through.

He heard the lunatic's heavy footsteps racing toward him, and he felt a strange sensation of deflation. Not only a mental deflation, but also a very real sense that he was a balloon and that someone had punctured him, and he was going to soon be this piece of rubber which lay there useless on the ground, with the grotesque remains of a human shape.

And then he heard a voice. A voice he knew.

“Kevin?”

He turned and saw . . . it was impossible, ridiculous, but true . . . he saw Charlie Breen right there looking at him. Charlie, in his comfortable plaid shirt, baggy Levi's, and work boots, dear Charlie staring at him.

“Charlie!” Kevin said. “We've got to get out of here. There's this guy . . . This guy who wants to kill —”

“Where?” Charlie said.

“Right around the corner,” Kevin said.

He took a step and peered around the corner. White was about fifty feet away.

Charlie saw the huge man steaming toward him.

Kevin grimaced and felt terrified both for himself and now for Charlie, whom he'd gotten into this impossible mess.

But then Charlie did something Kevin couldn't believe. He turned his body, bent down, and delivered a perfect cross-body block to the bigger man. The guy went down like a collapsed building and rolled into the gutter.

Charlie got up and dusted himself off . Then he leaned over and whispered something into the huge man's ear.

All the anger and bravado in White's face crumbled, and as he got to his knees, he nodded slowly.

He started to say something else, but Charlie shook his head, then kicked him in the ribs.

The man groaned and fell back into the street. Kevin could barely believe it had happened, and seconds later Charlie was walking him toward his car, with his arm around him. As they left the scene, Kevin peered back one last time and could see Flyboy disappearing into a copse of trees, apparently a back way to the beach.

Charlie smiled down at him. “Everything's fine now, Kev,” he said.

“Yeah. Man, what did you say to him, Charlie?”

“I told him I was with the FBI,” Charlie said. “That my name was Agent Jack Harper, and that if he had a problem with you, we could take it up at headquarters.”

Kevin broke out into a wild laugh.

“You did?”

“I did,” Charlie said. “I also said that if he bothered you anymore, I was going to come back and kill him twice.”

“Oh, man!”

“Now let's go get in the car. You were a very lucky young man today. I just happened to be down the street at the antique store looking for some chairs for the Deckhouse.”

Kevin smiled and suddenly hugged Charlie. He felt a radiant warmth spread through him. Like the love he used to feel for Jack.

“What the hell are you doing wandering around here on a school day?”

“I, ah . . . It's a long story, Charlie.”

Charlie laughed and gave him a little hug.

“Well, I've got all afternoon,” Charlie said. “Since I've become your fairy godfather, I think we should go back to my place, have a burger, and you can tell me all about it.”

“That sounds good, Charlie,” Kevin said.

Once again he felt like bursting into tears. Charlie had saved his life.

Amazing! It was like a minor miracle.

“Thanks, Charlie,” he said. “I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't been there just then. I still can't believe it.”

Charlie looked at him then and grinned.

“Forget it. You're like my own son, buddy. Old Charlie will take care of you. Don't worry about a thing, kid. Now's let get you on home.”

25

THE VALENTINE CLUB was located in a mini-mall between a Korean doughnut shop called US Very Good Doughnuts and a sushi restaurant called the Yellowtail Palace. If you blinked, you'd never notice the Valentine at all. It didn't have a sign, but instead featured a small red valentine on the outside of the wall. The average person might think of the place as an obscure blood bank, which was, in a way, what it was. If you hung out there long enough, you would end up giving your life savings and maybe even your blood to Timmy Andreen, con man, dope dealer, and contract killer.

Jack parked and went in through the heavy black door into a room that was painted red. There were little lamps on the tables like the kind you saw in Warner Bros. movies from the '30s. Jack laughed to himself, remembering watching those movies with his old man, thinking that somehow hanging in speak easies with the little lamps on them would be the height of sophistication. What a joke . . . This place, with its hellish red walls, its cheap black plastic tables, and its little lamps — probably stolen from the loading dock outside Costco — would pass as sophisticated only in the Valley. What it really was was an imitation of a movie set, itself a bad imitation of a '30s speakeasy. Gangsters, it seemed, were as nostalgic and sentimental about the past as clubwomen or the DAR.

The waitresses wore French maids' outfits and had their hair puff ed up in '60s bouffants.

Jack walked over to the bar, a massive oaken structure that didn't go with the rest of the place. Andreen probably picked it up for nothing from a Western movie set. Now Jack remembered that he had been a porno producer for a while back in the '80s and had even made a couple of Westerns, which went straight to video.

Jack talked to the bartender, a blonde with a ponytail, and breasts that looked as hard as cue balls. Her name tag said RAE.

“What can I getcha?”

“Vodka, straight,” Jack said. “Ketel One. And I need to see Timmy Andreen.”

“Timmy might be in the back,” Rae said. “Who do I say you are?”

“Bobby Hopps,” Jack said. The real Bobby Hopps was a kid he'd played lacrosse with who had been killed in Desert Storm, but there was no way they would know that.

“And why would he want to talk to the aforementioned Bobby Hopps?” the blonde said.

“'Cause Mickey Benz told me to look him up.”

Mickey Benz was a con Jack had put in prison for robbing a military armory in Arizona. Looking at a thirty-year bit, he'd decided to play ball. Jack was pretty certain that security had been tight enough that Timmy Andreen didn't know he'd ratted out people in the L.A. dope world. At least he hoped so, because Andreen and Benz had worked together a couple of times. Jack might have scooped up Andreen back then, but they didn't have anything major enough to warrant busting him. Maybe that would work for him now. Andreen would probably think of Benz as a stand-up guy. That was the plan, anyway. And God help Jack if it didn't work.

Rae picked up her cell phone and mumbled something into it, then set it down and gave Jack a wry smile.

“He said you could come in the back. He'll talk to you for five.”

“My gratitude knows no bounds.” Jack dropped five bucks on the bar.

“Yeah, well, you shoulda tipped me a dime instead, cheapskate,” Rae said. But she was smiling when she said it.

Jack walked through another black door. He was getting tired of the red-and-black color scheme. He felt a sudden urge to simply blow the cover, take Andreen out in the back alley, and kick the shit out of him. But that would have been wrong. Very unprofessional. And totally against policy.

The back room had more red walls but there was a big desk sitting in the middle of the room. On a couch on the side sprawled a guy in a pink silk shirt who looked like he was stuff ed with bowling balls. Over his left eye he wore a black leather eye patch. He was dressed in shiny leather pants that were so tight they looked as though they might burst at the seams. His massive head was flat on top, and his eyes were slits and set about two feet apart. His nose was about a yard wide, and his nostrils looked like two caves that were big enough for bats to fly in. His lips were big and meaty, and when he smiled, there was a gap between his teeth that you could have used for a mail slot.

• • •

He grinned at Jack and nodded his head up and down in a rhythmic way to a tune which only he could hear. Jack guessed it might be a moronic nursery rhyme he liked to play while eating human intestines.

The man behind the desk, on the other hand, was small and wizened. Had a head like a bulbous raisin. His face was all wrinkles and angles, and his eyes were hidden in the folds of his leathery skin. His nose was like a pug's, and his mouth was as thin as a staple.

“So,
Mister
Bobby Hopps,” Raisinhead said, standing and waving to Jack with his thumb up, as if he was Roger Ebert endorsing a movie. “You come from an old friend of mine . . .
Mister
Mickey ‘The Quick' Benz. Mister Quick and I go way back to the days when we were hustling pony rides on the parking lot at the new and highly touted Happyland. Thing was, we didn't have an ‘animal license,' and they turned us over to their very own little fascist park police. I assume a world traveler like yourself would know that they house a whole little mafia down there . . . Took us into these stucco buildings . . . and by the way don't you just hate the fucking word ‘stucco' . . . a lot of what's happened with Western civilization — I mean the decline thereof — could be related to the use of the word and substance ‘stucco.' Shoddy shit, stucco. Anyway, they take us into stucco land, and they sweat our asses and threaten to call the state troopers on us, mere striplings. Lads. Eventually they let us go but kept our pony as evidence. I heard tell that the man himself straddled the horse, putting its giant member into his mouth . . .”

The giant on the couch began to laugh at that one. Well, Jack was pretty sure it was laughter. It was something like “A harharhar har . . .” a sound which seemed to be an imitation of a cartoon pirate laugh. The laugh was shortly followed by a gagging cough, and Jack watched as the great flat-headed giant tried to right his shaking muscle groups.

“Well, how can I assist you, Bobby Hopps?” Timmy Andreen said. “Any friend of The Quick's is a friend of mine . . . Et cetera. Et cetera.”

“I don't know, exactly,” Jack said. “I just got out of Soledad and I need a gig. Mick said if I mentioned his name, you'd get all soft in the middle and offer me a truckload of money.”

Andreen raised an eyebrow, and five or six hundred wrinkles rose with it.

“I like your exceptional banter,” he said. “But what is your specialty, Mr. Hopps? Driver, safe expert, perhaps gemologist?”

“I lean more toward the security department.” Jack smiled and looked over at the massive one-eyed hulk on the couch.

“Yes, I see,” Andreen said. “But that's one area where I'm pretty much up to snuff . I mean, Winkie over there has never met a man he couldn't best.”

For the first time, Winkie opened his twisted, flabby lips and spoke. Jack expected a deep, guttural sound befitting a giant idiot, but was surprised to learn that Winkie's voice was high and light, with a kind of Oklahoma twang. Like Mickey Mantle's on ether.