He took his cell from the charger and clicked it on to call Bernie Graham. Maybe the man was leaving Los Angeles too, just like Ethel. Malcolm needed someone to tell him what to do. Maybe Bernie Graham would take him along, and they could set up the business in some other city. Then he remembered the office. She said he might be there. Malcolm was more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. The fear was exploding into outright panic.
Dana Vaughn, who was riding shotgun with her cell phone pressed to her ear, closed the cell and said to Hollywood Nate, “Flo Johnson said they got a ping!”
“Where is he?” Nate asked.
“She doesn’t know exactly. She’s being given quadrants. Santa Monica Boulevard between Wilcox and Cahuenga.”
“Better get on tac and tell Flotsam and Jetsam and Sheila and Aaron.”
“How about Mindy and R.T. Dibney?”
“Okay,” Nate said, “but we may have to taze R.T. to keep him from shooting the guy on sight.”
By the time Malcolm reached the duplex in east Hollywood, the moon was large and full and high enough to make the street glow, the way he’d seen the boulevard glow in reflected glare from the huge spotlights during red carpet events. There was a van parked in front and no parking for half a block north, where he managed to find a space. He wondered if any of Bernie Graham’s runners were there. He needed to speak to the man alone. He was feeling light-headed and giddy, like when he smoked pot. His thoughts were fragmented, and he kept seeing her doing her dog paddle, trying to swim away while the blood splashed onto the floor.
He dialed the Bernie Graham number.
Dewey Gleason felt a sliver of hope when the cell rang. He didn’t even look at the caller ID. It had to be Hatch, the man with the money!
“Bernie Graham,” Dewey said anxiously.
“Mr. Graham, it’s Clark,” he heard the voice say.
“Oh, shit,” Dewey said. “I can’t talk to you now. Call tomorrow.”
“You have to talk to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I’m outside the office in my car.”
“Get outta here, Clark!” Dewey said. “I’m busy. Call tomorrow.”
“You’ll wanna talk to me,” Malcolm said. “It’s about Ethel. I was with her.”
Dewey was silent for a moment and then said, “Okay, come in.”
“Are you alone?” Malcolm asked.
“No, but we’ll talk privately. Come in.”
Malcolm closed his cell and put it in the glove compartment with the box cutter. He thought about it for an instant, then put the box cutter in the pocket of his jeans. He felt calmer just having it there. The box knife made him feel… large. When he stepped from the car, a dagger of moonlight stabbed at his eyes. He looked away from the glowing white ball in the black-velvety sky over Hollywood.
“Who the fuck was that?” Jerzy Szarpowicz asked.
“A runner,” Dewey said. “He’s outside.”
“You told him to come in?” Tristan said. “I can’t believe it.”
“You’ll wanna hear what he has to say,” Dewey said. “It’s something about my wife.”
That silenced them. All three were waiting when Malcolm tapped on the door. Dewey opened it, and Malcolm stepped inside, out of the bright moonlight. He looked at the boxes and crates stacked wall-to-wall.
“Hello, Mr. Graham,” he said with a shy smile. “I knew you were still in business.”
“Whadda you know about his wife?” Jerzy said to Malcolm.
Malcolm looked warily at the ferocious man and back at Dewey. “This is real confidential, Mr. Graham,” he said.
“Okay, let’s go in the other room,” Dewey said.
Dewey led Malcolm around the maze of stolen merchandise to the single bedroom at the rear of the apartment.
Dewey turned on the ceiling light, and before he closed the door he heard Jerzy say, “I ain’t happy about this.”
He heard Tristan reply, “I ain’t happy about nothin’ right now.”
After the door was closed, Dewey said to Malcolm, “What about Ethel?”
“She lied to me, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “She told me your business was all through, and she wanted to pay me to drive her and all her stuff to the airport. But I didn’t do it.”
Flabbergasted, Dewey said, “She called you?”
Nodding, Malcolm said, “She said she was the boss and you were… nothing. She was in a hurry to leave and go to New York. I bet she stole some of your money.”
“All of this happened at our apartment?” Dewey said.
“Yeah,” Malcolm said. “I came straight here afterwards. I’m glad to see everything’s okay. I can help you sell the stuff in there and then we can leave L.A. and start making real money like you said. You can find another secretary better than Ethel.”
This boy! Dewey could only gape at him, at his earnest and intense gaze, the dark, liquid eyes somehow different tonight, with a kind of… glint in them. “Did she say anything else, Clark? Anything about… about how she spent the night after the three of us had dinner?”
“No,” Malcolm said.
“How did she look? The same as at dinner?”
Malcolm thought and said, “She had a lot more makeup on.”
“Okay,” Dewey said. “So you left her and came here?”
“That’s right,” Malcolm said.
“That’s fine, Clark,” Dewey said. “But you can run along now. I’ll call you on Monday and we’ll get some jobs going. Okay?”
“I can’t wait, Mr. Graham,” Malcolm said. “I want you to leave L.A. with me and teach me the business. We’ll be a good team.”
“I couldn’t leave L.A. even if I wanted to,” Dewey said. “I’m short on cash right now.”
“You have to,” Malcolm said.
Dewey was losing patience. He said, “Why do I have to?”
“Because you’ll be in trouble when they find Ethel in your apartment.”
“Whadda you mean, ‘find her?’ ”
“Find her dead.”
Neither spoke until Dewey said, “What the hell’re you talking about, boy?”
“She made me kill her,” Malcolm said. “I had no choice.”
Dewey could only shake his head in exasperation. He could see from the beginning that the kid was a bit strange and creepy, but he should’ve realized sooner that the boy was a real mental case. He opened the bedroom door and said, “Then she won’t be needing the apartment anymore, will she? Maybe I’ll just move back in until the rent runs out.”
“Don’t go out there yet,” Malcolm said. “You think I’m making this up, but I’m not. I cut her throat. She bled all over the place. She’s dead, Mr. Graham. You and me, we gotta make plans.”
“This is ridiculous,” Dewey said, but he felt an ominous shiver in the sweltering room on this warm summer night. He shook it off. “Ridiculous,” he repeated.
Dewey walked out to the room where Jerzy and Tristan waited. He said to Jerzy, “Clark’s leaving. He needs to go home and rest. I think maybe he’s having some kind of… episode.”
Less than a block away, no fewer than three unmarked cars were double-parked, including one containing D2 Flo Johnson. Behind the most recent arrival were 6-X-32, Flotsam and Jetsam, and 6-X-76, Dana Vaughn and Hollywood Nate. Two detectives were on the front porch of a residence adjacent to the red Mustang with the pinging cell phone in the glove box. Three detectives were covering the rear of the house, and the bluesuits were backing the detectives in front.
A very old immigrant from the Dominican Republic who did not speak English and was thoroughly confused opened the door. Flo Johnson spoke to him in Spanish for a few minutes and then said to the others, “This isn’t where he is. Do you wanna set up on the Mustang or start knocking on doors?”