"Well, she should be too. I'm seriously thinking now," Dawn said, "if she sees you the same way I did, my dream come true, asking two hundred grand wouldn't be outrageous. I think you'll like her, if you can get her to show some life. You'll love the house, it's in Beverly Hills."
"We split the two hundred?"
"I think anything over fifty, we'll have to give Cundo a cut." She said after a moment, "Unless we don't tell him. You'll need to dress up a little, and you have to be serious, very conservative, if you want to pass for an actual ghost hunter. Okay? And don't forget the smudge pot. We'll visit Danialle this evening."
A few minutes before noon Dawn set out on her exercise schedule, walking and running four days a week: walking till she saw a jogger approaching and she'd start running, lengthen her strides and nod as they passed, The Pretenders blasting in her headphones, Dawn wailing along with "Back on the Chain Gang."
Today she followed Ocean Front Walk up to Breeze, turned from the ocean and followed streets inland till she came to Broadway, and Tico's aunt's yellow frame bungalow at the north end of Oakwood Park: about two miles and a quarter she could do in thirty minutes, arrive sweaty for Tico.
He'd told Dawn his ah'nty's house, worth less than a hundred thousand anywhere else in America, would sell now for three-quarters of a mil in Venice, at least, his aunt smoking eighteen dollars' worth of cigarettes a day, six bills a pack. One day he stole two cases of Newports out of a truck and gave them to Tilly, Tico hoping before she'd inhaled the last one she'd be dead. He'd sell the house and get the fuck out of Venice for good.
The door opened. Dawn said, "Tilly's out?"
"For two hours. I gave her fifty dollars and pointed her to the bus stop, get her to Hollywood Park." Tico said to Dawn, "Lady, who you want me to be for today, Mr. Jigaboo or La Cucaracha, what Lou Adams calls Latinos. I'm already into being a jig for my ah'nty," Tico grinning at Dawn. "You nice and slippery-looking the way you sweaty, but you smell fine."
Dawn took off her warm-up top. Tico handed her a bath towel and watched her naked from the waist up drying herself, Tico saying, "You ain't drying the rest? Gonna leave the nether region gamey?"
Dawn said, "I'd like a tall glass of ice water."
By the time he was back from the kitchen with it, Dawn's running pants were on the floor and she was drying her lower half. She drank the glass of water and said, "One more, please."
She sipped this one sitting down, Tico watching her, admiring her pure white skin he was waiting to get at. He said, "We got a hour and twenty minutes left on the clock, time slipping away on us."
Dawn said, "You know what you haven't told me about, the times you were arrested for homicide."
"Three out of four," Tico said. "I told you about the one I was convicted on. The other two were like that. You join a gang, you got to pop somebody to show who you are. There was a war and I shot another dude."
"Black or Hispanic?"
"Latin. I was riding with the colored folks at the time. We all got hauled in but nothing came of it and they let us go."
"What was the one you got away with?"
"I musta told you. Was the dude work at Saks Fifth Avenue, wouldn't sell me a suit I wanted. Was a dark gray pinstripe I coveted, age sixteen years old, I had to have it."
"Why wouldn't he sell it to you?"
"I'm a skinny nigga kid. How could I have enough money? The suit went for six bills."
"Really."
"I went home and come back with a piece, drove all the way to Beverly Hills, the Saks on Wilshire. I say to the dude, 'You gonna let me have the suit?' No, he's about to call security on me I don't leave. I say to him, 'See, what I got?' Show him the Walther PPK three-eighty, beautiful piece."
Dawn said, "Oh," sounding surprised. "The same gun you gave me to hold?"
"How many you think I got? I told the Saks dude to put the suit in a hanger bag. He got one and now I'm twisting a suppressor on the barrel. Cost me six hundred with the piece, as much as the suit. The dude is all eyes watching me fix the silencer on this cool pistol. The dude say, 'Don't you want the tailor to fit the suit on you?' I say, 'No, thank you, I have my ah'nt fit it to my size.' I shot the Saks dude in the head and walked out."
"No one saw you?"
"Wasn't nobody there but me and him." "You were lucky," Dawn said.
"You don't think I was cool, I'm sixteen fucking years of age?"
Dawn came out of the chair raising her arms to slip them around Tico Sandoval's neck, telling him he was the coolest dude she'd ever known in her entire life.
"Cooler than the bank robber?"
Dawn said, "What bank robber?"
SEVENTEEN
WHAT DOES A CERTIFIED ADVANCED PARANORMAL INVESTIgator say to a woman who's had a hex put on her and is visited by ghosts? Once Dawn introduced him Foley said to Mrs. Karmanos:
"You remember Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein? He's admiring the door to the castle and says, 'Look at those knockers!' And Teri Garr says, 'Thank you, Doctor.'»
Danialle seemed to smile, though he wasn't sure. She looked stoned, or hungover. "You have the same kind of knocker," Foley said, "on your front door, that ring of metal."
Dawn had said on their way here-in the new Saab Cundo had leased for her-Danny Karmanos wasn't on drugs or drinking to excess, she simply acted drained, devoid of hope. Though she'd become quite disturbed, Dawn said, when asked about ghosts manifesting themselves-especially her husband's spirit, and what Danny said Peter was telling her to do.
They stood in the front hall, Danialle wearing a black cashmere sweater, loose on her, and jeans, her feet in silver low-heeled shoes with laces, her blond-streaked hair not combed or brushed today, or perhaps lately, layers of rich-girl hair that a former movie star would wear whatever way she wanted. She might be depressed, but still looked good to Foley. She brought them into the living room, where lamps turned low showed comfortable pieces in tans and reds, more colors in the pillows scattered over the chairs and sofa.
Following Danialle, Foley said, "Remember Marty Feldman in the movie, with the bulging eyes? They come off the train and he tells them, 'Walk this way,' and Gene and Teri Garr try to walk the way Marty does, like they have curvature of the spine and drag one of their feet."
Dawn gave him a look that said, What are you doing?
Danialle turned to him with a smile he was sure of this time, beginning to show signs of coming alive.
He said, "Mrs. Karmanos, tell me, are you afraid?"
"Of course I am."
"Of what?"
She didn't answer but looked at Dawn.
"It's Peter's spirit," Dawn said, "who's disturbing Danny. I can't help but feel sorry for him"-Dawn turning to Danialle now- "once I understand what he's going through. You were the love of his life, he doesn't want you falling for someone else. But, his behavior is unacceptable." She said to Foley, "I hope you'll have a talk with him."
"Once we locate him." He said, "Dawn, why don't you look around, see what the signs are and I'll come and make him come out. But first I want to talk to Mrs. Karmanos."
"Doctor, I have all the information we need."
"Very telling. But I have to look at this from my vantage, if you want my opinion. I'll talk to Mrs. Karmanos while you check on the signs. I'm already thinking the house is probably in need of a good spiritual cleansing. Afterwhile I'll get the smudge pot out of the car. Unless you'll have time to get it. Dawn, I'm hoping Mrs. Karmanos can tell me whether or not we're looking at hypnogogia here, and I want to be absolutely sure about it."