5
Belinda Nichols was getting tired of bars.
She’d been working her way down Sunset, focusing on the dives, the tiki joints, the art bars with films projected on the wall and board games in a corner. Left on Silver Lake, the neighborhood Hispanics, homosexuals, and hipsters, a great combination for nightlife. But her head was pounding and she could smell a stale funk on herself—sleeping in the back of the van wasn’t doing much for her hygiene—and the gun tucked in the back of her waist was driving her crazy, digging in when she leaned back, feeling loose enough to slip when she didn’t. And through it all, the two thoughts spinning and colliding, dusting themselves off, and then spinning up again.
You’re going to point a pistol at a living, breathing person and pull the trigger.
And Where is Daniel Hayes?
It was only seven and a Monday night, so she found a place to park easily enough. As she walked past the side of the van, she stroked the four-foot wound in the side, felt the paint flake against her fingers.
You’re no longer Belinda Nichols. You’re Niki Boivin. You find people. You wanted to be a private-eye-slash-nurse who knew kung fu, like something out of a seventies action show, but really you work for lawyers and creditors. Most of the time that means you sit behind a computer and dial the phone, but sometimes you have to do it old school, and those are the nights you like best. The happiest moment of your day is jogging through morning mists with your dog, a mutt whose pit bull/dachshund heritage just had to include rape.
She’d been Niki Boivin most of the day, and slipped her on like old jeans.
A squat gray bunker abutting an auto repair shop and marked with only a small marquee, Spaceland looked like a roadhouse on some sad stretch of Southern highway instead of one of L.A.’s best music venues. Niki stepped in, blinking. The silver-blue curtain that framed the stage was bathed in light, but the band hadn’t started. She pushed over to the bar, ordered a beer she didn’t want from a pretty emo girl, all dyed hair and sadness. When it arrived, she pulled out a twenty, told the girl to keep the change.
Niki leaned back with her elbows on the bar. The place wasn’t crowded yet, maybe fifty people milling about. Friends of the band, probably. Monday was for up-and-coming acts hoping to share the success of others who had strut the same stage. As she watched, a skinny kid with nerd glasses walked on, picked up a bass, and began tuning it, the notes ringing low and slow.
Daniel Hayes wasn’t here.
She sighed, took a swig of beer. The headache was getting worse; the bassist might as well as have been strumming her raw optic nerves. When the bartendress came back, Niki gave her a finger wag.
“Whatcha need?”
“Actually, I’m looking for someone.”
“Somebody who works here?”
“No.” She pulled the photo of Hayes from her pocket, the print a little crinkled. “This guy.”
“Whoa, this is so film noir.” The bartendress leaned in to stare at the photo. She was wearing citrus perfume, clean-smelling and nicer than Niki expected. “Wait, wait. I know my line.” She straightened, tipped her head, hardened her eyes. “You a cop?”
Niki laughed. The girl wasn’t bad. “Nope.”
“Bounty hunter?”
If she wants to play, let’s play. “Something like that.”
“What do you want him for?”
“What’s it to you?”
“What are you going to do to him if you find him?”
“Well . . .” Niki stuck her pause. “I’ll probably shoot him in the head.”
The bass player ran through a quick little riff, a handful of notes cut off in the middle as he stopped to tighten the strings.
“I don’t want no trouble.”
“You don’t want trouble, you better tell me what I’m after.”
The emo girl smiled, said, “This is fun, but I got customers.”
“So—”
“Sure I’ve seen him. On the news. That’s the guy killed his wife.”
“But in here?”
“I think he’s been in before. But I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“All right. Thanks.” Niki folded the picture, took another sip of beer, then started away.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“You forgot. You’re supposed to pull out a business card, and say,” she dropped her voice an octave, “ ‘If you remember anything, anything at all, you give me a call.’ ”
Niki paused. The gun bit into her back. She stared at the girl. Read her whole life. Born in the Midwest, Michigan or Ohio. Acting classes twice a week. A spec script she’d had “almost finished” for two, three years. Been an extra on a handful of films, landed a role on a sitcom that died in development. Probably blown a rock star or two in the stockroom; had offers to do porn, but so far turned them down. Twenty-four years old. But L.A. years were dog years, and she didn’t have many left.
“I told you,” she said, and turned away. “I’m not a cop.”
5
It was time to get more botulism pumped into his face.
Jerry D’Agostino squinted in the mirror, swiveling his head to the left and right. Crow’s feet. No question. And were those lines on his forehead? Lines? Jesus Christ, cats and dogs living together. He’d have to schedule another Botox session. After Tuesday’s shoot, maybe, as a little reward.
He opened the medicine cabinet, took out the face cream—fifty bucks an ounce, you ought to be able to chop it up and snort it— and squeezed a pea-sized dollop on each index finger. Patted it in, careful not to rub.
He walked down the stairs, past the framed posters of The Last Taboo and A is for . . . and Mommy’s Nasty Secret. In the kitchen he pulled out a bag of carrots and began peeling them with long steady strokes, neat strips falling to the sink. When he was done, he chopped them and tossed the pieces in the juicer. A thick trickle of orange liquid filled a pint glass. He mixed in fish oil, green tea extract, a packet of vitamins, stirred the brackish liquid, and took a sip.
Uugh.
He coughed, took another slug, then tightened the belt of his robe and walked through the house to his office. Stood at the window watching the San Fernando Valley flicker like ten thousand candles. The 405 was a glowing ribbon. Planes coming in to Burbank rose and fell like sparks. Up in the hills, though, the bright spots were fewer, jewels in the night. In dazzling, cramped Los Angeles, darkness was a luxury.
Can it really have been thirty years?
He’d come here after Watts but before Rodney King, the big bad eighties, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was dropping one-liners in action movies instead of speeches on the news, and Simi Valley was one of those jokes that wrote itself. Back then, he’d thought he was going to change the town, make it his. Thing about L.A., though, even though nothing stayed the same, it never really changed. But no matter how fortunes rolled and shifted, there were no slums in the Hills. If he hadn’t changed the world, at least he’d improved his address.