Part 9 (1/2)
Fontaine was locked away behind a ma.s.sive oak door, and soon after that a couple of well-dressed white men came to the house, paid Fontaine's business manager a great deal of money, and took Solange with them to the west. Her new owner was an elderly Mafia capo who wanted her around for good luck; he'd heard of what she'd been doing for Fontaine and knew that Fontaine's business had shown an eighty-percent increase while she'd been with him. He never touched her either, but a couple of his hired men did come to her room one night. They said if she ever dared to tell what they did, they'd cut her throat.
That went on for a long time, until Solange fas.h.i.+oned corn husk dolls of them and set them on fire. They died when their Lincoln Continental slammed into the rear of Sunoco gas truck on the San Diego Freeway.
And so it went on, year after year, a succession of powerful and greedy men. Another Mafia lieutenant, then a motion picture studio head, then a director, then a record company executive who was robbing his partners blind. She was with him when she met Wes, who was doing a show in Vegas. It wasn't much money, but at least it would take him through the bad period after his second series had been canceled. He was looking for private action, too, so he'd gotten himself invited to this poker game at the Las Vegas Hilton with a group of big money players. Solange's record exec among them. During the long, grueling game Solange had sat behind the man; Wes remembered she had had a bruise on her cheek. Anyway, the guy's luck had started turning bad and went downhill; after he'd lost the first thirty thousand or so, he'd taken Solange into a back room and whaled the s.h.i.+t out of her, then brought her in again and shoved her back in her chair. Her eyes were swollen and red; the record exec was really starting to sweat. After another three hours the game had pared down to just the two of them: there was a stack of red chips infront of Wes and a look of animal fear on the record exec's face. But he'd wanted to play on, and so it continued until he had no more chips, nor money, nor keys to his robin's-egg-blue Cadillac. Wes was willing to leave it there.
”SIT DOWN!” the man had screamed. ”I TELL YOU WHEN TO LEAVE!”
”You're through, Morry,” one of the onlookers said wearily. ”Give it up.”
”SHUT UP! Deal the cards . . . COME ON!”
”You're cleaned out,” Wes said. ”The game's over.”
”No, it's not!” He'd turned and gripped Solange's arm with a crus.h.i.+ng hand.
”I'm putting her up as security!”
”What! Forget it!”
”You think I'm kidding, Richer? Listen, punk, this b.i.t.c.h is worth her f.u.c.king weight in gold! She can suck your c.o.c.k right out of the roots; she'll f.u.c.k your eyeb.a.l.l.s out with tricks you never even heard of!”
”Now listen, I don't think . . .”
”Come on, you lousy little punk! What do you have to lose? You're floating in my cas.h.!.+”
It was the second use of that word that got to Wes. He paused for a moment and looked at the beautiful battered woman behind him. He wondered how many times she'd had to endure this man. Then he said, ”I'll accept her as security on five hundred dollars.” Solange had responded with a slight nod. And ten minutes later it was all over as Wes sat facing a beautiful royal flush.
The record exec had jumped to his feet and grabbed Solange's face, squeezing her jaw so hard she whimpered. ”Back off, you sonofab.i.t.c.h!” Wes had said quietly.
”You're marking up my merchandise.”
Then the guy had really turned ugly, making all kinds of threats about how Wes would never have a series again because he had connections with all three networks, and as for recording, forget it! Someone gave the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d a drink and ushered him out of the room. For a long time Wes sat looking at Solange across the poker table, not knowing what the h.e.l.l to say or do. She broke the silence: ”I think he chipped my tooth.”
”You want to find a dentist?”
”No. It's all right. I've seen you on television before. You're the comedian,” she went on. ”I remember now, I saw your face on the cover of TV Stars.” He nodded. ”Yeah, I made that cover and a lot more. There was an article on me in Rolling Stone, too. I've got a couple of comedy alb.u.ms out.” He stopped, feeling foolish for tooting his horn in front of a woman whose right eye was swollen and blue and whose left one was an odd shade of yellow. Still she was beautiful: it was an exotic, cool beauty that had made Wes's pulse gallop ever since she'd walked in.
”You're working here now?”
”That's right. But my agent's hot on a deal for a new series next season, and I may do a bit in the next Mel Brooks flick.” He cleared his throat nervously.
”How long have you been ... his mistress?”
”Almost a year. He's a very unkind man.”
”Yeah, well, I guess I cleaned him out, didn't I?” He stared at the wad of bills and the big-money lOUs that sat in front of him. ”Christ. There's a lot of dough here.”
”It's late,” Solange said. ”Why don't we go to your room now?”
”Huh? Oh. Listen, you don't have to . . .”
”Yes I do. You own me now.”
”Own you? Abe Lincoln freed the slaves in case you . . .”
”I've always belonged to someone,” she said, and Wes thought he heard fear in her voice. ”I made his luck go bad. I can make yours good.”
”Huh? What do you mean?”
She stood up and reached out her hand for him. He took it. ”Your room,” she said.
That had been almost a year ago. Wes put the orange juice back into the refrigerator. He knew he should be getting dressed because Jimmy might be coming over this afternoon to talk over some figures on that Mel Brooks movie, a spoof on trendy department stores called Quattlebaum's. When he walked into the living room, Wes paused over the Ouija board for a moment, wondering how he could get away with throwing the thing in the garbage. He didn't believe in those spirit tales that Solange liked to tell, but one thing had bothered him ever since he'd brought her back to Hollywood with him. Less than a week after he'd made the down payment on this house, he'd seen Solange at the pool in the middle of the night, slowly twisting the arms and legs of a GI Joe doll. Then she'd dropped it into the water and held it under for several minutes. Two days later her old record exec was found drowned in his own kidney-shaped pool. Variety ran a short squib on his death; the doctor who'd examined the body said the guy's muscles were all cramped up into knots. I'll throw you out later, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, Wes mentally told the Ouija board, and then he went back to his bedroom to put on some clothes.
FIVE.
Palatazin was in the den, watching the Steelers crawl all-over the 49ers at two o'clock when the telephone rang. Jo got up to answer it. ”Come on, get him!” Palatazin said to the television screen as Terry Bradshaw evaded not one but two stumbling linesmen and c.o.c.ked his arm back like a piston to pa.s.s.
”Don't let that guy score again! Oh, for . . .!” He slapped his thigh as the pa.s.s was completed for thirty-four yards.
”. . . Yes, I'll get him,” Jo said from the kitchen. ”Andy?”
”Okay.” He hauled himself out of his La-Z-Boy and took the receiver from Jo.
”Yes?”
”Lieutenant Reece, captain. We've got somebody in here who's seen the guy on that artist's composite.”
”I need more than that. Maybe he just liked hookers.”
”I've got more. The young lady in here says he told her he was going to take her to a motel but stopped instead in a vacant lot on Yucca Street. She got scared and took off, but he chased her in his car. The car was a grayish Volks, and she remembers part of the license plate.”
”Keep her there. I'll be down in fifteen minutes.” He felt Jo's disapproving stare as he replaced the receiver. ”I have to go,” he told her as he started for the front door.
”I heard. Will you at least be home for supper?”
”I don't know.” He shrugged on his coat and kissed her cheek. ”I'll call.”
”You won't be home,” she said. ”And you won't call.” But by then he was already out the door and gone.
SIX.
As Palatazin was hanging up his telephone, Rico Esteban was climbing a long series of stairs in an East L.A. tenement, where sunlight took on a muddy pallor as it streamed hotly along the hallways through dirty windows. The steps creaked underfoot, and in some places there was no railing; Rico could look down four floors to the cracked yellow tiles in the entrance hall. Garbage had spilled from cans on the stairway landings, a sheen of smelly liquids making the stairs as slick as if they were carved from ice. Rico still wore the same clothes he'd been dressed in the night before, only now the back of his s.h.i.+rt was damp with sweat. His eyes, now somewhat sunken due to lack of sleep, were veined with red.
Around him the building swelled with clas.h.i.+ng noise-a toilet chugging as water strangled a clogged pipe; a man and a woman both shouting in Spanish, trying to outcurse each other; a baby howling to be fed and a mother's desperate ”Quiete!”; someone coughing violently, the cough finally falling to a rattle of phlegm; transistor radios and televisions battling for dominance with the thump-thump of disco, a Spanish news broadcast, or the gunshots from a cowboy or detective movie.