The Butcher's Granddaughter Page 2

  I played it over in my head, picturing her on the downside of an orgasm, Jay walking in and flicking on the light, she being slow to turn around and realize who was standing in the corner with a face that had all the animation of an egg. I imagined the pleasure draining from her features and being replaced by the pure fear that was evident now in every crease of her face.

  Her hands were white-knuckled around the lip of the sheet that she had failed to completely cover herself with. Her small, tan breasts rested innocently between her arms. I’d never had the pleasure of seeing Li naked, but it was obvious that she and Song were sisters.

  I thought about that and popped a match lit with my fingernail. It sounded like a jet engine starting up.

  Jay was the first to move, but Song was the first to open her mouth. As Jay raised his head, she asked in a voice so locked with fear it creaked, “Who are you?”

  I ignored her at first because, although I didn’t feel like I was in any real danger, I also wasn’t totally sure what Jay would do—and a .45 makes an exit wound a nine-year-old could crawl through. I was standing there holding the lit match without lighting my cigarette, breathing slowly, when Jay went ahead and answered for me.

  “Bird. What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Getting the important things out of the way first, I said, “You gonna use that cannon on me?”

  He shook is head and re-adjusted it between his shoulders. He said “No,” to the floor. I didn’t ask if he was going to use it on anybody else.

  Song chose that moment to assume, wrongly, that my arrival somehow broke the tension or even affected the situation. She suddenly shuffled across the bed to get her shirt. Without looking up, Jay raised the gun, leveled it at Song and cocked the hammer, which cracked like a high-tension wire in the cold silence of the room. She froze, looking at me like I had forgotten to do something important. I deliberately lit my cigarette and inhaled and exhaled reflectively, all without looking at her.

  “This is a little weird, Bird,” Jay said to the floor, “you showing up right now. You can sit down if you want. You been standing there a while.” He waved the cigarette at the foot of the bed.

  Not wanting to have to move around any bullets if Song continued to exercise her I.Q., I said, “I’ll stand, thanks. I’m here because I was asked to be. I’m not going to tell you by who because...well...just because.”

  There was some silence. It’s amazing how long you can linger over simple decisions. For me it was: stay or go? For Ballesteros: kill her or not? For Song: Sit there and wait, or move and die?

  Jay finally asked, “You scared, Bird?”

  “No.” I wasn’t lying.

  “I am, man.”

  That surprised everybody. “What are you scared of?” I asked, studying the end of my cigarette.

  “I’m scared I’m gonna do something really stupid, you know? I mean, I got a problem, and...” His words trailed off to a whisper and he twitched the gun at the bed.

  He was talking about Song like she wasn’t even in the room, which scared her back into the tennis game between his face and the gun. He hadn’t even mentioned Sheff, but hadn’t shot him either, so I figured he was safe.

  “I’ve been sitting here trying to decide whether to kill her or not,” he continued. “But, like, not as if she was a person—like she was a problem. I mean, you know me, man. I got a problem, I get it out of the way.” He grew quiet for a moment, then gazed emptily between his shoes and said, “You think killing her is the best thing?”

  Song’s facial expression was split between the relief she felt because he was at least talking now, and the realization that she was essentially sitting on her deathbed. The academic tone of the conversation Jay and I were having could not be helping any, either.

  Jay was still looking at the floor. From his voice I could tell his mind was calm, and he was in control. He was figuring all of this out as best he knew how. He was being careful, and therefore, slow. He didn’t seem to be aware of the anxiety this was causing. I took a relatively minor chance and said, “Sheff, get dressed.”

  Sheff looked at me like I had told him to cut off his left foot. I moved my chin enough to indicate the door behind me. He moved so slowly at first that I thought he was going to pass out. Jay didn’t even lift his head. Once Sheff got the message that he wasn’t going to get shot, he dressed so fast he wound up with his shirt on backwards and inside-out. He paused outside the door and said, “I owe you...big.”

  “That’s right,” I said under my breath. “You do.”

  His shoes whispered down the stairs and when the click of the big entrance door closing echoed up the stairwell, I decided to play it out.

  “You know,” I said casually, “you could kill her.”

  Song shot her eyes at me and let out a high squeak. Jay raised his head and waited for me to go on, like I had made the decision for him and he was waiting for me to tell him what to do next.

  “Think about it. Nobody knows who she is. Just another eighteen-year-old in the big city. She’s a Jane Doe. Got no home but this one, and her name’s not on the lease, right? She may split the rent, but there’s no record of that. You ace her, toss the body a couple blocks away in a liquor store dumpster, and she might as well have died in another country. No I.D., nothing. Beauty and the unknown beast.”

  Song started sniveling, very quietly and very high.

  “After all,” I continued, “you’re trying to say something with that gun, now, aren’t you? Something to Naomi here?”

  He looked puzzled. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “You think Naomi has anything to say to you?”

  He hadn’t thought of that one. He didn’t move or speak.

  I turned to her. “Do you, Naomi?”

  She didn’t know whether to talk or not. Her mouth moved for a minute, but when nothing came out she shut it.

  “Look honey,” I said, “Jay’s not the fuckup here. He’s not gonna go first.”

  At that Song started crying, but I couldn’t decide if it was fear or grief or both. I waited a second and then said, “Talk, Naomi.”

  She shook her head as her body racked with sobs.

  “Talk!” I yelled. I crossed the twenty feet to the bed in three strides and grabbed her shoulder, squeezing hard. Jay watched intently but otherwise didn’t move. “You’re going to start with ‘I’m sorry,’” I said firmly. “And then you’re going to tell him more. You know what I mean,” I said, pulling her over to me and whispering, “Song.”

  Her eyes got wide, and then the apology flooded out of her. It was insincere, but it was exactly what Jay needed to hear.

  “I’m sorry,” she coughed, “but this is the first night, Jay. The only night, I swear to God. Maybe I’m not ready.” She thought about that one. “I’m for sure not ready for this. You’re too much for me. Too intense. You’re wonderful, Jay. But I wanted something else.”

  “What?” I said.

  “To get out.”

  “Why?”

  She looked up at me with those eyes like Li’s. They didn’t have the same effect. “Tell him,” I said flatly. She still looked blankly at me. “Tell him why!” I yelled, and wrapped a hand around her neck and stood her up at the end of the bed like a rag doll. The sheet fell away and for a split second there was complete silence, Song’s sudden, brutal nakedness filling the room and freezing us both with her sheer vulnerability.

  Then she screamed and Jay stood up, his .45 swinging in a hard arc. Almost in tandem I pulled my own piece and pushed the muzzle into Song’s soft neck just as Jay settled his aim, rock steady, at my chest.

  “Stop it, Bird. I swear to God I’ll kill you.” This was delivered in a tone of voice he might have used to order a sandwich.

  “First,” I said, keeping my voice from shaking, “you need to hear this. Second, you’ll take us both down.” I could feel my jacket collar sticking to my neck. But if he would protect her from me, he wasn’t going to kill her anymore. I slowly pull
ed the gun away from her neck, staring him down. “Tell him, Song. Tell him why you want out.”

  At the use of her real name, Jay didn’t say anything. He just stood there, waiting. Later on, that would bother me.

  But Song blew it all—told Jay about her parents, who he thought were dead, about the lie of her whole life. “You were part of it, Jay. Part of the lie. I thought that I loved you but I was wrong. When I slept with Sheff, I guess that pretty much showed me how I felt. I needed out.”

  “Then get out,” he said. It wasn’t hateful. There simply wasn’t anything left to say. The problem was solved. He wanted it to leave.

  I had put my gun away as she spilled her guts. I waited by the door until she got dressed and went past me with her head down and scuttled down the stairs. If she hadn’t been Li’s sister, I would have had to fight the urge to kill her myself.

  Jay was standing in the middle of the apartment, his hands hanging limply at his sides. The gun was all but dropping to the floor from his fingers.

  “I’ll be around,” I said.

  He didn’t speak except to mumble, “Loved her.” Then he dropped the .45’s hammer and tossed it on the bed. I nodded, shut the door, and trudged down the stairs.

  I thought I would have to chase her down, but she was waiting for me outside the old building’s thick double doors. She stepped out from behind a scrolled column next to the sidewalk and opened up on me with her fists. They felt like rabbit’s feet thumping softly against my chest. She was still crying a little, and when I got hold of her wrists her mouth took up where her hands left off.

  “Fucker, fucker, fucker! Who the fuck do you think you are! Do you know who I am?”

  She struggled, the gold pendant around her neck getting tangled in her hair. I glanced up and down the block, too aware that I was a white boy manhandling a screaming woman who would look black from ten yards away. Before she could continue the screeching, I dragged her back inside the doors and all but threw her against the stairs. She continued turning the air blue with English words sprinkled liberally into broken Vietnamese phrases whose meanings could not have been compliments. I almost yelled at her to shut up, then simply pulled the gun out instead and she went dead silent in mid-shout. Sighing disgustedly, I paced back and forth in front of her. “Think for a minute,” I said to her. “Use your fucking brain for just a second. Five minutes ago you were an inch from getting your head removed and I pulled you out. I’d be pissed, too, if someone busted in and made me spill my guts to a lover, particularly a lover holding a gun. But before I beat the shit out of him I’d want to know a few things.” I took a deep breath and stared at her the way a teacher stares at an indolent student. “Don’t you?”

  She was still so furious that droplets of sweat were pilling on her forehead, but she started to think. She didn’t get very far.

  “What the hell would I wanna ask you, you fuckin’ dickhead? I could’ve handled it. He wasn’t gonna dust me. He loved me.”

  “Right,” I said. “Nobody ever got killed by someone who loved them.” I was getting tired of guiding her through this. “So you got out with your life, now what? Know a comfortable wino you can curl up against?”

  She threw her nose in the air. “I got lotsa places to go.”

  “Yeah? Name two.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “If it hasn’t occurred to you yet, and I don’t think it has, I know a little more about you than you suspect. And one of the things I know is that you’ve got no place to go. That’s why you screwed Sheff in your own bed. What the hell were you thinking, cheating on a guy like Ballesteros?”

  “I’ll make out all right.” She was tough, I had to give her that. Stupid, but tough.

  “Lady, you’re doing a stellar job already,” I clipped. “But this’ll make it a little bit easier.” I took a matchbook out of my pocket and wrote Li’s phone number inside it. She looked at it, obviously didn’t recognize it. “Your sister, Li, sent me because she thought you might be out here screwing up. I guess she was right.”

  Song whispered her sister’s name and stared vacantly at the matchbook as I talked.

  “She claims not to care about you, but she’s shoveling it. She cared enough to chase me all the way out to The Reading Room. If you call her, she’ll come get you. She’s got her own place. You won’t have to deal with your parents.”

  The mention of her parents seemed to mellow her, and I got her to walk with me to Gorky’s. I knew I wasn’t going to get any gratitude, and knew even deeper that I didn’t deserve any, so I started my bike and left Song standing on the corner of Eighth and San Pedro. When I circled back around toward my apartment, she was on the phone across the street. Through the scratched and graffitied acrylic windows of the booth I could see her smile in what seemed like relief.

  I’m glad I got to see her smile at least once.

  The air was that greasy cool you only feel late at night in the city, and the last of the vampires were peeling themselves off the streets as I flashed past the numbered blocks along Olympic Boulevard. It was four-thirty in the blessed a.m. The first trickle of traffic, which would become a fuming, honking deluge in forty-five minutes, was beginning to fill the pay-parking lots that decorated every corner with asphalt. I turned off on a side street deep in the Garment District and wandered the motorcycle into its space next to my bedroom window. I ran the chain through both wheels and snapped the lock home. My back creaked as I stood up, discussing bed with me.

  Yeah, I thought, stretching, it’s been a long night.

  And people owe me. Oh, do people owe me.

  Chapter 2

  Detective Sergeant Luzana Cazares, Caz to her friends, is a huge Mexican lesbian with gin blossoms on her cheeks, a racist streak a mile wide, and poor taste in sports jackets. I was dreaming about her.

  Normally, I would have been dreaming about Li. But at that particular hour, eleven-thirty Thursday morning, Caz was sitting in my head. The reason she was there, screwing up my dreams, was because at that particular hour she was also standing over me, about to wake me up. I could smell her.

  “C’mon, Bird...c’mon, sleepy head.” She was lightly slapping the back of my head and doing her best to sound like my mother. Just to get her to stop, I rolled off my face and sat up. “Oh, you’re up.” She sounded genuinely surprised. She moved her solid bulk into the kitchen alcove and poured two cups of coffee. That made me blink. She’d been here a while.

  “Tie one on last night, Bird?”

  “You could say that,” I said through a cheek-stretching yawn. I glanced at the clock and said, “Christ, Sarge. You know what time it is?”

  “You ask me that every time I drop in. It’s almost lunch time. Civilized people’ve been at work for four hours.”

  “Remind me to drop in at your place during my lunch break sometime. I’d like to meet that cute little redheaded girlfriend of yours. I bet she looks great in a nightie.”

  “Doesn’t wear a nightie,” she said flatly. “In fact, she doesn’t wear much of anything. It’s what makes the relationship work.” She thumped a cup down on the night table. The aroma tried to clear my head but couldn’t quite get past my sinuses. I took a mouthful and spit it back in the mug.

  “You made this? On purpose?” I coughed.

  She shrugged and sipped. “It’s your coffee, Bird. Got it from the cupboard. Good as the joe at the department.”

  “No wonder you guys are beating people up,” I jabbed, then quickly apologized. She didn’t say anything.

  I slid out of bed and ambled over to the sink. I dumped the junk in my mug as well as the pot she’d made down the disposal. I pulled the grinder down and started over. I was opening the freezer for the fresh stuff when she called from behind me, “You got anything here I’d like?”

  She was studying my CD collection, bent over and squinting like an ape with gastritis. “Yeah, lowest left corner.” Caz was a classical fan. “But nothing too serious,” I warned. “It’s too early
in the damn morning.”

  By the time the coffee was done I had a t-shirt and jeans on, and Handel’s King Solomon was greeting the Queen of Sheba. I dumped cream in the coffee until it was the color of Li’s skin, turned down the stereo, and poured myself back into bed. “Good call on the music,” I said.

  Caz nodded. “It’s information time, Bird.”

  “I figured.”

  “We got a body in an alley last night on Eighth and Los Angeles. I understand you were there.”

  “I try to do my killing away from home.” I sipped the coffee. Much better.

  “Not funny.” She unbuttoned the top button of her K-Mart blouse and made my only chair squeak a lot while she got comfortable. “What were you doing down there?”

  “I didn’t say I was down there. How about you just tell me what you want, I’ll tell you what I know, you get the fuck out and let me get back to sleep?”

  She shrugged and unloaded the dump truck. “Tell me what Song Ti Nguyen was doing in the Santa Fe Building this morning at about three-thirty.”

  I said, “Cheating on her boyfriend,” and took another sip of coffee.

  “That’s it?”

  “You asked, I answered. The door’s over there.”

  “I could take you in and make you talk for free.”

  “No you couldn’t,” I said offhandedly. I put the coffee on the table and hunted for a cigarette. After I got it lit, I said, “Sure, babe, there’s more that you might want to know. Maybe I heard something, maybe I didn’t. You know how I operate.”

  “Look, Bird. I usually come to you ’cause I don’t have to beat information out of you, and once in a while you actually know something important. But this time,” she said, “I got ya.”

  Caz is a careful cop. That was the first time I had heard a threat from her and it scared me, because she doesn’t just shoot off her mouth. “Bring it,” I said flatly.

  “Four boys from Vice were takin’ their dinner in the front window of Gorky’s this morning. And lo and behold, who comes strolling down the walk with a choice piece of Chink ass, but the Bird himself. I traced it back to an old nigger chick waiting for the bus who saw a guy looks a lot like you throw that very same piece of ass back into the Santa Fe Building not ten minutes earlier.” She didn’t smile, sipped her coffee. “Four cops and a witness, man. We got you at the scene. You’re in it.”