January Justice Part 37

"Of course. But it didn't make any difference. That man kept right on beating me and asking where the money is."

"Next time they might kill you."

"They might have done that before, but now I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"Because now I have a backup plan."

"Yeah? What is that?"

"Not what, Malcolm. Who. My backup plan is you."

45.

The next day Olivia slept a lot. I cleaned the M11 at the kitchen counter and clipped the weapon to my belt. Then I went outside and washed a couple of the cars. I never let the guesthouse out of my sight, but it was good to have a little distance from Olivia. I needed time to think about her story.

When I was done with the second car, I went and sat on Haley's favorite bench beneath the bougainvillea. From there I could see both Newport Harbor and the guesthouse. It seemed clear Olivia had told the truth as far as she knew it. Her story didn't hang together in a couple of places, but that was probably because of the one mistaken a.s.sumption I was pretty sure she'd made. And her information did explain some things that had been puzzling me.

It was a perfect day for sailing. The wind was steady out of the northwest, the skies were cloudless, and the chop was under a foot. A good sailing day is a good thinking day. By the time I stood up to return to the guesthouse, I was fairly sure I knew what was really going on.

Olivia and I walked around the grounds for a while before sunset, then we ordered pizza and watched a movie, Wall Street. It was good to sit and relax a little, knowing there were finally no secrets between us. But there was a limit to my relaxation. I kept the M11 on the table at my elbow.

Olivia's black eye had turned from red and purple to a more uniform dark brown. On most women it would have been an ugly mark, but even with the bruising, she was beautiful. She said she needed fresh clothes for work the following day, so we spent another night in separate bedrooms and then rose before the sun and drove up to her apartment in the Bentley.

When we arrived, I took her keys and asked her to stand in the small courtyard outside her front door. Before I stepped inside the apartment I pulled the M11, put a round in the chamber, and slipped the safety off.

The living-room furniture was still askew, the potshards were still scattered on the floor from my diversion, and the slugs were still in the walls from the shots I had exchanged with Medallion's partner. Otherwise the place was fine.

I tidied up the living room while Olivia went to her bedroom to pack some things. Twenty minutes later, she came into the room with only a purse over her shoulder. She had done wonders with makeup. It was hard to tell she had been beaten just three days before. But I had expected her to come back with a suitcase full of clothes.

"Where's your other stuff?" I asked.

"What other stuff?"

"I thought you'd pack for the week."

"I can't stay at your place, Malcolm. There's the walls, and you and Simon and Teru. Those men won't come for me there."

"They might, but we'd be ready. And you sure can't stay here. It's too exposed."

"If we make this too hard for them, they can't take me to my mother."

"Olivia, be reasonable. You don't even know for certain that they work for your mother. They kept beating you after you told them who you really are, remember? All we know for sure is that they only care about the money, and there's nothing they won't do to you to get it."

"It's still the only way to find her, and if I don't find her, my father's going to drink himself to death. You saw him. You know it's true."

"I'm not leaving you here alone."

She smiled. "That's what I'm counting on."

She took her little j.a.panese car to the Montes's place overlooking Beverly Hills. I hung back a couple of blocks, since I knew where she was going. She took Lincoln Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then turned inland. At Beverly Drive she turned left, and at the little Will Rogers Park where Beverly meets Sunset Boulevard, she bore left again. We pa.s.sed the Beverly Hills Hotel and crossed Sunset to climb into Benedict Canyon. Up near the top, she turned right on Wallingford and then left into the Montes's driveway.

The last thing I needed was for Dona Elena or the congressman to see me there and think I was stalking them or casing the place for another home invasion. So while Olivia paused to push the code into the gate keypad, I drove past her, made a U-turn, and parked in the shade of a live oak tree about a hundred yards up the road, out of camera range from the gate.

I killed the engine and settled in to wait. Like so many other roads above West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, if you didn't know there were mansions all around, you'd never guess. Only one of the Montes's neighbors had erected a wall along the road. All the others had planted landscaping that looked natural but was artfully positioned to conceal fences and state-of-the-art security systems. So from where I sat, mostly all I saw was vegetation, a couple of gates, and blue sky.

After twenty minutes, a woman drove a white Honda Civic past me. I watched in the rearview mirror as she slowed and turned into a driveway on the other side of the street. She seemed to know the gate code. Somebody's maid, probably.

After about an hour, I decided to see how many bird species I could spot from where I sat. There were quails and doves and crows and smaller blackbirds. Also hummingbirds and one hawk gliding in a giant circle on the thermals rising from the hills. I saw several little brown birds, which I couldn't distinguish from each other, so in fairness I could only count them as one species. Also some kind of a finch that looked like a sparrow, except it had a yellow breast.

At eleven-thirty my cell phone rang.

She said, "You still out there?"

"You bet."

"I just had a thought. You know how Teru thinks the guys who attacked me were the same ones who tried to kill you? Maybe they were also the ones who did the home invasion. Maybe it was me they were after, not the congressman or Dona Elena. You know, I spend the night here sometimes. Maybe there was a mix-up. If you catch them trying to get to me again, you might be able to prove a connection with the home invasion and clear yourself."

"Maybe so."

"You already thought of this?"

"Something like it crossed my mind."

"Well, good. I'm glad you're getting something out of this too. Why don't you go for lunch? I'd bring out some food, but Dona Elena might notice, and it's probably not a good idea for her to know you're hanging around out there."

"That's true."

"Go ahead. I promise not to leave, and they've really beefed up the security in here. I'll be okay."

"Lunch is for wimps."

"Isn't that from a movie?"

"Gordon Gekko. From last night, remember?"

"I fell asleep, remember?"

"How could I forget the deafening snores?"

"Liar. Go eat something."

"You'll stay put?"

"I promise."

There were no restaurants along Benedict Canyon, or any other kind of business as far as I could tell, so I drove all the way back down to Sunset and parked at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I stood around staring at the big banana leaves on the wallpaper at the Fountain Coffee Room while they put together half a tuna sandwich and a cup of tomato soup to go. It cost twenty-eight fifty, plus ten bucks for the valet, but that included a bottle of water and a sprig of parsley, so for Beverly Hills, it was a bargain.

I drove back up the canyon to Wallingford. When I had resumed my stakeout under the live oak tree, I called her and said, "You still in there?"

"I am. You back out there?"

"I am."

"So everything is fine."

"Don't kid yourself."

During the afternoon, I spotted two new kinds of birds: a woodp.e.c.k.e.r and a couple of blue jays. Three vehicles drove by. A Bentley exactly like the one I was sitting in, a grocery delivery van, and a truck with a landscaping company name painted on the door. Not much traffic in the middle of the afternoon on Wallingford Drive.

I placed a call on my cell phone. Simon answered after the second ring.

I said, "Simon, my good man, I am a trained investigator. Although you have refused to admit your former a.s.sociation with Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service, based on how you handled yourself when Fidel Castro tried to run us down, not to mention certain other clues, I suspect you have some experience in providing security."

"Alas, as has been mentioned previously, one couldn't say."

"This is not frivolous cuRiosity. I need help protecting Olivia Delarosa."

"It would be my pleasure to a.s.sist you."

"The opposition appears to be professional. I need to know you're fully qualified."

There was a pause, and then, "I am qualified."

"All right," I said. Then we discussed a strategy.

At 5:05, Olivia drove her car out through the gates. She waved at me, then turned right, heading for Benedict Canyon Drive. I started the engine and rolled along behind her, all the way to Venice.

She parked on the street and waved me into her driveway. It was nice for her to worry about me parking the Bentley on the street. We met at her gate, and she gave me her keys. After I had checked out the apartment, I let her in. She changed into a pair of cutoff blue-jean shorts and a loose T-shirt that had the words "Lella Lombardi Lives" printed on the front. Only a true racing fanatic would know about Lella Lombardi, the sole woman to ever score points in a Formula One race, especially since Lombardi had been dead for more than twenty years and hadn't driven in a grand prix in nearly forty.

Olivia said, "I usually go for a walk on the beach before dinner."

"Sounds good."

It was nearly sunset. The afternoon heat radiated up from the sidewalk. I stayed between Olivia and the street and kept my eyes moving constantly to observe a regular pattern around our parameter. The M11 was ready beneath the loose shirt tail at my hip.

She said, "If they see you with me, they won't try anything."

"Be fools if they did."

"But we need them to come forward. How else are we going to find my mother and clear you of those charges?"

"I'm not letting you walk around out here alone."

"Of course not. But maybe if you followed from across the street, they wouldn't notice."

"Olivia, these guys are very well trained. They could s.n.a.t.c.h you in five seconds, maximum. I might not be able to get to you until it's too late."

She put her hand on my arm for a moment. "You'd get to me. Please, just go across the street and be inconspicuous."

"I'm not comfortable with that."

"It's not your decision."

She was right. In the personal-security business, you tried to stay as close as the client would allow, but ultimately the safety level was up to the client.

I crossed the street and fell back about fifty feet. Olivia traversed the neighborhood to South Venice Boulevard, and then followed that over the ca.n.a.l bridge and across Pacific Avenue and Speedway. At the beach walk, she went right toward the pavilion. I hung back as far as I dared.

As always, all the Venice Beach stereotypes were on full display: kids with multicolored spiked hair, every form of piercing and tattoo imaginable, guys holding hands with each other, girls who looked like guys holding hands with each other, bodybuilders pumping iron on Muscle Beach, kids whipping past on skateboards, guys playing pickup games on the basketball courts, girls in next-to-nothing string bikinis playing volleyball, girls in next-to-nothing string bikinis gliding along on Rollerblades, and homeless people bundled up in everything they owned, as if it were ten degrees below freezing.

Black clouds towered above the Pacific, stretched across the horizon like a ma.s.sive wall and moving our way.

I tried to figure out why a cla.s.sy girl like Olivia would choose that kind of neighborhood. Then I remembered where she had grown up. There were a lot of similarities. Venice Beach was not what most people would consider upscale. Except for the blocks closest to the ocean, it had a blue-collar quality. Maybe Olivia felt comfortably at home there, as if she were back in Pico-Union, except with a beach and without the gang violence. Plus, of course it was only fifteen or twenty minutes from Beverly Hills, depending on the traffic, so that was convenient. And I had to admit, strange as they were, the people in her neighborhood kept things interesting.

Olivia turned inland at the pavilion, followed Windward past Pacific Avenue and the little roundabout, took Grand up to Dell, and then cut across the ca.n.a.ls. Nothing suspicious happened whatsoever, but the looming clouds had reached the sh.o.r.e by the time we arrived back at her apartment. Darkness fell upon us suddenly.

I paused at the gate outside her front courtyard. "You should get the remote lock fixed on this thing," I said.

She said, "I told the landlord that a month ago."

Inside her place, we sat around in her living room for a while, listening to the rising wind, reading magazines, and drinking a nice merlot. At about eight o'clock, she went into her kitchen to make dinner. Meanwhile, I walked around her apartment, checking locks on windows, closing drapes, and trying to memorize everything in case it was pitch-black the next time I was there.

Dinner was a stir-fried beef lo mein, with egg drop soup. It was some of the best I'd ever had. As we sat down to eat, I said, "So, you're also a chef. Is there anything you can't do?"

She smiled. "There's not a lot of difference between cooking and working on a car or writing computer code. It's all about learning how things fit together."

"You make it sound like there's no art involved."

"Do I? It's hard for me to tell the difference between art and craftsmanship, I guess."

"Doesn't instinct come into it? Something indefinable, beyond just doing it by the numbers?"

"You're the artist, Malcolm. You tell me. All I know is I don't have much trust in instincts. What if the things we believe are really only things we hope? How would we know unless they can be measured or tested or proven somehow?"

My own vast emptiness came to mind, the random chaos that sometimes seemed to swirl around me, when even my most cherished memories betrayed me, unconnected ideas coming from all directions and trailing away again before I understood them, everything I tried to cling to vanishing through my fingers. I thought about trying to pa.s.s my broken fingers through a wall, while Haley ran screaming out into midair.

I said, "You have to have to have some kind of solid ground to stand on. Something that isn't open for debate. If that ever disappears, there's nothing left but madness."

"Yes," she said. "Exactly."

"But I also think if you go through life requiring that of everything, you'll miss what's most important."