Lorena sat on the bed and Waldo stirred. His head was jumbled; the pain had woken him up around three and he’d taken another pill. “How’s your arm?” Her tone was gentle and she took the fingers of his damaged arm in her own. She was dressed already, more casually than yesterday, in a navy blouse and loose slacks. “I got that gig I met on.” The one he doubted was real. “I’m going to work it today. Think you can keep anything else from burning down while you’re on Rose?”
Rose. It was a carefully neutral label. He said, “What’s the new case?”
“Peep-show classic.” If she was lying about it, she was doing it easily, but that didn’t surprise him. “Investment banker, thinks his trophy wife’s jumped the pedestal. Stakeout in Brentwood—going to use it to break in my young guy.” Waldo felt a glimmer of jealousy, then wondered, through his thick Percocet haze, if that had been her intention.
Hours later, when he woke up for good, he didn’t even remember Lorena leaving the room.
He tended to his wound and reconsidered his day, or what was left after sleeping half of it away. He’d been planning to focus on Ouelette, but Lorena’s critique of his Stevie blind spot nagged at him and he decided instead to reconstruct a ticktock of the girl’s five days off the radar. Daron’s role in hiding her was suspicious, his father’s in finding her even more so. Waldo wanted another shot at Roy and Brenda together, which meant another trip to Newport Beach. With the late start, he’d get there, conveniently, around dinnertime.
Traveling to O.C. without a partner in stilettos let him cut a couple of bus rides off the front of the trip. In fact, if it weren’t for his arm he’d be tempted to take most of the forty-five miles by bike. In the event, though, by the time he reached downtown it was throbbing so badly that he was grateful to be able to rest it on the MetroLink.
He extended his stop in Long Beach, searching on his phone for a farmers market and finding one set up for the day in a parking lot near the Denny’s where they’d taken Mariana. He feasted on a late lunch of unpackaged foods: homemade garlic jack cheese, strawberries and a scrumptious bagel—pumpernickel—baked, the vendor swore, by reformed members of the Latin Kings.
After that, he returned to Wardlow Station to catch the bus that would take him back over the county line. Before all this he’d thought of O.C., when he bothered to think about it at all, the way most Angelenos do, as a bland, bloated suburb, a negligible stepbrother, so irrelevant to the real city that even their Major League team couldn’t inspire a decent rivalry. Now, though, he was starting to see Orange County more like a junior version of L.A. itself: glamour, grime and divertissement in separate and incongruous but proximate stretches, the golden coastline of Roy and Brenda hard by the grubby boulevards of Amador and Mariana, hard by the fresh-scrubbed Main Street of Mickey and Minnie.
Waldo transferred to the OCTA bus down PCH, traversing the Beach cities—Seal, then Huntington, then Newport—where, shadows growing long, he got off an easy pedal from the Waxes’ house. The conspiracy theorist security guard he’d left hanging was on duty again.
Waldo said to him, “Hey, sorry about last time, but I had to get in there.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Besides, I can’t go on the radio and talk about the Pinch murder. You understand that, right?”
“Depends what you’re hiding.”
“There’s nothing to hide. The story is the story.”
“Good story,” said the guard. “Before this? I was Seal Beach PD,” he said, significantly. “Three years.”
Waldo looked the guard in the eye and spoke as earnestly as he could. “What the cops say happened, happened. I shot the guy.” In fact, Waldo hadn’t shot the man, but it was so much closer to the truth than the fables they were peddling on the radio, he was almost convincing himself. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So,” said Waldo, hopeful that he’d put the crazy talk to rest, “could you tell the Waxes that I’m here?”
“They’re not home.”
“You sure? Could you call and check?”
“I’ve seen them both drive out today.”
“Separately or together?”
The guard, pleased with himself, said, “The story is the story.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Not in the driveway.” He closed his window.
The other side of the street was a line of low-slung luxury apartments. Waldo breathed in the salt air and contemplated another minor O.C. mystery: who would be filling these, at probably seven figures a pop for a two-bedroom? Hollywood weekenders? Rich locals like Daron Wax, parents parking them until the inheritance kicked in? Could there be that many of those kids?
He found a shady spot close enough to the guard gate to get a read on a driver, and a brick planter where he could sit until someone chased him away. There were few cars on this out-of-the-way street and no pedestrians. Waldo bored quickly and found his Kindle. He broke off from World War I at the occasional sound of tires and looked up to see if they were turning into the Waxes’ community. Two luxury cars did get waved through in the first hour without being stopped, but neither was driven by a Wax.
A little past seven, Roy wheeled into the drive in an electric blue Porsche Targa convertible. The gate rose immediately but Wax paused anyway to trade a few words with the guard before continuing in. Waldo gave Wax five minutes to get to his house and settle in, then biked back to the kiosk. He said, “Call him for me now?”
“Call who?”
“Roy Wax.”
“Told you, he’s not here.”
“I just saw him. In the Targa.”
“That wasn’t Mr. Wax. That was another resident with the same car.” Waldo didn’t know if the guard was running interference at Wax’s direction or just screwing with him freelance. Probably the former.
Eight-foot stone walls extended from the guard gate in each direction. Waldo went south and cruised to the next corner. The wall turned there and ran downhill with the side street to the water. There wasn’t a good spot for scaling, but the least bad was a crumbling stretch where he might be able to wedge a toe. A couple of nearby oaks would obscure him from the main road, another benefit.
He’d done this before, and all too recently, successfully circumventing more fearsome guards up in Beverly Park in pretty much the same way. The déjà vu renewed his misgivings about this new career. He could hear Lorena telling him to throw a better shine on it: he was turning into a pro, getting his reps in.
He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then braced the Brompton against the stones and stepped up onto the seat. He tested a crack with his boot. No luck: the wall just crumbled a little more. The Brompton shifted beneath him and he had to grab the top to steady himself. A shaky toe toppled the bike and he barely managed to catch the wall with his other hand too and hang on, nose pressed to the wall. He chinned himself to where he could grip the far side with both hands. He could almost see over the top now, but not quite. The strain tore at his wounded forearm. He hung there for a moment in limbo: should he try to pull himself the rest of the way over, or let himself fall and start the whole process again?
Two quick woots from a police siren made the decision for him. He dropped to the ground. A pair of uniforms were getting out of a Newport Beach Police SUV.
“Turn and face the wall, please, sir?” Very polite.
“Afternoon, Officers,” he said without obeying. “Good thing you came along when you did.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“You were able to stop me right before I accidentally trespassed. Could have gotten myself in trouble.”
“Hands on the wall, please?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Hands on the wall.”
Waldo did as he was told. One frisked him while the other whipped open his expandable baton. Waldo said, “I’m former LAPD,” not knowing whether that was even currency down here. The frisking cop took his wallet and his phone. He told Waldo to put his hands down, then slipped Waldo’s backpack off his shoulders and took that too. He slapped a cuff on Waldo’s bad arm. “You’re kidding, right? Hey, in front, at least? Professional courtesy?” The cop pulled Waldo’s other arm backward and cuffed him behind. The baton cop guided Waldo into the caged back seat. They tossed the backpack in after him and slammed the door.
The windows were all up and the air-conditioning had already worn off. He could see both uniforms walking past the rear of the vehicle, in no rush. He wished they’d talk to the gate guard and put together who he was. Not that the truth would win him any fans, but it would all work out more quickly and smoothly than if the NBPD treated him as what he knew he looked like, one more homeless guy hanging around a beach town until he got into trouble.
One of the cops made a brief phone call, but mostly the pair chatted idly and left him roasting in the car. The vehicle had a funk that rose with the temperature, dried vomit apparently unliberated from the upholstery.
The smell of sick had always been suggestive to him. It had been that way since the first grade with Mrs. Rothbell, when he was left in the hallway with five other kids whose parents, along with Waldo’s mom, went inside for a group parent-teacher conference. The children were instructed to sit quietly against the wall and stay there until the parents emerged. Waldo’s classmate Wanda Martinez, sitting beside him, suddenly vomited on the floor without warning or explanation, the way small kids do. A hushed, inside-voice debate ensued among the children as to whether Wanda should go in and tell the grown-ups now or should wait as instructed until her mom emerged. The little girl chose stoic patience. The fetid spew on the marble floor beside him filled little Waldo’s nostrils; he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. Suddenly he threw up, too.
Shawana Council was next, then Joey Parlapiano, followed by, pretty much in unison, the last two kids, whose names Waldo couldn’t remember. But he vividly remembered the parents and Mrs. Rothbell emerging to find the six classmates sitting there with vomit all over the floor and their school clothes, and Mr. Parlapiano saying, “What the fuck have you shitbirds been doing out here?,” making it an unforgettable day on the vocabulary front, too.
The stench of the SUV brought that afternoon rushing back and threatened to bring the Latin Kings’ half-digested pumpernickel rushing back too.
The cops opened the back of the vehicle and tossed in Waldo’s bike, then climbed back into their seats in front. “Goddamn,” said one. “Smell’s just getting worse.”
Waldo said, “What is that?”
“We picked up a drunk last night. Didn’t make it.”
They started the car and rolled down their windows. Waldo said, “Mine too, huh?” But they left the rear ones up. The motion of the car further roiled his stomach. “Hey,” he said, trying to be heard over the rushing air up front, “what do you have on me? Seriously—it’s not trespassing if I never made it to the other side of the wall!” Shouting heightened the nausea, so he stopped.
They drove him through the unfamiliar beach town. He wanted to resolve this before they got to the station and started putting him through the system, chewing up what was left of the day. “I really was a cop!” he yelled, queasiness be damned. “I’m a PI—I’m working a homicide!” Neither of them even turned around. “There’s an LAPD detective, you can check me out with him! Jim Cuppy!” Either they didn’t believe him or they just didn’t care.
They crossed a bridge, giving Waldo a good view of the pleasure boats bobbing on the shimmering bay. “I guess I see why the money comes here,” he said, this time softer and to no one in particular.
To that one of the cops responded, the one in the passenger seat. “Yeah, it’s beautiful. Idyllwild’s nice, too. I were you, I’d go back.”
They knew exactly who he was. Which, Waldo realized, wasn’t better at all.
He sat in the back seat, parked behind the police station, aching in the cuffs. The front windows had been mercifully left down, at least, and with stillness his nausea receded. But they left him there for hours, not returning until long past nightfall. By then the point had been made: Waldo wasn’t getting in to see Roy Wax again, not at home, not in his office, not without an invitation.
The baton cop opened the door and unfastened the cuffs. The blood flowed back into Waldo’s arms, which relieved the discomfort everywhere except the spot the Presa Canario had crunched, which felt worse. He started to climb out of the SUV but the cop said, “Stay there. We’re taking you to Long Beach. Train station.”
“That’s awfully decent of you.”
His partner said, “Buses aren’t reliable this time of night. We want to make sure you get on that Blue Line to L.A., nice and safe.” The day was wasted, but things could be a lot worse. “Next time we’re not going to be that friendly about it, understand?” Finally able to sit normally, Waldo settled back and even buckled his seat belt. He put the backpack on his lap, closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders to work the kinks out of his neck. What to do tomorrow? He could come back down here and try to work the Daron angle: the son would be easier to get to than the father. Or maybe give O.C. a rest for a day and work Ouelette and the school.
They reached the Long Beach train station quicker than Waldo expected them to, and when they opened the door and let him out, he saw why: they weren’t in Long Beach at all, nor at a train station.
They were in Santa Ana.
North Harbor Boulevard, to be specific, across from the Wonderland Motel.
The cop said, “You have a nice night,” handed Waldo his wallet and phone, and got back in the car. Orange County wasn’t made of separate, incongruous pieces at all. It was more like the moon, with a bright side and a dark side, but all one. The cops knew the Waxes, who knew Amador, who knew Tesoro. And now they all knew Waldo.
“Hey!” he shouted as the cops pulled from the curb. “My bike!” He lunged at the SUV and managed to slap the back hatch twice. But that didn’t stop them from driving off with it.
Waldo was in trouble.
He jogged across Harbor toward the Wonderland and the relative safety of its lights. A twentyish kid with a pompadour and hoops in his ears manned the desk, young for the night job, a stickup waiting to happen. A terrified look in his eye, he said, “Help you?” Waldo shook his head, trying his best to look reassuring. He took out his phone and, tossing aside every belief that once had saved him, tried to save himself now by finding a cab. He’d concoct some counterpoise later; maybe he’d squeeze to Ninety-Nine Things for a year.
The scared kid disappeared through a door to the office; a second later, when Tesoro came out the same door, it became clear that it hadn’t been Waldo who was frightening him. Waldo spun for the exit and straight into a left cross from the Burger King thug who’d survived Lorena’s demolition derby. There were two more bangers behind him.
They tackled Waldo and laid into him with boots and fists. One against four: he couldn’t get off a single lick of his own. One of them noticed the bandaging on his arm and stomped on it. Waldo screamed.
Another banger stood on his good wrist, pinning him. Tesoro knelt over him and drew back a muscle-bound arm. The last thought Waldo had was almost comforting: if he was still alive, it probably meant that they wanted him that way.
Someone was slapping his face awake.
Waldo was in a bathtub, his sleeves rolled and his hands bound with bungees to the rusty metal knobs overhead. A grungy plastic shower curtain was gathered by his feet, whitish tiles all around him stained by a half century’s worth of hotel guests of slowly descending quality.
Tesoro perched beside him on the edge of the tub. A girl a few years older than Mariana stood in the doorway. Tesoro spoke in Spanish; then the girl said, “He says, he told you this ain’t the neighborhood for you.”
Waldo said, “Tell him I took a wrong turn.”
The girl put it into Spanish. Tesoro nodded at Waldo: you sure did.
Waldo added, “Tell him I’m looking for Disneyland. ‘It’s a Small World’ fell out of my head and I have to get it back in.”
The girl hesitated. “That’s stupid. You really want me to say that shit?”
“I don’t think it matters a lot.”
Tesoro, displeased at the side conversation, turned on the girl. They had a brief dialogue. Then the girl said in English, “He says, ‘This time we send you home with a souvenir.’”
Waldo said, “Cool. I’ll take one of those Goofy caps, with the long ears.”
The girl sighed annoyance and shook her head.
Tesoro snapped open a small knife and placed it on the edge of the tub. He reached into his pocket and took out a wide-mouth bottle of Parker black ink. He opened it and laid out the bottle, the cap and an eyedropper at the curtain end of the tub.
He ripped a tatty white towel from a bar and spoke a couple of sentences in Spanish. The girl translated for him: “Some pimps, they mark their bitches with tattoos. This is better—gives you an experience to . . . what’s the word?” She looked for it, found it. “Remember.”
Tesoro leaned down and held Waldo’s nose closed and, when Waldo opened his mouth to catch a breath, stuffed the towel into it.
The girl said, “It’ll be less bad if you don’t fight it.” Her own contribution.
But Waldo balled his fists and squeezed them tight as he could. He could feel the effort straining the stitches on his arm, the one farther from Tesoro. Tesoro called out and one of his bangers pushed his way past the girl and into the bathroom. He stepped into the tub, bracing his foot between Waldo’s sternum and the wall. With both hands the banger pried open Waldo’s left fist, knuckle by knuckle. Tesoro carefully positioned the knife against the webbing between Waldo’s ring finger and pinky, then flicked his wrist. Waldo felt the wicked sting and, looking up, saw the red on his forearm, first drops and then a steady trickle.
It would do him no good to watch the bleeding. He looked away—and through the banger’s legs saw the ink bottle on the side of the tub. Waldo torqued his body, then whipped his far leg, kicking the glass jar clean across the bathroom; it shattered on the ceramic tank behind the toilet. At least he’d be spared Tesoro’s crude tattoo.
“Cabrón.” The pimp answered with his knife, adding a second laceration between Waldo’s ring and middle fingers, slicing a little deeper this time. He did the third web, too, and then the coup de grace across the ball. The blood streamed onto Waldo’s face. Waldo grunted into the towel.
Tesoro stood and rinsed his knife in the sink. He said something to the girl and left the room, his banger behind him.
The girl came over and unbound Waldo’s hands. Everything was staining red. She took the towel from his mouth. Waldo wrapped it around the bloody hand as tightly as he could, tasting the salt of his blood as it traversed his mustache.
Tesoro came back and said something from the doorway.
“He says, come back here again, he cuts a T in your throat.” The girl looked at Waldo with concern and apology. Tesoro kept talking and she translated, in pieces. “And that bitch with the Mercedes? . . . He’s gonna cut all kinds of Ts into her . . . He has her license plate, so tell her he’ll see her soon . . . She don’t even have to come to him.” The pimp turned and left again.
The girl leaned in and whispered, “Are you the one who took Mariana?” Waldo nodded. “Is she okay?” Waldo had no idea.
Tesoro called for her. She tossed another towel to Waldo and scurried out of the bathroom. Waldo heard them all leave and the outer door slam.
His phone was in his back left pocket. He reached around for it with his right arm—pathetically enough, his better one now. Behind the instant smears of blood, he managed to find 9 and 1 and 1.
For the second time in three nights Waldo reclined on an emergency room bed, taking stitches. These were more agonizing for the same reason Tesoro picked that spot to cut, the concentration of nerve endings in the fingers. This doc, a young guy named Pfeffer with a mane of orange frizz, wasn’t telling him how lucky he was. He wasn’t buying Waldo’s claim of a can-opener accident, either.
Waldo distracted himself by chewing over what the night meant to the case. Why did Wax want him out of O.C. so badly? Their knowledge of the raitero business couldn’t be enough to trigger all this, could it? What would that be to Wax, really, beyond bad PR? Then again, would Wax necessarily be told what Tesoro would do to Waldo? Was dropping him on Harbor just Amador’s suggestion, with Tesoro taking it this far on his own, retribution for stealing one of his girls? Did Wax even know Tesoro at all?
The drug connection to Ouelette was still murky, but the immediacy of the violence made their involvement in his killing feel more plausible. But again—what did “they” even mean? Was Wax connected to Ouelette, in more than a secondhand way through Stevie? Could he be the seventy-nine link? He’d have the kind of friends who could afford big-ticket designer pharmaceuticals. Even if it was hard to see Roy Wax personally waiting for Victor Ouelette in his parking garage with a gun, he could have sent Amador. Tears like rain. But the links were thin, the motives opaque.
Shit upon shit, and Waldo was still nowhere.
His cell rang and he managed to work it loose from his pocket midstitch, to the doctor’s consternation. He looked: Joel Rose. Good God, what now? What could Stevie possibly have left for an encore?
“Joel,” he said, trying to keep the weariness out of his voice. “What’s up?”
Joel Rose answered through racking sobs. “It’s Paula. She’s dead.”