Читать книгу Hollywood Heat - Arlette Lees - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

DARK RENDEZVOUS

DECEMBER 31, 1956

Up and coming young architect Gavin Chase was lost. When you live in an upscale Hollywood neighborhood, chances are you’ll never have reason to cross the Los Angeles River into the barrios of Boyle Heights. Tonight was an exception he’d come to regret.

Not quite midnight, and firecrackers were exploding in rusty barrels adjacent to the freight yards. A pipe bomb blew down a fence. A shotgun blasted skyward, raining buckshot down on Gavin’s car—a world gone nuts and not a cop in sight. He felt a familiar stitch of pain in his right side and kept going. The wind was up, electrical wires whipping like snakes between utility poles.

In October, Gavin had met a drop-dead gorgeous stripper. An hour later they were in a motel room on Western Blvd. She broke through his moral defenses faster than a burglar picks a lock. He expected her to ask for money. I mean, she seemed like that kind of girl. Instead, they began sharing their deepest, most intimate troubles. He hadn’t intended to get in this deep, but they met again and again. What his wife Amanda didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Now, he’d grown tired of pushing his luck. Tonight he’d take Crystal and her sister to a safe house and get back to his real life.

A group of teenagers in a lowrider tossed an empty beer can against the windshield of his station wagon, then peeled into the night. He passed street corner bodegas, store front churches, second-hand shops, and a Rescue Mission with a gold neon cross burning a hole in the darkness.

Gavin swooped beneath a graffitied overpass. When he came out the other end, the street lights were gone from his rearview mirror. Weeds grew in the cracks of sidewalks, and everything except bars and liquor stores were closed for the night. A derelict pushed a shopping cart against the wind and a bony redhead with scarecrow hair drank from a wine bottle and stumbled into a lot strewn with broken glass and discarded tires. Lovely, just lovely, he thought.

He pulled to the side of the road, snapped on the roof light, and unfolded his map. He glanced nervously at his watch. By now he should be driving back across the river. Amanda would be in her glittery new party dress, pacing and tapping her toe.

He folded the map, pulled back into the street, and passed a noisy cantina on his left. It was painted gaudy coral with turquoise trim, like a ride at the Beach Boardwalk. Out front a knot of men smoked fat joints, their eyes hidden by smoke and shadows beneath cocked fedoras, gold watch chains dangling from the vests of their zoot suits. Suspicious glances cut in his direction, their wariness met with equal unease.

A mile further, and a deserted gas station appeared on his right. This should be it. He pulled beside two battered 1920 gas pumps and let the engine idle. A rusty motor oil sign flapped against the wall of the dark auto repair bay. Wind rocked the car and dead leaves blew across the hood. He’d been stood up…again. He was through. He couldn’t do this anymore.

A man appeared at his window. Where the hell had he come from? He wore a black hat and tapped on the glass with a big ring. The sudden tension caused the pain in his side to ratchet up a notch.

The stranger had a pencil-thin mustache reminiscent of a silent film Casanova, his black eyes set close to the bridge of an aquiline nose, thin lips drawn back in what might have passed for a smile in a friendlier setting.

“I have a message from.…” The wind blew away the words.

“What?” he said, rolling down the window. A gun appeared in a leather-gloved hand. “Is this a joke?” Gavin broke into a sweat. He wanted to unbutton his coat and loosen his tie. He tried to punch the gas pedal, but his foot froze. “Here, you want my wallet?”

The man didn’t answer, his black eyes swallowing the light.

Gavin’s mind was spinning, sweat prickling like flea bites on his scalp. He didn’t want to give up the money, but he had to get the gun out of his face. He’d have to think of a story to tell Amanda when he came home with an empty wallet. He’d never lied to her…until recently.

The wallet was half out of his pocket when a bullet whispered into Gavin’s left temple. There was no time to contemplate his fate, or have a redo, or speak Amanda’s name one last time. He couldn’t have been deader if the Saturday night special had been a bazooka. Across the street a man walking his dog paused a moment, then continued down the dark sidewalk.

The gunman pocketed the weapon and took the wallet from the dead man’s hand. He smiled. It was stuffed with cash, as if the poor sucker had paid for his own hit.