Sunset People. Herbert Kastle

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СКАЧАТЬ laughed, tears pushing at her eyes, and shook her head. “If you’d just sleep with me.”

      He pulled his hand away and stood up. “Can’t see it If I sack you, I’ll fuck you. At the least.”

      Again she laughed, and this time the tears rolled down her cheeks. No help from Arthur of the purest blue eyes.

      “Listen, you’re falling out of it, you know?”

      “I know,” she whispered thickly.

      “You need something.” He thought a moment. “Remember Chrissie, the redhead? She was turning hard junkie. Scientology was her out. You oughta try Scientology. Or maybe Hari Krishna. Or the Jesus freaks. Something to latch onto, Diana, because fun isn’t your bag.” He walked out the door.

      She sat there alone, and nodded. Fun wasn’t her bag. But neither was religion.

      Still, he was right about her needing something.

      A smart man, Arthur Dumont. A man with friends high up in city government. Which was why he’d retained four of his six massage parlors when most other such entrepreneurs had folded completely. A rich man too, and she respected the self-made rich. They generally knew what they were talking about.

      Not like the wailers, the complainers, the failures: her father.

      Not like the make-out cops: Lieutenant Lawrence (call me Larry) Admer. Who was in charge of finding the animal who had blown her sister’s life out the top of her head. Who couldn’t care less because he obviously classified Carla, along with Diana, as a hooker, a non-person. Carla, who hadn’t been robbed, hadn’t been sexually assaulted, hadn’t been touched at all . . . simply murdered.

      She got up, fists clenched . . . and staggered. She’d never taken Quaalude before, or any of the mind-altering drugs that people popped like candy, but it was obviously beginning to work.

      The super-relaxant was taking her out of it, at last.

      She went upstairs and undressed, dropping her clothes where she stood, and got into the king-sized bed. Where she and Carla had spent so many nights giggling together like kids, talking far into the morning.

      And Quaalude or not, she again clenched her fists, again saw her sister’s waxy face and matted hair—matted with blood and bits of brain. Again wept. Again despaired of life. Again panicked. Again knew Arthur was right and she had to find something to live for; her “out.”

      Had to find it soon.

      She had wanted, for an insane week, to kill the cop who had shot her brother. It was her out at the time. But he’d been transferred and no one would say where and she’d known it was impossible. And also known it wouldn’t have satisfied her even if it had been possible.

      Now she wanted to kill the animal who had taken Carla from her.

      And this too seemed impossible.

      But if it were possible, it would satisfy her.

      Her eyes closed. Her fists unclenched. The drug took stronger hold.

      And still, she knew she had to have a course of action, a raison d’etre, something to hinge her life on.

      An out.

      She forced open lips and eyes, which seemed glued shut now, and said, “I swear, baby,” speaking to Carla, “I’ll find whoever did it. I swear I’ll punish him.”

      The next time that cop phoned her, he’d get a surprise—a cordial reception. Because whatever it took, she had to learn how to find the murderer, had to know everything the police knew.

      With this, she could finally surrender consciousness.

      FIVE: Sunday, July 30, p.m.

      Larry Admer spent Sundays with his five-year-old son Larry Junior, whom he called J.R. Gloria had remarried. Almost seemed as if she’d been waiting for him to cut out. Two months after the final decree she was at the altar with a new guy, partner in an Orange County real estate company with his name on the for-sale signs. An older man, maybe forty-five, but in good shape and so together and friendly he made Larry sick.

      But what the hell, he was good to J.R., no doubt about that. Good for him, too, and Larry hadn’t been, and wasn’t. Not that he hadn’t tried.

      Just not the daddy type, he thought, driving back from Huntington Beach and the expensive sea-view house. Not the husband type either.

      But he didn’t envy Roscoe Green of Green Realty lac. Sure, he would’ve liked some of that heavy bread, and wouldn’t have minded the classic Jag convertible either. But Green wasn’t what he considered a real man, a blood-and-guts man, the kind that won the wars and made the country what it was . . . or had been. Like George C. Scott playing Patton. Jesus, the world’s greatest movie!

      Larry Admer had been a damned good soldier—got his Silver Star to prove it—but Vietnam had been the wrong war. He hated thinking of the way they’d pulled out. God, the wasted American lives! The fine lives. And the ones who had copped out and stayed home, who bought their way out with college courses, had run around the streets making shit out of those sweating, bleeding, dying men.

      Well, it was long finished and no one wanted to remember, so fuck the great American public that had sat on its ass and watched the war on television. Just another show and the ratings had gone down so cancel one war. Catch Larry Admer enlisting in the next one!

      Still, he’d been a helluva soldier. And parlayed his Silver Star and a lifelong ambition into becoming a helluva cop. And that meant a helluva man, which Roscoe Green, whatever else he was, could never be. Which few men could ever be.

      He smiled. Everything going along well. He had Roberta and sometimes a new chick and he could’ve moved in with a dozen chicks in the two years he’d been separated from Gloria. He’d gotten his B.A. from Los Angeles Community College, and then his lieutenant’s bars—had to give Gloria credit on both, as he was a lousy student—and the bread wasn’t bad at this level. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do . . . if he couldn’t quarterback the L.A. Rams.

      He came off the freeway, and opened the glove compartment for his cigarettes. He didn’t smoke when he was with J.R., because neither Gloria nor Green smoked and she’d asked him not to “give the child bad habits.” Right. But he made up for it on the trips home.

      Lighting his third unfiltered Camel of the evening, he saw the massage-parlor sign. And immediately thought of that victim’s sister. And tried not to.

      Small, neat sign, this one. Blue letters on a white background lighted from underneath: A-l MASSAGE. No more blinking arrows and bright neons and all the rest of the attention-getters of two, three years ago. The few that had managed to renew their licenses tried not to draw too much attention to themselves. (The regular customers knew where to go. The tourists who searched long enough would find a place.) Vice still hassled them, and he’d spent five months on Vice and hated every day of it. No job for a real man.

      Some of the girls were good-looking. Some were hard. Some were junky kids trying to feed their habits without using the streets and a nigger pimp. Some were just pathetic.

      He СКАЧАТЬ