The Fallen. Jefferson Parker

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       8

      McKenzie met me outside Uptown Management over on Fifteenth. Al Bantour was a slender man in an old blue suit. Sixties, gray hair and eyes. He mouthed an unlit cigar and gave us a canny once-over as McKenzie explained what we needed. He smiled around the cigar, then explained that yes, Garrett Asplundh had a place at the Seabreeze Apartments down in National City. Too bad what happened. Garrett was the last guy in the world he thought would get murdered. When the cops are getting lulled it’s a bad situation, most bad. Bantour said the on-site manager at the Seabreeze was a guy named Davey, and Davey ought to have an extra key. Any problems, just call. Wasn’t I the guy who got thrown out of the hotel?

      We headed down I-5. Light traffic and the fog still thick out over the ocean.

      I told McKenzie about my meeting with Carrie Ann Martier, about the sex videos made for Garrett, the Squeaky Clean Madam, her spot callers, and the girls in convertibles. McKenzie shook her head and exhaled in disgust. She told me she’d run across Squeaky Clean Madam’s enforcer and he was a real cool guy.

      ‘Cool, like he’d cut your nipple halfway off to teach you respect,’ she said. ‘Cool, like he’d break some ribs and toss you into Glorietta Bay to watch you suffer. Six-four, three hundred. Half of him’s tattoo. One of those big dudes with too small a head but he shaves it anyway. He’s got a carjack crew that works San Diego and TJ, and he runs cockfights out in east county. And an occasional gig for Jordan Sheehan because he likes pretty girls. Chupa Junior. Short for chupacabra. And ‘Junior’ because his daddy was just like him.’

      I’d heard tales of the chupacabra. It meant ‘goatsucker’ in Spanish. It was a vampirelike creature with huge red eyes and a row of spines down its back. They were reputed to stand five feet tall and suck the bodies of goats, sheep, and other animals almost completely dry.

      I thought about Carrie Ann Martier versus three hundred pounds of Chupa Junior and hoped she wasn’t foolish enough to run a hustle on her boss. She couldn’t win that one.

      I thought of Gina again. I imagined her at work now, standing beside her chair, arms raised, shears and comb in hand, snipping away. Last year for her birthday, I bought her a pair of Hikari Cosmos scissors, among the best money can buy. They had molybdenum-alloy blades that were said to be able to ‘melt’ through hair. The Rylon glides were for accuracy from pivot to point. They cost twelve hundred dollars. They fit her small hands particularly well without the inserts she sometimes had to use. I’d had them inscribed along the inside of the tang, which is where the cutter rests his or her finger. It said Hugs and Kisses, Me, though because of limited space the words were hard to read. She somehow left them at the Mick Jagger trimming up in Beverly Hills not long after. The next day she’d made a dozen phone calls to the hotel but had never gotten them back. She was crushed. She couldn’t believe she’d just forgotten to put them back into their case and box. I couldn’t either so I scanned eBay for them and sure enough, there they were, with ‘genuine hair from Mr Jagger.’ I tried to quickly trump all bids by offering five hundred dollars over the asking price of thirty-five hundred, so long as I could authenticate the engraving first. I was willing to travel at my own expense and would of course pay in cash. The owner of the shears and hair turned out to be in Culver City. When I got to a squalid apartment I felt bad for the young maid who had found or more likely stolen them. Her muscular husband suddenly demanded seven thousand so I thanked the woman, put the shears in my pocket, and headed for the door. When the husband charged me I finally lost the temper I’d been trying so hard to keep and I punched him sharply in the solar plexus, pulled his shirt over his head, and pushed him to the floor. He was balled up and gasping when I walked out. I’d committed more than one crime in all of this, including assault and battery, and I drove home to San Diego with my stomach in a knot.