Was she sleeping in and letting the phone ring? Or out, already, working the streets? Maybe neither and she was recreating—out on a date, she was cute enough. A girl with a social life.
Intellectually, he understood the need for pleasure.
Viscerally, it left him cold.
34
Petra got up early to work the streets. Last night’s shift had been spent with the after-dark crowd: clubbies, bouncers, parking valets, boulevard evangelists, dope-zombies, curb trawlers, assorted other miscreants. Crazies, too. Hollywood at night was an open-air asylum.
She stared into dead eyes, sniffed rancid auras, felt revulsion and pity and futility. These were Erna Murphy’s compatriots, but no one coherent enough to talk admitted knowing the big redhead.
Today would be more mundane: covering merchants she’d missed the first time around. Hopefully some good citizen would recall Erna.
It was a miscreant who came through. A pallid, twenty-two-year-old meth shooter and petty pill dealer named Strobe, with matted, oatmeal-colored hair that hung past his shoulder blades. Real name: Duncan Bradley Beemish. A country kid—a hick—from somewhere down South, Petra couldn’t remember where. He’d run away years ago, come to Hollywood, rotted like so many of them.
Petra had worked him as a small-time informant. Very small-time and only once. She’d run into Beemish while working a bar shooting and the speedfreak had provided ambiguous info that led Petra to someone who knew someone who might’ve heard something about something that might’ve gone down but hadn’t.
That fiasco had cost her seventy bucks, and she’d had enough of Strobe. But he found her as she talked to the owner of a joint on Western that advertised “Mediterranean Cuisine.” On Western, that meant kabobs and felafel and charcoal fumes that leaked to the sidewalk.
The proprietor was a Middle-Easterner with a big gold frontal incisor and a too-friendly attitude—the unctuous type that could turn quickly. The food stand had a B rating from the health department, which meant rodent droppings had topped the acceptable level. Gold Tooth denied ever seeing Erna Murphy and offered Petra a free sample. As she begged off and turned to leave, a reedy voice said, “I’ll take the sanwich, ‘Tective Connor.”
She turned, saw Strobe’s twitchy face. The kid never stood still, and his long hair vibrated like electric filament.
The falafel guy’s swarthy complexion purpled. “You!” To Petra; “Geet him offa my brawberty, he alla time take the hot bebber.”
“Fuck you, Osama,” said Strobe.
Petra said, “Work on the charm, Duncan.”
Strobe hacked and blew tobacco breath at her and slapped his knee. “ ‘Tective Connor! Whuz up—wuz that?” Twitchy fingers wiggled at the photo in Petra’s hand.
“Dead woman.”
“Cool. Lemme see.”
The falafel king ordered: “You. Police. Geet him offa my brawberty!”
Strobe bent his knees in a crouch, filthy hair strands swinging like vines as he put body English into a fulminating one-finger salute. Before he could complete the gesture, Petra ushered him off the property, away from Gold Tooth’s shouts, and over to her car.
“Fuckin’ towelhead,” said Strobe in a suddenly scary voice. “If I come back and cut him, you gonna bother to investigate?” Before Petra could answer, the freak’s meth-attenuated attention span snapped his coyote eyes back to Erna Murphy’s photo. Merriment in the eyes—mean-spirited. The kid’s cold side lurked just beneath the surface. “Hey—I know her.”
“Do you,” said Petra.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, saw her—what—lemme see—hadda be a few days ago.”
“Where, Duncan?”
“How mutchez it worth?”
“A sandwich,” said Petra.
“Ha. Hahahahahahaha. Get serious, ‘Tective Connor.”
“How can I know what it’s worth until you tell me what you know, Duncan?”
“How can I tell you what I know unless you pay me, ‘Tective Connor?”
“Duncan, Duncan,” said Petra, unclasping her purse and pulling out a twenty.
Strobe snatched the bill like a zoo animal grabbing a peanut. He pocketed the money, squinted at the photo. “Hadda be a few days ago.”
“You already told me that. When, exactly? And where?”
“When exactly was . . . three days ago. Maybe three . . . could be two . . . could be three.”
“Which is it, Duncan?”
“Oh, man,” said Strobe. “Time . . . you know. Sometimes, it . . .” He chuckled. Finishing the sentence in his head and deeming it witty.