“She brags about me?”
“No, Raymond. I’m just saying that to hear myself talk,” I said. “I don’t suppose I could trouble anybody for some grub. We haven’t had breakfast and I’m starving to death.”
Raymond leaned forward and gave Luis a thump on the head. “What’s the matter with you? Pull off here. Didn’t you hear what the lady said?”
Raymond studied me with amusement, talking to Bibianna over his shoulder. “I like your friend, here. She’s got some spunk.”
“This isn’t spunk, Raymond. This is irritation,” I said. Bibianna eyed me uneasily, but I was really on a roll. I was making up Hannah’s character as I went along, and it was liberating as hell. She was short-tempered, sarcastic, outspoken, and crude. I could get used to this. License to misbehave.
Raymond smiled at me.
“This okay, boss?” Luis, of the handsomely tattooed arms, was slowing near the entrance to a McDonald’s on upper State Street.
“This okay with you?” Raymond said to me. He seemed genuinely concerned that the restaurant meet with my approval.
“Raymond, this is perfect. Way to go.”
I ate three Egg McMuffins. If it had been 10:00 A.M., I’d have had a couple of QP’s with cheese instead. Bibianna couldn’t eat. She sat and picked at an apple Danish while Luis and Raymond, with a flair for the Gallic, ordered French toast and French fries, with a side of maple syrup. I had spotted a telephone in the narrow corridor leading to the ladies’ room, but the wall-mounted instrument was in plain view of the table where the four of us sat. Raymond kept his arm loosely draped around Bibianna’s shoulders, rubbing her upper arm in a manner meant to be sexy. Guys learn to do that in high school and it’s very irritating. She was back to being passive, obsequious, and subdued. I wanted to see her sass him. Resist. I wanted her to thumb her nose at him. It was not going to help her to act like a whipped dog. It was time she stood up for herself again. If she acted like a victim, the guy was going to treat her like one.
I got up from the table. “I gotta go to the can. Come with me, Bibianna. You can rat my hair.”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, I’m not. Could you pardon us, Raymond? We have to go do some girl stuff.”
“Have at it,” he said.
I kissed my fingertip and placed it on the tip of his nose. “You’re a peach.”
He slid out of the booth so Bibianna could get up.
12
IN THE LADIES’ room, she turned on the faucet and splashed some cold water in her eyes. I pulled out a paper towel and passed it to her. She buried the lower half of her face in the paper toweling, staring at herself in the mirror above the sink. She wiped her hands and threw the paper away. “Thanks for what you did in the car. God, I can’t stand this. I really hate his guts.”
“He’s certainly crazy about you,” I said.
She moved into one of the stalls, trying the window above the toilet. “Shit. This is nailed shut. Do you think there’s another way out of here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll check,” I said. I was in a bit of a bind with Bibianna, wanting to help her without actually giving up proximity to Raymond Maldonado. I went over to the door and opened it a crack, making a show of searching for a rear exit. All I caught sight of was Raymond doing one of his head jerks. The public pay phone on the wall was tantalizingly near, but Luis was bound to spot me if I tried to use it. I closed the door again. “What’s the matter with Raymond?”
“He’s getting worse,” she said morosely. “I never saw him so bad.”
“Yeah, but what causes that?”
“It’s called Tourette. TS, whatever that is. It’s like something in his nervous system – neurological and like that. All I know is he does that stuff over and over and sometimes he gets into uncontrollable rages. He’s got pills he won’t take because he can’t stand the side effects.”
“He’s had it all his life?”
“I guess so. He doesn’t ever talk about it much.”
“But he’s not doing anything for it?”
“Smokin’ dope helps, he says, and he sometimes shoots up.”
“Is that why you left, because of the Tourette?”
“I left because he’s a jerk! The other I could live with, but the guy’s turning mean. It’s got nothing to do with his condition,” she said. “Jesus, we gotta figure out how to get out of here.” She moved into the second stall and tried the window there. Also locked. “The hell with it. We’re going to have to make a break for it some other way. I wish Tate were here.”
I said, “You and me both, kid. You think Raymond knows you’re involved with him?”
“God, I hope not. He’s so jealous, he can’t see straight.”
“How’d you meet Tate?”
“He crashed a costume party last Halloween. Dressed as a cop. Everybody thought it was a joke, except me. I can smell a cop a mile off.” She took a brush from her handbag and ran it through her hair. “It’s really different with Jimmy.”
“Well, that’s obvious,” I said. “I take it you’re in love with him.”
She smiled fleetingly for the first time since we’d left the jail. “I better be. We got married week before last. That’s why my place is coming up for rent. I’m moving in with him.”
The door flew open. I must have jumped a foot. It was Luis with his .45 and his little smirking mustache. “All right, ladies. Time to go. Speed it up. Raymond says you been in here long enough.”
I waved at him dismissively. “Oh, come off it, Luis. What is it with you? Running around acting like an idiot. I still have to tee-tee and so does she.”
He colored faintly. “Snap it up.”
“Right,” I said, moving over to the first stall. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shove the gun in his waistband and back out of the room.
Ten minutes later we were on the road.
So that’s how I came to be speeding down 101 in a low-rider Wednesday morning, October 26. Vera’s wedding was coming up on Monday and I was going to miss it, sure as shit. If Raymond killed Bibianna, he was going to have to kill me, too. By Halloween, I’d probably be in the long-term parking lot at LAX, crammed in the trunk of some stranger’s vehicle. Even in the hot sun, it can sometimes take days before anybody picks up the scent.
Luis drove while Raymond sat in the front seat fiddling with the radio. At irregular intervals, he would go through his ticcing sequence. If he was talking to Luis, the tics would seem to subside, only to assail him with a vengeance as soon as his mouth was shut. Bibianna had curled up on the backseat in a troubled sleep. At least now she wouldn’t have to worry about being quizzed by the Santa Teresa cops. I was feeling wired. In the past couple of hours, I’d passed through fatigue to exhaustion and out to the other side. God knows my work exposes me to an occasional unsavory character, but I really don’t like violence or danger or threats to my health. My semiannual visit to the dentist is as masochistic as I care to get. Yet here I was in the company of these vatos, wondering how I could get to the telephone number Dolan had given me. I missed my beloved handbag, my jacket, and my gun. At the same time, I confess, I felt extraordinarily alive. Perhaps I was merely experiencing one of life’s peak moments before the bottom dropped out.
At Oxnard, we left the freeway and continued south on Highway 1, winding our way through the southeastern section of town. We passed the Naval Construction Battalion Center at Port Hueneme (pronounced “Y-knee-me”). The road began to parallel the deep blue green of the ocean, which was far off to our right. The beaches were deserted except for an occasional fisherman casting his line out into the water. The sand had been packed down and darkened by the rain, but the sky was now cloudless, a clear azure blue. The morning sun had burned the fog away, and I could see straight out to the horizon. On the landward side, loose sand swept down to the highway from rosy beige cliffs creased into folds by erosion, hills flattening out to pale gray scrub, freckled with vegetation.
After we passed Point Dume, houses began to appear, rilling the widening strip of land between the road and the ocean, properties piling up rapidly as the miles accrued. In the parking lane, RVs and pickups were lined end to end. Guys in shorts and wet suits unloaded surfboards and wind-sails. By the time we reached Malibu, apartments and condos and single-family dwellings were crowded cheek by jowl, the architectural mix ranging all the way from chateaus to beach shacks, Italian villas, Tudor mansions, Cape Cod, and concrete. The rich folk with taste had apparently been elsewhere the day the planning commission took a vote. (What planning commission?) As a consequence, the road was densely lined now with retail businesses, signs advertising Texaco, Malibu Lumber, Crown Books, Shoes, Fast Frame, Jack-in-the-Box, Motel, Malibu Inn, Liquor, Jimmy’s Ribs at the Beach, Budget Cars, Palm and Card Reading, Shell Gas, Realty, Arco AM/PM, Malibu Travel, Motel, Liquor, Pizza, Real Estate, Locksmith, Shoe Repair, Malibu Fish Market … a vulgar hodgepodge of neon, billboards, and blinking lights. Traffic was piled up in a perpetual gridlock of Mercedeses, BMWs, and Jaguars.