just couldn’t get it together. Cliff cruised Central on his Electra Glide with a bunch of other bikers, got in fights a lot, had trouble holding a job. When Ron was a little boy, his father would go out looking for Cliff, who often disappeared for weeks at a time. Lately, though, he seemed to be doing a bit better.
They pulled into the parking lot and Ron saw Cliff’s long ponytail and beard. He turned around, gave Brian the thumbs-up, and stepped out of the car.
“Be right back. Need more smokes, Kelly?”
She nodded and blew Ron a kiss as he disappeared into the store.
“Damn, you got him whipped,” Brian said. “Dude’s like a puppy dog.”
“Would you stop it with that shit?” she said, laughing. Kelly put a Marlboro between her lips and crushed the empty pack. Brian leaned over the front seat with his Zippo. She cupped her hands around the flame and drew in a lungful of smoke. She let her fingers linger against his wrist for a few seconds longer than necessary.
“It’s the truth,” Brian said.
“Whatever.”
They sat silently in the car. Kelly smoked her cigarette.
“Seriously, man. When are we meeting that guy? I’m not feeling too good,” Brian said.
Kelly glanced back and noted the hunger in his eyes, the pale and sweaty sheen of his skin. She sighed and reached into the front of her T-shirt, producing a thin silver chain, from which hung a tiny glass vial. She tapped out a small amount of white powder into Brian’s palm. He scooped it up with his pinky’s extra-long fingernail, raised it to his right nostril, and inhaled sharply.
“I’m running out too. Don’t worry though, I talked with my guy earlier. We’re supposed to meet him at Party Gardens at 1:30. He says he’s got something special saved for me.”
“Cool,” Brian said.
“And if you’re a good boy, I may even let you have some of it,” Kelly added, looking over the seat at him, a glint in her eye.
After a few moments, Ron came walking out of the convenience store. He smiled as he opened the shotgun door and tossed a twelve-pack of Coors on the front seat. “Ask and ye shall receive,” he said. He pulled a hard pack of Marlboro reds out of his pocket and handed them over to his girlfriend. Kelly eased the Toyota back out onto Seventh and headed north. She hooked a right on McDowell and they were soon parked behind Brookshire’s.
The trio sat in the car drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The back door of the Lucky Cue pool hall hung open and they watched two teenaged kids pass a joint back and forth. Finally, Ron looked at his watch, swore under his breath, and groped around in the backseat for his crumpled server’s apron. He was late again. Ron kissed Kelly on the lips and staggered off toward the restaurant to begin his shift.
Conover pulled into the Erotica Hotel on Fifty-Second and Van Buren. The sign outside offered hourly rates and free XXX movies. The city tried to shut it down many times, but somehow the old flophouse had survived. The place got a lot of business from factory workers at the nearby Motorola plant, who used it for nooners and after-work trysts. The Erotica sat diagonally across from the Tovrea Castle and marked the eastern edge of the Van Buren strip. Conover, who’d been on the force since the late ’60s, knew every square inch of the area. The detective spotted the patrol car as he pulled into the small lot. He parked the Polara and was relieved to see that the officer was Luis Escalante.
“Hey, Gene. Still drivin’ that heap, I see.”
Escalante stood with arms crossed outside the open hotel room door. Yellow crime scene tape had been stretched across the doorway. Conover noticed that one of the cars out front, a metallic-blue Toyota Cressida, had also been covered with the tape.
“Can’t bring myself to get rid of her, Luis,” Conover said, stepping out into the late-morning sun’s glare. It was nearly October and still well into the nineties.
“On your salary? Shit, you need to get you a flashier ride, homes,” Escalante said. “Like our man Bob’s.”
“Yeah, right. Me and Steve McQueen.” One of the other detectives, Bob King, had a green ’68 Mustang Fastback, just like the one McQueen drove in Bullitt. The vanity plate on the muscle car read: HEAT. Conover respected King as a cop, but he disapproved of all the flashy bullshit.