If you wish to go to the police, I suppose you can do that." The pat again. "We didn't want Jodi hurt." Leaving it on me, saying do what you do and bring it down on Jodi Taylor. Elvis Cole, Bad Guy. My head was splitting, and it felt like a couple of steel rods had been jammed into my neck.
I said, "Fuck you."
Beldon Stone smiled and stood. It was over, and he knew it. I knew it, too. He paused at the door to the motor home and fixed the hawk eyes on Sid Markowitz. The warm, fatherly expression was gone. "I'm disappointed that you went behind my back, Sid. We'll have to speak about this again."
Sid Markowitz looked as if he'd just received a positive biopsy. "You gotta understand, Bel. Hey, we hadda know."
Beldon Stone stayed with the killer eyes another moment, and then he left, the younger guy and even younger woman after him.
It was quiet in the motor home except for the air conditioner and the generator and the sound of Jodi Taylor crying. They were small sounds, pained and somehow distant.
Sid Markowitz brightened, coming up with the big idea. "Hey, how 'bout that bonus? You came through. You're playin' it straight. We'll give you a fat bonus. You deserve it."
I said, "Sid?"
"Yeah, a bonus. We'll treat ya right. Whaddaya say?"
I shook my head and then I walked out. If I had stayed any longer, I was afraid that I'd kill him.
CHAPTER 18
I t was twenty minutes after six when I left the General-Everett lot, picked up my car from the Shell station, and drove to the Lucky Market on Sunset. The traffic was heavy, with plenty of horn-blowing and fist-shaking, but I drove without a sense of personal involvement, as if I were somehow apart from the world around me. I parked in the Lucky's lot, went inside, and selected two baking potatoes, green onions, a very nice Porterhouse steak, and three six-packs of Falstaff beer. Nothing like a well-balanced meal after a hard day at the office.
I pushed my cart to the registers and stood in line behind an overweight woman with a cart filled with Dr Pepper, chicken parts, and jumbo family packs of Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs. The Cocoa Puffs were open, and the woman was eating them dry. She would reach into the box and pluck out a handful and put them into her mouth and then repeat the process. The woman stared blankly into a huge display of Purina Dog Chow, and the process seemed without conscious thought or direction. Automatic eating. A little girl maybe two years old stood in the cart surrounded by the Frosted Flakes and the Cocoa Puffs, bouncing up and down and going ga-ga-ga-ga. The overweight woman ignored her. Maybe that's what I needed to do. Ignore what went on around me. Maybe I could become Elvis Cole, Zen Detective, and let the ugly realities of life flow around me without affect, like water passing over a stone. A client hires you under false pretenses? No problem! Withholding evidence from the police during a homicide investigation? No big deal! A guy gets zapped because you shoot off your mouth? Those are the breaks! The road to inner peace through Cocoa Puffs was sounding pretty good. Of course, you probably had to eat Cocoa Puffs to achieve this state of grace, and I didn't know if I was up to that.
When I got closer to the cashier there was a little four-pocket TV Guide rack above the Certs and the chewing gum, and Jodi Taylor was staring at me from the covers. She was sitting on one of the Songbird kitchen stools, surrounded by the guy who played her husband and the four kids who played her children, and everyone was smiling. The slug line on the top of the picture said "America's Favorite Family." Funny. I had just left Jodi Taylor, and she had looked small and frightened and nauseous. Amazing how pictures lie, isn't it? The overweight woman was already gone, else I would've asked to try the Cocoa Puffs.
I drove home and let myself into the kitchen. It was just before eight and the house was quiet. I opened a Falstaff, put the others in the refrigerator, and left the meat and the potatoes and the onions on the counter. I brought my suitcase upstairs, put the dirty things in the hamper and the clean things away, and then I changed out