“I loved that you were there in the audience rooting for me—you stuck out like a sore thumb.”
“Yeah?” Then she touched my face and I grabbed her for one of those awkward over-the-gears car kisses that are completely uncomfortable but make life worth living.
She sighed and said, “I gotta go.”
“I know—go. Give Ziva a hug from me.”
Then she got out with her blue guitar, walked up the little path, searched for her keys, and went inside, and I headed down La Cienega humming the guitar riff of “And I Love Her” like a corndog.
But somewhere around where the boulevard crosses Third, it started to dawn on me that the same gray ’22 Subaru Legacy had been behind me since at least Sunset. That just wasn’t natural. Thinking back through my half-stoned lovestruck state, I realized I’d noticed that same car in the rearview when we first left the theater. Goosebumps. I slowed down to let ’em overtake me but when they wouldn’t, I pulled a radical right just before the piano shop and gunned it through the residentials.
So did they—they were after me.
26
My pulse jacked up as I cut south, eyes on the rearview, and when we hit some traffic I adjusted the mirror for a better look: it was Devon Hawley Senior at the wheel, squinting to see me in the night glare, looking miserable, shaken, deeply disoriented. What the hell was that old geezer doing, stalking me on a Monday night?
Losing him would probably not be that difficult once traffic opened on Beverly, but then it occurred to me that maybe the guy was senile—he was the worst tailer in the world. That’s when I got the crazy notion to lead him right back to the cul-de-sac, take him home, so to speak.
I kept my pace down Beverly, trying to not let on that I knew I was being followed. Then we made the long dip down Doheny onto Pico, straight into the curving streets of Cheviot Hills. At his cul-de-sac I stopped and he pulled in front of his home. I got out as he got out of the Legacy in an old khaki trench coat waving a pistol and coming right at me.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Mr. Hawley!” My hands went up as I backed up to the Jetta. “Put that thing down!”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind.” He was stern, vulnerable, face all pale with half-crazed grief.
“Sir—please. Put the gun away.”
“You just tell me how you knew my son, and don’t forget, I am brandishing a nine-millimeter Rock Island Armory firearm and I know how to use it.”
He sort of displayed it for me. It was beyond awkward.
“But…I didn’t know him, Mr. Hawley.”
“If you don’t talk straight with me, I swear on Devvy’s soul—”
I leaned way back on the car, searching for how to play it. But there was no way to play it. This jittery old fool could go off—
“Whatever you need to know,” I said, fake calm, “whatever I know, I’ll tell you. But I can’t think straight with that thing in my face.” I kept my eyes on his and slowwwwwly, gennnnntly reached and moved his wrist, getting the gun to point elsewhere.
He scowled. “Why were you there, and skip the official version. You told the cops you’re working for some old man—who is it?”
“I can’t—”
“Charles El-kaim, isn’t it?”
Our eyes locked.
“That’s what I thought. What the hell does he want?”
“Your son visited him,” I said, “and promised to return. When he didn’t, Charles asked me to look into it.”
“I know all that,” he said. “Ma-dam Persky already told me all about it.”
We both cast a glance toward her house—curtains drawn.
I said, “Then she told you I went to see her.”
“What else?”
“I learned about your son’s old group.”
“What old group?”
“The Daily Telegraph. The band he was in with Elkaim’s son.”
“Oh that, that was no group, that was a bad joke.”
“So…you knew about them.”
“There was nothing to know. They played one high school contest—battle of the bands. And they lost. I was there, it was pathetic. I took pictures for their yearbook, big deal.”
“I’d like to see those,” I said. “And hear more about what happened with them after—”
“Is that all you’ve got? His lousy band?”
“The drummer was murdered,” I said. “Then the guitarist. And then—”
Our eyes met again in the zone of mistrust. I tried to convey real sympathy. It’s not easy when the other guy’s holding a Rock Island whatever-it’s-called. But Hawley Senior caught the vibe and cast a curious glance at the gun in his hand. Exasperated, he shoved it in his trench coat pocket.
