A Better Goodbye Read online

  Sometimes doing massage bothered her, no matter how much she loved the easy money. But it wasn’t a moral issue—some guys just needed to get off, others craved a little tenderness, and if they were married, well, maybe having a stranger pulling their plugs was what they were looking for. What gnawed at Jenny was that she knew she should be doing something with her life besides wondering how to spend her money while jerking off a guy she had never seen before and might never see again. She wasn’t a rocket scientist, but she was bright—lots of clients had told her so, lawyers and writers, even a UCLA professor whose class she wouldn’t have minded taking—and she appreciated her gifts enough not to want them to wither and die. It was a curse, kind of.

  So were the thoughts that dogged her about those girls at the apartment on Sepulveda. Even when their massage names blurred in her memory, names being as changeable as fishnet tops and crotchless panties, she remembered the pain and terror on their faces. And the ominous stain beneath the black girl, the one who was so nasty in so many ways—Jenny remembered the stain most of all. At every recollection she scorned herself for not standing up to them, for not calling the cops or taking them to the hospital. Where had the nearest hospital been, anyway? She had no idea because she had never imagined needing one. But she should have loaded those girls into her car and found it. Instead, she had caved in to the black girl’s orders—Contessa, that was her name—and she had been relieved when she ran, glad to have her money and her safety, never pausing to consider the unseen baggage she was taking with her.

  The baggage was here now as she went through the contents of the safe-deposit box she kept at a Bank of America branch on Santa Monica Boulevard. She had other boxes at other banks, but this was the one where she stored most of what she saved in cash from massage. Her checking accounts made her nervous. She felt self-conscious when, two or three days a week, she deposited piles of money straight out of an ATM, and she worried about the IRS, too. Some weeks she made thousands of dollars and didn’t pay a penny in taxes. She knew she should have saved more, but she was still comforted by those stacks of twenties, fifties, and hundreds, so neat and precise, right down to the rubber bands around each of them.

  As she counted fifties in a private alcove, she began to wonder if any of them were from her last day on Sepulveda. It left her feeling disoriented, even queasy, as if the dark stain had somehow spread to her.

  Jenny put the money on the table and tried to think of something else, but something else turned out to be the calls she had received after the rapes, all from girls in the business who were scared to death. When it got to be too much, she canceled the number they were calling. Just a few good friends had the number she kept, most of them unaware of what had happened or the life that had provided the money she was visiting now.

  She took a deep breath and resumed counting it, wondering how long it would last, and what she would do when it ran out. She knew, of course. She just didn’t want to admit it. Not while she was feeling like this.

  4

  Onus DuPree Jr. strolled into Skybar, on the roof of the Mondrian Hotel, and right away started feeling seriously antisocial. Even with the city lights twinkling below on the Sunset Strip and standup heaters keeping the customers nice and toasty, he wondered what it would be like to rob the movie stars he rarely saw there but always heard tourists gossiping about. He wondered, too, about making victims of the singers who had just gone platinum and the moneychangers who were forever inviting presidents and would-be presidents to their big-assed houses for cocktails and campaign contributions.

  And here was the thing about DuPree: with his shaved dome and a navy blue turtleneck under his suede windbreaker, he could have passed for Skybar royalty. In fact he would have, at least on this night, if some sissy hadn’t waltzed over the minute he got there and asked did he really produce Mary J. Blige’s last album. “Get away from me, faggot,” he said, knowing his words would spread through the bar like napalm, and not caring. For DuPree, half the fun of a place like this was fucking with the clientele.

  He ended up at the bar with people giving him plenty of room as he sipped his cranberry juice and club soda and thought about the work he’d be putting in later. Three seats down was a porcelain blonde who had seen the guy she was with abandon her for some buddies, all of them turned out like lawyers or agents and big on laughs and high-fives. While DuPree shook his head at the waste of prime pussy, the blonde looked his way every now and then. When he finally looked back, she held his gaze. He took it as an invitation.

  “Shouldn’t never be an empty seat next to you,” he said as he slid onto the stool. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “You haven’t heard me scream for help, have you?” she said.

  “You a screamer?”

  She raised her eyebrows and drained the last of her white wine.

  “You better have another,” DuPree said, and moved to flag down a bartender.

  “A little on the assertive side, aren’t we?” the blonde said.

  “Got to be. I’m workin’ against the clock.”

  “Oh.” She feigned a pout. “So you’re going to go off and leave me too.”

  “I’ll come back—if I’m invited.”

  The blonde smiled and made a purring noise. An instant later, DuPree felt a hand clamp his right shoulder.

  “Move along, LL Cool J,” the hand’s owner said. “The lady’s spoken for.”

  DuPree turned in his seat and found himself looking at the guy who must have just remembered the blonde was with him. Had one of those dents in his chin and a tan he probably got on a boat of his own. He wasn’t in any hurry to let go of DuPree’s right shoulder.

  “You don’t take your hand off me,” DuPree said, “I’m gonna give it back to you in pieces.”

  “You can talk all you want on your way out the door,” the guy said.

  “Marty?”

  It was the blonde, trying to get the guy’s attention. She’d seen the change in DuPree, how he wasn’t the charmer who had sat down beside her any longer. Now he was what you never want to see step out of the shadows. But the guy was too wrapped up in his own drama to realize he had no chance against DuPree. None at all.

  “Marty!” The blonde was close to losing it.

  The guy turned to her, annoyed, and DuPree came off his stool, uncoiling like a rattler. He turned his left hand into a club that broke the grip on his shoulder, spun the guy a hundred and eighty degrees, and put him in a hammerlock so cruel it buckled his knees.

  DuPree leaned close and whispered, “My name ain’t LL Cool J, motherfucker.”

  The only response the guy could muster was the strangled sound of someone in severe pain. It fell to the blonde to say, “Don’t hurt him, please.” But that just pissed DuPree off more. And then he saw the guy looking desperately for his buddies.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna help you, bitch,” DuPree said, grabbing the first finger he came to on the guy’s hand and twisting it like a swizzle stick. The guy tried not to scream, but people nearby still heard him. DuPree didn’t care about them. “Please,” the blonde said. DuPree didn’t care about her either.

  The guy was whimpering now, and there had to be bouncers on the way. Maybe the guy’s buddies were coming, too. DuPree looked the blonde up and down once more. “Damn, you are fine,” he said. Then he snapped the guy’s finger like a no. 2 pencil.

  The guy’s scream filled the air as DuPree shoved him to the floor face first and started toward the elevator. He had to wade through the gawkers who were already gathering. Those who saw what he’d done stepped out of his way. And all the while he kept telling himself to be cool. Just take his time. No need to run, no need to even walk fast. He was the king of the fucking jungle.

  A little before ten-thirty, as lights started to go out all along Hollyridge, DuPree pulled up beside the fence behind Chuck Berry’s old house and parked looking down the hill. The night was too dark and the shrubbery too thick for him to eyeball things, but he knew from
the changes out front that there had been a lot of work done on the motherfucker. It needed some serious beautifying after the way the bands that rented it had trashed the place, thinking they were honoring old Chuck by living like pigs—empty bottles, dirty needles, and women’s stained drawers everywhere.

  White boys acting like that’s what it took to be black, DuPree thought. It hurt to contemplate the enormity of what they didn’t know. Of course, being partial to Nas’s bad-assed rap, DuPree might not have known either if the old man hadn’t told him. Not that the old man was tight with Chuck or anything, but he had been to parties here even before he signed with the Dodgers, just out of Fremont High and acting like there wasn’t any kind of shit he couldn’t get away with. Said he shared the first white woman he ever had with Chuck himself, a bad-talking blonde straight out of that old-time porn where hairy ofays never wore anything except black socks. Of course it could have been bullshit, too. DuPree’s old man threw bullshit around like he was running for president. But that had been his time back then, the fifties turning into the sixties, and Chuck Berry riding high before he took that underage Apache girl across a state line for what the law said was immoral purposes.

  Thinking about it made DuPree glad he wasn’t famous. Better to be a clean, well-dressed African-American criminal sitting in his black 5 Series BMW, a ride just right for looking like it belonged in the neighborhood. If any of the neighbors peeked out their windows and saw his car before going nighty-night, they’d most likely assume he was visiting somebody on the block. The fact that he was black wouldn’t upset them as long as he wasn’t coming through a window and pinning them to the wall with a spear.

  DuPree was wiggling his toes comfortably in a pair of Bruno Magli cordovan loafers, the O.J. touch in his wardrobe, when his man came around the curve off Bronson and headed up the hill, driving too fast in his Acura MDX for such a narrow street. It didn’t look like he noticed DuPree, which was what DuPree was counting on. Just keep everything normal, let the man do his home deliveries, like the one he’d be making to an actor in another minute or two.

  The actor had struck it rich in the early nineties as a lovable goof in a sitcom that made being stupid look like a good thing. He had celebrated his good fortune ever since by shooting as much smack as he could without killing himself. The times he had tiptoed to the edge of the abyss, his standup girlfriend had been around to dial 911. Barely half his age and she was the adult in the equation, until she wound up loving heroin even more than he did. It figured he wouldn’t be in any condition to call for help when she OD’ed. Now he sat up in a three-million-dollar house with a view of the Hollywood sign and a rat problem, grieving and staying as fucked up as he could, coming down just long enough to sleepwalk through another TV or movie gig that would finance his drug habit.

  DuPree wondered if the hopeless motherfucker even remembered his dealer’s name. He should have, seeing as how the dealer made deliveries three nights a week, always right around this time. But the important thing was, DuPree remembered.

  He’d seen Teddy George for the first time six or eight months ago playing bass for Esther May at the House of Blues. Other than having a big head of rock-and-roll hair and pants so tight he must have been castrated to squeeze into them, George was nothing special musically, no Flea or Stanley Clarke. But DuPree started getting interested when one of the guys in his party said Esther had been a stone junkie back in the 50s, when she was taking R & B mainstream with a song called “Midnight Moan.” Then someone else, a Latina with glitter on as much of her titties as DuPree could see, said if Esther was still using, she probably got it from Teddy George.

  Turned out he dealt an upscale high to writers and directors in the Hollywood Hills, producers and lawyers in Beverly Hills, and agents, record executives, and moguls of every description in Bel Air, Brentwood, and the Palisades. The only time he didn’t make his appointed rounds was when he was on the road; then his kid brother hauled the tar heroin, rock cocaine, weed, crystal meth, Ecstasy, Vicodin, and OxyContin. But with Esther May looking like she would spend her golden years nodding off, George had more and more time to devote to his nightly magical mystery tour.

  DuPree had spent the past month figuring out the man’s stops and which night was the busiest. He had time on his hands after the bank robbery in Porter Ranch, way the hell out there in the Valley. There might be even more downtime if he stayed away from the armored car job that was getting talked about. Armored cars seemed like too much trouble—more partners, more chance of gunfire and bloodshed, and the last thing he wanted was a piece of a shootout like that B of A shitstorm, two crazy motherfuckers with full body armor and insane firepower, and they still got their asses blown away. When it came to pain, DuPree was about giving, not receiving.

  So he had gone solo, liking the feeling as he followed Teddy George partway one night, then partway another, piecing things together until here he was, waiting to cash in on a Thursday night. Thursdays were the heaviest with cheddar, George’s clients most likely stocking up for the weekend and George not running a credit card operation. As DuPree wondered what that dumb-fuck actor up the street paid for his smack, George came rolling back down the hill and disappeared around the curve.

  DuPree started his car and pulled out, punching up Stillmatic on the CD player, listening to Nas kick the shit out of Jay-Z and all the other Nee-groes too fucking stupid to realize that the flag is red, white, and blue, no room for black. An hour of this and DuPree would have his blood up right where he wanted it.

  The colonial’s porch light was on, and DuPree could see the front door open and George step inside the way he’d done the other times DuPree had followed him to the Palisades. He’d stay four minutes, five tops, just long enough to conduct business.

  DuPree used the time to ease his Beemer up two houses without turning on its lights. Then he snugged up his leather driving gloves and picked up his Luxeon Hand Torch from the passenger seat, $89.95 worth of flashlight straight off the Internet, approved by SWAT teams and the military, now on the verge of being tested in a criminal endeavor. He made sure the interior light was off before he opened the door and eased onto the street. He closed the door softly, then checked the nine-millimeter Glock tucked in the back of his pants and stepped to the other side of his car. If anyone should come along and ask—a cop, for instance—he had his big-assed flashlight out so he could say he was checking a tire that had been making some bad noises.

  A minute later, as the porch light went off behind him, George came back down the walk without the grocery bag he had taken in. He was humming a tune that DuPree couldn’t put a name on. George unlocked his MDX by remote, and when he started to open the door DuPree made his move, hurrying across the street toward his target, flashlight in his left hand and raised to shoulder height.

  “Yo, Teddy,” he said.

  George grunted in surprise and turned around just as DuPree clicked on the flashlight, aiming the beam at his eyes. George threw up his left arm to block the glare.

  “Who is it?” he asked, having no success whatsoever at keeping the uncertainty out of his voice.

  “It’s me, man.”

  “Who?”

  DuPree, still advancing, could see George running through the file of black male voices in his memory bank, trying to find one that belonged in a neighborhood full of rich motherfuckers. That ruled out most of the musicians he had played with, drunk with, maybe even sold drugs to.

  “Shit, get that fucking light out of my eyes so I can see you, dude.”

  Just as George came to the realization that he had never seen the black guy who was almost on top of him, DuPree said, “Yeah, sure.” And he turned off the flashlight and clubbed George on top of the head with it, making a noise that sounded like a drum he had heard once in a reggae band.

  George’s knees buckled and he grabbed his open door to stay upright. DuPree skull-thumped him again, hard enough to draw blood and send the batteries flying out of the flashlight. George
lost his grip on the door and did a face plant on the street.

  DuPree kneeled and turned him over. Motherfucker had a bloody nose now, to go along with that gash on his coconut. DuPree dug through George’s pants pockets, pulling them all inside out. His first discovery was a glassine bag containing cocaine, no shake, all rock, a little something to help him celebrate later. Then he moved on to George’s faded Doobie Brothers tour jacket, wondering who the fuck the Doobie Brothers were until he unzipped an inside pocket and pulled out the night’s grand prize. It was a wad of bills the size of his fist, and DuPree had a big fist.

  The clock in his head told him to wait on counting the money. He straightened up and climbed behind the wheel of George’s MDX, checking everywhere he could think of for more to steal. The glove compartment contributed a vial of pills and there was another, smaller roll of bills under the passenger seat. The only other thing of interest he found was a CD with “Britney Demo” written on it with a girlish star over the “i.” Britney Spears? What self-respecting musician would have anything to do with her? Was George doing session work? Auditioning for her band? He couldn’t be a fan, could he? All that cracker bitch was good for was bending over, and DuPree was positive he’d had better white pussy at Uni High, those little rich girls giving it up so nice for the football hero.

  He pulled the CD from its diamond case and snapped it in half. Then he got out of the MDX, took a look at George on the ground, blood still oozing from his head and nose, and kicked the motherfucker in the ribs hard enough to hear one of them breaking. Then he kicked him again, trying for another. Fuck Britney Spears.

  5