50 – Daddy’s men come again
"I want to go out," Marie
said. It was not a request.
"No," Lance said, parked in front of
the door, feeling a bit besieged. "Not until Mike and Dan come back."
"I'm not a prisoner," Marie said.
"You can't keep me here against my will."
"I'm just doing what I'm told,"
Lance said. "Besides you know what happened last time. Those men are still
out there somewhere."
"You weren't told to watch me,
hero," Marie snapped, pacing back and forth in front of Lance, as if
waiting for her chance go plunge past. "You're watching him
remember?" She jerked her head in the direction of Bobo who sat against
the wall across from Lance, a deck of cards spread out on the floor in his
millionth game of solitaire. "As for Daddy's men, they can sit on
Hollywood boulevard all they want. I won't go near the place. But this is L.A.
and since I've been here I've seen nothing and done nothing and I intend to
have a good time before we leave."
"No."
"Oh let her go," Bobo said, peeking
up from his cards. "You can't expect a girl as pretty as her to sit here
and look at us. Some people are made to party."
"No one asked for your opinion,"
Lance said, having heard similar arguments before, not from Bobo or about
Marie, but in this same room. And now with Sarah gone, he wasn't going to lose
another one to that urge. If Mike wanted to let her go, that was his business.
But Lance wouldn't.
"Pardon me," Bobo said
sarcastically and flipped a deuce down on an ace. "I see we have a regular
fascist state here-- where a person can't even express an opinion."
"I'm doing what I've been told,"
Lance repeated.
"So were the Germans."
"Well, I won't have it," Marie said.
"If you won't let me out the front door, I'll climb out from the
balcony."
And with that she slid open the glass door and
pushed out into the open air.
"NO!" Lance roared and moved
to stop her. Bobo leaped for the now vacated door.
Lance stopped. So did Bobo, frozen in the act
of running like a sports photograph. The balcony rail twanged from outside as
Marie climbed up on it, shoes and purse clutched under one arm as her other
hand reached out across the gap to grip the landing rail.
She cried out as one shoe fell back onto the
balcony, then the other. She flew back into the room bare-foot, her face as
pale as paste.
"They're outside!" she gasped.
"Who?" Lance asked, twisting around
to the peep hole. But no one's face appeared.
"Daddy's men. I saw them on the
stairs."
"Daddy's men?" Bobo asked, slowly
easing back to his natural nonchalance.
"Tinkertons," Lance said, shoving
Marie away from the balcony door. He locked it again and pulled the curtain
across the glass, half expecting the army from the Boulevard to flow over the
rail and through it before he could fix the latch.
Bobo looked shocked, his shoulders hitching up
with the air of a frightened cat. "You mean the rumors are true?"
"Rumors?"
"About Mike robbing the cradle of a big
time private cop," Bobo said, his voice dripping with admiration and awe.
"No one robbed any cradle," Marie
said coldly. "I came because I thought it would be fun. Like cops and
robbers. Or Jesse James. But it hasn't been as much fun as I thought. But if
Daddy catches me, I'll spend the next four years in some exclusive European
school, learning to be an old maid."
Someone pounded on the door. It had the
typical official ring, yet without the vocal declaration.
"So what do we do?" Marie asked, her
bold tone changing rapidly into panic and a series of searching looks at Lance
and Bobo. She even looked towards the beaded curtain and the rooms beyond.
"No other doors to this place?" Bobo
asked, his shoulders melting again, his form seeming to change before Lance's
eyes, like a chameleon shifting from the guise of a fat and friendly fellow
into something more threatening and balanced. Even the man's step was
different, more calculated.
"No," Lance said.
"Stupid, Dan. What the devil is he doing
living in a rat trap like this?" Bobo seemed thoughtful for a moment when
the knock came again. "All right," he said. "Let me talk to
them. Both of you keep out of sight."
The man loosened his tie and messed his hair,
and eased the door open to the end of its chain, poking his nose through the
opening. "What do you want?" he asked.
"Mr. Drummond?" a nasally voice
asked from the other side.
"No."
"But Mr. Drummond lives here?"
"I live here," Bobo said in an
impatient tone. "And you've interrupted me. Go away."
"But Mr. Drummond must live here."
"I don't know any Drummond," Bobo
barked. "Now get away from my door before I call the cops."
There was a long pause, then whispered voices
and some sense of confusion. The strangers outside the door scurried away from
the door.
"They're on the balcony," Lance
whispered as someone climbed over the rail. Bobo slammed the door and moved to
the glass door, peering through an inch opening. Outside, men moved in the
dark, squat men with the same doggish faces Lance remembered from the
Boulevard.
Bobo opened the glass door and inch and put
his mouth to the opening. "What do you want?" he asked coldly.
"The girl," a voice said. "We
came for the girl."
Marie's hand gripped Lance's arm, the sharp
nails digging deeply into the flesh. "Don't let them get me," she
whispered. "Please!"
Gone was every bit of her previous
sophistication and phoney demure. She looked and sounded like the little girl
she was, staring out towards the pack of wolves with all the fear of a child.
"Fuck you!" Bobo told the men.
"Get your own girl, this one's mine."
He yanked closed the glass door and relatched
it, shaking his head at Lance. "We can't stay here," he said.
"And we can't get out," Lance said.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong,"
Bobo said, emitting a startling smile, his eyes twinkling as he looked Lance up
and down. He glanced at Marie. "You have another dress? For him."
"For me?" Lance said. "What the
hell do I need a..."
"Not that would fit him," Marie
said. "But his old lady might. She's a bit bigger around the hips and
shoulders than I am."
"Find something quick," Bobo said.
"I'm not sure how long we have before these idiots decide to break
in."
Marie vanished through the beaded curtain and
returned a moment later carrying several things. The red pants suit Lance had
bought for Sarah in Denver their first time there. She also brought out an old
dark wig and a case of Sarah's make-up.
"I'll never be able to make him look like
me," Marie said, eyeing Lance's features, her gaze laughing at the
prospect of trying, as if it was all a game again, part of some Butch Cassidy
trick to escape.
"Wait one minute!" Lance said,
stepping back from the advancing Marie. "I didn't volunteer for this. Why
can't we dress you up?"
"Because they've seen me already,"
Bobo said.
Yet Lance didn't understand. Or wouldn't.
Maybe it was the indignity of being mocked most of his life, his hatred of
violence always viewed as something else, something akin to homosexuality. Real
men dug blood. Real men liked violence and gore, and they definitely didn't
dress up in women's clothing.
"No," Lance said. "I won't do
it."
This time when the knock came, it was
accompanied by a command to open the door. Not a cop's voice, but the distant
urgent echo of a father in Detroit, wanting his child back.
"Please, Lance," Marie pleaded as
Bobo slipped through the curtain and returned with yet another set of clothing.
One of Lance's old bush hats, Sarah's sweat shirt and jeans.
"Put these on," he told Marie.
"And pull the hat down low. Better yet." He took the wig and pushed
it down over her bright red hair, then put the hat on top of that.
She struggled out of her dress and put on the
clothing he'd provided. She was smaller than Sarah, but with a few added
notches in the belt, she fit into the clothing-- and looked different enough
from her original self to fool most people. Maybe even Mike. Like a young
hippie straight from the midwest. At least in the dark.
"None of this will fool them under close
examination," Bobo said. "But we're not going to give them time for
that. The minute they come through the door, you two get out-- down the stairs
and out to the street. Wait for me down at the park near the Ranch Market. I'll
get there as soon as I can."
"What are you going to do?" Lance
asked.
"Why-- try and stop them from searching
the place, of course. If I don't offer some resistance, they'll start looking
at you."
The knock came again, more insistent.
"Open up!" the voice said, as someone tried to pull on the balcony
door as well.
Bobo manhandled Lance and Marie to the wall
between those doors, pushing their backs tight against it, whispering at them:
"As soon as they rush in, you got out. The first ones won't try and stop
you, and whoever they've got downstairs might not recognize either of you. If
they do, start running."
Bobo yanked open the door. "What is
this?" he moaned at the men charging in, two at first, then more, flooding
in like water from a broken dam. "You people got a warrant?"
As soon as they passed, Lance and Marie
slipped out onto the landing where the dark and empty stairs greeted them. The
soft orange glow of the building's external lights illuminated faces in the
drive, bull-dog faces smoking cigarettes and staring up at the balcony as if
expecting Marie to drop down from it. They looked up startled when Lance and
Marie reached the bottom stair, searching closely their faces in the dim light,
more interested in Lance than Marie. They remembered Lance. They were angry at
him for his stunt on the Boulevard. Perhaps they even had a file on him by this
time, and fingerprints-- yet without Marie he was just another hippie lost in
this world of hippies. Their interest waned as Lance hurried on, down the drive
to the street, then a sharp right up it towards Fountain. Others looked at them
from parked cars on either side, or groups of them standing on the corners. But
none stopped them.
"I don't believe this," Marie
whispered. "This must be costing Daddy a fortune."
"Shush," Lance said, taking her arm
more firmly and pushing her on, around the corner and down Fountain towards
Vine. A block down, Lance noted more of the army parked there, waiting and
watching for someone to slip out through one of the back yards. They had
surrounded the block, watching every inch of it for some possible trick. Even
if there had been a back door, Marie wouldn't have been able to use it.
Daddy wanted her back and would stop at
nothing to have her back.
"Hurry," Lance whispered and
increased his pace, pushing her for the next three blocks till they reached the
park, feeling her quiver beneath his fingers. Something about her helplessness
made her attractive, even dressed as she was.
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