Body Copy - Michael Craven [47]
“I’m afraid, gentlemen,” Tremaine said, “that that’s not going to happen.”
The white spokesman who talked like he was black looked down at the ground and laughed. A mocking, smart-ass laugh.
“Why don’t you quit calling us ‘gentlemen.’ That tone, I hear it, showing us disrespect.” Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife. Looked to Tremaine like a knife used in the armed forces. Pretty small blade, thin 145
Michael Craven
black handle, easy to conceal. And sharp. Then he picked his head up, looking at Tremaine now, and said, “And give me your fuckin’ wallet.”
He was holding the knife up, showing it off, tilting it to the side a bit. Posing.
Tremaine started walking toward him.
Nina said, “Donald.”
“You better back the fuck up, ’less you wanna get cut.”
Tremaine looked right at the guy and kept walking.
Steadily, a beeline. He was about two feet in front of the guy, when the guy pulled back the knife, in position to take a swipe at Tremaine. Tremaine, still moving forward, cocked back his fist and drove it in the guy’s nose.
A piercing crack, followed by gushing blood. As the guy raised both of his hands to hold his ruined nose, the knife fell out of his hand. It fell at the feet of the two other guys. Tremaine made no motion to pick it up or kick it away.
Instead, he said to the two guys, “You want it, pick it up. Go ahead.”
Neither one of them moved.
The white guy with the blood on his face removed his hands and looked at his two buddies. He said, “Let’s go get the boys and come back and kill this bitch.”
He turned to Tremaine, who could see the tears in his eyes, and said, “You dead. We’ll be back.”
Tremaine said, “No, you won’t. And you should know, the way you’re talking, you sound like an idiot.”
The guys turned around and strutted, quickly, into the blackness, down the beach where they’d come from. The knife shined and sparkled a bit, catching some of the moon-146
B O D Y C O P Y
light. It was right on the ground where the guy dropped it.
Tremaine picked it up, opened his car door, and threw it on the floorboard in front of the passenger-side seat.
He turned to Nina and said, “Sorry about that. This little stretch is usually very peaceful.”
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C H A P T E R 2 1
Wendy Leahy said, yeah, sure, I’ll talk to you, when Tremaine called her and asked if she had some time to talk about Roger Gale. She obviously didn’t know her affair had been kept out of the police report, that it was a secret to many. She was perfectly open about it, willing to discuss it. She said she didn’t have a ton of time, but that he could come by the gym and they could talk at her desk.
This woman, Wendy, acted very composed, not fazed at all about discussing the affair. Practice, maybe.
Tremaine arrived at L.A. Shape—that was the name of the gym, Peterson had gotten it wrong—at about noon. The place was packed. People running and lifting and sweating and grunting all over the place. Only in L.A., he thought.
Tuesday mid-morning and a full house. Where did all these B O D Y C O P Y
people work? In Los Angeles, the ebb and flow of people in public was just different. Most towns, Monday through Friday had a different feel from the weekend. Not really the case in L.A. You could go to the movies or to the mall or to wherever right smack dab in the middle of the workweek, in the middle of the day, and there would be people everywhere. And not just vagrants or octogenarians or teenag-ers ditching school. Twenty- and thirty-somethings who looked like they made money. What the hell did they all do? They couldn’t all be successful actors or writers or directors. There was a mystery Tremaine would never solve.
Tremaine went to the desk at the gym where everyone showed their identification. The desk that determined whether or not you could enter the hallowed grounds of L.A. Shape.
“May I help you?” the woman behind the desk chirped.
“I have an appointment with Wendy Leahy.”
“Do you know where her