Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [112]
From the look of things now, real estate had soared again.
That’s where they live, Manny said, pointing to a narrow modern structure of steel and wood and glass four stories high.
I parked across the street.
That’s a pretty funky house, I said.
He’s an architect. Designed it himself.
You got beat up by an architect?
He used to be a military engineer. Apparently he has a black belt.
He’s still an architect.
What are we doing here? he asked.
Sit, look, listen, I said. Tell me about the father. Tell me what he looks like. We need to plan.
The house was made of ecologically friendly materials, and utilized solar energy. His first floor was concealed by a shiny hammered metal wall softened by elegant bamboo. Its entrance opened to a narrow alley, but the sound of waves echoed among the buildings. He must have had quite a view. I could see the upper levels above the bamboo. They were walls of glass that revealed glimpses of affluence and style—leather furniture, a drafting table, pieces of skylight and sky.
I made the preparations and dropped Manny at the boys’ club. Then I drove back to Venice and parked near the architect’s house. I stood and waited in front of a condo complex across the street, smoking. When a man left Harley’s house and headed down the sidewalk with a little English bulldog, I followed. He matched Manny’s description of the father: shaved head, artsy glasses. When he neared my parked truck, I hurried my step. Perhaps he sensed me coming up, because he turned. One look at me and he got a bit nervous.
Hi, he said. A moment passed. Can I help you?
He wore tortoiseshell glasses, black turtleneck, jeans, and a black-faced Omega watch.
Nice day to walk your dog, I said.
He looked upward as if he hadn’t already noticed the overcast sky, the June marine layer, with its thick smell of ocean salt. In the humid air my joints throbbed.
Yeah, sure, he said. He spoke uncertainly, his tone part fear, part annoyance.
Your dog pooped on my lawn, I said.
He seemed relieved—an explanation for my body language. I’m sorry about that, he said.
You’re supposed to scoop it up.
Like I said, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. He started to pass.
Get in the truck, I said, pointing.
What?
I pulled out the ice pick, set it against his chest. Like I said, get in the truck.
He noticed the tinted windows. I pressed the point against his nipple, which was visible through his microfiber shirt, and he obeyed.
What do you want from me? he said. You want my wal-let?
Put on this bandana. Cover your eyes.
In our family, my grandmother’s brothers fought as guerrilla soldiers in the jungled mountains of Laguna and Quezon during the Japanese occupation. Two had been Philippine Scouts and on the American payroll before MacArthur retreated to Australia. I only knew them years later, as old men, drunkards who loved to boast in a mixture of English and Tagalog and Spanish. They visited Los Angeles and stayed with us several times, trying to claim the veterans’ benefits they had been promised. I thought they were losers because they kept asking, even though they never got anybody to listen to them. They struck me as dreamers. Then they got me drunk when I was nine. They told me I took after them, the Laurels (that’s my mother’s maiden name). Indeed, a few years later I grew tall and broad—the conquistador’s barrel chest, they called it.
They don’t seem like soldiers, I told my mother and her sister. We were visiting them in San Pablo, an old Spanish-Malay city among coconut haciendas south of Manila, and they drank San Miguel beers from a crate on their picnic table. I was at a separate table, where the women sat.
That’s only because they’re old, Mom said.
What did they do?
Eduardo and Pedro were the worst, she said. They ran the hacienda like gangsters. They once shot a man for looking at their sister the wrong way.
Wow, I said. What else?
She said, One of their brothers—Tio Bien, the good one,