The Starshine Connection Read online

  “Thank god you called! I’ve been worried sick about that whole thing at the El Condor. Poor Kiko. I can’t believe he’s dead—”

  “Hold it,” Slayton cut in. “Is this Mercy?”

  “Yeah, right. I thought you knew.”

  Slayton motioned rapidly toward the phone and Lucius rushed over. “You were at the El Condor when our little Anglo party got rough.”

  “You were driving a silver Trans-Am,” Mercy said coolly. “I got there a few minutes before it happened. I was—I had a date, you understand?”

  “A fat Mexican cowboy driving a Bronco?”

  “Yeah, right. Raoul Cerritos. He only hangs around the barrio because it’s family, you know, but he makes more money than—”

  “How did you know to call here?” Slayton’s questions were almost formal, clipped of emotion. Lucius realized he was still angry—whether at himself or at the unsavory turn events had taken, he could not tell.

  “Kiko had a matchbook from the Hyatt. He told me about you. He said you were his friend, that the cholos chased you and you got away.”

  “He went into that place to drag you out,” Slayton said, bitterly. “He thought you were his friend, too. Poor son-ofabitch got gaffed like a trout because his friends turned out to be full of shit.” Mentally he yelled at himself: ease off, godammitl

  Mercy said nothing, her stream of words abruptly cut off by Slayton’s invective.

  “Sorry,” Slayton said. “Listen, we can’t come down into the barrio again; they know who we are. We’ve got to talk.”

  “It’s easy to get to the Hyatt from here. I can catch a bus—”

  “No, you don’t have to do that. Another car will be easy to arrange.” He glanced at Lucius, who nodded affirmatively.

  “No,” she said. “It’s okay. I can handle L.A. mass transit faster than you can dig up another car. Give me a room number, okay?”

  Slayton felt a pang of warning. It seemed too easy. It could, therefore, be some kind of trap. “Eleven-oh-four,” he said, naming the room on the floor above him.

  “Knock like shave-and-a-haircut?”

  “Do you do that usually?”

  “Hey man—you would not in your wildest imagination dream of what some guys ask me to do.” She was slightly indignant.

  “Sure I would,” Slayton said, a hint of his old humor coming back for the first time that night. “Some of those positions wouldn’t exist if I hadn’t been born.”

  “Oh Christ, a smart guy.”

  “Just get here,” Slayton said, voice growing flinty again.

  “Yeah, right. G’bye.” Dead line.

  “What now?” said Lucius, by now committed and indefatigable.

  “Now we perform that good old Treasury Department standby,” said Slayton, shucking his bloodied shirt. “The stake-out.”

  Mercy had changed into a wool turtleneck and black slacks tight enough to be stylish. The way she walked on top of the very lofty heels indicated she had had a lot of practice at it, and even at a distance Slayton could tell she had stripped away most of the makeup he had spotted on her at the El Condor. She was attractive, but a bit flat-featured, looking more Oriental than Mexican. Obviously familiar with the layout of the Hyatt, she beelined for the bank of elevators.

  She had barely rounded the corner of the lobby when the boy tailing her came through the sliding doors of the main entrance, struggling to appear casual in an environment that was clearly alien to him. He looked furtively around, and grew panicky when he did not spot the woman.

  Slayton punched the out line on the courtesy phone as Mercy waited for the elevator.

  “Hello, Slayton again. Yeah. Listen, you’ll find a chopped Dodge full of very sultry Chicanos in the parking lot of the Hyatt. They probably won’t be doing anything but obstructing a corner. Make up some excuse and get them out of my hair. There’ll be one more you can pick up from hotel security. Right. Tank them for twenty-four hours. There’s a chance that we’ve got accessories to aggravated assault and homicide. Yeah. Gotta go. ’Bye”

  Mercy stepped into the elevator as Slayton hung up. The cholo had spotted her, but missed the car, and stood patiently waiting to see what floor she got off on. Across the lobby, the security man who had lobby duty for the night already had his eye on the kid. Nonchalant, Slayton walked up behind the teenager, almost certain now that it was one of the hyena pack involved in the El Condor stabbing.

  Later, the guard would swear that what he saw take place was an outright attempted mugging in the Hyatt lobby, foiled by the intended victim. What actually happened was that the boy began to turn, and Slayton caught his head in a flat, open-handed swing that connected with his right ear and imploded the eardrum on impact. The boy reeled drunkenly, and Slayton put the heel of his right hand into his open forehead, snapping his head backward and causing him to slip on the wax finish of the floor. The security man was rushing over as fast as his bulk would permit. He made it in time to hear the heavy thump of the cholo’s head introducing itself to the tiles of the floor. His feet jerked into the stupid splay of unconsciousness as Slayton, in a single blurring motion worthy of a magician, dropped his wallet and picked it up again.

  The guard did not have to be convinced of anything.

  “I saw a police car in the parking lot, dealing, I believe, with some friends of this gentleman here,” Slayton told the guard. “No harm done. I’m in 1004 if you need me; name’s Slayton. Now pardon me, officer, but I’ve got to catch up with my wife.” He tugged a thumb toward the closed elevator doors. The car had stopped at the eleventh floor.

  The security man nodded quickly as Slayton jumped into a free car. There was no hurry. The cholo remained kayoed as he was swept up off the floor.

  As usual, the elevator ascended with the slowness of a worker paid by the hour. Slayton, pumped up with adrenalin from the takeout of a few moments before, punched the fake wood paneling in a frustrated, irrational attempt to goad the car into speed. The elevator crawled.

  The doors opened, and Slayton sprinted out into the corridor. He almost collided with Mercy and Lucius as they rounded the corner together.

  His eyes met the deep, whirlpool brown of Mercy’s own. “Shave and a haircut?” he said.

  “Yeah.” She returned his look uncertainly, more than a little bit afraid. “Christ! I thought this guy was a cop or something. Scared the crap out of me. I kept expecting him to flash a badge or something, and he don’t do nothing, you know? Then I thought, oh god, the Hillside Strangler or something, right? Some kind of hotel pervert.”

  Lucius threw up his arms helplessly. “She checks out, Ben.”

  Together they reentered the elevator. “Did you know you were being followed, Mercy?”

  “By you?” Her ignorance was all Slayton needed as verification. He did not think she was part of the contingent in the souped-up Dodge.

  Fortified by room service, and more or less secure within 1004 at last, Slayton let the bomb drop.

  “When was the first time you ever drank Starshine, Mercy?”

  Her chatter, which concerned most of the bums she had been rented by in the past week, stopped as if her audio plug had been yanked out. “Oh, wow,” she said. “You guys narks or something?” Her face shifted easily into expressions of suspicion and wariness.

  Slayton smiled as amiably as possible and pointed toward Lucius, who was just coming out of the bathroom. “He is, but he’s leaving.”

  Mercy’s eyes flitted between the two men. She was smiling, yet did not know whether she was being put on or not

  “Damn straight,” said Lucius, unsuccessfully attempting to crack his backbone. “I’ve had it for today. Maybe you don’t need any sleep, Ben. Maybe that’s the secret to making it, eh? Not me. Give me nine-to-five. Thank you, god. Ouch!” He tried to massage his own neck. “I hope my car hasn’t been stolen.”

  “You’ll find it on blocks in the lot,” Slayton joked.

  “Not funny. Ow. Goddam Trans-Am seats!”

>   “Here, here,” Mercy said, standing up. “Put your arms down. Relax. Stand still.” She reached up and kneaded Lucius’s sore shoulders and neck from behind. “Okay?”

  “Ah—better,” he said.

  “Muscles are all knotted up. What the hell do you do to make you so tense?”

  “Ugh!” Lucius indicated Slayton. “I put up with his superhuman demands on my time, friendship, and resources, that’s what. Ah!” He lifted his arms. “Enough! It’s wonderful, but enough—I’ve got to go and I don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.” He collected his jacket. “Phone in if anything weird happens, Ben, okay? And again—I’m sorry about…”

  “Yeah,” Slayton said, dismissing it. “Later, Lucius.” He did not rise. He was wrung out, and tired, as well.

  “Hey, listen,” Mercy said, turning from the door. “I’m really sorry about Kiko, you know? I felt like I must have owed him something—I mean, I helped to hurt him once. And nobody deserves that. Nobody deserves to die like that, either.”

  “Kiko told me about how he met you,” Slayton said. “I can guess what happened. But how did you run across the gang?”

  “They were neighborhood. I never thought they’d kill anybody—they made a lot of noise, you know, but killing people? No, thanks.”

  “Second, I’m willing to pay you for your time if you can tell me anything I need to know.” Slayton watched for the effect of his carefully phrased prod.

  “Oh, wow,” Mercy said in an astonished kind of whisper that Slayton had already come to associate with her personality. “I didn’t mean it that way. Really. I want to help.”

  “Then stop skirting around the topic of Starshine and answer my questions, and we’ll both be happy people.”

  “I knew some guys who liked to play rich, put on airs, you know?” She motioned for a match, and Slayton lit her filtered cigarette. “Convince everyone they were exotic. One worked for the guys who make agua fria, the ice-water, the ones who distill it. It was easy for him to get paid in Starshine. The cholos, they’re like budget cops. Bargain-basement security. The distillers load them up with dope and a little Starshine. They get ‘em out of jail. They’ve got the allegiance of the whole gang in return for helping them become one of the strongest in the barrio.”

  She paused and smoked for a moment. “I started hanging out with Ortiz and Manuelo Paz. They were movers, they were machins—top guys. They could get Starshine if you wanted it. One night they got me really tanked on that stuff. That’s the night they brought Kiko in and made him go down on the whole goddam gang. I was stoned out of my gourd. I didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

  Slayton tried not to think about Kiko’s pitiful tale wherein Mercy was his “girlfriend.” “Listen, Mercy,” he said. “They’ve probably already connected you to Kiko—he spoke to you in the El Condor right before they got him—and they know he was connected to the Anglo who’s made asses out of them twice now. What makes you think they won’t pound the crap out of you when you go back, either for kicks or to try to get me? They followed you here.”

  “I don’t think they won’t; in fact, I know they will. Ortiz gets off on hitting women; that was why I stopped hanging out with them even though they were supporting me. Why the hell do you think I’d work a dive like the El Condor if I didn’t need the bread?”

  It made sense. It also meant Mercy could not simply go waltzing back into the barrio as though nothing had happened. If the Starshine ring had the pull Slayton suspected, the cholos who tailed Mercy would be out of jail in a day. She was in danger; he had marked her as surely as he had put the hex on Kiko. But now he had a key to the Starshine distilling group.

  “Mercy, how about if you promise me to stay on the hotel strip for a few days? Lay low. My treat. We’ll move you into a room for a week or so, and you can avoid the meat grinder.”

  “Thanks,” she said quickly. “I could use the time to just loaf around, watch TV, think to myself. I need some quiet. I need to think about things. Maybe it’s a good idea. But why change hotels?”

  “They’ve already connected you to this one. Just a precaution.”

  “I don’t think the cholos have the savvy to search every room in the Hyatt House.”

  Slayton gazed out the crack in the curtains at the lights of L.A.X. Planes lifted off from the runway every minute or so. “You’re probably right,” he admitted.

  “Terrific,” she said, standing up. “First abuse I’d like to make of your hospitality is stealing your facilities for a hot bath. Okay?”

  “Don’t you want another room?”

  “We can do that later if you want. I mean, if I’m that ugly.”

  It was a bait Slayton did not mind rising to even though his tired body protested. “You’re far from ugly. I’d be sitting here all hot and bothered if I hadn’t had a friend’s guts plunk into my lap earlier today.”

  She glided over the remark. “I don’t mind staying in here. You’re cute enough.” She began to walk toward the blazing lights and white tile of the bathroom.

  “You won’t believe this,” Slayton said, talking louder when the bathtub water came on in full force, “but a Washington debutante said something like that to me just a few days ago.” Steam began to roll out the open bathroom door in clouds.

  He heard Mercy moving around, but decided to do nothing. Instead, he cleared the bed, fully intending to catnap while she relaxed in the tub. He knocked off his shoes, linked his hands behind his head… and promptly fell asleep.

  His frame ached for rest. The wrenching movements of the high-speed driving, the gunplay, the physical involvement with the cholos, the flight, the long, long hours had exhausted him. Fatigue finally defeated his obsession with getting a particularly distasteful mission out of his life.

  He awoke only once, and lay drowsily on the bed. At first he was aware of the room’s wonderful air conditioning, stirring the hair on his naked body from a distance, and then of the rasp of his black silk socks leaving his feet.

  Somebody was undressing him in the dark!

  His body calmed when his brain told him it was nothing to panic about. Then, before he dropped off again, he heard a voice—sweet, unbearably luscious, and thousands of miles distant.

  “Are you going to scoot over, lover, or am I going to coop on the floor?”

  The last thing he remembered was the velvet motion of Mercy’s beautiful, brown body against his own.

  12

  The tables were neatly turned when Slayton woke up. The blaze of the afternoon sunshine was dampened by the heavy curtains in the room. Inches away from him, he saw Mercy’s naked shoulder rise and fall with the undisturbed cadence of deep sleep. The air conditioning was still on.

  A warm but pleasant ache in his groin told him that Mercy had been at work while he slept. And he had not wakened! He must have been in a coma. But that obviously had been hours and hours ago. Now Mercy was in another land, and Slayton decided to return the favor in kind.

  She had not required money or favors, or bartering banter. Slayton thought that interesting, almost nice. He rearranged himself on the warm, slept-in bed. The homey smells of two dozing people intoxicated him.

  Mercy made a gasping sound, small and quiet. Several moments later she came awake, discovering Slayton above her, making love with all the finesse of which he was capable. She closed her eyes again, finding his rhythm, and gradually joining it. She wished him good morning in a sleepy voice, and they both laughed.

  When she told Slayton she did not like coffee, he smiled back at her and ordered coffee for four from room service. With a hot tea.

  “Would it do any good to go chasing after Ortiz and Paz? Do they have any useful connection to the higher-ups in the Starshine business?” Slayton asked her later.

  “No. Other than being watchdogs, their interests are strictly confined to terrorizing the barrio. Ortiz is a sadist, I told you—that’s why I don’t have anything to do with them anymore.” She blew on her tea to cool it while Slay
-ton dealt with the task of loading himself with coffee, a morning ritual with him no matter where he was. His bodily depletions were habitually replenished first with the rush of sugar-energy and the stimulant of caffeine, followed by another ritual in the bathroom. That phase he had not yet reached. Both were still unclothed, and in bed.

  “Can you help me?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She furrowed her brow briefly, like a schoolgirl perplexed by an outwardly simple problem. “I told you Ortiz and Paz were the machins—and they thought they were bigger than they were. Always showing off, always brutalizing their subordinates, always screwing as many women as they could brag about. They thought they were better swordsmen then they were. But one way they’d convince girls to go with them was to show off, and one way they’d show off was to take them on tours of the Starshine plants when the real guys—their employers—weren’t around.”

  “Of course, they said the facilities were all theirs?”

  “Sure they did. Wouldn’t you? They were primo maderistas, those two.”

  “Primo what?”

  “Bullshitters. But barrio girls are easily dazzled.”

  “Including you?”

  “Ho, ho. Afraid not. But I have been to several of the plants, if that interests you.” She grinned, fully aware of the carrot she was dangling before Slayton’s nose.

  “Go on,” Slayton chose not to indulge the game. He knew he was probably running out of time on the other side of the country.

  “I was inside of one place, a warehouse. It was designed so that on the inside, an entire floor was unaccounted for. It was filled up with the equipment they needed to make the agua fria—bootleg it, I guess you’d say. It all looked very impressive.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start,” Slayton said, rolling out of the bed and making preliminary moves toward the bathroom.

  “Ben, I have no idea when the place is occupied and when it isn’t. How will you know?”

  “Once upon a time,” Slayton said, sitting on the foot of the bed and lifting Mercy’s foot to massage it, “there was a man who came to me and said, ‘Ben, there’s this used car lot. It never seemed to sell any cars, but for two weeks they engaged a security guard who stayed out in the lot, in the cold, all night.’ For two weeks only. After that, no security guard. What would your conclusions be?”