2 Sisters Detective Agency(21)

“Man, it was nothing personal,” Benzo said. “At least not for me. I didn’t pick you. Someone else did. I don’t even know what it was about. For me it was all just a game, okay? Just a bit of fun. No one got hurt, right?”

Jacob fired a bullet into Benzo’s thigh. The boy was tough. He screamed but didn’t fall. Jacob watched the boy clutching his limb with a detached sense of admiration.

The pain seemed to give him courage. Benzo grabbed a lamp from the table by the couch and flung it in Jacob’s direction, using the distraction to make a limping run for the glass doors that looked out onto the yard. Jacob followed at a walk, stepping around the blood trail Benzo was leaving on the marble tiles. He fired again and hit Benzo in the calf just as the boy reached the glass doors, which Jacob had jammed shut with a stone from the garden. Benzo beat on the glass with his fist, but the doors and windows to the garden were triple-paned, installed after neighbors had complained about Benzo’s late-night guitar sessions in the huge, empty house. Beyond, in the dimly lit garden, one of the escorts was resting with her head hanging back over the hot-tub rim as the other chatted on her phone, staring into her champagne glass.

Benzo sank by the doors, his legs useless. “There’s fifty thousand dollars in a safe upstairs,” he said.

Jacob zapped the cattle prod trigger again and smiled. “You like electricity, huh, Benzo?” he asked.

Benzo’s lip twisted in a sneer. “You come over here, old man, and I’m going to snap you in half like a twig.”

Jacob walked forward, gripping the cattle prod hard in his hand.





Chapter 24



Baby didn’t speak to me the whole way to Torrance. I tried to explain my perspective a couple more times, but she just sat there with her bony arms folded, staring straight ahead, her mouth locked in a pout. Her phone was bleeping incessantly in her handbag—her followers, I assumed, wanting to know whether she’d made it onto the plane. This was just a challenge, I assured myself. Baby wasn’t distinctly different from any troubled teenager I’d dealt with before. She had the same wants, needs, fears. I just had to find a way in. I tried a different approach as we pulled into the all-hours storage yard emblazoned with a big green giraffe.

“Why would a kid lie about being abducted?” I wondered aloud, inviting anyone who might be within earshot to chip in.

“He said it was a prank.”

“Weird prank,” I said.

“I know Ash from school. He and I had like a…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Somebody told me that he liked me, but I wasn’t interested at the time. He was really short.”

“That doesn’t sound shallow at all, Baby.”

“I’m talking epic short. Like Tom Cruise short.”

“Ah, you know who Tom Cruise is.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “So you’re not irredeemable. Ashton said Dad came through for you two? What was that about?”

“Oh, man, it was so stupid.” Baby snorted. “We were all partying down on the beach, and Dad came down to hang out with us for a while. Me and some of the kids had blow. The cops showed up and wanted to frisk us, but Dad slipped them a couple of bucks and told them to hit the road.”

“How old were you then?”

“Like, thirteen maybe?”

“So our dad bribed some cops to help you get away with snorting cocaine at age thirteen.” I glanced over at her. “Am I hearing you correctly?”

“He was doing it too.” She shrugged. “This is Los Angeles, okay? You’re not in Chicago anymore.”

“I’m from Colorado.”

“I don’t know why Ash lied about not being abducted or whatever-whatever,” Baby grumbled. “Seems to me like he was scared out of his mind. If I had to put money on it, I’d say he was abducted but he didn’t want you to know.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not trustworthy.”

“What? How could he tell that just by looking at me?”

“You send mixed messages.” She gestured to me. “The hair and the rock band T-shirt and the tattoos say Look at me, but everything else says you hate yourself and don’t want to be looked at.”

“What’s everything else?”

Baby didn’t answer.

“My weight?” I laughed. “You think I hate myself because I’m fat? Is that what you’re saying?”

Baby shrugged again. “I don’t know why you care about Ash anyway.” She huffed. “You’re not taking the case. You’re here to mother me to death, not solve mysteries. Maybe Ash didn’t really want anyone to go looking for the guy. Not the cops. Not you and me.”

“Why not?” I asked, feeling tired.

“Maybe he was looking for Dad because sometimes Dad would smack a guy around if you asked him to. You know. Like sometimes people would come hire Dad not just to find a guy but to find a guy and break his nose,” she said.

I massaged my brow, tired and torn between the desire to know more about my dad’s life as a thug for hire and the instinct that the less I knew the better.

“Or maybe the guy’s got something on Ash that Ash doesn’t want the cops to know,” Baby said.

“Like what?”