Killing Moon

Harry lit up the joint. He had come to the conclusion that joints didn’t count with regard to the new drinking regimen he had embarked upon. Inhaled. Watched the smoke curl upward to the ceiling. He had dreamt about the man behind the wheel of the Camaro again. And the number plate that read Baja California Mexico. The dream was the same, he was chasing them. So not exactly hard to interpret. Three weeks had passed since Harry had stood in the parking lot outside Creatures with a Glock 17 aimed at him, fairly certain his imminent demise was a second or two away. Which had been just fine by him. So it was strange that the only thing that had been in his head after those two seconds had elapsed, and every day since, was not to die. It had begun with the hesitation on the part of the man in the polo shirt; perhaps he was considering the possibility that Harry was a mental case, a manageable obstacle to be overcome, who didn’t need shooting. He would hardly have had more time to think before Harry’s chisel punch struck him in the throat and put him down for the count. Harry had physically felt the man’s larynx give way. He had lain squirming on the gravel like a worm, his hands to his throat and eyes bulging while he gasped desperately for air. Harry had picked the Glock up off the ground and stared at the man in the car. Due to the tinted windows he hadn’t seen much, only the outline of a face, and that the man looked to be wearing a white shirt buttoned right up to the neck. And that he was smoking a cigarette or a cigarillo. The man made no move, just looked calmly out at Harry, as though evaluating him, committing him to memory. Harry heard someone shout ‘Get in!’ and noticed Lucille had started her own car and pushed open the door on the passenger side.

Then he had jumped in. Down the rabbit hole.

The first thing he asked as she turned down towards lower ground and Sunset Boulevard, was who she owed money to and how much.

The first answer — ‘The Esposito family’ — didn’t mean much to him, but the next — ‘Nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ — confirmed what the Glock had already told him. That she wasn’t in a little trouble but a lot. And that from now on that trouble included him.

He explained that under no circumstances could she go back home, and asked if there was anyone whose place she could lay low at. She said, yes, she had a lot of friends in Los Angeles. But after thinking about it for a minute, she said none of them would be willing to run the risk for her. They stopped at a petrol station, and Lucille called her first husband, whom she knew had a house he hadn’t used in several years.

And that was how they had ended up on this property, with its dilapidated house, overgrown garden and guest bungalow. Harry had installed himself in the bungalow with his newly acquired Glock 17 because from there he had a view of both gates, and because it was fitted with an alarm that went off should anyone break into the main house. Any prospective intruders wouldn’t hear that alarm, meaning hopefully he could take them from the rear, given that he would be coming from the outside. Up until now, he and Lucille had hardly left the property, just short trips for the absolute essentials: alcohol, food, clothes and cosmetics — in that order. Lucille had taken up residence on the first floor of the main house, which after just a week was full of cats.

‘Aw, in this town they’re all homeless,’ Lucille told him. ‘You put some food out on the stoop a few days in a row, leave the front door open, some more food in the kitchen, and before you know it you’ve got enough pet friends for an entire lifetime.’

Yet not quite enough it seemed, because three days previously Lucille decided she couldn’t endure the isolation any longer. She had taken Harry to a former Savile Row tailor she knew, to an elderly hairdresser in Rosewood Avenue and then — most important of all — to John Lobb’s shoe store in Beverly Hills. Yesterday, Harry had picked up the suit while Lucille got ready, and a few hours later they had gone to eat at Dan Tana’s, the legendary Italian restaurant where the chairs were as worn out as the clientele, but where Lucille seemed to know everybody and had beamed all evening.

It was seven o’clock. Harry inhaled and stared at the ceiling. Listened for sounds that shouldn’t be there. But all he heard was the first cars on Doheny Drive, which was not the widest street, but popular because it had fewer traffic lights than the roads running parallel. It reminded him of lying in bed in his apartment in Oslo, listening to the sounds of the city waking outside the open window. He missed it, even the ill-tempered ringing and the shrill screech of a braking tram. Particularly the shrill screech.