phone? Probably only a handful of those dinosaurs left in the country and you get a crank call from one. “Where?”
“What?” the stranger, Paul, demanded.
“The phone you’re on right now. Where is it?”
“I dunno…uh…in L.A. What do you think? Here on Wilshire. Yeah…there’s a bank on the corner. California Something, I think.”
“What’s the cross street?”
“Who the hell knows? It’s around Sixth or Seventh, I think…hey, look, I gotta use the phone, okay?”
Bentz wasn’t going to let the guy go. Not yet. “Just a sec. Did you see a woman using this phone, say, twenty minutes ago?”
“What is this?” The guy on the other end was getting pissed.
“I thought you might have been waiting for the phone and seen someone. A woman.”
“Shit, dude, I said no! Oh, for Christ’s sake!” He hung up, severing the connection.
Bentz clicked off his cell phone, gathered his keys, and slipped into his shoes. He didn’t know what good driving around L.A. in the dead of night would do, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep any time soon. Rebecca was just crushing her cigarette into the large ash can by the front door. The night air was still tinged with the faint smell of smoke as she watched him climb into the Ford.
Familiar with the area, he drove to Wilshire and cruised down the wide near-empty boulevard. A cop car screamed by, lights flashing. He kept his eyes on the street-level storefronts of buildings rising toward the night sky. In the blocks around Sixth and Seventh his gaze swept over the sidewalks and plazas of the massive buildings of steel and glass, searching for a damned pay phone. He wasn’t sure what he expected to find, but he knew he wouldn’t spot the woman who had called him. Unless she was an idiot. His gut told him that she’d be long gone by now. Still he felt the need to view the pay phone for himself.
He missed it on the first pass, but then, spotting California Palisades Bank, he wheeled around in their empty lot…and there it was. His tires squealed slightly as he tore from the parking lot and steered straight to the modern booth. Three sheets of dirty, graffiti-covered Plexiglas on a pole, in front of an edifice with a Korean market on the first floor.
Few people were on the street, but he parked and walked around the pay phone as a city bus sat idling at a bus stop.
Who was she?
Why had she called him? What was the purpose? To get him to track her down here? He scanned the area, dubious. No point in getting him here among these office buildings sitting like sleeping giants in the night, security lights casting eerie beams beyond tinted glass. On the avenue only a smattering of cars passed. Traffic lights glowed green and red down the broad boulevard while tall streetlamps rained down a fluorescent lonely atmosphere.
He saw nothing unusual.
Only that someone was seriously messing with his brain.
Who the hell was doing this to him?
And, more importantly, why?
CHAPTER 8
“I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me,” Kristi fumed on the other end of the wireless call.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Yeah. Eight in the morning.”
“There. It’s barely six here,” Bentz grumbled, eyeing the digital clock as he rolled to the side of the uneven mattress. He’d barely slept since falling into bed after his late-night drive down Wilshire Boulevard. “Two hours difference, remember?” His back ached and he hadn’t gone to bed until nearly 2 A.M. and now his kid was calling at dawn.
“Okay. Sorry.” She didn’t sound it. “But come on, Dad, what’s this all about? I asked Olivia about it, but she was kinda secretive. You know how she gets, all ‘this is between you and your father,’ which is just such BS.” Kristi must’ve been standing outside, maybe outside the apartment she rented in Baton Rouge while attending All Saints College. Bentz could hear the sounds of traffic and the soft call of a mockingbird in the background.
“I just need to work things out.”
“So this is like…what? A separation?”
“What? No.” He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his jaw and walked to the window to crack open the blinds. Immediately bright sunlight streamed through the dusty glass. “I just have some things to do.”
“What things?” Kristi demanded.
“Just catching up on some old cases. I’m meeting with one of the guys I worked with tonight.”
“Why? I thought you hated L.A. The way I remember it you couldn’t get out of the place fast enough.”
“I was going stir crazy.”
“So suddenly, after all these years, you hop on a plane and head west? Save me, Dad,” she said with a theatrical sigh. “Just tell me this doesn’t have anything to do with Mom, okay?”
“It doesn’t.”
“And you’re a bad liar. A real bad liar.”
He remained silent, wondering what had tipped her off. Of course…he’d told Kristi he’d seen Jennifer in his hospital room after he’d woken from his coma. Though they’d never discussed it since, Kristi was bright enough to put two and two together. She was also on the verge of being paranoid now that she possessed her own little bit of ESP. Ever since an accident that nearly took her life, Kristi claimed she knew when a person was about to die, that the victim would “bleed from color to black-and-white.” That had to be scary for her, and Bentz didn’t want to add to her worries.
“Aren’t you supposed to be planning a wedding or something?” he asked.
“Don’t deflect, Dad. It doesn’t work with me.”
“So why did you call? Obviously not just to tell me to have a nice trip.”
“Very funny.”
“Thought so,” he said as he moved to the bathroom where a single-cup coffeepot was wedged onto a slice of countertop. Tearing open the packet of coffee, he listened as Kristi kept firing questions at him: Why was he in L.A.? When was he coming back? Were there problems with Olivia? How worried should she be? He plopped the packet of “fine roast” into a basket, added a cup of water to the pot, and pressed the on button.
“I’m fine. Olivia’s fine. Nothing to worry about,” Bentz insisted as the coffeepot gurgled and hissed. He needed to take a leak, but decided not to freak his daughter out any further and waited until she hung up.
It took another five minutes, but she finally told him “to keep in touch,” before taking another call. He relieved himself, hopped in the shower, and dressed. With his cup of coffee in hand, he decided to hunt up breakfast. He figured a coffee shop on Colorado Avenue might be a good place to start.
After
