I said, “Loomis, slow down. You don’t have anything on your stomach.” I didn’t hear anything back. I continued, “Ask her like we rehearsed.”
Loomis did pretty well, considering he drank four more Zombies in the next five minutes. He told the woman he was looking for a dancer named Blanca, but didn’t know her last nam
e. The woman said Blanca didn’t work at the Diamond anymore. Loomis said he was to deliver a package to Blanca from an admirer who used to watch her dance, but was dying and wanted to give her this little token of his appreciation. He said it was too bad Blanca wasn’t working here, but did the woman know where she was? Loomis showed the woman the manila envelope with ten one hundred dollar bills, then told her if she could get him to Blanca, she would get a reward. The woman hesitated and Loomis placed a hundred dollars on the table and told her she could have that if she knew where he could find Blanca. He told her there would be another hundred if he found Blanca.
The woman took the hundred and told him an address in Culver City.
**
Loomis threw up in the Yugo before we returned to the Camino Real. He apologized and was going to take off his jacket to use as a rag when I told him I’d take care of it. My eyes watered. I rolled down the window and turned my nose to the wind.
“Why did you order Zombies?” I asked.
“The only drink name I knew.”
“You could have ordered beer.”
“I didn’t think that’s what people drank in naked clubs.” He felt miserable and I didn’t question him any more. When I let him out, I drove to the nearest car wash and spent three dollars in quarters cleaning out the passenger side. I paid a dollar for some kind of strawberry air freshener -- the only kind they had -- and placed it at Ground Zero. It helped a little.
The address in Culver City was in a Hispanic neighborhood. I got some long stares as I cruised in the Yugo, looking for the house number. I found it in the middle of the next block. The house was originally built in the forties and was well maintained with the yard neat and green. I parked at the curb and walked to the front door. A doorbell was by the knob and I pushed it, hearing the faint ring inside.
The door had three small, face high panes of glass descending like stairs across the door. I put my eye against one and could see through a thin curtain. A woman was getting out of a recliner. She put down a newspaper and walked to the door. I pulled my face back and the door opened. The Hispanic woman was probably in her fifties. She looked at me with a frown.
I said, “Miss, I’m looking for Blanca. Is she here?”
“No hablo Ingles.”
I could see the living room behind her. The newspaper was the Los Angeles Times, in English. There was a Redbook beside it and an old Bewitched rerun was on the television, with Elizabeth Montgomery and the rest of the actors speaking their lines in English. I said, “Blanca’s in danger. I’m here to help her.”
The woman didn’t move or speak.
We had a silent face-off for thirty seconds, until she won. I sighed and said, “My friend is the one who helped her escape at the Caspian Diamond. He was almost killed doing it. I know Blanca went by to see him while he was in the hospital. Her enemies wouldn’t know that.” The woman didn’t acknowledge I’d spoken. I said, “I’ll go wait in the car for five minutes. If you don’t put me in touch with Blanca by then, I’ll drive off. But know this, those men are hunting her just like I am, and if I can find this address, so can they.” I went to the Yugo, got in and tuned the radio to NPR, where they were describing the incredible distances whales could hear each other under water. After a couple of minutes, I figured if the human race could learn to talk in hoots, whistles, and clicks we could just stick our heads in the water and talk across the globe. Then again, being put on hold might result in a lot of drownings.
The door of the house opened and the woman stepped outside holding a cordless phone and beckoning me to her.
The woman said, “Blanca’s on the line. She wants to talk to you.”
“Wow,” I said, “That Learn to Speak English in Thirty Seconds course from Rosetta Stone really works, huh?” She made a face like tasting something sour and handed me the phone.
I said, “Hello.”
“You’re his friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, tell me what room he’s in.”
“Three fifteen.”
“Anybody could find that out with a call.”
“Yeah they could, but nobody except someone he talked to would know you visited him. He told me you snuck past the nurses, and you thanked him for saving you. He almost died that night because of pneumonia, did you know that?”
“No, but he seemed to have trouble breathing when we talked.”
“Hondo made it through the night and when he regained consciousness this morning, he told me to find you.”
“How did you?”