The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais Page A

you.”
    Poitras grunted. He opened the drivers side door and stuck his head in. When he leaned against the little car, it settled on its springs. Then he dropped down into a push-up position on the ground. He got up, went to the tail end of the car, and dropped down again. This time he reached under the car and came out with a pair of white and lavender glasses. The left temple was broken.
    â€œEllen Lang’s,” I said.
    Poitras nodded and watched the cars go by on Ventura. He set the glasses on the Subarus hood, leaned against the fender, and stared at me, eyes empty. The streetlamp was suddenly much louder. “Old Mort,” Poitras said slowly, “he was into something all right.”

13

    Later, Poitras had one of the uniforms drive me back to Ellen Lang’s for my car. Janet Simon was sitting on the ottoman when I walked in, the little blue ashtray beside her full and the living room cloudy with smoke. I didn’t make any cracks. She said, “Well?”
    â€œLooks like someone grabbed her.”
    She nodded as if it were unimportant and stood up. There were two small suitcases by the entry, one light blue, the other tan. She said, “I’d better get the girls.”
    â€œAre you sorry it happened between us?”
    She went ashen around her lips as if she were very angry. Maybe she was. As if in opening herself she had violated a promise she held very dear. Maybe she had. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”
    I nodded. “Want some help with the girls?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMaybe some company, when you tell them?”
    â€œNo. I’m sorry, but no. Do you see?” She was a pale, creamy coffee color beneath her tan, her lips and nostrils and temples touched with blue. She wasn’t making eye contact. She was at a place like Ellen Lang, where putting your eyes to someone else’s cost too much, only Janet Simon wasn’t used to it.
    â€œSure,” I said. “You’ve got my number.”
    She nodded, once, looking down at her cigarette.
    I left.
    I stopped at a Westward Ho market to pick up two six-packs of Falstaff, the best cheap beer around, and went home and put George Thorogood on loud and drank beer with the cat and thought about things. Ellen Lang and Janet Simon. They weren’t so very different. Maybe Janet Simon
had
been Ellen Lang. Maybe Ellen Lang would one day be Janet Simon. If she were still alive. I drank more beer, and cranked the speakers up to distortion when George got to
Bad to the Bone
. I listen to that song, I always feel tough. I drank more beer. Atsome point very late that night I became a flying monkey, one of thousands chasing Morton Lang toward the Emerald City.
    The next morning I hurt, but it was manageable. The cat was on the floor beside me, belly up. “Have something ready when I get back, okay?” He ignored me. I stripped down to my shorts, went out onto the deck, and went from the twelve sun salutes to the tae kwan do. I took air in deep, using my stomach muscles, saturating my blood with oxygen until my ears rang. I pushed hard, spinning through low space to mid space to high space, using the big muscles in my back and chest and legs the way I’d been taught, working to burn out the Bad Things and finding a proof of it in the pain singing in my muscles.
    After I shaved and showered and dressed I made soft-boiled eggs and raisin muffins and sliced bananas. While I ate them I made four sandwiches, brewed a pot of coffee, and poured it into the big thermos. I took out a six-pack of RC 100, two Budweisers, and a jar of jalapeño-stuffed olives. I put all that in a double-strength paper bag on top of a couple books by Elmore Leonard,
Hombre
and
Valdez Is Coming
. I took my clip-on holster out of the closet, put the Dan Wesson in it, and selected a jacket to go with my khaki Meronas. By eight-twenty I was staking out Kimberly Marsh’s apartment. I was cranky. If the fat guy