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Close to the Ground Page 4


  He was strong, and he was good. His punches avoided the ribs, squarely aimed at Angel’s solar plexus. Any mortal man would have had the wind knocked out of him.

  After taking a few, Angel caught the surfer’s fist in his hand, tugged the guy right up to his face. The surfer’s eyes widened in surprise at Angel’s strength. Angel squeezed until he could feel some of the small bones of the hand break.

  “Don’t ever go near her again,” Angel whispered. “If you do, I’ll hear about it. And you’ll be the one with regrets.”

  He let go of surfer dude, who stepped back, cradling his hand and shaking his head. There were tears in his eyes, from the pain. Angel was briefly sorry he’d taken it so far, but it seemed to work. The fight was gone from the surfer, and his partner didn’t look willing to take up where he had left off.

  “D-dude.” There was a hitch in the surfer’s voice. “He broke my freakin’ hand, dude.”

  The surfer’s friend backed away from Angel. “You want her, man, you got her,” he said. “She’s all yours. Jeep’s mine, though.”

  “That true?” Angel asked the girl.

  She nodded her head, wiping tears off one cheek with her right hand.

  “Take it,” Angel ordered. “And get out of my sight.”

  The two men piled into it. The bald one got behind the wheel, cranked it up, and pulled out of the lot. The last Angel saw of them was their tail-lights turning onto Sunset.

  “You okay?” Angel asked.

  She sniffed. “I guess so.” Her eyes began to fill again, and her head snapped around at the sound of a car engine on the street. “Please don’t leave me here,” she pleaded, clutching at Angel’s arm. “What if they come back?”

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

  She looked very young in the faint light from the U-PARK sign. Her eyes were wide, her round cheeks glistening from the tears. Doyle had called her pretty, and he was right. In a few years, Angel found himself thinking, she’ll be a knockout.

  And, this being Los Angeles, she’ll be very skilled in using her looks to get what she wants.

  “Like Dave said, they were supposed to be watching me. Daddy calls them bodyguards, but they’re more like chaperones or baby-sitters. It’s not like I’m in any danger or anything, he just wants to make sure I don’t do anything he doesn’t want me to do.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one,” she said. She seemed to be relaxing now, getting a handle on her terror.

  At least enough to lie.

  Angel just looked at her. Right, he thought, and I’m only a hundred and ten.

  “I have ID.”

  “I’m sure you do. And I’m sure it’s a great fake.”

  “Nineteen,” she offered. Angel looked at her some more. “Well, almost eighteen. In November.”

  “Which makes you seventeen now. It’s almost three in the morning. Your father seems pretty permissive as it is.”

  “He knows I’m not going to stay home on a Saturday night, so he figures he can sic the watchdogs on me to keep me from having any real fun.”

  “I don’t blame him a bit.”

  “Gee, thanks. And I thought you were on my side.”

  “I’m not on anybody’s side here,” Angel elaborated. “I just don’t think grown men should slap around young ladies.”

  “Well, there’s something we can agree on,” she said. She seemed to be gaining in confidence as they spoke — she carried herself now with the air of someone older than she really was, maybe even older than she liked to pose as being. “They were mad that I made them earn their pay,” she went on. “And I guess they figured, after I gave them the slip, that they’d get fired as soon as Daddy found out anyway, so they had nothing to lose by taking their aggressions out on me.”

  “Well, they’re gone now, so I guess I’ll deliver you back to Daddy. I don’t think you should be out here alone, not at your age. What’s your name?”

  “Karinna,” she said. She smiled politely and stuck out a small-fingered hand, like a toddler learning manners. Angel shook it. “Karinna Willits.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Karinna Willits. I’m Angel.”

  “Angel,” she repeated. “How very apropos. That means ‘fitting.’ ”

  “I know what it means,” he said. “Let’s go. Unless it’s been towed, my car’s in the alley.”

  “Oooh,” Karinna said. “You live dangerously.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “So what’s he like, your dad?”

  They were in Angel’s car, heading toward Bel Air. The top was down and cool night air rushed into the car, and Karinna was kind of huddling against her door, staying as far away from Angel, and as protected from the wind, as she could manage.

  “I don’t know, he’s a dad, you know. Likes to make rules, likes to set limits. Home by midnight, no boys with piercings, don’t make the school have to call home more than twice a year, stuff like that.”

  “Home by midnight?” Angel repeated. “Not tonight.”

  “Yeah, well that one kind of fell by the wayside a long time ago.”

  “The boys with piercings, that seems like a good one to stick with. At least for now.”

  “He used to include tattoos in that, until Mom made him get one.”

  “Your father has a tattoo?”

  Karinna smiled. “It’s cool. It’s a rose with a thorny stem, and one of the thorns looks like it’s sticking into his arm, and there’s a drop of blood where it stabbed him. It’s on his bicep. I’m trying to get him to pierce his eyebrow, but he won’t even talk about it.”

  “Imagine my surprise,” Angel said. “He sounds like an okay guy.”

  “I guess he is. Like I said, for a dad and all. He’s not like my friend Jasmine’s dad, Albert. We all call him Albert, and he lets us hang out in his basement, watch videos, kind of do whatever we want, you know? He and Shyla, that’s Jasmine’s stepmom, they’re like the really cool parents everybody else wishes they had.”

  “I know I’m going to sound really old saying this,” Angel began. “But I think it’s true. As you grow up, you’ll realize that parents who care enough about you to set some limits and let you know their expectations are probably the best kind to have.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I am?”

  “You do sound old. Are you?”

  It was Angel’s turn to smile. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  He slowed to turn into the guarded entrance to Bel Air, one of the wealthiest communities in one of the wealthiest regions of one of the wealthiest countries on Earth. There was probably more money within Bel Air’s walls than there was, total, in half the countries on the planet, he guessed. Angel had never had occasion to go behind the walls that surrounded this enclave of privilege, and he anticipated some problem with the guard.

  But the uniformed man simply stepped out of his little guardhouse, tossed Karinna a smile and a smart salute, and said, “Morning, Ms. Willits.”

  As if it wasn’t almost four o’clock in the morning and she wasn’t seventeen and arriving in a stranger’s car, Angel thought. Who is this girl?

  “Hi, George,” she said to him. As Angel drove by with a small nod of his own, Karinna said, “That’s George.”

  “Figured that out from the clue,” Angel said. “That’s what we private detectives do. We get clues, and from those we deduce the answers to the really tough mysteries like that one.”

  “You’re kind of a smart-ass, aren’t you?” Karinna asked.

  Angel looked pensive, or tried to. “No, I don’t think anyone’s ever called me that before.”

  She laughed, for the first time, and Angel liked the sound of it. She sounded her own age, when she laughed. Like she had forgotten she was trying to appear older.

  Past the gate, Karinna directed Angel up a broad avenue that swept past magnificent estates, mostly hidden from the road by trees and vast lawns and, fre
quently, walls and fences of their own, as if the ones that protected everyone else weren’t sufficient shelter.

  “What does your family do?” Angel asked.

  “Mom doesn’t have, like, a job, but she’s on the boards of like eighteen different charity organizations and stuff. Dad runs Monument.”

  “Monument?” Running through his mind, trying to think of any businesses with that word in the name.

  “Monument Pictures? The movie studio?”

  He was impressed. “Oh, that Monument.”

  “Better than being a private investigator.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Angel said.

  “You live in a place like this?”

  Angel looked at the enormous mansions, or the bits of them he could see from the road. He thought about his apartment in a section of L.A. most people wouldn’t even want to be caught in after sunset. In Sunnydale he had lived in a mansion, but it wasn’t necessarily any better than the downtown apartment. Bad things still happened. Good ones, too. “Not recently.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so. And what’s up with this car, anyway? What is it?”

  Angel glanced at the broad hood of his 1968 Plymouth Belvedere GTX. “It’s a classic,” Angel replied. “Anyway, money isn’t everything.”

  “There you go sounding old again,” Karinna said. “And anyway, don’t try saying anything like that to my dad. He’ll have you committed.”

  “He likes money, huh?”

  “If you ask him what he loves in life, he’ll say me, my mom, movies, and money. Just don’t ask him what order they come in.” She thought a moment. “No, I take that back. Making movies would come at the top of his list. The others are a toss-up.”

  At her direction Angel pulled the convertible up to a locked gate. She reached over him to punch numbers on the keypad that operated the gate, pressing uncomfortably close as she did. Angel could smell remnants of the perfume she’d put on that evening, before leaving the house for her Hollywood expedition. It was a grown-up woman’s perfume, not a trendy teen one. He found it a strange choice for her.

  But then, he thought, how many of us really look our own age here? Talk about the pot and the kettle.

  Karinna’s code entered, the gate swung open and Angel nosed the car through it, then up a tree-lined drive as wide as most city streets, and more smoothly paved.

  “You think he’ll be angry?” Angel asked, glancing at her. “You coming home so late, and without your regular bodyguards?”

  “That’s why you’re here,” Karinna replied. “If I came home by myself, I’d catch some hell. With you here, he’ll be polite. Especially when I tell him about how you saved my life and maybe my virtue.”

  “I see.” Angel returned his attention to the driveway, which began a graceful arc as it broke through the trees into a clearing. A huge expanse of lawn stretched from the clearing to a house that might have been better described as a palace. Floodlights hidden in the trees and in bushes that edged up against the mansion illuminated its sides, arches of light extending almost to its distant roofs.

  The place was Spanish-style, with clean whitewashed walls and slanted red tile roofs, wooden beams that Angel remembered were called vigas jutting out from the walls a little ways below the roofline. It was one of the biggest houses he’d seen in this country, and compared favorably to many of the castles he’d seen back in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. Three or four stories tall, and seemingly as wide as a couple of football fields. Here and there, turrets or cupolas broke the roofline as if they were architectural afterthoughts.

  “Nice,” Angel said. “Rich” was an understatement. Filthy rich? Abominably rich? Disgustingly rich? Why do all the words that modify “wealthy” have such negative connotations? he wondered. Then answering his own question, he thought, Because poor men write the dictionaries.

  “It’s home.”

  “For three of you?”

  “And the staff, of course,” Karinna corrected him.

  “Of course.”

  Angel brought the car to a stop in front of the front entrance. Five steps led up to a pair of wooden doors that must have been fifteen feet tall. They looked ancient, as if the doors had been here when California was young, at one of the old ranchos, and had just remained here until someone built a newer house around them.

  “This okay?”

  “Perfect,” Karinna said. “You have to come in with —”

  “I said I would.”

  She waited in her seat until he came around and opened the door for her, then held out his hand to help her out. Well-schooled in manners or just manipulative? he wondered. Is she just reminding me that she’s rich and female?

  Not that he needed any reminder of either.

  She bounded up the steps as if it were midafternoon and she’d just had a nap. Angel followed at a somewhat more sedate pace. By the time he reached the door, she’d flung it open and stepped into the tile-floored entryway.

  Inside, a fat aromatic candle sputtered in an alcove set into the thick white wall. Another doorway led away from the entry with thick wooden beams surrounding the door, and a wide stairway climbed up, the stairs also tiled, with a hand-worked wrought-iron banister. High above, a wrought-iron chandelier held a dozen bulbs.

  There was no one here to meet them.

  That’s probably better, Angel thought. Images of a quick getaway started to enter his mind. He wasn’t sure he was really done with Karinna — it seemed that merely protecting her from some testosterone cases was hardly enough to give Doyle a vision — but the sun would be up soon, and he didn’t want to be caught out here in Bel Air when it rose.

  He stopped at the door, waiting for an invitation across the threshold. She was inside, turning in a slow circle as if to ascertain that the entryway truly was empty.

  “Looks like everyone’s gone to bed,” Angel said. “Guess I’ll —”

  “Oh, no,” Karinna protested. “Come on in. I’ll get Daddy. He’ll want to meet my rescuer. Better start polishing up that armor, Angel.”

  Angel waved a hand, trying to dissuade her. “Look, if it’s a problem, I really don’t —”

  She stepped outside, took his hand, drew him through the doorway onto the terra cotta tiles.

  “You just wait right here.”

  Before he could speak again, she was gone, through the doorway. She let the thick door close behind her, and Angel was alone. He couldn’t hear anything from the rest of the house. Three-foot walls’ll do that, he thought. The old ways of building had their charms. He’d never lived anywhere quite so lavish back in mother Ireland, but he’d been in some castles that were similar in the philosophy of construction. Everything solid, stout, built to last.

  He was beginning to wonder if she’d forgotten about him and went to bed when the inner door opened again and Karinna stepped through. Behind her came a man who had to be her father. He had the same red hair, except it had faded to gray and a kind of orange juice yellow. His face was deeply lined, eyes hooded and squinty like those of someone who spent a lot of time in the sun. Despite the hour, he wore tennis whites, with a canary sweater pulled over his white polo shirt.

  “Dad, this is Angel,” Karinna said. “Angel, my dad, Jack Willits.”

  “Pleasure,” Angel said. “Hope we didn’t wake you.”

  “Not at all, young man, not at all,” Jack Willits said. He offered his hand, and when Angel took it, closed it in a crushing grip. He smiled broadly, animating laugh lines around his mouth. “No rest for the wicked, right?”

  Jack paused as if he really expected an answer.

  “Guess not,” Angel said at length.

  “That’s right. Just reading some scripts, in the study. You like cigars, Angel? Study’s the only room in the house they’re allowed, anymore, but I could probably break out a couple if you want one.”

  “No, that’s really not necessary. But thank you.”

  “I understand thanks are due you, Angel. Karinna says you really saved
her bacon out there tonight.”

  Angel shrugged. He wanted to downplay the whole knight-in-shining-armor routine. “I guess her bodyguards got a little frustrated, tried to take it out on her,” he explained. “I don’t think they’d have done any more damage than they did.”

  “Not the way she tells it. Said you probably sent one to the hospital. No more than he deserves, you ask me. I hired them to take care of it, keep her safe, not to manhandle and assault her. They’ll be lucky if I don’t press charges.”

  “I did what anyone would have, if they’d seen it,” Angel protested.

  “But no one else did see it. I’m damn glad you happened along, Angel. You did just happen along, right?”

  “Yes. That’s right,” Angel said. “Just on my way back to my own car.”

  “Karinna tells me you’re a private eye,” Jack said. “That a fact?”

  “Yes, sir. At least, that’s what it says on my business cards.” He reached into his pocket to find one, and found just that — one. It had one corner dogeared, and there was a phone number scrawled on the back of it in Doyle’s handwriting. But he’d gone this far, so he handed it to Jack Willits.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Cordy — my executive assistant — is always after me to carry more cards. That’s the last one I have on me right now.”

  “Angel Investigations,” Jack read. “You don’t mind if I keep this, do you?”

  “Not at all,” Angel said.

  “You never know when you’re going to need a good investigator,” Jack said. “You don’t happen to do bodyguarding as well, do you?”

  “I haven’t, sir. No.”

  “Just had to ask. There’s an opening here, as you know. Karinna isn’t the easiest person to keep tabs on, I’m afraid. And it’s hard to find guards who’ll do good work and stay on task. No work ethic anymore, you know?”

  “I know what you mean, Mr. Willits. I’m kind of an old-fashioned guy myself.”

  “I can see that about you, Angel. I like that in a man. Sign of character.”

  “Thanks,” Angel said. He glanced toward the door. “It’s been really nice meeting you, Mr. Willits. This is a great place you’ve got here. And Karinna seems like a really nice girl. But it’s getting late, and I really should get going.”