A hoodie-shrouded homeless man pushed a woman wearing a fedora down a Studio City side street in a rattling, clanking shopping cart. Other pedestrians ignored them with a zeal that rendered them effectively invisible. Lia herself might not have recognized them as Hannah Potter and Dexter Graves.
“I seem to recall Miss Lia sayin’ something about us takin’ a cab…?” Graves said ruefully. He was in the process of discovering that his reanimated bones could still ache like a bastard when he’d been on his feet for a while. It was going to be a long walk back to North Hollywood.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t bring my purse, or my phone, or anything,” Hannah said. “I didn’t expect to be leaving the way we did.”
“And I didn’t guess we’d get dumped off at the top of Mulholland Drive.”
They rumbled past a pair of very old men playing chess out in front of a rundown nursing home, a few blocks north of Ventura. One of the players was very big, as well as very old. Large enough that sheer size must have been his defining feature for his entire life.
Graves stopped the cart and came back after a moment, to have another look at the big fella, but Big Fella wouldn’t look up from the chessboard.
“Hey,” Graves said, after a moment of silence. “Your name’s Juan, ain’t it? Juan San Martin?”
Big Juan kept his eyes on the chessgame. “Not if you’re a cop or a process server, it ain’t.”
“Nah, nothin’ like that,” Graves said. “This is strictly personal.”
Big Juan looked up, and Graves pushed back his filthy hood, revealing the bullet-cratered bone beneath. “If I recall,” he said, “you were the only schmuck that showed up at my funeral.”
Big Juan leapt to his feet, upsetting the chessboard, and booked it (as fast as a fat nonagenarian dragging an oxygen tank could, anyway), shuffling off down a nearby alley.
Hannah hopped out of the shopping cart and was after him in a wincing, relative flash, limping along in deference to her bullet-grooved side, but Graves and the second old guy who’d been playing chess had seen one another by then, and for them, time had all but stopped.
The antique looked up like he was seeing a ghost. He wore a stiff Navy baseball cap with the insignia of the USS Jubal A. Early embroidered across the crown.
“Dex?” he said, squinting like he expected his vision to resolve into something he could process. “Dexter Graves? Can that really be you?”
“Holy shit,” Graves said. “It’s Charlie Lurp! Brother, you got ancient.”
“Dex, am I dyin’?” Charlie looked like he really needed to know. “Is this what happens? Old friends come back to meetcha?”
“I don’t think so, Charlie old pal. At least not today,” Graves said. “I got special dispensation, is all.”
“Last time we talked was when I helped my buddy Dave track you down,” Charlie said. “You disappeared right after that.”
“Yeah, well, I woulda phoned… but you know how it is.” Graves tapped his exit wound and Charlie nodded as if he did indeed know how it was to be shot in the brainpan and buried for sixty years.
Graves threw off the hooded sweatshirt he’d scrounged from the same roadside gutter in which they found the shopping cart he’d been pushing Hannah along in since her feet had started to blister during their downhill trek. He shrugged back into his long coat and headed down the alley, feeling little need to hurry after Hannah’s low-speed pursuit of Big Juan. Graves kept pace with Charlie, who followed with the aid of a walker, bumping along step by step. The thing had slit-open tennis balls crammed onto its feet, for some reason.
“Big Juannie wasn’t the one that done that to you, was he, Dex?” Charlie asked, pointing up at the exit hole in Graves’ forehead. “Wouldn’t put it past him-the asshole cheats at chess. Poker too.”
“Nah,” Graves said. “But he used to work for the guy that had it done. And he did dump me in a hole, way out in the desert.”
“That dirty son of a bitch,” Charlie said.
They came upon Hannah, who was crouched over the prone and wheezing form of Big Juan, way down at the litter-strewn end of the alley. So that was that. Chase over. It hadn’t been much of a horserace.
Hannah looked over her shoulder as first Graves and then Charlie stepped up behind her. Graves took his hat off her head and settled it back onto his own. Then he leaned over Big Juan, getting right down into the old henchman’s face.
“I need some intel before you shuffle off there, big fella,” he said. “You worked for Hardface once. You know his ways. Spill what you know about his fetish for earthy girls, and maybe I won’t come after you on the other side.”