Blues in the Night by Dick Lochte Page B

Lowell, hurrying to her car. She seemed angry.
    â€˜Sorry,’ he said.
    â€˜It helps if you look where you’re going,’ she said, continuing on to the Mustang.
    Feeling like a fucking idiot, Mace stood there watching her get into the car. Finally, he pried his feet from the sidewalk and went back to work.
    The Mustang led him to Sunset Boulevard, where a traffic light stopped them just as, to their right, Hollywood High had ended its school day. A group of pierced, tattooed, spike-haired, tattered-bloused schoolgirls were thumbing a ride. They caught Mace staring at them and waved their hands. A female student with hair the color of flamingo feathers and a voluptuousness that seemed advanced for her years placed a hand under one partially-exposed breast as if offering it to him.
    Just what I need, Mace thought, shifting his glare from the girl to the Mustang.
    To distance himself further from the delights of statutory rape, he pressed on the Camry’s dash panels, hoping to uncover the car’s cigarette lighter. The Camry had its good points, chief among them being anonymity. At first glance it looked like half a dozen other charcoal gray sedans. And he liked the keyless ignition system and the hybrid engine’s silence that allowed you to lurk unnoticed with the motor running. But there was a lot of crap he found unnecessary, like the LED monitor on the dash that kept a running tally of gas consumption. And the panels hiding necessities like ashtrays.
    And the goddamned cigarette lighter.
    A metal door flipped up, exposing a plug for a cellular phone and the lighter. He got a cigarette going, then punched on the radio and began scanning past the rap, rock and Spanish-speaking stations. The traffic opened up and as the Mustang made a turn on to Sunset, he settled on a shock-jock show.
    It was stop-and-go along Sunset in the shadow of the giant ego stroking billboards. One of them, devoted to Jerry Monte, featured the superstar and blossoming poet standing on a windswept mountain top in tight black leather pants and a flowing open white silk shirt. The caption read: ‘The Legend Continues.’
    On the radio, a female call-in was complaining that her husband ‘was lucky if he got it up twice a week.’
    â€˜Maybe you should slip a little blue pill into his oatmeal, honey,’ the jock suggested with a leer in his voice.
    â€˜I tried that,’ the caller said, whining now. ‘All it did was give him the added excuse of a headache.’
    â€˜OK, then you gotta slip the dude a roofie, babe. I’m a big believer in love chemistry.’
    â€˜Shit,’ Mace grumbled and snapped off the radio.
    He drove in angry silence, filling the car with cigarette smoke that the air conditioner battled but could not defeat. His discomfort and increasing depression almost made him miss the Mustang’s sudden burst through an opening in the traffic.
    Cautiously, he followed the yellow convertible’s lead, squeaking through a changing traffic light.
    The Mustang continued up Sunset past the Florian, past the Strip with its shops and bars and restaurants. Past Honest Abe’s Coffee Empourium which looked dreary and deserted in the sunshine.
    The traffic fell off as they cruised beside UCLA where students walked and jogged, evidence that there were still some pockets of normalcy in the city.
    Crossing over the San Diego Freeway, Mace relaxed a little and tried the radio again, this time giving the FM band a spin. He settled on a jazz station broadcasting from Long Beach. He wasn’t what you would call a jazz lover, but it served his mood as the drive continued.
    Gliding easily along Sunset’s snake-like turns, he tried to figure out how Angela Lowell had exited the drug store. She’d been coming from the direction of Schlesinger’s Gun Shop. Were the two stores connected? He hoped so, because that meant she may have had business in both. If, on the other hand, she had