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Sunshine glared from the glass high-rises along Ventura Boulevard as Joe Cox drove his blue BMW 2002 through the tail end of rush-hour traffic. As he turned south into Topanga Canyon, he remembered how these mountains used to look as a kid back in the 60s. The Santa Monica mountains hadn't always been these formless hills with roads ripped through them every couple of miles, carved and beset with the developers’ inhuman qualities. They hadn't always been one long incision of rich communities–Brentwood, Bel Air Estates, Beverly Hills.

But then there was Topanga. Topanga, where the orphans of the hippy years still coveted their Bohemian jungle. Where the first-class and the no-class consorted in the same gnarled neighborhoods.

Joe found Greenleaf Road, but Teddi Weldon's address didn't seem to exist. Until he discovered the end of the paved road that crookedly wound up the hill behind massive overgrowth, by way of a narrow dirt track with a hump in the middle, and on a rock embedded in the hillside he saw the top of a set of numbers. Out of his car, he pushed aside the weeds. This was it.

Behind him, a gust blew over him, as a car squeezed between his car and the hillside. He caught a glimpse of a sporty red compact as it disappeared around the bend. Could've killed me, he thought, brushing dust from his jacket sleeves.

The one-story, ranch-style redwood house poked from between two giant black oaks, shading the house like mushroom clouds. The house was nearly invisible under a cancerous growth of vines. Hundreds of stacked, tumbled, ripped, torn, stretched, bubbled, bald black tires filled the front yard.

He tugged on the sleeves of his sport jacket, tapped the shellac-peeling door with his knuckles. A deep MGM growl rumbled from within the house. Instinctively, Joe leaped down the steps and had to hurdle a hump of animal dung. A chip of broken cement walkway hooked his Florsheim heel when he landed and made him stagger and fall butt-first into a mound of old tires. He heard the door open and looked up.

"Need some help?" a girl said from behind the screen door.

Beyond the manure, speckled by raw, half-regurgitated globules, he faced the dashing electric blonde hair and blue eyes of a teenager in her rookie year as a woman.

Joe tried not to stare. Tight Levi's, a sepia colored silk scarf wrapped around her developed breasts, long hair falling to her waist.

"Careful," she warned, grinning. "It's dangerous out there."

Untangling his elbows from the tires and his ego from embarrassment, he said: "I see that, thanks."

She swung open the screen. "You Mr. Cox?"

He cleared his throat. "I actually considered lying by saying I'm a Jehovah's Witness...but, yeah, I'm Joe Cox."

"Come in." She smiled curiously. "The pets won't bite."

The place was a damn good replica of an African jungle. The living room would seem bigger if it weren't for the plastic kiddie pool filled with murky green water in the middle of the room. Someone had plunked a hunk of granite in the center of the pool. Swimming around it was a feisty white Donald Duck sort of duck. It dipped its head underwater, came up smacking its bill. The odor of captive beasts overwhelmed Joe's nostrils, so he breathed through his mouth. The girl didn't appear to notice nor apologize for the smell.

"Sit anywhere," she said, hands jammed into her back pockets, forcing her breasts out. As if she didn't know.

He was about to sit, when a steamy roar blasted from behind and between his legs. He quickly considered a list of things he should do next.

"Daisy won't hurt you–if you just act natural."

The large lioness had breath that could fry aluminum. Drool strung down from the corners of her mouth. She cocked her big head and inspected Joe.

"She's eaten today?" Joe said.

The girl giggled. "Two kids down the road, the Avon lady and the Culligan Man."

The humor escaped him. Could the lion smell his fear? Was his aura turning a tell-tale yellow?

"What do I do?"

"Just don't sit on her," the girl laughed, "that's all."

Joe puffed his cheeks, hands in his pockets, and turned away.

He found himself face to beak with a brilliant red and green parrot. The tall black cage was tucked between the couch and a bookcase against the inner wall. The parrot cocked its head–just like the lion–and watched him through the bars of the thick iron cage. Joe sidestepped the waste piles of sunflower seed shells, bits of fruit, bread crust and splatters of black and white parrot poop.

"That's Cagney," she told him, holding a cracker through the bars. "He's a macaw. Cagney, meet Joe Cox."

"You-dirty-rat," Cagney impersonated perfectly.

Joe laughed.

"Mom'll be here any second. She's picking up a python for a Spielberg movie. I'm Jayne–with a y, like Jayne Mansfield."

"That what your mother does?"

"Trains animals for the movies, yeah–mostly exotics. Does other stuff, too, but that's the bread and Parkay."

"She's teaching a python tricks?"

"Hell, no," she snorted, " you can't teach a python tricks. You teach it to relax."

"Relax." This struck Joe funny. A vision of a python, wearing sunglasses, draped across a chaise lounge brought a chuckle. He stopped, though, because it drew Daisy's attention away from her gnawing a lathered leg bone.

Joe heard the thick crinkle of shopping bags about that time. From the kitchen a woman's husky voice said:

"What's so funny?"

"Didn't hear you come in, Mom. Your private eye's here."

A horsey face, with eyes sprayed by deep lines, popped around the corner of the doorway. "I ain't blind," she said to Jayne. "Saw his car." To Joe: "Howdy, I'm Teddi, sorry you had to wait, but I stopped by Vons for a few things I needed. Be right there. Jayne, put these away for me, please."

Jayne huffed and stalked into the kitchen.

In a moment, Teddi Weldon strutted into the room. She had the stature of a Munchkin, and the arms and shoulders of a boxer. She wore tight jeans and a red t-shirt. Her rusty brown hair was braided in one thick rope and hung down her back.

She sat in a wicker chair opposite the lion. "Take a seat."

Joe settled into a love seat upholstered in a flowery pattern that didn't fit the room's bestial motif and sunk to his waist in the cushions.

"Appreciate your coming all the way out here."

"No problem. Interesting place you have."

Her eyebrows jumped. "Damn zoo." She sighed. Joe saw she wanted to get to business. On the phone last night she'd sounded like someone restraining panic. Now that he'd met her, she wasn’t acting so harried. Maybe she'd had time to settle down.

"What do you need to know to get started?"

"Just everything."

She took a breath. "Well...I have another daughter. Jackie–Jacqueline. Like I told you on the phone, I have no idea where she is, and I'm...she could be in trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Hormones."

Joe smiled, nodded. "She run away before?"

Teddi shook her head.

"How old is she?"

"Seventeen."

"When did you see her last?"

"Two weeks ago."

"What happened?"

"I wrangled for a production out in Antelope Valley this summer for Paramount. Jackie had some time off before school– she likes helping out–and she met this guy hanging around location. Ivan something. They got to be friends. Least that's what she said. Wasn't her type, so I believed her."

"What do you mean, wasn't her type?"

"For a boyfriend. She's spent her whole life around tough people, hardworking people used to long hours, getting bit, getting kicked and stomped on, you know? This Ivan's like–remember Poindexter from the old Felix the Cat cartoons? Kind of dorky? Big brains, big glasses. Kid knew something about everything–Britannica with feet. Wasn't egotistical about it or nothin'–just plain smart."

"You didn't worry about him."

"At first, no."

From the kitchen, Jayne called: "Mom? Where do the condoms go?"

Teddi rolled her eyes. In a no-nonsense voice, she called back, "Bathroom." To Joe: "That one in there...can't stand being left out of anything. Anyway, Jackie was erratic, acted funny."

"What kind of funny?"

"There were nights she couldn't sleep. Then periods when she'd sleep for hours and hours– nothing roused her. Before she met Ivan, she had a big sense of humor. Kid around, talk about anything. A boy she liked, the new rock-and-roller she wanted to see in concert. But then...then all she did was sit in her room. Door closed. Listened to music. Wasn't like her. Jackie did things.

"And when we had an argument–usually about cleaning up after herself–she’d get violent and throw things, break furniture, and destroyed most of our family pictures by stuffing them in the garbage disposal and grinding them up." She swallowed emotionally. "She wasn't like that before she met Poindexter."

Daisy looked up suddenly. Keeping an eye on her from his love seat, Joe asked: "Why'd she leave?"

"She was uncontrollable."

"You told her to leave?"

"No, that's not what I said."

"But you said she could go?"

"Something bad about that? That make me a bad parent? I wanted her to go, yeah. I was fed up. She–"

"You don't have to explain."

"Sounded like I did."  The lion's tongue lapped its nose.

"Okay, so she left two weeks ago–"

"She left a month ago, moved in with Ivan–blew me away. I saw her two weeks ago when she came by for the rest of her things."

"Where do they live?"

"Were living in a scummy apartment on Sherman Way near the Van Nuys Airport. She wouldn't say where. But I knew a club she liked in Reseda, found her there the Friday after she left, and I followed them in Poindexter's beat-to-hell VW."

"She didn't see you?" Teddi shook her head. "Happen to get the plate?"

"I was afraid of losing them, so I got it. Personalized. R-O-L-L-E-M. Cute, huh?"

"I'll run it."

"Three days ago, I went to her apartment because I hadn't heard from her, and I was getting worried, you know? I was going to drag her home if I had to. But some muscle-guy, like a weight-lifter or something, answered the door. Told him I wanted to speak to my daughter, and he says real smart-alecky there ain't nobody's daughter living there, said he lived alone. He was grinning ear to ear–this whole bunch of teeth–and wouldn't open the door but an inch. I called him a liar. He closed the door in my face."

"What about the police?"

"Tried. Said they checked the place out and got no one home. Manager said two men rented the place and no girl lived there. Police put Jackie on their missing persons list. Big deal. Last night, when it was finally obvious to me that the police weren't doing diddley, I went back. Manager's this little Iranian camel jockey who wouldn't tell me anything." She looked at her hands, one thumb massaging the other. "The guy across the hall said they moved out two days ago–I blew it again." Her lips folded together to keep from crying. "She hasn't called me." Her finger rescued her from crying again by lashing over her mouth.

"What did the police say?" Joe asked, predicting the answer. He sat up straighter, ready to move, because Daisy was watching him like a cat watches a chatty, self-absorbed mockingbird.

"Said she was a runaway, can't do anything."

"Too many runaways in this town," Joe agreed.

From the cage, Cagney croaked. The duck quacked.

"I'll need the address, the name of the club in Reseda, descriptions. And the retainer."

Teddi gave everything to him, then went to the kitchen for her purse. Joe heard her scolding Jayne in an angry whisper. Daisy rose from the pillows while she was gone. Joe held his breath. Before he turned blue, Teddi returned and handed him fifteen hundred in cash.

"Jayne know anything?"

"Girls don't get along. If she knew something, she'd love to tell me. Talk to her if you want."

"Maybe later," Joe said. "If you have an answering machine, keep it on. Leave a message for Jackie on it."

"Okay."

"Something conciliatory."

Joe pocketed the cash. Daisy moved in to Joe's crotch, breathing heavy enough to collapse his shirt against his stomach.

"She okay there?" he asked. Thinking he might need both hands free, he stashed his notebook and pen in the inside pocket of his jacket.

"Don't!" Jayne screamed from the kitchen door, ran to him, and grabbed his wrist. Impulsively, Joe brought up his arm, deflecting her grasp; before he could turn away, Daisy thrust her fangs in his face, searing his skin with a roar that brought his death into quick focus.

"Daisy!" Teddi commanded, smacking her thigh. "Daisy, die!"

Immediately, Daisy fell to the floor. But Joe's adrenalin rushed him anyway, forcing a stream of words from his mouth that, if replayed at slow speed, were a cross between a swear and a prayer.

"What the hell are you doing?" Teddi chided her daughter.

"I...I thought he was going to shoot her–thought he had a gun."

"For Pete’s sake," Joe spat angrily. "I don't carry a gun."

Teddi and Jayne exchanged a worried glance.

"Sorry. Jeez. How'd I know? What kind of P.I. doesn't carry a gun?"

Recovering from the assault, Joe said: "Sprinters."

Teddi and Jayne looked across the room at each other and giggled. Joe laid his business card on the coffee table set between the love seat and the wicker chair. On the coffee table was a photograph in a black frame of a pretty girl with a mature face, short brown hair, almond-brown eyes, and a slim, athletic figure, standing beside a flea-bitten mare outside a corral.

"Jackie?"

"Yes." Teddi picked up the photograph, removed it from the frame, and handed it to him. "Take it."

"What do you want me to do when I find her?"

"You mean if you find her," Jayne mumbled.

Teddi bit her lower lip. "Don't do anything. Watch her. Let me know if she's okay. I want to know if she's healthy. I'll decide what to do when you find her. Is that okay?"

"You're the boss," Joe said.

"You know it," Jayne said. "You know, you don't act like the private eyes I've read in books."

"Maybe you're reading the wrong books."

Daisy rose from the dead. Joe backed away for the door.

Jayne smirked. "Aren't private eyes supposed to be hard-boiled?"

"That's New York," Joe said. "In California we're sunny-side up."

The duck slapped the water in the pool with his wings. Cagney screeched like chalk on a blackboard, "Move it, or I'll blast ya!"

Jayne chuckled.

Joe wanted out. "I'll keep you informed, Mrs. Weldon."

"Thanks."

He turned on the heel of his shoe to make a quick exit and collided with a slick camouflage-colored head with beady eyes and a tongue that flicked at him like a wicked wishbone.

The python dangled down from the open-beamed ceiling, coiled at the tail end around a crossbeam, and undulated in mid-air.

"Say hello to Monty," Jayne giggled.

Joe saluted the python, thinking, Hard boiled, indeed.

Copyright 2010 by Tom Eubanks