My Detective

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “You look like a surfer. Where you from?”

  “Back east. Port Jefferson, Long Island.”

  “I grew up in Newport.”

  “No shit. An LA detective from Rhode Island. Not many of you, I’d guess.”

  “I’m it.”

  Jamieson rubs his hand over the chapel’s stone wall.

  “Feel this. Old World.” I reach for the wall; he presses his face closer to the cuts and chisel marks. “Why do we want this stone, this style, Detective?” he says, turning to me as if I am someone to be taught. “These buildings hold the past up for us. I suppose they fit the quaint notion of religion, don’t you think? God, at least the Christian one, was enshrined in architecture the moment the medieval touched the Renaissance. It fits, though, doesn’t it? A kind of permanence that reminds us of our imperfections and how temporary we are. Here, at least. Among the stained glass and the dead.”

  He pulls his hand away and wipes another tear.

  “It doesn’t have to be about the past, though, does it? People like the Europe of cathedrals and palaces. Those gargoyles and gilded halls. I love them too. They inspire, but I don’t want to imitate them. Why rebuild what once was, Detective? You can’t anyway. There are no stonecutters anymore. The earth has changed. Cities grow and evolve. Our notions of beauty change. Don’t you think? We must build from the materials and genius at hand. To take the now and coax into tomorrow. That sounds pompous, I suppose. But I’ve been thinking a lot about this since Michael died. We talked often about this.” He takes a breath. “Michael loved Disney Hall. Its curves and angles and stainless steel skin. A building as vital to its time as the Pantheon was to ancient Rome. Michael called it a ‘great silver dream.’”

  Jamieson puts his hand back on the chapel wall.

  “In its day, this design was modern, Detective, but now it’s dead.”

  He pulls his hand away and wipes another tear.

  I pull out my notebook, see the way he reacts to it, and slide it back into my pocket.

  “Arthur tells me it wasn’t robbery,” he says. “His wallet wasn’t taken. Was it some homeless nut?”

  “Not likely.”

  “I can’t imagine who, then. I’ve been trying. Michael could be a hard-ass. He was vain. He understood how big his talent was, and he wasn’t shy about it. That naturally turned a lot of people off. But he was respected. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him. He was rarely disturbed by anything, not that I noticed anyway. The only time I saw him not his confident self was a year or so ago. His computer had been hacked. His laptop at home, not his work one. I suppose he kept some work on it—we all do—but not important projects. He felt quite violated. As anyone would.”

  “Did he have any idea who might have done it? A competing firm?”

  “No.”

  “Were files stolen? How did he know?”

  “An alert from his firewall. He didn’t know if anything had been taken or if it was a malware infection or something else. He destroyed the computer. Smashed it with a hammer and threw it in the ocean. That’s what he told me.”

  “Any idea what could have been on it that somebody would have wanted?”

  “No. I mean, how would I know?”

  “You two were close.”

  Jamieson doesn’t answer. He’s told me something he wishes he hadn’t. I let it pass.

  “How well did you know Miranda?”

  “The three of us were close. Have you seen Miranda? She’s quite lovely in a waifish way. She’s like a fairy. You would not have put her and Michael together. That’s nothing against Michael, but Miranda is a woman easily noticed. She loved him, though. You could tell that over time. She was fascinated by him. Michael could be poetic when he talked about architecture, what it means, how it defines us and yet is in a constant state of metamorphosis. He never seemed to arrive at what he wanted to be.”

  “He was young.”

  “Incredibly impatient.”

  “Why did they split?”

  “I don’t know, Detective. You’ll have to ask Miranda.”

  “He must have told you something.”

  “Things like that he kept to himself. Michael was very compartmentalized.”

  His answer is terse, but again I note it and let it pass.

  “So you don’t think …”

  “No, Detective. Not a chance Miranda could have had anything to do with this. She doesn’t need the money, and vengeance is not her style.”

  “Why do you say ‘vengeance’?”

  “A word I associate with hurt, I suppose.”

  “So she was hurt?”

  “They both were.”

  “But you sound as if it may have been Michael’s doing.”

  “I don’t know anything about that, Detective.”

  “Have you spoken to her?”

  “No. Arthur called her and gave her the news.”

  Jamieson runs a hand through his hair. He feels for his tie, brushes his jacket sleeve. He looks right, left, anywhere but at me. I can’t see what’s in his eyes. His sunglasses reflect only me. He takes a breath and apologizes for not knowing more and being out of sorts. “You can understand, I suppose,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say. He likes the word “suppose”; it hangs like an affectation, a sound of both condescension and wonder. I stand in silence, keeping him in my gravity. Pauses are good, let the moments linger between questions. I pat my pocket but remember I don’t smoke anymore. Jamieson wants to slip away, but he won’t. We watch the passing faces of mourners, mostly men, their small, whispered huddles filling the air like the hum of insects. The priest, vestments slung over his arm, walks down the hill, a black figure growing smaller against the gravestones.

  “Arthur tells me you and Michael were close to another man—an architect too.”

  “We ran around for a while with Stephen Jensen. The three of us met years ago at Cornell and ended up out here. Michael and I joined firms. Stephen went out on his own. He’s a few years older than us. Late to college. His office is in Santa Monica. I haven’t seen him in a few years, except at parties now and then. We went our separate ways, I suppose. Michael and I stayed close, but Stephen had other aspirations and interests.”

  “He’s not here today?”

  “No. As I said, I haven’t seen him in a while. He may be out of the country. He travels a lot.”

  “Did you guys have a falling out?”

  “No. Nothing like that. Men change, I suppose.”

  “Not a lot, in my experience.”

  Two birds flicker in the sky. I shake Jamieson’s hand.

  “Thank you. If I need anything else, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Whatever I can do to help. Michael was dear to me.”

  He turns.

  “Oh, one more thing,” I say. “Did you know about Gallagher’s hooker friend downtown? The one he kept a room with at the Chaplin Hotel? He had just left her when he was killed.”

  Jamieson’s cheeks flush. He swallows, takes a soft breath, and, after a moment, regains composure.

  “No, Detective, I didn’t know about her. I find that rather surprising.”

  “True, nonetheless,” I say. “The woman said he once brought a man with him. Big, handsome blond guy, like you. Had a Mad Men look to him, she said.”

  “Wasn’t me. Not my style. This is LA, Detective; lot of Mad Men out here. I must get going.”

  “Must have been someone else. We’ll figure it out. Thanks.”

  He walks away and joins Kimmel. The mourners are gone. The two men walk side by side down the hill. The last streak of incense fades. I’m alone at the chapel. I run my hand over the chiseled stone, remembering the months I spent backpacking across Europe—my mother insisted—after graduating from Berkeley. One morning, just after dawn, I awoke on a hilltop above A
ssisi. A river of cloud ran below me over the valley, obscuring all except the top of the basilica, which pricked the blue sky and seemed to float between two worlds. I stood there until the cloud burned away and the line between heaven and earth disappeared in the clearing of a new day. It was an astonishing moment. I felt alone but not abandoned, and tears came to my eyes—not from a holy revelation, but from my capacity to imagine myself in the world.

  The groundskeeper closes the chapel door. The sun skims west. I head down the hill and call Ortiz and tell him I’m flying to New York to talk to Miranda.

  Chapter 9

  I’ve been going through my man’s files.

  We’re a lot alike.

  Our thoughts, how we wonder about things, and our melancholy, which gives us comfort. It’s an old word, “melancholy.” But it is how my detective and I see the world. Through bruises. We are not morose. That is a different word. We hear what others do not. He came to it earlier than I did.

  The files on his father—a novel’s worth in length—are visitations on a man he never really knew, a boxer in the twilight, fascinating and frightening, a man who left a boy half-formed. The damage fathers can do, forcing boys to stand over the body of the man who gave them life but no sense of how to live it. Thank God for his mother. She rescued and healed him and set him right, and she is loved, though her passages are short. But it is the father he writes about to pick apart the mystery of self. My realization of self came much later and, I would say—and I do think I can be trusted on this—in a quicker, more shattering way. But we are the same, and now we are in this game together—my game. I hold the instructions, the rules, the hourglass, and the pieces. Oh, yes.

  He’s onto Jamieson. That prick. Although, I must say, I admire Jamieson’s aesthetics, his sense of style and meaning, much more than Gallagher’s. Jamieson understands classicism. His buildings possess a flourish, often just a nod, to what came before. A hint of Greek, a twist of art deco, Beaux-Arts. It gives his work modern sensibility and the air of permanence, as if architecture is not inevitable decay, but reincarnation through different forms. Not easy. But still, he’s a prick. He so desires invincibility that he doesn’t see the cracks, the clay feet (to borrow a Greek analogy) that can destroy him. I do. He told my detective about Gallagher’s computer. The hacking. Oh, my. I’m blushing. It was me. Gallagher’s laptop was tougher to crack than my detective’s. He had a formidable firewall and a cryptic password that read something like this: “pq@z#%oo&bilbao.” Yikes. Gallagher called a friend who knew a computer geek. They went about trying to find the hacker. No luck. They lost my scent at every turn. I slid like a phantom back into the ether. This is a very critical time in my game. My detective’s off to New York. Miranda could tell him a lot. She knows what was on the computer. Oh, yes. She discovered it quite by chance, and she flew away years ago in a mist of bank accounts and tears. Jamieson knows what was on the computer too. Gallagher had sent him and Stephen Jensen a few incriminating files, like boys exchanging Pokémons or baseball cards or whatever it is little boys do. It was Gallagher’s conceit and Nietzsche-like vanity that led to his undoing. Smug, pale, wiry, and small, he couldn’t help himself. He once wrote to Jamieson in an email:

  I feel the rest of them don’t see things the way we do. They are uninspiring men. Their visions are gone, if they had them at all. Gehry and a few others are still good and capable. But not most. How do you build a Renaissance with mediocrity? I don’t know. I suppose great architects like us have had to contend with lesser talents throughout history. Maybe LA is too fragmented. No center of gravity. By the way, we really should learn to surf. I think it would help us see an integral part of what we need to know about man and his place in nature, which—I’m sure you will agree—is the aesthetic of this place. I bought a board and a wet suit. Did I tell you I’m looking at a new Porsche?????

  What an asshole Gallagher was; I’m glad he’ll never again see a pretty crack of dusk rise in the west. That is my thought when Jacob and I stop at a light. I promised myself I’d stop seeing Jacob, but he called, and I thought, well, it might be good for a few hours to think about something other than the game. I could never love Jacob, but I do like him—at times, anyway. He soothes me. He’s driving us down Wilshire to the screening of a new Tom Ford movie, which Jacob didn’t produce. But like all producers, he is curious about what his brethren—his word, not mine—are up to. Producers are very much like architects. I’m wearing black jeans, a matching tank, and a waist blazer. The outfit is a bit of a disappointment to Jacob, who prefers short skirts and bare legs, but I’m not in a slinky mood.

  “You’re not listening to me.”

  “Sorry, a bit preoccupied.” (Hello, understatement.)

  “Well, I was saying the Chinese are becoming a real problem. In film, I mean.”

  “Mmmmm.”

  “That’s a huge market, right? Two billion–plus people. But the party, the Communist party, keeps a tight lid. A very tight lid.” He raises his eyebrows for effect. “But they can’t stop it. They’ll eventually succumb to Twitter, Facebook, all of it. I mean, how can you not? It’s inevitable. The Chinese want control. They’re trying to cramp us. Limited theater runs. Restrictions on stories. Do you know we can’t have Chinese bad guys in a script? Their censors won’t allow it. I heard they asked Lionsgate to make one bad guy a monk from Tibet. I mean, how can you make a monk a bad guy?” He sighs. “The Chinese want to inflate their own film industry and shrink our piece of the market. Puts them in control, you know?”

  Another light. Bach plays light on Jacob’s speakers.

  “I read about it the other day in the Times,” I say. “What globalization will do to Hollywood. Marvel and superhero comic book stuff—that’s what Hollywood is offering the world. That’s not much, Jacob. I’m sorry, but it’s not much. Will the X-Men be our legacy?” Now I’m suddenly pissed. “It’s what sells, though. Right? That crap won’t sell forever. It’s money. Why are you surprised the Chinese want some of it? Two billion people can make a lot of movies. Besides, we need Beijing to handle North Korea.”

  Jacob slips out of his comfort zone.

  “Who said anything about North Korea? I’m talking about Hollywood.”

  “It’s all connected. The bigger picture. Nukes. Films. The price of cars.”

  “Screw the bigger picture. I make movies.”

  He glances over at me and smiles—a plea for a topic change. Another light. A homeless man with a shopping cart crosses the street, his plastics rattling in the breeze. Jacob’s eyes follow him. Jacob is manicured and combed. He’s kept his dark, curly hair, and despite his paunch (which appears smaller tonight), he’s attractive, though not handsome, in the way rich men—he’s in his fifties—are when they have acquired what they think might get them to the finish line. Jacob wants more. I do like that about him: his restless, insatiable need for the deal. The light turns green. He pats me on the knee.

  “It’s good to be with you again, Dylan.”

  “I’m glad you called. I needed to get out.”

  “I’m anxious to see this film.”

  “Isn’t Tom Ford a fashion designer?”

  “Yup. I think this is his second movie.”

  “So, if nothing else, it will be pretty to look at.”

  “You sound like a critic.” He laughs, patting me on the knee again, happy to be far away from North Korea and other global nuisances. We park and slip into a small screening room. No one recognizable. Most of the crowd looks like film bloggers and friends of gaffers, but Jacob, who likes to spot a star or two, seems content, leaning back as the lights go down and offering me a gumdrop.

  Fat women—no, obese women—fill the screen, dancing naked and holding sparklers, their flesh pale, mottled, swaying. They are lipsticked and unashamed, inviting almost, wearing red, white, and blue hats as if the Fourth of July had descended on a surreal land of misshapen elephants
. And I think, how can this be? How can they dance so honest and happy in their ugliness? Who taught them that? One dancer changes into another, a chorus of fat ladies mocking the lines of beauty. How false it is, how great a facade. We’re all beautiful, right? But maybe, inside, we’re ugly and dancing with sparklers, or maybe the notions of beauty have changed, or maybe nothing is as it appears and all is a trick of the mind. Or maybe they are new symbols of America. Excess until it becomes disfigured and sad. It is always women, though, isn’t? Whose skin they want? Our flesh sold, bartered, and displayed. We surrender too easily. That is their game against us. As the fat dancing women fade, the camera finds Amy Adams, nose sharp as cut glass, dressed crisp and fine, an art dealer of wealth and style, a lady of the canyons. Her skin so pale. But the fat ladies dance out of sight, silently swaying. You can feel their girth. The rest of the movie, I must say, is not too good, overlapping stories of a kidnapping, rape—Hollywood loves a good rape—and a doomed romance. A bit pretentious, as art-house things can be. The lights come up, and the bloggers text and scurry out, comparing notes as if they had just witnessed something of great importance but don’t know why that is so or how they feel about it. It’s all very nebulous. Not for Jacob.

  “Excellent,” he says. “Wasn’t it just excellent? The lovers, the crime. The loss of things you never get back. The hurt. What’d you think?”

  “I thought it odd that a guy would mail his ex-girlfriend a novel about rape and torture. Who does that? And why does the movie want us to feel more sympathy for the man who can’t stop the rape than for the victims? As if his failure as a man could be compared to the pain and death of the women. Jesus. It’s fucked up—pardon my French.”

  “Mmmmm. You may have a point.”

  “Of course I have a point. Hollywood does this all the time,” I say, taking a breath and calming. “Did you like the dancing fat ladies?”

  “Ooooh, what a way to start a picture, huh? A metaphor, I suppose. I wanted to close my eyes but couldn’t. Then it all seemed kind of normal. They bother you?”