‘A student of mine told me he’s a little loose around the hinges,’ I said.
‘And they’re such good judges of character at this age,’ Marcello said.
‘Bugayong’s a wuss,’ Julianne said. ‘I’ll bet you a new coffeemaker that he pees sitting down.’
I tested one of the scabs on my knuckles. ‘I know. It’s not him. He’s got the imagination for it. I doubt he has the nerve.’
‘And your neighbor has the balls but not the imagination,’ Marcello said. ‘So who’s got both?’
Simultaneously, Julianne and I said, ‘Keith Conner.’
Her zeroing in on the same name unsettled me. Not that any of the prospects were good ones, but given Keith’s resources, his targeting me was a pretty chilling scenario to contemplate.
Julianne sank into a chair, picked at her flaking black nail polish. ‘You never really think about it,’ she said. ‘How thin the line is that separates everyday resentments from obsession.’
‘The stalker’s obsession or mine?’ I headed for the door. I wasn’t sure what I hoped to accomplish, but if my scuttled career had taught me anything, it was that a protagonist has to be active. I wasn’t gonna sit around and wait for the next escalation — the intruder, inside my house, with a camcorder and a claw hammer.
From behind, I heard, ‘ON FEBRUARY NINTH, PATRICK DAVIS HAS. NOWHERE. LEFT. TO HIDE.’
I said, ‘Today’s the tenth, Marcello.’
‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘ON FEBRUARY TENTH—’
I closed the door behind me.
Chapter 13
I found Punch Carlson in a lawn chair in front of his ramshackle house, staring at nothing, his bare feet up on a cooler. A scattering of Michelob empties lay crushed next to him, within ape-swing of his arm. Punch, a retired cop, worked as a consultant on movie sets, showing actors how to carry guns so they didn’t look too stupid. We’d met several years ago when I was doing research for a script I never sold, and we stayed in touch over the occasional beer.
Bathed in the glow of the guttering porch light, he took no notice as I approached. That blank gaze, fixed on the house, held an element of defeat. It occurred to me that maybe he dreaded being inside. Or perhaps I was just projecting my feelings of late for my own house.
‘Patrick Davis,’ he said, though I couldn’t tell how he knew it was me. He was slurring, but that didn’t stop him from cracking a fresh brew. ‘Want one?’
I noticed the script in his lap, folded back around the brads. ‘Thanks.’
I caught the can before it collided with my forehead. He kicked the cooler over at me. I sat and took a sip. It was good as only bad beer can be. Punch lived four blocks from a seedy stretch of Playa del Rey beachfront, and the salt air burned my eyes a little. A plastic flamingo, faded from the sun, stood at a drunken, one-legged tilt. A few lawn gnomes sported Dada mustaches.
‘What brings you to Camelot?’ he asked.
I laid it out for him, starting with the first DVD showing up unannounced in yesterday’s morning paper.
‘Sounds like some bullshit,’ he said. ‘Leave it alone.’
‘Someone’s laying the groundwork for something, Punch. The guy went inside my house.’
‘If he was gonna hurt you, he would’ve already. Sounds like an elaborate crank call to me. Someone trying to get a rise out of you.’ He looked at me pointedly.
‘Okay. So it worked. But I want to know what it’s about.’
‘Leave it alone. The more attention you pay to it, the more it’ll turn into.’ He waved at me. ‘If you remove a woodpecker’s beak, it’ll pound itself to death. It doesn’t know, right? And it keeps bashing its little woodpecker face against the tree. So—’
‘Is that true?’
He paused. ‘Who gives a shit? It’s a metaphor — ever hear a’ them?’ He frowned, took another sip. ‘Anyways’ — he struggled to recapture his momentum — ‘you’re like that woodpecker.’
‘A powerful image,’ I concurred.
He took a healthy swig, wiped the dribble from his stubbled chin. ‘So where do I come in on this little boondoggle?’
‘I want to talk to Keith Conner. You know, given our whole fiasco, he’s my top contender. But he’s not listed. Obviously.’
‘Try Star Maps.’
‘It still shows his Outpost address,’ I said. ‘He’s in the bird streets now, above Sunset Plaza.’
He flipped halfheartedly through the script. It seemed he’d zoned out.
‘What do you say?’ I pressed. ‘You think you could dig up an address for me? And nose around on him a little?’
‘Police work?’ He raised the script, let it fall back into his lap. ‘If I was any good, you think I’d be doing this shit?’
‘C’mon. You always know the right moves, who to talk to to get something done. All that LAPD-brotherhood stuff.’
‘Going official routes never got anything done, my friend. You do it all unofficially. Call in a favor here, return another there. Especially when you’re shooting a movie. You need a street permit, some asshole needs to rent the SWAT chopper, whatever. You’re on a deadline.’ He smirked. ‘Not like, say, when you’re trying to catch a serial rapist.’
I could read his tone, so I said, ‘And?’
‘A tired dog like me, I only got so many favors. I gotta spend ’em for rent.’
I stood, drained the beer, dropped it on the lawn beside the others. ‘Okay, thanks anyway, Punch.’
I went back to my car. When I closed the door, he was at the window. ‘When did you start givin’ up easy?’ He jerked his head toward the house.
I got back out and followed him across the front yard and into the kitchen. Dirty dishes, a dripping faucet, and a trash can overstuffed with bent pizza boxes. A strip-club magnet pinned a child’s drawing to the fridge. A crayon depiction, nearly desperate in its cheer, portrayed a family of three, all stick figures, big heads, and oversize smiles. The requisite sun in the corner seemed the single spot of color in the dingy room. I couldn’t blame Punch for having retreated to the front lawn.
I looked for somewhere to sit, but the sole chair was piled with old newspapers. Punch poked around for a while before producing a pen. He tugged the drawing off the fridge, the magnet popping off and rolling beneath the table. ‘You said he’s on the bird streets?’ he asked.
‘Blue Jay or Oriole, maybe.’
‘An asshole like Conner probably put title of his new house in the name of a living trust or whatever to make him harder to track down. But someone always fucks up. DirecTV or DMV registration or something goes in his name. Wait for me outside.’
I went out and sat in his lawn chair, wondering what he thought about when he contemplated the same view. Finally he emerged.
With great ceremony he handed me the crayon drawing, an address now scrawled on the reverse. He snickered. ‘Nice part of town your boy took up in.’ He waved me out of his chair. ‘I’ll ask around a bit about Conner, see if anything comes back.’
Something about actually having the address made me uneasy. As a movie star, Keith Conner seemed like fair game, but of course that was bullshit. Digging into his life was invasive. And the past two days had retaught me the meaning of the word. My actions — and my motives — gave me sudden pause. But I folded the paper into my pocket anyway. ‘Thanks, Punch.’
He waved me off.
I took a few steps to the car, then turned. ‘Why’d you help me out? I mean, with everything you were saying about calling in favors?’
He rubbed his eyes, hard, digging with his thumb and forefinger. When he looked up, they were more bloodshot than before. ‘When I had the kid in the minute and a half before I fucked it all up and Judy lowered the boom on custody, that time he got jammed up in school? You helped him. That book report.’
‘It was nothing.’
‘Not to him it wasn’t.’ He trudged back to his lawn chair.
When I pulled out, he was just sitting there motionless, watching the facade of
his house.
My apprehension grew on my way home, rising with the altitude as I crawled up Roscomare in evening traffic. All the lights were off at the Millers’. I pulled into the garage next to Ari’s white pickup, then went back and checked the mailbox — lots of bills, but no DVD.
I let go a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. Don and Martinique were minding their own business, our mailbox was clear, and all was momentarily right with the world.
When I opened the front door, an alarm screeched through the house. I started, dropping my briefcase, papers sliding out across the floor. A door shoved open upstairs, and a moment later Ariana thumped down the stairs, wielding a badminton racket. Taking note of me, she exhaled, then jabbed at the keypad by the banister. The alarm silenced.
I said, ‘Lawn party?’
‘It was the first thing I could grab in the closet.’
‘There’s a baseball bat in the corner. A tennis racket. But badminton ? What were you gonna do, pelt the intruder with birdies?’
‘Yeah, and then he’d slip on your papers.’
We took a moment to smirk at our feeble reactions.
‘The new code is 27093,’ she said. ‘The new keys are in the drawer.’
Tonight, if I wanted to check the property, I’d have to remember to turn off the alarm before going outside. We stood there looking at each other, me with papers across my shoes, her with a badminton racket at her side. Suddenly awkward.
‘Okay,’ I said cautiously. Her implicit ultimatum from last night hung between us, clogging the air. I knew I had to say something, but I just couldn’t land on it. ‘Well, good night,’ I offered lamely.
‘Good night.’
We regarded each other some more, not sure what to do. In a way the strained politeness was even worse than the stand-off atmosphere that we’d been inhabiting these past months.
Defeated, Ari forced a smile. It trembled at the edges. ‘Want me to leave you the racket?’
‘Given the size of his hands, I think it would just aggravate him.’
She paused by the banister and punched in the alarm code to rearm the system. A moment later, through the open bedroom door, I could hear rerun-reliable Bob Newhart.
Even after the door closed, I stood at the bottom of the dark stairs, looking up.
Chapter 14
I slept fitfully on the couch again, rising for good when the morning light accented once more the futility of semi-sheer curtains. Swiftly, I got up and raced to the front of the house, anxious to see if another DVD had been folded into our morning paper. I yanked the door open, forgetting about the alarm until I heard the blare of it in my skull. Racing back to the pad, I turned it off. Ariana was at the top of the stairs, hand pressed to her chest, breathing hard.
‘Sorry. Just me. I was checking outside for . . .’
‘Is there one?’
‘I don’t know. Hang on.’ The front door was still open. I jogged over to retrieve the newspaper and searched it, dropping rumpled sections all over the foyer. ‘No.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Okay. Maybe this whole thing’ll just blow over.’ She reached out, knocked drywall superstitiously.
I had my doubts, but so did she. No need to say it.
We moved through the morning routine on autopilot, tamping down panic, doing our best not to pause and acknowledge the threat hanging over us. Shower, coffee, brief polite exchanges, mariposa from the greenhouse. Orange again. I wondered what to make of that.
After checking my pseudo-security footage of the porch and walk, then repositioning the camcorder in the lady palm, I hurried out, eager to keep moving. Once again I stood in the garage, the slanted sheet of sunlight through the open door capturing the trunk of my car, the wedding dress peering out at me through the clear side of the plastic bin. For the first morning in recent memory, I didn’t want to sneak around to watch my wife. It took me a moment to figure out I was afraid. Afraid that she’d be crying, and maybe more afraid that she wouldn’t.
I climbed into the Camry, reversed out into the driveway. Cars whizzed behind me, the morning commute well under way. On bad days it could take me five minutes to back out onto Roscomare. I tapped the wheel impatiently; I had a full schedule of classes in front of me. And the piece of paper on the passenger seat had Keith Conner’s address scrawled on it in Punch’s hand.
Movement next door caught my attention. Don strolling to his driveway-parked Range Rover, talking into a Bluetooth earpiece. He was focused on his conversation, gesturing, as if that would help drive home his point. A moment later Martinique came running after him with his forgotten laptop carrier. She wore workout clothes, spandex to show off the new body. It was practically her uniform; the woman worked out four hours a day. Don paused to take the laptop. She leaned forward to kiss him goodbye, but he’d already turned to climb into his truck. He pulled out, taking advantage of a break in traffic I’d been too distracted to notice. Martinique stood perfectly still in the driveway, not looking after him, not heading back to the house. Her face was surgery smooth, expressionless. Her eyes moved, just slightly, focusing on me, and I could tell that she knew I’d watched what had just transpired. She lowered her head and walked briskly inside.
I sat for a long time, the beat-up dashboard looking back at me. My eyes pulled again to the paper in the passenger seat with the address. I flipped it over so Punch’s kid’s crayon drawing was faceup. A big, sloppy sun, stick figures holding hands. A heart-breaking picture, primitive and wistful.
I put the car in park, climbed out. When I came in, Ariana was sitting where she always sat when I left, on the arm of the couch. She looked surprised.
I said, ‘I have spent six weeks trying to find any way not to be in love with you.’
Her mouth came slightly ajar. She lifted a shaking hand, set her mug down on the coffee table. ‘Any luck?’
‘None. I’m fucked.’
We faced each other across the length of the room. I felt something budge in my chest, emotion shifting, the logjam starting to break up.
She swallowed hard, looked away. Her mouth was quivering like it wanted to smile and cry at the same time. ‘So where’s that leave us?’ she asked.
‘Together.’
She smiled, then her mouth bent down, and then she wiped her cheeks and looked away again. We nodded at each other, almost shyly, and I withdrew back through the door to the garage.
Chapter 15
I brought Julianne a Starbucks from across the street, which I held before me like a sacrificial offering as I entered the faculty lounge. She and Marcello sat facing each other, but at different tables to maintain the pretense that they were working.
She regarded me warily. ‘What do you want?’
‘Cover my afternoon classes.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know how to write a screenplay.’
‘Right. You’re the only person in Greater Los Angeles who actually knows she doesn’t know how to write a screenplay. You’re already overqualified.’
‘Why can’t you teach?’ Julianne said.
‘I have to look into some things.’
‘You’re gonna have to do better than that.’
‘I’m going to talk to Keith.’
‘Conner? At home? You have his address?’ She clasped her hands with excitement, a girlish gesture that looked about as natural as a Band-Aid on Clint Eastwood.
‘Not you, too,’ I said.
‘He is sort of dishy,’ Marcello offered.
‘Perfidy everywhere.’
‘Why don’t you just go see him after work?’ Julianne said.
‘I have to get right home.’
‘Home?’ she said. ‘Home? To your beautiful wife?’
‘To my beautiful wife.’
Marcello, in monotone: ‘Halle-fuckin’-lujah.’
‘That’s all I get?’
‘ON FEBRUARY’ — Marcello checked his watch — ‘ELEVENTH, PATRICK DAVIS DISCOVERS THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY . . . IS THE ONE T
HAT TAKES YOU HOME.’
‘That’s more like it.’ I waved the Starbucks cup in Julianne’s direction, letting her attack-dog nose pick up the scent.
She eyed the cup. ‘Gingerbread latte?’
I said, ‘Peppermint’ — she sagged a little with desire — ‘mocha.’ Her head drooped wantonly. I walked over and extended the cup. She took it.
I heard her slurping contentedly as I walked out. Classes were in session, the halls empty. My footsteps seemed unnaturally loud without bodies there to absorb the echoes. As I went by each classroom, the voice of the teacher inside rose and fell like the whine of a passing car. Despite the full classrooms all around, or perhaps because of them, the preposterously long hall felt desolate.
There was a clap like a gunshot, and I jumped, my files spilling all over the floor. Wheeling around in a panic, I saw that the noise had been nothing more than a kid dropping his binder, which had struck the tile flat on its side. I mock-grabbed my chest and said, too loudly, ‘You scared me.’
I’d intended it lightly, but it had come out angry.
The student, crouched over his binder, glanced up lethargically. ‘Relax, dude.’
His tone got under my skin. I said, ‘Hold on to your stuff better, dude.’
Two girls paused in the intersecting hall, rubbernecking, then scurried away when I glanced at them. A few students had collected at the far end also, by the stairwell. I was breathing hard from the scare, still, and from my reaction now. I knew I was handling this poorly, but my blood was up and I couldn’t find my composure.
The kid nodded at my spilled papers. ‘You, too’ — he turned to walk away, coughing into a fist to mask his last word — ‘asshole.’
‘What the hell did you just say to me?’ My words rang down the corridor.
A teacher I vaguely recognized stuck her head through the doorway of the nearest classroom. Lines of disapproval notched her forehead between her eyebrows. I stared her back into her classroom, and when I refocused, the offending student had vanished into the stairwell. The others milled and gestured.
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