Or She Dies

by Gregg Hurwitz

  Grabbing my cell, I shoved my door out into hands and elbows. A camera cracked against the window. I stood, but the swell pushed me back into the car — Give him space give him space! — and then I rose again, pressing forward. Lenses and foundation-tan faces and bundled microphones slanted in on me. What are you feeling right Does your wife know Is it true that Keith Tell us in your own words are you -

  They moved as a floating mass around me, tripping over the curb, banging into each other. When I stepped onto our property it was like crossing a magic line. Most of them stayed back, straining against an invisible fence, though a few followed me. I was too shell-shocked to protest. The helicopter spotlight glowed around me, blazing white, though I was certainly imagining the heat. Churning air blew specks of dirt into my eyes. Our porch was scattered with yellow DHL boxes, SAME DAY SERVICE written in screaming red across the sides. As I fumbled out my keys, a few names jumped out at me from the airbills — Larry King Live, 20/20, Barbara Walters.

  I jabbed the key at the lock, but then the door gave way on its own, Ariana shouting, ‘I told you, off the porch or I’ll call the cops aga—’

  She froze, and we stared at each other across the threshold, dumbstruck, her strained face flickering beneath a cascade of camera flashes that matched the crescendo of my heartbeat. How ’bout a homecoming hug Are you upset with your Can we get a moment between What you must be feeling—

  Ari grabbed my hand and tugged me inside, and the door flew shut, and I was home.

  She said, ‘Dead bolt,’ and I complied. She wouldn’t let go of my hand. We walked together to the couch and sat next to each other, almost calmly. On the muted plasma, Fox News showed the angle from the sky, the angle I’d just been on the receiving end of. I watched myself, a puzzled dot emerging from the crush of the crowd and working its way clumsily up the front walk.

  The doorbell chimed, and Ariana’s sweaty hand tightened around mine. The home phone rang. Then Ari’s cell phone. Then mine. The home phone. The home phone. Someone knocked politely on the front door. Ari’s cell phone. Mine again.

  The cushions had been tugged off the couch or clumsily replaced, no doubt by the cops when they’d searched the house. Papers and bills lay scattered on the carpet. The kitchen cupboards stood open, the drawers pulled out and upended. She’d been through hell, and it was my fault.

  By my shoe was one of the many bills from my lawyer, reviewed and tossed aside by the cops. I’d require a criminal attorney now on top of that, which meant, barring a miracle, we’d have to sell the house.

  What had I done to us?

  Ariana said, ‘I woke up. And you were gone.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to be scared.’

  ‘How’d that work out?’

  ‘Not good.’

  She started to say something, then swore sharply, rooted through her purse, turned on the jammer, and threw it on the cushion between us. It sat there, silent and innocuous-looking, withstanding her glare. She took a moment to steady her breathing. ‘The bed was still warm. And I had to sit with it. Knowing you’d gone to the hotel.’

  ‘I couldn’t resist,’ I said. ‘I had to go.’

  ‘I knew in my gut it was bad. I thought you’d get killed. I almost called the cops. But then they called me. I thought—’ She shoved a fist against her mouth until her ragged breathing evened out. ‘Well, let’s just say I’d never have thought that hearing you got arrested would be a relief.’

  The phones bleated out their reveille again, and when the home line paused to catch its breath, Ari rose and swatted the receiver off the wall mount. She came back and took up my hand again, and we sat, staring ahead at nothing. ‘They went through everything. My fucking tampon carton. They emptied the trash. I came into the bedroom, a cop was reading my journal. He didn’t apologize. He just turned the page.’

  My mouth was dry. I said, ‘You knew. And I didn’t listen.’

  ‘There’s plenty I haven’t listened to.’

  I looked down at the legal bill at the tip of my sneaker, my face hot, burning. ‘What I’ve done to us . . . if I could take it back—’

  ‘I forgive you.’

  ‘You shouldn’t.’

  ‘But I do.’

  I blinked, felt wet on my cheeks. ‘Just like that?’

  Her grip was so firm that my fingers hurt. The helicopters beat at the night air overhead. She said, ‘It’s gotta start somewhere. ’

  Every action seemed freighted with considerations. Changing channels on the TV. Walking past a gap in the curtains. Deleting cell-phone messages. My Sanyo, at capacity, held twenty-seven. Julianne, supportive. A neighbor, crying. A friend from high school, his excitement hidden beneath a veneer of concern. My civil attorney, confirming that he’d never received the studio’s settlement offer and now, understandably, could get not a peep out of them; there did remain, however, the issue of his depleted retainer. My department chair, Dr. Peterson, bemoaning ‘a full day of missed lectures. I understand there are extenuating circumstances, but unfortunately we still have students we are responsible for. I need to see you. I’ll expect you tomorrow morning at ten.’

  Her brusque hang-up punctuated my dismay. I’d be there, even if it killed me. Especially in the midst of everything I was up against, I had a desperate need to hold onto something normal. All I had was an adjunct faculty position, but I realized now what that job mean to me. It’s what had gotten me up all those mornings when I’d wanted to curl up in defeat, and I owed it back more than I’d yet repaid. Plus, it was grounding. A desk and a function. The last piece of my identity as I used to know it. If I lost that now, who would I be?

  I turned off my cell phone and set it on my desk in the place my computer used to occupy before the cops had seized it. The media had thinned out a bit once the photographers grabbed the homecoming shots and the reporters did their stand-up reports, but quite a few unmarked vans remained, idling hopefully at the curbs, and the news copters maintained their tireless loops. The clock showed 3:11 A.M. I was a kind of exhausted I hadn’t known was possible.

  I’d used Ariana’s laptop earlier to look up Ridgeline, Inc., and had found nothing worthwhile. Shell within a shell. Rolling up the window shade, I stared across the rooftops, wondered who was staring back at me. Who the hell had done this to me? Were they out there gloating? Were they planning their next move or just waiting for LAPD to swing back and roll me up?

  I walked down the hall. Ariana was lying under the covers, balled in the fetal position, the fake Marlboros on the nightstand. Someone was shouting outside, and a dog barked, but then it was quiet except for the white noise of the helicopters.

  ‘When I tried to write,’ I said, ‘my characters were always level-headed. They thought on their feet. Grace under pressure. It’s such bullshit. It’s not like that at all. I was so fucking scared.’

  She said, ‘You did okay. You got yourself out.’

  ‘For now.’ I got into bed — our new bed — and stroked her head. ‘I mean, murder? Prison? We live in a death-penalty state. Jesus, the fact that’s even relevant . . .’

  ‘If we sit in this, we won’t make it. It’s too bleak. So let’s make each other a promise. The last time we were up against it, after Don, the movie, we shut down. We drifted.’ Her dark eyes shone. ‘Whatever happens now, we stay in it together. And we fight like hell. If we go down, we go down swinging.’

  Gratitude welled in my chest. My wife, reiterating the vows we’d made to each other on a cloth-draped altar, when everything was simple and the road ahead clear. I didn’t realize back then, standing on weak knees as the priest droned on, what those vows meant. I didn’t realize that they mattered most when they were hardest to uphold.

  ‘No matter what’ — my voice was low, hoarse with emotion — ‘we stay in it together.’

  Her arm tightened over my chest, and that sense of protectiveness rose in me again, even stronger.

  ‘They weren’t expecting me to get out of jail,’ I said. ‘I should ge
t us each a gun.’

  ‘You know how to fire a gun?’ Her head rustled against me as she looked up. ‘Me neither. And I doubt a firearm license would clear for the Davis family anytime soon. Plus, I don’t think we want an unregistered gun floating around, not this week.’

  ‘They’re still out there,’ I said. ‘And no one’s looking for them. But you can bet they’re watching us.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But so is everyone else.’ Beyond our dark ceiling, a helicopter carved an arc, the whirring rising to a whine and then fading. ‘That makes us safe, at least for tonight. No one’s gonna sneak in here past the klieg lights and threaten us. There are advantages to being watched. Everything that’s thrown at us, we have to figure out how to use to our advantage. That’s the only way out of this.’

  ‘Play the hand you’re dealt.’

  ‘Detective Richards told you as much,’ she said. ‘There are questions we need to answer before a jury writes your name in the blank space with permanent ink.’

  ‘Who wanted Keith Conner dead. Who stood to benefit from his death. Who’s standing behind a left-handed guy wearing size-eleven-and-a-half Danner boots with a pebble stuck in the tread.’

  ‘Tomorrow I’ll look into criminal lawyers.’

  ‘And I’ll keep digging,’ I said. ‘If I get something tangible, Sally and Valentine will have to listen.’

  ‘Or we’ll find someone who will.’

  I slid down next to her. Moonlight, even through the cinched blinds, bathed our sheets in a pale glow. Ariana lay on her stomach, facing me as I was facing her. The line where her skin met the mattress perfectly halved her face. My hand was out, palm flat, before my cheek. Hers beside mine. We stared at each other, two parts of a whole. I could feel her breath on my face. I took her in. Right here, in front of me. The nearest beating heart this night and nearly every other for the past eleven years. Those dark curls, climbing the pillow she’d shoved up against the headboard. Etched at the edge of her eye, premonitions of crow’s-feet. I’d watched them creep into existence these past few years, and I owned them as much as she did, owned the hurt and laughter and life that had gone into them. I wanted to be with her to see them deepen, and now I could no longer take for granted that I’d get to. She blinked long, and then again, and her eyes stayed shut.

  I cleared my throat. ‘In good times and in bad.’

  She put her hand over mine, mumbled, ‘For better or worse.’

  I thought, Until we are parted by death.

  Sometime around daybreak the helicopters left.

  Chapter 38

  After a few hours of stone-dead slumber, I jolted up, puffy-faced, the recollection of the prior day raging in my skull along with a headache I could practically hear. Transmitters and hidden lenses had haunted my sleep, and the first thought to chisel through my stirring panic was of Ariana’s raincoat.

  I crept downstairs. Seven A.M., and golden morning light fell through the break in the living-room curtains. Faint as it was, it made me squint. A harsh world out there, waiting.

  The coat was hanging in the front closet, and I sat on the foyer floor and draped it across my lap. Deep breath. My fingers pinched the seam. Metal beneath. The tracking device remained, sewn into the fabric. I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, rolling the bulge between finger and thumb, appreciating its existence, but I was startled to hear Ariana behind me.

  ‘I already checked that it was there,’ she said, ‘after the cops left.’

  ‘Whoever’s behind this removed the one from my Nikes but kept yours in,’ I said. ‘Which means they don’t know that we were aware they bugged our clothing.’

  She held the jammer loosely at her side. ‘Why remove the one from your shoe and leave mine in?’

  ‘I was supposed to be arrested, in which case the cops would’ve put my clothes and stuff through a security scanner.

  And they’d have been hard-pressed to explain why I planted a tracking device on myself.’

  ‘So what do we do with this?’ She pointed at her jacket.

  ‘Don’t wear it. It’s not raining, so even if they are still monitoring it, it won’t seem suspicious that you left it behind. If you go out or into work, keep your cell phone off — remember, they can track that, too. Have Martin or one of the carpenters meet you in the parking lot and walk you from your car.’

  ‘I’m not going in today,’ she said. ‘It’s a madhouse even there, and besides, I need to start calling lawyers.’

  ‘Whenever you’re home, keep the alarm on.’

  ‘Patrick,’ she said, ‘I know how to be careful.’

  She went into the kitchen, surveyed the mess on the floor where the cops had dumped the drawers and the trash bin, then gave a shrug, plucked a pan from the heap, and set it on the burner. I took the jammer, went up to my office, and stared at the blank desk. My thoughts were scattered, but I figured I had to start with Keith. Getting information about a movie star’s private life was hard enough, even without a murder complicating matters. I needed people who knew how he spent his days and with whom, people who might not mind talking to the lead suspect in his murder. The list was short. In fact, it was two names.

  Using the throwaway cell phone I’d given Ariana, I tried to dial, but the thing wouldn’t work. After a few more attempts, I realized that the jammer was knocking out the signal. So I returned the jammer to Ari and went out into the backyard, which I figured more likely to be clear of surveillance devices. I made an anonymous call to my former agency and had a kid in the mail room get me the number of the production office for The Deep End. When I called over, giving a fake name, the assistant was short with me, weary from fielding calls about Keith’s murder. She refused to give any contact information for Trista Koan. Keith had mentioned that Trista had flown in for the production, which meant corporate housing, hotels, or a sublet, which in turn meant no easy trace. Predictably, I couldn’t turn up a listing on her by calling information. And I didn’t know where she was from.

  Back in my office, I rifled through my drawers and finally came up with an ivory card bearing the name of the second person on my list. I found Ariana’s laptop in the bedroom and Googled him. Endless photo credits — he was real, not an invention like Doug Beeman and Elisabeta.

  Back outside to dial. The phone rang, and finally he picked up.

  ‘Joe Vente.’

  ‘Patrick Davis.’

  ‘Patrick. Don’t you think it’s a little late to sell out Keith Conner?’

  ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be hard.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m camped out in front of your house.’

  I hung up, walked back inside, and peeked through the living-room window. Shadows in drivers’ seats, but I couldn’t make out faces. My car and Ari’s remained floating off the curb; I’d have to move hers into the garage before I left for my meeting at school. From the kitchen Ariana called out, ‘Poached eggs?’

  ‘I don’t think I can eat.’

  ‘Me neither. But going through the motions seems like a good idea.’

  I pointedly didn’t say anything, and a moment later I heard a click — her turning on the jammer. After sixteen years her ability to read my mind was staggering. I called out, ‘I’ll be right back. I’m going to see Keith’s paparazzi stalker. He’s right outside.’

  She said, ‘Play the hand you’re dealt.’

  When I stepped onto the porch, a few car doors opened and slammed, and then a couple of guys jogged toward me toting cameras and trailing wires. A female reporter ripped the paper makeup collar from around her neck and charged, wobbly on her high heels. I felt tentative, exposed in the sunlight, but I had the world to face and everything to prove, and I wasn’t going to prove it holed up in my house with the curtains drawn. On blind faith I walked to the end of the walk, and sure enough a van materialized and the door rolled open. I stepped in, and we pulled out and away. Joe hunched forward, smoking, humming along with Led Zeppelin on a
crackly stereo and tapping the wheel. His shiny scalp was visible through thinning yellow hair, and he was growing the back out into a ponytail that hadn’t quite gotten there. The van was equipped for a stakeout — cooler, sleeping bag, hot plate, camera with giant zoom lens, swivel chairs, stacks of magazines and newspapers with porn mixed in.

  He drove around the block, pulled over, then climbed back to sit opposite me. The carpeted interior held the fragrance of incense. ‘You’re a hot ticket.’

  ‘I want to talk to you about Keith.’

  ‘Lemme guess: you didn’t do it.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Why are you bothering with a scumbag like me?’

  ‘I need to know what Keith was up to in the days before he was killed. I figure nobody followed him as closely as you.’

  ‘You got that right. I know every fucking coffeehouse and production office and midnight booty call. Hell, I know every dry cleaner his clothes visited.’ His cell phone piped out an old-fashioned ring, and he snapped it open. ‘Joe Vente.’ He chewed a chapped lip. ‘Britney or Jamie Lynn? What’s she wearing? How many frames they have left to bowl?’ He checked his watch, rolled his eyes for my benefit. ‘Not worth the drive. Call me next time right when they get there.’ The phone disappeared back into a pocket, and he bared his teeth at me. ‘Another day in paradise.’

  ‘Did Keith ever overlap with a company called Ridgeline, Inc.?’ I asked.

  ‘Never heard of it.’

  ‘Do you know his life coach?’

  ‘Life coach?’ He snorted. ‘You mean that hot blonde bitch? Course I do.’

  ‘Can you get me an address?’

  ‘I can get you whatever you want.’

  I waited. Waited some more. Finally asked, ‘In return for what?’