Double Solitaire

by Craig Nova

  “Mr. Jones,” Farrell said.

  “Mr. Fucking Jones,” said Portia.

  “So, let’s talk about what happened,” said Farrell. “And the first thing is . . .” He looked at Portia. “You’re lying to me.”

  She stared back. Charlene started to cry.

  “I bet there was someone else here last night when your mother brought you up to see Mr. Peregrine,” said Farrell.

  “Men like Terry are so easy,” said Portia. “They go into a kind of trance when they start thinking about it.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Terry.

  Cherry opened her bag and took a roll of Dramamine from it, put two in her hand, and swallowed them dry. She really did look like she was going to throw up.

  “Well?”

  Charlene cried harder now and Peregrine handed her the box of Kleenex.

  “Don’t get snot on the couch,” he said.

  “If I were you,” Farrell said to Terry, “I’d keep my mouth shut.”

  “She was a runaway,” said Portia.

  “So, there was someone else here that night?” Farrell said. “Is that what you are telling me? That’s the problem, right?”

  Charlene looked up with the saddest face in the world: a sixteen-year-old girl, cheeks streaked with mascara, who knew that the promise she had counted on, the effect of youth, and what she could get with it, were up in the air.

  “Do you know that or are you guessing?” said Portia.

  You poor kid, thought Farrell.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “We met her on Sunset,” said Portia.

  “She was hungry,” said Charlene. “Desperate for a shower. Wanted to shave her legs. So, we took her home to my house and put a pizza in the microwave, let her have a shower, let her shave her legs, gave her some makeup. She looked great. She had something special. Really had it.”

  “British,” said Portia. “Had an accent, like, you know, like some snooty cunt.”

  “So she came along when we came up here to see Terry,” said Charlene. “She was so beautiful. Black hair, and I mean black. Blue eyes. Bone structure to die for.”

  “Cherry?” said Farrell.

  “Yeah,” she said. She looked at the floor. “I guess there was another girl.”

  “Guess?”

  “There was another girl, okay?”

  “So, where is she?”

  “He,” said Portia, moving her shoulder toward Terry. “Gave her a drug. She got a little woozy . . .”

  “Terry,” he said. “What was it? Flunitrazepam?”

  “A roofie,” said Terry. “She didn’t seem to need it though.”

  “She threw up,” said Charlene. She held a Kleenex in one hand, just a ball now. “Made a mess in the bathroom.”

  “And you slept with her?” Farrell said to Peregrine.

  He nodded, although he looked down at that lush carpet. No one should try to take away from me what’s mine, Peregrine seemed to say. No one. Why, I’ll rip the sun out of the sky. . . .

  “Did she have any identifying marks?” Farrell said. “Tattoos? Scars? Marks of any kind? Birthmark?”

  “What do you want to know for?” said Portia.

  “That’s my lookout,” Farrell said.

  “She had a tattoo in that sort of German script,” said Portia.

  “Gothic?” Farrell said.

  “Yeah. Like on fancy German beer bottles. Just above where her pubic hair would be, that is if she didn’t shave. She was a Jesus freak or something.”

  “Maybe,” said Charlene. “Pretty skanky for a Jesus freak.”

  “The tattoo said, ‘Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors.’ Proverbs something or other. Chapter. Verse. Whatever that stuff is. Small type. Arranged like a fan.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Listen,” said Portia. “We want our lines.”

  “What do you want that British runaway for?” said Cherry. “She’s not here. She’s gone. So, she’s not part of this at all.”

  “But you’re not sure where this girl is. What was her name?”

  “She called herself Patricia Melrose,” said Charlene.

  “I don’t know how she got here from England,” said Portia. “She was a runaway. Who cares where they go?”

  “But you’re uneasy about her,” Farrell said to Portia.

  She shrugged.

  “Terry took care of her . . .” said Portia.

  “How was that?” Farrell said.

  “He took her to the doctor.”

  Terry looked at the floor, then nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t look too good,” said Charlene.

  “We had to carry her out to the car,” said Portia.

  “Then you waited for Terry to come back?”

  “Yeah,” said Portia. “She didn’t look too good.”

  “I know a doctor,” said Terry.

  “Where is she now?” Farrell said. “Doesn’t she want a couple of lines and her own card?”

  “No,” said Terry. “She was more into other things.”

  “Who knows what happens to people like that,” said Portia. “You know how many runaway girls there are in town? If we could just get our lines, we’d forget the entire thing.”

  “That’s the best thing,” said Cherry. “And we can forget about everything else. All this stuff about a runaway.”

  “So, you don’t want to go to the police because of Patricia,” Farrell said. “If that’s her name.”

  Portia shrugged.

  “Just get us our lines,” said Portia. “That’s all that counts.”

  “I’ll work on it,” Farrell said. “Cherry, are you going to drive them home?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “If we’re done.”

  “You’re going to help, right?” said Charlene.

  Farrell stared at her.

  “I don’t like that look,” said Portia.

  “I’m not feeling so good,” said Peregrine.

  “So, what now?” said Portia. Cherry put her hands together. Terry bit his lip.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Farrell said. “You should have told me about the British girl.” He was about to walk to the door, but stopped and said, “Where do you live?”

  “Santa Monica,” said Portia. “Is that a crime?”

  He looked at her again, then wallowed and said to Terry, “Walk me out.”

  Farrell got into his car, rolled down the window, put the keys in the ignition, but took a moment to consider the lights in the valley. He had looked at them when he had parked with a girl from high school and had felt that warmth where they had touched. Her shirt still had the scent of laundry detergent clinging to it.

  Terry stood next to the rolled-down window.

  “You act in a couple of movies and you can’t trust anyone,” he said. “Like these girls. You know what they did? They fucking stole my toothbrush. Tortoiseshell handle, great bristles, comes from Italy. I just used it, and I go back into the bathroom and one of them has taken it. I missed it this morning. Like they just had to have a souvenir or something. You can’t even trust them for a fucking toothbrush. You see how it is?”

  Terry shrugged with self-pity and the unfairness of things.

  “And then,” said Terry. “I have to get some bum to straighten things out . . .”

  “What?” said Farrell. “What did you call me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Terry.

  “A b-b-bum,” said Farrell.

  The lights in the valley had an icy glitter, like Christmas tinsel left in a gutter.

  “This isn’t easy,” said Terry.

  Your life is hanging by a thread and you say that to me? thought Farrell. He considered how good it would feel to let the sharks have Terry. That close, thought Farrell. If you only knew how close you are.

  “I didn’t mean it really,” said Terry.

  “Sure, sure,” said Farrell.


  “You forgive me?” said Terry.

  Farrell winced, in spite of himself, looked away, and then stared at Terry’s handsome face.

  “Let’s just get this taken care of,” said Farrell.

  “Look at those lights in the valley,” Terry said. “You’d be surprised what people do for a view like that.”

  “No, I wouldn’t,” said Farrell.

  Terry tapped his head against the roof of the Camry.

  “Makes you think where you came from,” said Terry. “And how much you don’t want to give it up.”

  “I know where you came from,” Farrell said. “And what you did when you first came here.”

  “You mean being a fluffer?” said Terry.

  “Yeah,” said Farrell.

  “All right,” said Terry with a kind of furious despair. “I was a fluffer and other things, and you think I’m going to just walk away?”

  They looked at the valley where those lights shimmered. Farrell considered what fluffers did, or how they kept men ready in the movies made in the Valley, even in the days of Viagra and Cialis. He imagined Terry’s head sinking into a man’s lap.

  “In West Virginia,” said Terry. “Everyone had bad teeth. Broken refrigerators on a back porch. I worked in a gas station and when a guy in a Jaguar came in, he gave me a look. You can tell. That’s how I got to New York.”

  He stared at Farrell for a long time, and the look of a tough kid from West Virginia was right there, as though he was in a trance.

  “So, tell me about the doctor,” said Farrell.

  He went on staring at Farrell with that same look, as though he was holding a piece of two-by-four with a tenpenny nail in it.

  “She was sick, throwing up, and she was pale.”

  “Who is the doctor?” Farrell said.

  “What does that matter?” he said. “Doctors do me favors. I’m discreet about them. Okay?”

  Discreet?

  “And what happened?”

  “He gave her a shot of Narcan, and she snapped right out of it. Asked for a cigarette. Bang.”

  He went on staring at the valley.

  “Really beautiful,” he said. “The first time I saw it, I thought, I’m home.”

  The scent of eucalyptus lingered in the air.

  “You remember what I said about lies?”

  “Of course,” said Terry. All false charm now, like a beauty queen.

  “So, she snapped out of it,” Farrell said. “Then what?”

  “I took her to Musso & Franks. Right by the Wax Museum,” he said. “Got her a chicken pot pie. She said it didn’t compare with fish and chips, but she ate it. Then I dropped her off on Sunset. God knows where she went from there.”

  “Where on S-s-unset?” he said.

  “Must have been at Doheny,” he said. “Yeah. Doheny. I gave her fifty bucks.”

  “And you remember about the lies?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re my pal. There’s nothing to worry about her. You know what she said about those two?” He gestured to the house, where Portia and Charlene were. “She called them dumb clunges. I don’t even know what that means.”

  “It’s not polite,” Farrell said.

  “That’s what it sounded like,” he said. “I used a condom with her, you know, her being from England with all those Pakistanis. Who knows what she had?” He glanced at the valley. “So, there it is. Last seen on Sunset at Doheny. Okay? No problems there.”

  He swallowed.

  “No one is going to take anything away from me. That’s it. Do we understand each other?”

  “I understand,” said Farrell.

  “That’s good,” said Terry. “Sorry about the bum stuff. It just came out.”

  “Listen to me,” said Farrell. “Don’t you touch those girls. Don’t . . . hurt them. Leave them alone. Do you hear me?”

  “Do you think I’m dim?” said Terry.

  Farrell started to roll up the window, but Terry stopped him.

  “I have to stay centered,” said Terry. “You know?”

  “Sure,” said Farrell.

  “I think of my hero. James Dean. Now there was an actor, right? The myth. He was fearless. That’s the thing. He didn’t give a shit.”

  “He died pretty young,” Farrell said.

  “Yeah, but what a way to go,” Terry said. “Flat out in his Porsche. A Spyder, right? Going like a bat out of hell. He just disintegrated. Right out into history. Never to be forgotten. Have you seen my Spyder? It’s around back.”

  “Some other time,” Farrell said.

  Terry turned and went back to the house, but hesitated, head turned toward the valley. He appeared as a silhouette, silent, still, as though cut from black paper, but he had an air of regret, or mystification, as though everything he had wanted, no matter how superficial, meant more than he could say, although he seemed to feel it like some physical pain. The mysterious ache he gave off lingered like the scent of eucalyptus.

  Farrell knew there was one thing, and only one, that he was going to do, had to do. That meant as much to him as Terry not giving up what he had. Farrell knew the one thing was to find the British girl.

  7

  CHARLES DENT HAD AN OFFICE on Cahuenga Boulevard in a suite of rooms that were arranged in a building that was a cube. Stairs on each end and an entrance in the middle that lead to a square courtyard in which there were some palms so healthy they must have lived on Miracle-Gro. They were surrounded by hibiscus like the brightest red lipstick. Farrell went up the stairs in the courtyard and into a hall that was like something from a dream. All the doors were the same. The plaques by each door had been made at Staples, and they were for an accountant, a financial adviser, and a psychologist, Werner Jacobs, PhD. Next to the shrink’s office was the door for Charles Dent.

  Dent was in his late twenties, had a haircut like someone in an ad for Brooks Brothers, and wore khaki pants, a blue shirt, and high-end Nikes. If you saw him in the street and were then asked to describe him, you would come up with a blank.

  “Hey, Farrell,” said Dent. “Come in. Sit down.”

  In the office there were two enormous monitors, an ergonomic keyboard that was shaped like an upside-down V, and a wireless mouse. Also ergonomic. Two iPhones, a pad of paper, and a pencil. An ergonomic chair.

  “Shhh,” said Dent. He had a water glass in his hand, put it against the wall, and then pressed his ear against the base of the glass. “You can hear the shrink next door . . . wait a minute.”

  Dent listened. Then he shook his head.

  “It’s like a soap opera. You wouldn’t believe what people do. Just un-fucking-believable.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Farrell.

  “Well, you’ve got an unfair advantage,” said Dent. “This woman here . . .” He gestured to the wall. “Well, first . . .”

  “It’s all right,” said Farrell. “I can guess.”

  Dent put the glass down.

  “Well, she always comes at this time on Tuesday. I’ll get the next installment in seven days.”

  Farrell put an envelope with cash in it on the desk in front of the enormous monitors.

  “Something you are interested in?” said Dent. “Credit card records, phone records? Bank records . . . ?”

  “Not right now,” said Farrell. “But I wanted to make sure everything is okay.”

  “Yeah,” said Dent. “Everything’s fine. All wars were won by offensive weapons. You see? All that computer software, all that security stuff, well, there’s always something they forgot, or an item they never dreamed possible . . .”

  Farrell raised a brow.

  “You should get a job in the film biz,” said Farrell. “You know, for the production design for a picture about a hacker . . .”

  “Yeah,” said Dent. “I should. They are always wrong . . . you know, they always show hackers that have a mess of tattoos, long hair, fat, and they live in some rathole of a cellar . . .”

  He shrugged.

>   “It reminds me of the movie version of writers. In the old days they used to always be ripping sheets of paper out of a typewriter and making a ball of them. Now it’s typing on a laptop, and then deleting it. Same schtick, over and over.”

  “What do you think it’s really like?” said Farrell.

  “Staring out the window,” said Dent. “Yeah. That’s probably what it’s like. Same thing with hacking. You have a piece of software set up to grind out a password, and you look out the window while you wait . . .”

  “I guess,” said Farrell.

  “There’s no guessing,” said Dent. He picked up the envelope. “Thanks.”

  “Sure,” said Farrell. “I’ll be around.”

  “At your command,” said Dent.

  * * *

  In the morning before the fog burned off, the color of the air was like the fur of a gray cat, and the fountain at the Hollywood Bowl splashed with that same low tide hint. The concrete bench was cool, and the cars moved with that stop-and-go aspect of LA traffic. Either too fast or too slow, but never just right. Farrell guessed that traffic had held Braumberg up, which probably left Braumberg with the essential LA mood, anxious to get someplace but stuck.

  It wasn’t that Braumberg was going to do something stupid. But Farrell understood that Terry’s trouble affected Braumberg as a variety of physical irritation, as though insects had gotten into his clothes, or as a maddening itch. Braumberg knew that he shouldn’t scratch it, but how was he going to stop? He understood panic as confinement. It wasn’t Braumberg’s intelligence that Farrell had to address so much as his impulsiveness, and how can you make someone sit still when they are dying to scratch?

  One of Farrell’s first jobs for Braumberg had been to escort an actress to Las Vegas. Braumberg didn’t trust just anyone with the cash to pay the actress’s gambling debts, since, for all he knew, if he gave the money to the woman, she might start in at the craps table. Again. The actress, Amy Branshaw, and Farrell took the plane from Burbank, a direct flight to Las Vegas.

  Her skin took light so that it glowed and made the camera love her. But she didn’t want to have her breasts done, and so she was wearing a brassiere with two balloons, one under each breast, and they could be blown up with a little tube that was hidden beneath the balloons. Halfway to Las Vegas, the airplane lost cabin pressure.