by Ace Atkins
“You don’t have to be snippy,” she said. “This isn’t about HELIOS. I felt bad about the other night. I wanted to offer you an apology.”
“From the Phaethon?”
Her eyes remained on mine, not registering a bit of annoyance. “No,” she said. “From me. I like you, Spenser. I felt we really connected the first time we met. You’re smart, funny, and, let’s face it, a pretty handsome specimen.”
“That may be the only honest thing you’ve ever said.”
“And we seemed to share the same passions,” she said. “Good food. Good cocktails. Traveling. Dogs. I don’t know. Life is short, why not take a gamble?”
“Am I on camera?” I said. I looked around. “I feel like I’m in one of those eHarmony ads. What’s next, walking hand in hand on the beach? A bicycle built for two?”
“If you want,” she said. She took a long sip of the drink. It hadn’t been her first. Her cheeks were slightly flushed and there was a hazy, unfocused quality to her eyes. “Before you go home, I’d love to show you around Los Angeles. Perhaps have that nice dinner? There’s a lovely little sushi place not far from here. We can eat at the bar and catch up.”
“I told you some might take issue with that. My dog. My significant other.”
She placed her hand on top of my forearm and cocked her head to stare into my eyes. From this distance, she smelled very nice. Jasmine and citrus, maybe a little like the sea. Sharp pulled the silver hair from her neck and over onto one shoulder.
“You’re a long way from Boston,” she said. “Who would know?”
“Me,” I said. I signaled the bartender and ordered a Woodford Reserve neat with water back.
“Do I make you nervous?”
“Any moment I might start pawing at the ground with my right foot,” I said. “And blowing snot from my nose.”
“Can one little dinner hurt?”
I nodded. The bartender brought my bourbon. I drank half and then sipped on the water.
Sharp leaned in to me and pressed her lips against my ear. She made a bold statement about doing very bold things well into the night.
“That’s incredibly nice of you, Miss Sharp,” I said. “You must feel really bad.”
“I feel awful.” She held on to my biceps and squeezed. She asked the bartender for another martini.
“Can we discuss Gabby Leggett?” I said.
“Absolutely not.”
“Phaethon?”
“What is that?” she said. But this time, she giggled and covered her mouth a bit. “I wondered what you and that nutcase Charlotte Scott talked about today.”
“Eyes everywhere?”
“Everywhere,” she said. “A very important man doing important things has a lot to protect. Surely you understand.”
“Gabby looked sick the other night,” I said. “Like she hadn’t eaten for a long time.”
“She’d been part of an outdoors retreat,” she said. “Some retreats encourage fasting. Many of the world’s best-known religions do the same thing. Christians. Jews. Muslims. Is that suddenly a bad thing?”
“I want to see Gabby again tomorrow.”
“I thought you were going back to Boston.”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re stuck with me for a while.”
“For how long?”
“Until I’m convinced you are doing right for Gabby.”
She shrugged, reached for the martini, and plucked out three olives on a toothpick. She bit one off with very sharp teeth and swallowed. “I could arrange another meeting,” she said. “That’s up to Gabby. And then only if you have dinner with me.”
I began to think that perhaps dinner wasn’t such a bad idea. If she got to the bottom of another martini, she might just crawl into my lap and recite “Only God Can Make a Tree” and all the top-secret HELIOS doctrines. At the least, I could understand more about Gabby Leggett’s commitment. At the most, I could perhaps become the best Spenser I could be.
“I’m checking on a friend’s place in Malibu,” she said. “After dinner, you can go out there with me and relax a bit. It’s a lovely place to watch the moon on the water. The waves crashing onto the shore. The sand between your toes. Whenever I want to put the world in perspective, I return to the sea.”
“You and Captain Ahab.”
“What’s that?” she said. She was beginning to slur her words.
“Good captain,” I said. “Terrible placekicker.”
She laughed. She flipped her hair again, showing off her long, delicate neck. She tilted her eyes at me and stared for a really long time. “Don’t be nervous,” she said. “Tonight, I’m yours. You can do anything you want to me.”
“Anything?” I said.
“Whatever you like.”
My mouth felt a bit cottony. And for the lack of anything better, I finished the bourbon. Sharp’s eyes looked up at someone over my shoulder and suddenly stiffened. She stood up straighter, lips parted, and took two steps back.
“I’d take her up on it,” Susan Silverman said. “Anything you want? That’s a kind and most generous offer.”
I turned and saw Susan standing there, leather travel bag over her shoulder and a mirthful look on her face.
“You caught me just in time,” I said. “I was just about to take this woman to Malibu and commit acts illegal in most states.”
“But not California?” Susan said.
“Apparently not,” I said. “They have very open and modern laws.”
“Oh, thank God,” Susan said. “Is this the psychologist?”
“No,” I said. “This is the HELIOS publicist. Nancy Sharp. And Gabby Leggett’s former employer.”
Sharp straightened up and tried to stare down Susan Silverman. She would’ve had a better chance of body-slamming John Cena.
“And who the hell are you?” Sharp said.
“That’s for me to know,” she said, “and for you to go royally fuck yourself.”
Sharp looked like she might be choking on the martini olive.
“Beat it, Grandma,” Susan said. “This spot is taken.”
Nancy Sharp flipped back her silvery hair and reached down for her purse. She locked eyes with me and laid down several twenties onto the bar. She tossed her purse over her shoulder and sauntered out the pneumatic doors of the hotel.
Susan slipped onto the barstool. I smiled and ordered her a vodka gimlet with Ketel One and fresh lime juice.
“How much of that did you hear?”
“Enough,” Susan said. “You must really be getting to these people. She gave you carte blanche at the ole fun factory.”
“Fun factory?” I said
Susan Silverman also had a shapely body, more shapely than Nancy Sharp’s, and most women’s, for that matter, even those half her age. Her black hair was curly and vibrant, her dark eyes big and intelligent. She had on a thin silver necklace with a roman coin I’d bought her on a recent trip to Italy.
“Long time, Suze.”
“Too long,” she said. She reached under the bar and squeezed my knee. “Gabby’s mother wants me to evaluate how far she’s gone off-reservation.”
“Understood,” I said. “But tonight, there’s not much we can do.”
“There are a few things we can do.”
“Are you also offering me carte blanche at the fun factory?”
“Drinks first,” she said. “And then dinner.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll think about it, sport,” she said. “You have some explaining to do.”
35
The next morning, we checked out of the Loews and drove straight toward the Pacific and Santa Monica, where Gabby’s mother had rented us an apartment. It was big, airy, and modern, chrome and white tile, with three bedrooms and two slick bathrooms and a pool, all within spitting
distance of Shutters on the Beach. An Impressionist-style painting of seagulls gliding along the shore hung over a king-sized bed in the master bedroom.
Since Susan had stayed up late and rewarded me for my recent diligence, we took a long, leisurely breakfast at a nearby restaurant called Gjusta. We sat outside at a small table in a rustic courtyard with potted plants and artfully weathered furniture. Birds chattered on a tall privacy fence and swooped down every few minutes, scouring for crumbs. I felt as if I’d entered an aviary.
I had ordered a plate of huevos rancheros, almond-butter toast, a kale smoothie, and black coffee. Susan had a tahini croissant and hot tea.
“Kale smoothie?” she said. She picked at the edge of her croissant, popping small bits into her mouth. “Interesting.”
“What did you expect?” I said. “I’ve gone native.”
“If I hadn’t found you last night, I might have lost you to a much older woman.”
“Nancy Sharp is younger than you think.”
“I’ll say she looked well preserved,” she said. “Maybe HELIOS is even better than advertised. Good for the mind and the body.”
“We both know better than that.”
“Of course we do,” Susan said. She added a bit of honey to her tea and stirred. “Nothing is as good as advertised.”
“Nothing?” I said.
I smiled. Susan ignored me.
“So after a hearty breakfast and perhaps another session of lovemaking, I imagine we construct a plan on how to get Gabby away from that lunatic?”
“Construct plan first,” she said. “Make love later, Tarzan. This will be a lot harder than you and Z storming the mansion, snatching up Gabby, and tossing her into the back of your rented Toyota.”
“Must you spoil all my fun?”
“Only some of it,” she said. “And if she won’t be going willingly, isn’t that technically kidnapping in the state of California?”
“Probably,” I said, drinking a little black coffee and tearing an edge off my toast. “If you have to be so damn technical about everything.”
I threw the crumbs onto the patio for the birds. The birds swooped in and the crumbs disappeared within seconds. I was making friends everywhere I went. Pretty soon, a nice chickadee would land on my shoulder and start whistling “A Smile and a Song.”
“I’d like you to arrange a meeting with Gabby,” she said. “We can theorize, but exactly how deep is she?”
“From what I saw the other night?” I said. “I’m no psychologist, but I’d say she’s in deeper than the Mariana Trench.”
I cut into the huevos rancheros and the yolk spilled out onto the plate. Everything was local and very fresh. Cézanne couldn’t have arranged the beans and eggs with any more precision.
“She needs someone to challenge her view of reality,” Susan said. “I’d try to talk about things that anchor her back to Cambridge. Back to her mother and relationships before moving to California. This kind of mind-set always begins with detachment. A complete obliteration of the past and reality.”
“I’ve worked similar cases but never understood it,” I said. “Joseph Haldorn is neither handsome nor charismatic. He resembles a junior college philosophy instructor. Only with worse hygiene and sense of fashion.”
“It’s not just about Haldorn,” she said. “These people have a method. They always do. They may seem nuts, but they are the absolute best at breaking down people to their most vulnerable. It’s all about making their followers doubt themselves, making them reliant on those around them to make decisions.”
“Okay,” I said. “But what if Gabby won’t see you?”
“We’ll just have to insist.”
“You insulted my number-one go-between at HELIOS,” I said. “I doubt Nancy Sharp is a fan of Susan Silverman.”
“I don’t give a damn about that woman,” Susan said. “If Gabby is really free, then she’s free to make her own decisions. She’s free to talk about why she disappeared for so long and how she’s been treated by Haldorn and these HELIOS people.”
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool can mind it.”
“Gabby’s no fool,” she said. “She graduated with honors from BU. Played on the volleyball club team. She was once a very tough and very smart young woman.”
“California changes people,” I said. “Gabby is probably a much different person than the young woman her mother knew.”
“Has California changed you?” Susan said.
I picked up my kale smoothie and took a slow, deliberate sip from the straw.
“Ah,” Susan said. “It’s all starting to make sense.”
After breakfast, we found a Whole Foods to buy some supplies for the week. I brought the groceries up to the apartment and put them away as Susan pored over the reports I’d printed at Z’s office. She had her laptop cracked open and transferred notes with a quick, precise tapping.
I took my computer outside to a small balcony overlooking the pool and dug in deep with the death of Bailee Scott. Much of the story had been reported in the Times and some smaller papers and blogs. I didn’t learn anything new and returned back to the files Charlotte Scott had collected from other coroners offering their opinion. What bothered me most, aside from the sun-shaped brand on her left hip, was that Bailee appeared to have lost thirty pounds before her death and showed signs of dehydration. Not to mention the ligature marks on her wrists and ankles.
The same type of burns that I’d seen on Gabby’s wrists at the mansion. I read over each report three times.
That night, we took a break and I removed two large portions of fresh mahi-mahi from the refrigerator. I seasoned both sides with salt and pepper while heating up the skillet on the stove. I cooked each portion for about two minutes and then placed the whole skillet in the oven for about five minutes. When they were done, I removed the fillets, set them aside, and added some premade quinoa to the skillet, topping with the mahi-mahi and some chilled mango salsa I’d made earlier. I placed the hot skillet on the table and opened a bottle of sauvignon blanc.
“Don’t burn your fingers,” I said.
“He cooks,” she said. “He cleans. He does one-armed pushups while whistling ‘God Bless America.’ And by God, despite some somewhat old-fashioned views, actually likes and respects women.”
“Likes tends to be the key.”
“You don’t feel threatened by strong women.”
“A few times,” I said. “But only when a woman was holding a gun on me.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Why I like women?” I said. I scooped out the quinoa and mahi-mahi, careful to keep the artful dab of mango salsa on top. “I think I learned to appreciate and respect women from my father and uncles. I never heard them talk of women in a disparaging way. Or talk about women as conquests. They genuinely enjoyed being around women as people, not as objects. My father rarely spoke of my mother. But when he did, it was in the most glowing terms.”
“So for you it was role models?” she said. “Older men you respected?”
“Yep.”
“Men who hate women often have a multitude of problems,” she said. “But sometimes it’s the most obvious.”
“Such as?”
Susan raised her hand and crooked her pinkie finger up at me.
“Ah,” I said. “You spent how many years training at Harvard and your hypothesis about toxic masculinity boils down to one little thing?”
“A very little thing.”
I attended to my own plate, adding a little bit more quinoa and some salsa onto the fish. I poured the wine, sat down, and waited for Susan to take the first bite. If we had Pearl with us, staring up with big adoring eyes, it would nearly feel like home.
I ate for a bit and then took a long swig of wine. “Just to let you know, I’m healthy and confident in my appreciation o
f women.”
Susan laughed, nearly snorting some wine out her nose.
“Haldorn, on the other hand, isn’t going to let Gabby go,” I said. “Or come to a sudden epiphany about what he’s been doing.”
“I know,” Susan said.
“At some point, you’ll have to let me and Z do our thing so that you might do yours.”
“Even if you have to break the law?” she said.
“I’ve been known to do that once or twice,” I said. “For the right cause.”
“You believe what happened to Bailee Scott might end up happening to Gabby?”
I nodded. Susan thought about it and nodded, too. After dinner, she washed the dishes and set them on a wooden drying rack. We helped ourselves to the last of the bottle and stood out on the balcony, looking down at the small swimming pool, brightly lit from below. The tall palm trees swayed in the ocean wind.
The wind was warm, pleasant, and alluring, but we were far from home. Susan’s bare feet rested on the edge of the railing as she sipped her wine.
“What do you think?” I said.
“Do what you need to do.”
36
At about midnight, my phone buzzed. It was from a 301 area code, but a number I did not recognize.
“Is this Spenser?” a man said.
“You’ve reached the voicemail of Hopalong Cassidy and his wonder horse, Topper.”
“Quit dicking around,” the man said. “This is Miller.”
“And who is Miller?”
“Harvey Miller,” he said. “I work for Mr. Yamashiro. You know? Harvey the fucking rabbit? We met at the studio and at his place. You know who this is.”
“Ah,” I said. “Crew Cut.”
“What’s that?”
I reached for my watch on the nightstand. I was almost right, seeing it was nearly one a.m. Susan shuffled naked under a thin white sheet, the moonlight shining across her black hair and bare shoulders.
“We have a situation,” he said. “And I could use some help.”
“It’s way past midnight and I’m in deep slumber with my significant other,” I said. “Can’t the situation wait until morning?”