Secret Girl

by Terri Elliot

  Jesus, that sounds bad. It just stresses me out. LA was meant for sprawl, not to be compacted. That’s for every other city. LA is a different sort of metropolis. It was meant to be easy, carefree. Relaxed. Downtown is anything but. My level of anxiety triples when I cross the 110 into downtown’s chaotic grid. I understand what gentrification does, but in spite of that, I wish it would happen faster. I never say that out loud, I’m a liberal and everything, and I voted for the housing measures. But the fact of the matter is change comes, whether or not you’re prepared. Old gets replaced by new. We trade in the outdated for the top of the line. One way of life becomes history, replaced with the future.

  An older woman sits across from me in the waiting room, I believe she’s hispanic--Latinx. She wears the weight of her years in bags dragging down the skin of her face, but despite the world-weary expression, her posture is erect, she seems as ready to jump to her feet than to slouch and fall asleep. Her eyes rise to mine and we share an extended gaze for want of a better distraction as we wait. The muscles around her eyes tighten ever so slightly in judgment of my presentation. She’s taking in my outfit, my purse, my made up face, all with disdain. She’s been trained to distrust people who look like me. I could imagine her being a previous tenant of a complex in Silver Lake, ousted by rising rent costs to live in MacArthur Park.

  The door in the middle of the wall to my left opens and a man’s head pops out to examine the waiting room. He smiles at me before catching the other woman’s eye. “Mrs. Gonzalez,” he addresses her.

  He and I both watch as the woman stands and crosses the room. She stands alongside the door and reaches into her purse. She retrieves a checkbook and a pen. She presses the checkbook against the wall and puts the pen tip against a blank check. “I’m tired of waiting, Mr. Benson, just tell me the charge for another three weeks of surveillance and I’ll be out of your hair. But,” she points the other end of the pen up towards the man’s nose, “I want results!”

  The man bows his head slightly, an odd sight for a tall, well-built gentleman to be subservient to the much shorter, humbly dressed woman. He clears his throat, then whispers, “That’s thirteen hundred.”

  She takes no pause before writing the check, ripping it from the rest and pressing it against his chest. “Made it an even fifteen to inspire you. Get creative, Mr. Benson.”

  As she walks away, she throws a scowl my direction, which I don’t understand. He calls after her while her hand wraps around the opposite door to exit, “Creativity isn’t exactly my profession, Mrs. Gonzalez.”

  “You don’t like money?” she returns before the door shuts behind her.

  The man seems flustered in her wake, but hides it as he turns to face me. “Mrs. Gonzalez is a particular client.”

  I smile cordially and nod. “Seems to be.”

  He smiles back, then opens the door wide, inviting me. “Please,” he says.

  I stand and pass him into his office. As I cross the threshold, I get a whiff of his cologne, a musky, masculine scent, if a hint overdone. It informs how I see the rest of the room, a minimalist set up in the corner of this office building. A dark, wooden desk sits opposite the entrance, to one side file cabinets, the other, a mini-fridge. Yet the decor lifts its profile out of humility, with a beautiful painting of a deer mid gallop in the woods hanging above the fridge and on his desk a handsome set of silver pens and a leatherbound notebook. My instinct is he’s divorced, likely for a while now. Probably in his fifties, probably given up on the prospect of love. I suspect he’ll be good at his job on account of that, and I won’t have to worry about any untoward interest.

  “Have a seat, Miss…”

  I step into the room and seat myself before his desk. “Garner-Broadhurst.”

  “Miss Garner-Broadhurst,” he repeats, rounding the desk and sliding into his chair on the other side. He’s quick to retrieve a pen and the notebook, resting it on the thigh of his bent right leg crossed over the left. He poses the pen against a page tilted away so I can’t see, then turns a stern expression my direction.

  “You can call me Emily, though,” I say, somewhat nervously. I’ve never been in a situation like this, sitting down with a private investigator. It feels a little surreal. “I feel like I should be wearing red lipstick and a sultry dress,” I say my next thought aloud, and give a light chuckle.

  He humors me with a warm smile. “We’re not all Bogart,” he riffs.

  “Never went for the brooding, wise guy types anyway,” I say. I blush. What a foolish thing to say here and now.

  “Most of us are ex-cops who couldn’t give it up, thought we could serve our appetite by opening up an office to general inquiry, but what it really amounts to is making sure your instincts don’t consume you.” He pauses. His eyes look over to the mini-fridge for a split second before leaning forward and redirecting his attention to me. “But enough about me, what brings you in, Emily?”

  Air rushes in through my nostrils to inflate my chest. It does little to calm me, to raise my confidence. This still feels unreal, even sitting across from a PI. I exhale and let the words roll off my tongue. “I want to investigate my husband’s ex-girlfriend.”

  There’s an expression of recognition, a presumptive comfort with the subject I see cross his face. He leans back a bit in his chair, lays his hand down on the notebook. “I see,” he says, scratching at days old stubble beneath his chin.

  I lean forward, wanting to communicate my sincerity. “I found her journal--”

  “Mhm,” he interrupts. “Mrs. Broadhurst--”

  “Garner-Broadhurst,” I correct. “But Emily is fine.”

  He nods with nearly closed eyes, his lids heavy over them. “Is this something you’re particularly interested in?”

  “Yes,” I reply quickly. But he proceeds.

  “Because most people, they think they’re curious about past partners, exes, flings. What they really want is one of two things. Either you feel cheated, like the ex got the better deal by scramming on your partner and you want to know you’re better off with this person than without them; or two, you’ve got something far more nefarious in mind. Unless, of course, it’s the third option, in which you’re afraid your husband is back shacking up with this person, which probably isn’t the case here, because you would have led with suspicions of a cheating partner rather than just the ex.”

  He pauses his speech to review my physical response. I’m unwittingly uncomfortable, I catch myself adjusting my position in the chair, a likely predicted response. I’m flustered. He thinks he knows the story already. I readjust, lean my back against the chair, and cross my right leg over my left. I lift my chin and take a breath. He eyes me with curiosity. “Mr. Benson,” I begin.

  “Geoffrey.”

  “Geoffrey. Do you have privileges in your line of business? Legal privileges? Like attorneys, with their clients?”

  His eyes narrow, he’s trying to peg me. “I’ve got a real tight trap, how about that?”

  “I don’t know if that’s good enough,” I tell him. If I share the whole story, about the contents of the journal, I need to know Henry will be safe. Geoffrey Benson seems straight laced, but he also seems disinterested in the law. Perhaps enough to keep a secret.

  He pushes back from the desk and rises, crosses the room to open the front door. He peers into his waiting room. I turn my head to my shoulder and see through the open doorway that the chairs are empty. Despite his websites claim, it appears he’s not the most sought after PI in the city. Regardless I’m here now, and as he shuts the door and returns to his chair, I’m feeling more at ease with him.

  Geoffrey lays his hands down on the desk and hunches forward. “I understand if there’s a little more to the story than concerns over your husband’s ex, and if that involves legally nebulous circumstances, I want you to know I won’t entangle myself in the course of my work, but suffice it to say, if all you seek in knowledge, regardless of its nature, I will relay to you the information without get
ting you involved in something you don’t wish to be involved in. Understand?”

  I give a brief nod.

  He leans back in his chair and relaxes his posture. He closes the notebook and places it at the edge of the desk. “Now,” he says, “what would you like to share with me?”

  I’ll launch right into it. “I found her journal in a box of old things in the attic. Against my better judgment, I began reading it.”

  “Who among us wouldn’t?” he offers. I don’t necessarily feel better, but I appreciate the gesture.

  “It begins with private thoughts, but pretty quickly, she starts getting into something criminal. She starts writing about some activities she and my husband were involved in.”

  His hands stretch up and land behind his head, interlocking his fingers there. “I see. What were these activities?”

  I take a breath and look down at my hands. I watch as my fingers nervously intertwine. “She says they were, um, breaking and entering into people’s homes, uh, sometimes tying them up, often,” I clear my throat, “having relations in front of them.”

  His eyes widen. “Forcing them to watch?”

  I nod solemnly.

  “Pardon my skepticism, but you don’t seem the type to marry a hardened criminal. Does any of what she says jibe with what you know of your husband? That’s not a question I often ask, frankly most women blind themselves from the misdeeds of their husbands, fail to see the faults in their characters. But this, hoo boy, this is something beyond your typical bad behavior. You seem like a nice lady, I’m sure you and your husband have a nice house in the hills--”

  “Silver Lake,” I tell him.

  He nods. “Right. Ma’am--”

  “Emily.”

  “Right. Emily, do you suppose this woman--”

  “Casey Simpson.”

  “This Casey Simpson, do you suppose she might have been delusional? Maybe dabbling in a bit of creative fiction? Sometimes people like to pretend their lives are more grandiose than they really are, sometimes they live out these fantasies in a diary.”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that, Mr. Benson?”

  “Geoffrey.”

  “Sorry. Geoffrey. You think I haven’t considered the possibility that she was crazy?”

  He leans forward in his seat. “Now, I didn’t say ‘crazy.’ She might just have been--”

  “There are peculiar coincidences. There are…” my mind travels to our bedroom, the sex we’ve been having. The ropes, the control. “Parts of my husband’s personality I hadn’t seen before have come to light recently which leads me to question how well I really know him. And they align with what she writes about in her journal. Look, I don’t want any of this to be true. I want to pretend like she never existed, like my husband is the man I’ve always assumed him to be. But I can’t seem to get this girl’s words out of my head, and every time I think I’ve managed to separate myself from her, something happens that has me questioning all over again. I need to know--” I’ve worked myself up. I pull back, hang my head, collect myself. I don’t want to get emotional in front of a stranger. But I can feel tears threatening the backs of my eyes. I take a breath, and listen to a little voice inside my head telling me this was a bad idea.

  “Emily.” His voice is low, gravelly, but sympathetic. It takes me out of myself. I lift my eyes to him. I find his blue eyes holding their stare with mine. I don’t know if it’s because I want to, but I find empathy in them. “We can get to the bottom of it. We’ll put the story to rest.”

  I nod, letting myself feel comforted by the way he looks at me. I didn’t realize how close I was to collapse, but addressing the situation aloud in this office, I realize how deep the roots of this have grown into my psyche. I’m grateful for a man willing to help. “Thank you.”

  “Of course,” he says. “Now, some details.”

  I pick my purse from off the floor beside me and pull from it a folded collection of copies, pages of the journal. I put them on the desk between us and he begins flipping them curiously. “The journal,” he says.

  “Yes,” I confirm.

  His eyes scan the entries passively while he asks, “Do you know the last known whereabouts of this woman?”

  For a split second, I think to answer Hell. “She’s dead,” I tell him. He pauses, lifts his face. “She killed herself.”

  Geoffrey leans back in his chair again, leaving the pages behind. “Emily,” he says. I wait for him to doubt my resolve, to question the necessity of this investigation. Instead, “I’d be happy to take the case.”

  13.

  February 26, 2009

  We’re going to kill Joey Franks tonight.

  I shouldn’t have written that.

  Fuck it. I shouldn’t have written anything, but I’m not going to justify to myself the value in purging this by writing it down. I’ve already documented our sins, already spoken about the plan, it would be an incomplete record if I didn’t write about the murder itself.

  Joey Franks is going to die tonight. I don’t think Joey Franks is his real name. It doesn’t matter. That’s what they call him. People who move in criminal circles. Joey Franks is a self made man in such rings, an acquirer of stolen goods, a securer of black market trades. Joey Franks is the sort that can get you whatever you desire, so long as you have the money and are disinterested in the source. Joey Franks is a dangerous man. We are going to remove a terrible man from this world. I have no sympathy for Joey.

  So why is my hand trembling?

  Joey came to us through the black market, a series of backchannels, as it were, seeking the source of a great many high ticket items suddenly on sale. We were good at what we did, and our success drew attention. We’d passed off the stolen goods for a handful of dollars, found a few shady pawn shops that connected us with the underground marketplace. The money we made was negligible, the real value was in the act itself. But the jewelry and other high price shit we sold off was uncharacteristic, at least in the volume we provided. This was where Joey came in. He had been tracking the sales for a number of weeks, asking around, using his clout in the criminal world to arrive at the source: us.

  He made first contact by approaching us in the alley behind one of our more common buyers, a pawn shop in East LA. Without a weapon save the intimidation of having been found out by a complete stranger, he informed us that he would be taking a cut. We listened attentively, Henry held a stoic gaze, I concealed a slight tremble in my hands by clenching them and stuffing them into the pouch of my pullover hoodie - incidentally a brand name item lifted from a wealthy young couple in Brentwood.

  When the encounter was through, Joey left us with a time and place, a date that has come to pass. Tonight, ten o’clock, a house in Atwater Village. We’re not going to provide Joey Franks with what he has requested. We’re going to give him what he deserves.

  Henry isn’t afraid of Joey. He says he’s a two bit nothing trying to hussle what he thinks are a pair of scared, wannabe cat burglars. I don’t know if he’s right. I think the truth may be somewhere in the hazy middle. Joey seems smart, if a little over-ambitious. It’s not like he wears leather, has slicked back hair, and chews a toothpick, but something about Joey gives me a classic, sinister 50s vibe. He’s gruff. He walks with a swagger. It feels authentic. Earned. It doesn’t matter. He’s going to die all the same.

  Joey Franks, whether competent or not, is a disgusting example of humanity. He’s the sort no one is going to miss, I can’t even imagine a business associate shedding a tear for this man, a truly dishonorable thief. Lacking in respect, lacking in morality, lacking in taste. Say what you will on our activities, we still follow some form of moral compass. It may not be the same as everyone else’s, but what have the shared ethics of the world gotten it? Inequality and brazen individualism, fucking animals stampeding over each other for their lot. Impoverished, uneducated, dirty, depressed people will refuse to take a dollar from some rich cunt who voted on a measure to gut public school funding in
favor of charters so their rich cunt kids could get a bigger campus to take for granted. Meanwhile religion tells the poor their day will come in the kingdom of heaven. Praise Jesus Fucking Christ, come down and collect your moronic children and leave this pit to the rest of us sharks who know the game.

  My hand has stopped shaking. I feel strangely calm. I feel blood coursing through my veins, I guess I’ve worked myself up. I can barely read the previous paragraph, I wrote it so quickly.

  I don’t know. What I do know is that the world is an unfair, shitty place. There are no true laws here, only what can and cannot be done that dictates what we do. Can we get away with killing this man tonight? I think so. We’ve gotten away with so much already. What’s the murder of another criminal? Will the police even investigate it seriously? Does anyone matter?

  I feel like I’m losing touch with who I used to be, but if what I was wasn’t real, a face for the world with a complacent, naive mind behind it, was I ever really in touch at all? Who is growing inside me? I don’t even know myself.

  Maybe it can save me.

  14.

  The morning light filters through the window panes of the breakfast nook at the front of the house, I turn my face into it to feel the way it tickles my nose while I curl my feet beneath myself and lift the mug of steaming tea towards my lips. The newspaper rustles on the other side of the table as Henry turns the page. I taste the vegan bacon I’ve just finished, the granola, and banana slices in my mouth. The steam rolls over my face and into my nostrils, pausing a sneeze for now. Faintly, I hear the record player from the living room, a classical recording, Mozart, which I requested while making breakfast for the both of us. I purchased a half dozen classical recordings from the record store down on Sunset to play in the mornings. I shut my eyes as I listen to the instruments, working in concert the way the sun, the steam, and the residual flavor do to make something much greater than any individual note. I make a soft noise in the back of my throat, almost a pur, enjoying the sensation.