The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.

by Gina B. Nahai

  She cried again at city hall, and later, at the Ivy on Robertson where Raphael’s Son treated the family to his version of a celebratory lunch. He insisted on a table on the patio because he wanted to be seen not only by the other patrons, but also the paparazzi that gathered outside the restaurant as a matter of course. Before they sat down, he tossed a look at Neda—thin, ashen, resembling a fish that knows it will never find its way out of the net—and said, “You might have fixed yourself up.”

  He took the seat facing the street, put Neda on his left and Dr. Raiis on the right. When Zeeba wouldn’t stop tearing up, he handed her a cloth napkin and suggested, “You take yourself to the ladies’ room and clean up.” He ordered champagne and asked the waiter to bring a chef’s selection of appetizers, made small talk with Dr. Raiis who had a hard time—anyone could see this—looking Raphael’s Son in the face. He asked Nilou about school.

  Even in a city that drew the most beautiful women from around the world, Nilou turned heads with her unusually good looks. This, combined with the fact that she was exceedingly smart and utterly guileless, made it difficult for most women to like her. Angela was a rare exception.

  She hadn’t been invited to the lunch, but she showed up anyway, forty minutes into the agony, when everyone had run out of things to force themselves to say and Neda had yet to take a bite of the chef’s selection.

  Angela had come from the East Coast without telling anyone, even her mother, only called Nilou that morning to ask where and what time “Neda’s last supper” would be held.

  “I’d go to city hall with you if I thought I could keep from throwing up,” she had said with her usual empathy.

  Once Angela got to the lunch, she went around the table and kissed the Raiises on the cheeks, hugged Nilou, and patted Neda on the shoulder. “You could’ve called me.”

  To Raphael’s Son she said, “You’re beneath contempt.”

  LOS ANGELES

  Wednesday, June 26, 2013

  __________________

  When Leon went back to Mapleton at 8:30 Wednesday morning, Neda denied having ever heard of Eddy Arax.

  She was sitting in the “breakfast kitchen” when Leon arrived. Esperanza had led him there in her gym clothes—sports bra, bare midriff consisting of three layers of fat, yoga pants from the Lululemon store on Beverly Drive; she was going out for a jog. Neda was having her fourth espresso of the morning. She wore a smart black dress and black pumps with four-inch heels, light makeup, beige nail polish. The quivers of the previous days and the expression of stupefaction were replaced by an almost appealing sadness that is usually seen on the faces of politicians’ widows when they know they’re being photographed.

  Leon asked Neda if she knew a certain Edward Araxamian.

  She didn’t.

  He informed her that Eddy was one of her husband’s employees.

  Her husband never talked to Neda about his work or employees.

  Even one who’d been with him for more than twenty years?

  Neda shrugged.

  Was she sure? Because Leon had reason to believe that Eddy might be involved in Raphael’s Son’s death.

  She held Leon’s eyes for what felt like a whole minute.

  She was sure.

  * * *

  Was she really so dumb, Leon wondered, to tell a lie that could be so easily exposed? And why was she not even trying to feign grief? The only tears Leon had seen so far were Esperanza’s, and she appeared to have recovered magnificently from the previous day. Neda, on the other hand, hadn’t once asked if the police had found any trace of the body, or wondered aloud if “the killer” might come back for the family.

  A white person walking in from the outside might have mistaken this total absence of emotion with the kind of Western stoicism that equates grieving with weakness, and insists that every setback is an opportunity—the “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” and “making lemonade out of lemons” philosophy that inspires some people to celebrate the life of a loved one instead of mourning his death. But where Neda was from, grief and joy were two halves of the same poisoned fruit—it was sweet and bitter, but in the end it would kill you all the same. People were born not, as in the West, to conquer and prevail and become president, but to learn patience and forbearance and resilience in the face of what life would throw at them. Their parents’ losses became theirs and their losses became their children’s and that’s how they knew, better than any Westerner ever could, how to mourn.

  __________________

  From his car, Leon tried Eddy’s cell phone a few times, rang the apartment once, and when he still didn’t answer, Leon sent a text: Pick up the damn phone or I’ll be at your door in twenty minutes.

  He was in the two-hour-free parking lot on Brighton near Rodeo. Women with fake hair, lips, cheeks, and breasts drove along in their matrimonial sports cars, hiked down to the street on top of their ten-inch, crystal-studded heels, and went off like pilgrims to seek love and approval from the ten-dollar-an-hour salespeople at Gucci and Valentino.

  Eddy picked up.

  “What are you doing with Neda?”

  Leon could tell Eddy stopped breathing for several seconds.

  “Don’t play games, Eddy. You knew we’d would find out. Don’t act like you’re surprised.”

  Eddy’s voice, grainy and rough from all the caffeine and tobacco, sounded almost like static on the phone.

  “I’m not playing,” he said, clearly resigned. “Just tired.”

  Leon waited.

  “She had problems with her husband.”

  Leon was still waiting.

  “It was nothing like that,” Eddy sighed. Leon’s silence must have been more irritating than any open accusation, because after a moment Eddy said again, “I tell you, it wasn’t anything.”

  “Why does she deny knowing you?”

  Leon heard Eddy swallow (was it air? bile? more smoke?) at the other end. He was clearly thrown off by that last revelation.

  “I asked her if she’s ever heard of you, and she said no,” Leon pressed. “Why would she say—”

  “Because she’s a fucking moron,” Eddy breathed fire into the phone. “That’s why.”

  A long-exploited, desperately dependent employee. A wronged and unhappy wife. A story with too many holes. Maybe O’Donnell wasn’t wrong after all.

  “You’re just wasting your time with this one,” Eddy said, more quietly. “You wanna find some real evidence, find Lorecchio’s lapdog.”

  __________________

  That Fucking Snake agreed to meet with Leon, but he was too fearful of being seen or recorded anywhere near a cop. He was adamant that Luci had spies in every corner of every city street and public building across LA County; he also had cameras installed in streetlights, hearing devices hidden inside electrical boxes, and unmarked cruisers just looking for potential sources of trouble. That’s how, the Rat had explained, Luci managed to stay boss and get away with “everything he’s done” for eighteen years.

  The first two dozen places Leon suggested for a meeting, including his own apartment, were out of the question. The second set of locations Leon suggested—an empty parking lot at two a.m. in Lancaster, a bench in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, a desolate hiking lane in the Santa Monica Mountains—were too much out of the way and would provide excellent opportunities for any of Luci’s hit men. In the end, they agreed to meet in the main lobby of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance where, on any given day, a few hundred uninsured individuals milled around with their families, waiting to be seen by an emergency room doctor.

  * * *

  Though he claimed he was fifty-one, That Fucking Snake easily resembled a seventy-year-old with failing health. His enormous head and bulging eyes sat firmly over his torso through a too-short, too-wide neck, but the rest of him was narrow and angular and reeking of spicy cologne. His medical file would have had him dead and decomposed years ago from any one of the injuries or illnesses he repo
rted having suffered while at work, and his psychiatrist had lost count of the number of antidepressant medications he had prescribed over time.

  That Fucking Snake attributed all his physical and emotional troubles to the pressure of working for the Rat and Lorecchio. He also blamed them for the fact that he had not talked to his wife for twelve years running, two of his daughters were over thirty and unmarried, one was divorced with children, and his only son, well, the son came out as gay because his mother—That Snake’s wife—encouraged and even accepted it.

  “My ulcer started to bleed again the other night and I almost died,” he confided to Leon at Harbor-UCLA. “My daughter showed me a Facebook picture of my son with his ‘fiancé,’ Mark.”

  The bleeding ulcer, Leon guessed, had as much to do with the gay son’s decision to marry his partner as with the army of lawyers and accountants that the city comptroller and city attorney had unleashed on Luci, the Rat, and That Snake. When all his resistance and subversion did not make the matter of the $30 million go away, Luci testified before the city council that he had recently discovered that his associate, the Rat, had invested the money with what turned out to be an unscrupulous individual running a Ponzi. Upon learning this “just last week,” Luci had fired the Rat on the spot, and promised his own full cooperation as he sat back and let the union pay for his very expensive defense. The Rat, fearing the worst—dying in jail—had taken the first flight to Doha in Qatar, where he knew he would have a home for at least the next decade while the case made its way through bureaucratic channels. This left That Snake to fend for himself or leave his family and escape to Bangladesh. Hence, the meeting with Leon.

  * * *

  “I may be hard to reach for a while,” That Snake explained, “but I want to clear my conscience and come clean about a few things.”

  That conscience, Leon thought, could only be cleaned with industrial-strength fluoroantimonic acid. This man had come to inflict on Luci or the Rat whatever damage he was able to before he skipped town.

  * * *

  In early June 2013, Joshua and Hadassah Simcha had invited Luci to lunch at Shiloh’s, their favorite kosher “dining establishment” (as opposed to any old restaurant) in Pico-Robertson. Luci, of course, would not be caught dead in that kind of company, but he sent the Rat, who, “by the way, is one of those Jews who’re only Jewish when it suits them.” Soon after that meeting, That Fucking Snake was instructed to deliver, orally and without keeping any record of the encounter, a certain phone number to Hadassah Simcha. He had met Hadassah at the Union 76 gas station next to the old Robinson’s store on Wilshire and Whittier that had been empty and unused for a decade. While they pumped gas at either side of the same self-serve station, he had whispered to her a phone number.

  That Fucking Snake had no idea whose number he had passed to Hadassah. He also made clear that, though he was happy to share this information with Leon “because of our friendship, I would not make a reliable witness in any court, given some issues in my past,” and would therefore not be willing to give a formal statement. All he could tell Leon was that he sometimes made “referrals” of this sort “on the Rat’s behalf.”

  “I’m not saying Luci knew a thing about this,” That Snake emphasized. “But just think: Soleyman was laying low and overly cautious in those last days. He comes home in the middle of the night. The gate won’t open. If he saw a stranger stroll up to the car he would never roll down his window.”

  He might do that, however, if it was a woman he knew who emerged from the bushes.

  “I think one of the Simcha women baited him, and the Rat’s man did the killing. That’s the only thing that makes sense, given the way it went down. And don’t forget, if anyone has the capability to transport a body and make it disappear, it’s Luci.”

  __________________

  Esperanza was in the “decorative kitchen,” yelling at the pool man on the phone. It seemed he didn’t show up when he was supposed to, and the pool—not the one at Raphael’s Son’s house; Esperanza’s own pool, at her own house in Tarzana—was gathering algae.

  She waved when she saw Leon come in, but didn’t hang up until she had finished chewing out her employee.

  “I swear to you I can’t understand what he says,” she told Leon. “He’s Chinese. Terrible accent.”

  She took a sip from a bottle of VitaminWater.

  “Would you like an espresso? We can go to the kitchen.”

  She meant the “functional kitchen.”

  “Where’s Mrs. Soleyman?”

  Esperanza looked slightly offended that Leon wasn’t there only to see her.

  “Miss Neda is not home,” she said. “Did you have an appointment?”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Wednesdays she has yoga with Miss Azita. Private studio.”

  Leon heard a sound behind him and turned to see Neda’s older daughter, Nicole, standing in the doorway. Her eyes were puffy and red from tears.

  “You’re looking for my mom?”

  The way she said that, so sadly, with such resignation, embarrassed Leon.

  “I had some questions,” he said. “I’ll wait for her, if that’s okay.” He sat down.

  Nicole didn’t object, but didn’t offer her blessing either.

  “No school today?” he asked, then immediately regretted it. It was the end of June; of course there was no school.

  “We get done early,” Nicole offered politely.

  It occurred to Leon that she may want him to be there, may even have something to say to him. He turned to Esperanza, who was hovering over the table like a demanding maître d’. “Can I take you up on that espresso?” Then, to Nicole: “Want one?”

  She shook her head, but inched toward the table, then slid shyly into a chair.

  “Is it terrible?” Leon asked. He was trying to make her trust him, yes, but he also really wanted to know. She teared up.

  “Do you think he’s dead, like my mom says?”

  Leon nodded. “I’m afraid so.” He felt like he had just kicked a puppy in the gut. If he ever had a child, he thought right then, he hoped it would be a girl, like this one, only happier. “I’m sorry.”

  She lowered her head to hide her tears, but he saw one fall onto her leg. She was sitting with her hands tucked under thighs. Her hair, long and straight with only a single wave, reached her knees.

  Esperanza shifted a few inches away, but did not leave.

  Something about this girl—how sweet she was, how vulnerable and shy and obviously lonely she seemed—made Leon want to exonerate Neda.

  “Did you see what happened?” he asked.

  Nicole shook her head.

  “They should never have married.”

  Did Nicole know, Leon wondered, that it was her conception Raphael’s Son had used to get Neda to marry him?

  “She was pregnant with me,” she said. “She wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”

  Who would tell a girl such a thing?

  “I’m sure neither regrets having you,” Leon offered.

  Nicole still hadn’t looked up.

  “That’s okay. I regret it enough for all of us.”

  Esperanza was still in the kitchen. It was clear she didn’t plan to miss a single detail of her employers’ saga or—worse—have to hear it from some other maid in the Latin American Housekeepers’ Cabal.

  Nicole didn’t seem to notice her.

  “She lied when she said she doesn’t know Eddy.”

  Leon held his breath.

  “We all know him,” Nicole went on. “He called here all the time.”

  A voice inside Leon screamed that he had no right to this information, that this girl may have come to him for help, that she may be giving him the burden of her trust and not expect that he would betray it. The thought flashed in his mind that anything she said would not be admissible anyway, because she was underage and he didn’t have the mother’s permission to talk to her.

  He saw that Esperanza was al
l ears and not even pretending otherwise. He thought about asking her to leave but decided it might spook Nicole.

  “Did he call a lot these past few weeks?” Would he hate himself more for doing his job? Or for giving in to compassion and walking away from this?

  He felt something shift within Nicole. Maybe she realized what he was up to—that he wasn’t there as a friend; that talking to him was a bad idea. He was almost relieved by this, almost waiting for her to get up and leave and save him from being an asshole.

  “She found out my dad had a kid.”

  She said this so softly, Leon wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  “Eddy told her my dad has another kid. That’s why she kept calling him. He was the only one who knew—besides my dad, I guess—and he told my mom and that’s why they were talking so much.”

  The inside of Leon’s mouth felt like it had been filled with sand, scraped, and emptied again. Without thinking, he got up and went to the sink, realized he needed a glass, and started opening cabinets.

  “They’re in the one to the right of the stove,” Nicole told him. Then, as if completing the same thought, “She never would have told you, you know. She’d rather you think she killed someone.”

  Leon took two glasses, filled them with water, and came back to the table. He drank his halfway; Nicole didn’t touch hers.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When did he have the kid?” she replied.

  “That too. But when did Eddy tell her?”

  __________________

  For once, Eddy Arax was relieved to see Leon.

  He was pacing the block outside his apartment building, feverishly inhaling a cigarette, when Leon pulled up. In the glare of sunlight his face resembled a mask made of stiff rubber.

  Before they went into the apartment Eddy took off his smoking shirt, hung it on a hook outside the door, and put on a clean T-shirt. The sofa bed was made this time, so he gestured toward it and went into the kitchen to wash his hands and face. He even ran his wet fingers through his hair, trying to get out the smell of the smoke for his mother’s sake. Then Eddy wiped his face with a kitchen towel, dumped it in the sink, and started to make his Turkish coffee.