Edge of the Knife

by A. D. Miller

  “How?”

  Nyman took the notebook from his pocket and told him in detail what had happened. While he was talking, the woman in scrubs came to the table to give Joseph a piece of Salisbury steak, roasted potatoes, carrots and peas, and a slice of cherry cobbler. To Nyman she gave a cup of coffee. Joseph had eaten most of the steak by the time Nyman finished talking.

  Joseph went on eating. After three or four minutes, saving the cobbler for later, he leaned back in his chair.

  “You said she was murdered, Tom. I don’t see any evidence of murder.”

  “The boy said she was being threatened.”

  “The boy gave you a vague story, most of it second-hand. Anything that wasn’t second-hand was conjecture.”

  “Fine. The bruise on her face, then.”

  “Look around,” Joseph said, sweeping a hand at the other tables. “Everybody’s got bruises. That’s what life is: getting cuts and bruises. Not something you can build a business on.”

  “There aren’t exactly any other clients demanding my business.”

  “Not that you know of. They might be standing outside your door this minute, wondering why you’re closed.”

  Irritation showed in Nyman’s face. “I admit it’s thin. But I have to do it.”

  Joseph picked up the knife and fork and turned his attention to the cobbler. He ate with an old man’s patience, wiping his mouth after every bite. Then he finished his coffee, signaled to the woman in scrubs for a refill, and said to Nyman:

  “This isn’t rational, Tom. You know how I feel about you, but you’re not a rational man. You’re an emotional man. You’re letting your emotions ruin your business.”

  “Nobody but you,” Nyman said, “has ever called me emotional.”

  “That’s because they don’t know you like I do. You went through some bad things; I don’t deny that. Most people never have to go through what you went through. But you can’t let it control your life.”

  Nyman, avoiding his gaze, looked down at the untasted coffee in front of him. “You really think the Angels have a shot at Houston?”

  “Give up the case, Tom. There’s no money and no upside. You’ve got more important things to worry about.”

  “I can see them making a run for the wildcard, maybe, but I don’t see them catching the Astros.”

  “How long until you can’t pay the rent anymore?” Joseph said.

  Nyman got to his feet and left the table.

  Chapter 9

  He walked back to Joseph’s room, went into the bathroom, put on his tie and jacket, started to leave, and then stopped and looked at himself in the mirror.

  The skin of his face was patchy. His shoulders rose and fell with shallow, angry breaths. Reaching into his jacket, he took out a small rust-colored bottle, took out one of the blue pills it contained, and swallowed the pill with water from the tap.

  He went out of the bathroom. For a time he stood beside Joseph’s bed and stared at the blank screen of the T.V., his eyes narrowed in thought. Finally he left the room and walked back to the cafeteria.

  Joseph was standing with the woman in scrubs, talking about Salisbury steak. He acknowledged Nyman with a nod and told the woman he’d see her in the morning for breakfast.

  Without speaking, the two men walked to the common room and sat down in a pair of wingback chairs. Joseph picked up a copy of the Times and said in a sociable voice, as if nothing had happened:

  “You talk to Claire’s sister anymore? What’s her name?”

  “Theresa,” Nyman said. “She stops by the apartment once in a while.”

  “She find any work yet?”

  “I stopped asking about it.”

  “Talented kid like that, she should be able to find something. I remember that recital we went to. I’d never heard someone so young play like that.”

  “Neither had I.”

  Another silence fell. Nyman said something about getting back to work, but he didn’t move from the chair. Joseph leafed through the newspaper, frowning.

  “This Rexford place,” he said. “It’s some kind of restaurant?”

  “Trujillo says it’s a nightclub.”

  “A nightclub, then. Probably they were looking to hire a waitress and somebody suggested this Alana Bell.”

  Nyman opened his mouth to speak, but Joseph was already going on.

  “Funny thing is, though, the next morning she turns up with that bruise.”

  Nyman looked over in surprise, then nodded. “It was still fresh when I saw her.”

  “And you say she was acting scared?”

  “Scared or worried about something—I don’t know what. She kept saying she needed help.”

  Joseph tossed the Times onto the table between their chairs and shook his head. “Forty-five years I ran that agency, Tom, and I can count the murder cases on one hand. When somebody dies, it’s usually straightforward.”

  “This time it isn’t.”

  Joseph didn’t look at him and showed no sign of pleasure or displeasure. His voice was cool and flat.

  “Well, that’s for you to decide. It’s your agency now.”

  * * *

  The Rexford was an unmarked storefront in West Hollywood, across the street from the Laugh Factory. Its walls were painted a deep carmine red and its door was covered with black-and-gold damask. A man in a shirt marked Security stood beside the door.

  “Sorry,” he said as Nyman approached. “Doors open tonight at eleven.”

  Nyman looked at his watch. “They pay you to stand out here all day?”

  The man smiled. “There’s a private event going on right now.”

  “What kind of event?”

  “The private kind. You can come back at eleven.”

  “Maybe you can help me now. I’m looking for a security officer named Fowler.”

  “Come back at eleven, I’ll be happy to help. Right now I have to ask you to move along.”

  “You can’t answer my question?”

  “Move along, sir.”

  Nyman moved along down the sidewalk.

  The club’s neighbors were a laundromat on one side and a Coffee Bean on the other. At the end of the block was an auto-body shop specializing in German cars. It was partly enclosed by a chain-link fence and consisted of a three-bay garage and an apron of asphalt crowded with dozens of cars.

  Nyman made his way up to the garage. In the nearest bay a silver S-class was up on blocks with its tires removed. A man in coveralls lay on his back underneath it. Nyman smiled at him and nodded and was already past the garage before the man could speak.

  Ahead of him was a waist-high, padlocked gate barring access to the alleyway. He lifted himself over it, walked past the service entrance of the Coffee Bean, and came to the back side of the Rexford, where four or five men were unloading trays of food from a catering van. Stenciled on the side of the van was a corporate logo with the word Koda in the center.

  One of the men, noticing Nyman, said: “Looking for somebody, chief?”

  The man had a raw, deeply lined face and a plastic-covered tray in his hand. On his t-shirt was another Koda logo.

  Nyman had taken the phone from his pocket and was studying it with a puzzled expression. “I’m looking for something called the Rexford,” he said. “A friend of mine invited me to an event there, but I can’t seem to find it.”

  “The Fusion event, you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Through that door,” the man said, gesturing with the tray. “Then go up to the front and have Dave check you off the list.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem, chief.”

  The door opened into a hallway thudding with music. Nyman passed through a second door and came into a small, dimly lit alcove set off from the club’s main floor, which was visible through an archway. Here and there were low leather couches and glass-topped tables on which flutes of champagne had been set out. Nyman picked up a flute on his way to the main floor.

/>   The D.J. stood on a raised platform at the back. On the floor were more tables and a few dozen people, all young, all casually dressed.

  “You must be from up north,” a woman said, appearing at his elbow. She was no more than five feet tall and her eyes, behind thick-framed glasses, were bright with tipsiness.

  “Up north?”

  “Emeryville, or wherever the hell.”

  Nyman drank some champagne. “Sorry, I’m just here with a friend.”

  “Really? I thought you were from the other office. The mother ship. Who’s your friend?”

  “Guy named Fowler. You know him?”

  “Sorry. Afraid not. You should come have a shot, though.”

  She grabbed his hand and pulled him up to the bar, where a crowd had gathered. She said something to the bartender, shouted something indistinct into Nyman’s ear, and after a moment began handing around shots of tequila. The crowd roared with approval; someone slapped Nyman’s back and put an arm around his shoulders.

  Nyman slid out from under the arm, pretended not to see the shot the tipsy woman was offering him, and moved to the end of the bar. He was standing there a moment later when a man stopped beside him and said:

  “Can I have a word with you upstairs?”

  The man was solidly built, clean-shaven, fortyish, smiling. Despite the smile his eyes were blank and lifeless and his suit was the same dull gray as Nyman’s.

  “You’re Fowler?”

  The man nodded. “Please come with me.”

  Nyman finished his champagne and followed Fowler through an unmarked door and into a cramped stairwell.

  “Fun crowd you have in there,” Nyman said.

  “Thanks. We try to cater to different types.”

  “What’s Fusion, anyway?”

  “FusionStream,” Fowler said, motioning for Nyman to walk ahead of him up the stairs. “Some kind of tech start-up with an office in Playa Vista. They sold out last week to another company.”

  “And this is their celebration?”

  “One of their celebrations, yeah. Half of them just became millionaires.”

  At the top of the stairs were two doors; Fowler unlocked one and beckoned Nyman into what was evidently his office: a square little room with a particle-board desk and monitors showing closed-circuit feeds of the club below.

  “Well,” he said, sitting down behind the desk, “you asked David about me out front, and then you got Hector to let you in through the back. Obviously you want to see me.”

  “I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Well, ask away. Talking to people is the part of my job I like most.”

  Nyman glanced around the office. “What is your job, exactly?”

  “Director of nightlife security. Going on six years now.”

  “For the Rexford?”

  “For the Rexford, yeah, and all the other properties in the Koda portfolio. Which is eight, at the moment. Soon to be nine.”

  “Where’s the ninth going?”

  “Downtown,” Fowler said, “in the Merchant District. A hotel and condo tower we’re very excited about. But I’m sure you know all about that, being from A.B.C.”

  “A.B.C?”

  Fowler smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Alcoholic Beverage Control. Personally I thought we were past the point of these checkups. We’re up to date on all the fees and forms.”

  Nyman said that there’d been a misunderstanding. “I’m here about something else. A friend of mine.”

  “What friend is that?”

  “Alana Bell.”

  There was no change in Fowler’s expression, no dimming of his smile. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to notice something on the monitors. Exhaling, he got to his feet and said:

  “Can you excuse me?”

  “Of course.”

  After he was gone, Nyman got up from the chair and searched the office.

  Chapter 10

  Aside from a stack of brochures on the desk, the room was bare and neat and meticulously clean. He tried the drawer of the filing cabinet, found it locked, picked up one of the brochures from the desk, and settled back in the chair.

  Inside were photos of expensive hotels and restaurants and nightclubs, all owned by Koda. On the last page was a photo of a handsome, boyish-looking man in a t-shirt and Wayfarers. A caption said that Ethan Kovac was the visionary creator of the west coast’s premier luxury lifestyle firm.

  Nyman was studying Kovac’s photo when Fowler came back in.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, sliding a phone into his pocket and sitting down. “False alarm. You were saying something about a friend of yours?”

  “Alana Bell.”

  “Alana Bell, right. The name’s familiar, but at the moment I can’t place it.”

  “She’s a graduate student at Pacifica. You went to see her at Zamora Park this Monday.”

  Fowler snapped his fingers. “Of course. Nice girl. You’re a professor of hers?”

  “I’m a private investigator. Alana came to my office yesterday to hire me.”

  “Ah.” Fowler’s eyes showed no hint of surprise. “How long’ve you been in the business?”

  “About a decade.”

  “Really? Former cop?”

  “Not exactly. Yourself?”

  “No, I came up through the service side. Working the door. It sounds like corporate B.S., but Koda’s really a family business. If you work hard, you can distinguish yourself.”

  Nyman asked if that was why he’d gone to the park to see Alana Bell. “To ask her to join the business?”

  Fowler’s smile grew wider. “Oh, don’t be coy, Tom. She must’ve told you why I went there.”

  “She told me a few things. I’d like to hear your version.”

  Fowler said that there wasn’t much to tell. “Ethan wanted to talk to her, and he asked me to arrange a meeting.”

  Nyman glanced at the brochure. “Ethan Kovac?”

  “Right. He said Alana had raised some concerns about one of our developments and he wanted to hear more about it. Wanted to make sure we weren’t doing anything wrong.”

  “What sort of concerns?”

  “You’d have to ask Ethan. All I did was convey the invitation.”

  “And she accepted?”

  “As far I know. I told her Ethan would be here at eight and she said she’d try to stop by.”

  “But you didn’t actually see her here that night?”

  “No, I was at one of the restaurants. That day in the park was the only time I’ve seen her.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “You didn’t give her a bruise on her cheek?”

  Fowler stopped smiling and looked startled. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “She had a bruise when she came to see me. I’ve been told you’re the one who gave it to her.”

  “Well, you’ve been misinformed. I never did anything to her.”

  “You didn’t kill her, Mr. Fowler?”

  “Kill her?”

  Nyman told him what had happened in Vista Hills. When he finished, Fowler took the phone from his pocket, walked to a corner of the office, spoke to someone for several minutes in a voice too soft for Nyman to distinguish the words, and came back and stood beside the desk.

  “Ethan wants to see you,” he said. “Right away. He’s very upset by the news and he hopes you have time tonight to meet him.”

  Nyman said he’d like nothing more.

  “Terrific,” Fowler said, with evident relief. “He’ll be happy to hear that. You know the Palisades?”

  “I’ve been there.”

  “That’s where he is now—hosting a fundraiser at one of his houses. I’ll give you the address.”

  * * *

  The sun dipped lower as Nyman drove west. He found Ethan Kovac’s house at the top of a bluff in Pacific Palisades, overlooking the beach and separated from the street by an ivy-covered wall.

  A tempo
rary valet stand had been set up in the street. He parked beside it, gave his keys to a white-jacketed man, went through a door in the center of the wall, and came out on a lawn planted with olive trees.

  In the center was a modernist, steel-and-glass house with views of the ocean. He followed a path to the front door, where a woman in a short black dress asked for his name, checked it against a stack of preprinted nametags, frowned, and said:

  “Are you donating at the gold level, or the platinum?”

  Nyman said that he’d been invited by Mr. Kovac and wasn’t donating at any level.

  “Give me two seconds,” she said, and conferred with someone on a walkie-talkie. Then she wrote Nyman’s name on a blank white sticker and attached it to his lapel. “Enjoy the reception. I’m afraid they started without you.”

  The front door led into a vaulted entryway hung with photos of nightlife scenes, all presumably taken at Kovac’s clubs. A man’s voice echoed along the hallway, amplified by a microphone.

  The hallway opened into a sunken living room filled with rows of folding chairs occupied by people in semi-formal dress. They were facing the far end of the room, where Ethan Kovac was standing with his back to a wall of glass and speaking into a microphone.

  He’d aged visibly since the photo in the brochure had been taken. The t-shirt had been replaced by a trimly tailored suit and the boyish face was leaner, with a haze of stubble. His thick black hair was artfully tousled and his eyes were the same shade of glittering blue as the ocean framed behind him.

  “But that’s what I like most about Roberto,” he said, his words softened by a faint accent. “Most of the politicians I meet are trying to get something out of me. A table in one of my clubs, or a room in one of my hotels. All Roberto ever wants is my opinion on a tax proposal or something.”

  The crowd laughed politely. To Nyman’s left, at the makeshift bar that had been erected along one wall, an elderly man rolled his eyes and took a drink of wine.

  Kovac said: “Roberto’s a politician worth supporting, in other words. Somebody with real solutions. But you’re probably sick of hearing me talk about him, so now I’ll let you hear from Roberto himself.”