I was pretty much done, taking a drink from the hose, that coppery taste of summertime. Time go home, clean up, feed Mr. Frenchy, get ready for the day. The first customers were arriving.
What made me look up? The cigar. I hate cigars, they remind me of someone I’d like to forget. I staggered too close to a prickly pear, but I hardly felt it as it caught my arm. I recognized that tall trim form, long-legged in jeans, cowboy boots, shaking a match. Even with his bald head covered with a baseball cap and his eyes hidden behind aviator sunglasses, I knew him.
I watched him buy tickets, him and the girl, a pretty redhead in a hat and yellow sundress.
Look at him, laughing.
The LAPD said there was no such person as Jack West. The detective we hired came up empty. Sorry, kids, but you’re never going to see that money again.
His hand rested on the girl’s slim shoulder, a tall man’s ease, her arm around his waist. Christ, he was old enough to be her grandfather. We thought he’d taken off to Venezuela. Mathilde, Matilda … he take the money and run Venezuela. Or Bogotá, that’s where the wife was from, a former Miss Colombia, or so he said.
I found a bit of crumpled Kleenex in my pocket to dab at the blood seeping through my shirt as I watched them move through the ecosystems—all the varieties of cactus, some thirty feet high, others no bigger than your thumb. I could shove him into a patch of ocotillo, leave him crucified, like a bird I’d seen once, impaled on a thorn by the wind.
The girl screamed and batted at her flowered hat, knocking it to the ground. A hummingbird darted away, offended. Jack laughed, settling the fallen hat back on her head. So graceful, so easy. That gold watch, the only sign of his taste for fancy cars and expensive women, rented yachts, larceny.
We’d never seen that kind of flash, Gil and me. Box seats at the Bowl, house in Beverly Hills, boat at the marina, the white Rolls. By the time we knew what had hit us, he was gone. Along with everything we’d ever owned, ever made of ourselves, vanished. Like a magic act in which it was the magician, and not the doves, who appeared and then disappeared.
Had to suck it up. Our credit busted. Gil’s brother doling out a grand or two like he was the Sun King.
Then came the dark days. The shit condo in Reseda, Gil on the couch playing solitaire on a TV tray, watching detective shows … There are things in life you didn’t survive, and we didn’t survive our encounter with Jack West.
You’re young. Get on with your lives, the detective had said. Chalk it up to experience.
I sprayed water on things that didn’t need it, cholla and prickly pear, watched Jack and his date make the circuit and return to the tables of souvenir cactus and succulents. I coiled the hose and slipped out to my car across the street, an Audi from the eighties that’d once belonged to my mother.
Come on, you son of a bitch.
Here they came. Walked down to a silver-bullet Porsche. He folded himself in, leaving the girl to manage for herself. Clearly he was past trying to impress. I hoped they were staying locally; I didn’t have much gas. But I wasn’t going to let him get away. Not even if I had to follow him to LA or San Diego. It was a sign. The universe was giving me a second chance.
I tailed him down South Palm Canyon, past the Palm Canyon Mobil Club where I lived in my grandmother’s old trailer, as far as Coyote Hills Drive, where he turned and climbed. A white brick wall and a gate of frosted glass and black metal shuddering open for a quick glimpse at the house—a modernist platter with what looked like a 270-degree view over the valley. I kept going, found a place to turn around, and parked in the shade of someone’s olive tree.
Jack sure had improved his taste. The man I’d known favored mirrored tiles and round Hollywood beds. That bed … back then, that and Sarita’s lace stockings were the most elegant things I’d ever seen. What a kid I’d been.
Where the jutting roofline permitted, I could see the house’s patio, an angular blue pool, the concrete limited by glorious big boulders. That was my money. Mine and Gil’s, the money he’d stolen from us. A neighbor came onto his front patio and glared at me. Fuck you, sir. Unless he called the cops, I was staying right here.
But the gate was opening again.
I shadowed him back through town, to a sleek modern building with aqua-tinted windows. It housed a Coldwell Banker, a medi spa, and on the second floor—Thompson + Price Design/Build. Jack climbed out of that Porsche like he was Steve McQueen. He had to be fifty by now, maybe even older. I was thirty-six, but I felt sixty. Eight years since he’d killed me. I was a ghost, and he hadn’t aged a day.
Ten a.m. and my shirt was sweated through. My pierced arm throbbed. I ran the AC, listening to Rat Pack radio: Fly me to the moon—hey! I would wait. I was the soul of patience. I was a hawk waiting on a lamppost, a scorpion under a rock. I had nothing but time.
Meanwhile, Mauricio texted me. Echale un vistazo, jefe. It was our joke. Mauricio was my boss. I met him when I’d first landed here—bottomed out, tapped out, living in my grandmother’s trailer. Newly widowed, having a beer and a taco and a good cry. Back when I still cried. My Spanish was pretty good—my only good subject at Birmingham High—and he seemed sympathetic. I told him my sad story.
He too had a problem, he said. He ran a landscaping crew. Recently, the California governor had announced they were going to pay people to take out their lawns and put in plantas tolerantes a la sequía, cactus and natives. It was the future. He was a good gardener, not an idiot with a rake. But owners didn’t think Mexicans could do anything but wave a leaf blower. What he needed was una gringa bien hablada para conseguir nuevos clientes, ¿comprende? An ambitious guy. He wanted that business. I would be the boss, get the gig, then he’d take over. He’d give me 10 percent.
We came up with a name—Xterra Gardens. Gays y hipsters were the likeliest clients, new owners. This being Palm Springs, there was always somebody dying or moving away. I kept my white-lady wardrobe neatly together at one end of my closet—white jeans, canvas shoes, a clean straw hat. El jefe.
Mauricio’s lead was in Cathedral City, el profesor, could I drop by?
Mañana. Problemas personales.
Was Jack ever going to come out of there? Was I going to have to go in? At twelve thirty, he appeared with a young man, handsome, tanned, in a blue shirt and white linen pants, carrying a slim portfolio. Jack laughed at something and squeezed his shoulder. That gesture. I almost spewed. He did that exact thing with Gil. The approving father he’d never had. Jack smelled it on us, our need.
They headed into the Historic Tennis Club, valet parked at Spencer’s—that other Palm Springs of immaculate tennis courts, the members-only cabanas. The young man knew people, shook hands, introduced Jack. Suckers.
Spencer’s is casual but tony, with a kind of Polynesian air, a laid-back patio. I couldn’t go inside in my dirty khakis, but with my leather gardening gloves and big hat, a small rake, I could spy from the garden, where I had an excellent view.
An older woman joined them. Pale linen pantsuit, her hair a soft platinum. The opposite in every way from the redhead Jack had stashed on Coyote Hill. I watched him orchestrate. He let the young man talk, stepping in when the woman asked questions, soothing objections, making her laugh. The young one opened his portfolio, setting their wineglasses aside, their bread plates. The woman took out her reading glasses, leaned over. Diamond ring, platinum tank watch. I wanted to shout, Call your lawyer! but it was none of my business. I had some planning to do.
I threaded the Audi through the network of lanes comprising the Palm Canyon Mobil Club. Meticulous double-wides, even some new microhouses. The New Palm Springs. I liked it better when it was cheap and shitty and full of old people who hated children. Those crusty old broads. Some of them were still around, like Shirley Bliss, my grandmother Lottie’s best friend, two doors down and across the street. The difference in ages hadn’t been apparent to me back then—I had thought her ancient, but she must have only been in her fifties.
At home, I
showered and let Mr. Frenchy out of his cage, put him on my shoulder, and grabbed my computer. My lanai wasn’t nearly as nice as Spencer’s, just a cover of funky green corrugated fiberglass protecting my cactus and succulents, an old aluminum glider. I turned on the fountain so Mr. Frenchy could splash. A little cockatiel, he didn’t take much upkeep. Birdseed and fresh water and he was good to go.
I turned on my laptop, typed in Thompson + Price.
Photos appeared. Futuristic condos, walls of glass, oval or circular swimming pools set into cement or wooden decks like the water tank in Petticoat Junction. Good landscaping. I was wondering who did it before I realized that these weren’t actual photographs. It was a projected development at the hem of the San Jacintos off South Palm Canyon, past where Jack had his house.
Sunrise. Not Sunrise Palms or Sunrise Dunes, just Sunrise. I hated that shit. The newest New Palm Springs, bland and generic as a suburban Gap. I preferred the hipster fakery of midcentury modern, built around fantasies of the Rat Pack and tuck-and-roll upholstery, tropical plantings with blue uplighting.
Thompson + Price. Principals Alan Thompson, Licensed Contractor, and Ben Price, Architect. So Jack was now Alan, but the same man grinned out at me, lanky and loose like Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.
I typed in: statute of limitation, fraud. Added California.
Four years. Only murder could still be prosecuted at this late date. But wasn’t it murder? Hadn’t he killed us?
At last, the sun drooped over the ridge of the mountain, the temperature dropped five degrees, and it was cocktail time. I crossed the hot asphalt to Shirley Bliss’s battered single wide, rapped on her sliding glass door. “Yoo-hoo.”
She unlatched the slider. “Just in time.” She wore a little shift of white and gold Lurex. She’d once been a semifamous mobster’s girlfriend. The wig of the day was a long bloodred number—Brandy. She’d been breaking out ice for a margarita, pounding the tray on the sparkly Formica. Her ancient fingers neatly punched the handle out and back, the ice falling, such a nostalgic sound. She’d bartended at El Ranchero, still had a stiff pour.
“Salt the glasses, baby.”
I poured kosher salt onto a flat plate, water in another, wetted the rims, and dipped them while she shook the tequila, triple sec, and fresh lime in a cocktail shaker, overhand.
Out on the lanai with its green AstroTurf and the bird-bath I’d once made in a mosaic class, we sipped our drinks. She eyed me from behind her ombré frameless glasses. “You don’t look so good.”
“I didn’t realize it was a looking-good occasion.”
She was the only person I knew who was armed. When the nation learned that Nancy Reagan had a gun, Lottie and Shirley just shrugged. Of course she did. Who didn’t? Child me was appalled, like when I found Poppy’s revolver in his desk drawer. But that was his generation. Don’t tell your mother, he’d said.
“Still have Nancy’s little bedside gun?”
“Man problems?”
“A guy I used to know. Someone who once took something from me.”
She tasted the salt on her lips. Her drawn-on eyebrows lifted. She already knew the one. “Take my advice, honey. Just walk away. Walk away and keep walking.”
The smell of lighter fluid wafted over from a neighbor’s lot.
I couldn’t get him out of my head. The girl’s laughter, his arm on her shoulder. The car, the house, lunch at Spencer’s. He’d done well for himself. Out enjoying life while my husband was dead, and I was hanging out with old ladies and Mr. Frenchy. I’d waited eight years for this. “I can’t. He’s out there, breathing.”
She gazed up at the overhang, the hummingbird feeders.
“What would Moe say? Poppy?”
She sighed, her shoulders sagging. But she rose and click-clacked back inside, emerging a minute later with the gun—squarish, chrome, no bigger than a sandwich. “So,” she said in a half whisper, “I guess my gun got stolen.”
I stopped in to visit Pamela at Coldwell Banker. She had a couple of tips for me, one up in Old Las Palmas, the other in the Historic Tennis Club. She especially liked the one in the Tennis Club. “A young couple from LA.” Showed me the sales postcard. Where did people get money like that? Crime. Somewhere, there was crime.
I perched on the corner of her desk. “So what do you know about Sunrise?”
“A hundred town houses, high-end. Coyote Hill Drive. They’re still in permitting.”
“And Thompson + Price?” I indicated the ceiling.
“Yum-yum.” She crossed her tanned legs in her pencil-slim skirt, tapped her pen against her white teeth. “The architect’s your age. Rich kid. Cute. But I’ll take the developer. Mr. Personality. I think he’s from Phoenix.”
“Legit?”
She shrugged. “If it gets built, it’s legit. Rule of the veldt.”
Nobody was home at the Historic Tennis Club address. I left a card. Old Las Palmas was two gay guys with a schnauzer. They didn’t want cactus in case the dog hurt himself, but might be open to natives. I made some sketches. Drove out to el profesor in Cathedral City, thinking all the while about Jack West, and Sunrise. What was a deal like that worth? He had that architect, but I doubt he’d split the profits 50/50. How much would be in the kitty as they got ready to break ground? Millions. That was when he’d strike, and vanish. I had to get him before that.
I dialed Thompson + Price. Made an appointment with Ben Price. Could he come up to the house? Yes, it would make things so much simpler. Ilona Sonnenschein.
The Sonnenscheins were in Cannes, and I was watering their plants. We’d put in their garden, and Ilona had taken a liking to me. Probably a poor idea.
I met Ben Price at the Sonnenschein house in the Mesa. I wore my white-lady clothes—white denim jeans, aqua shirt, maybe buttoned a little lower than usual. Turquoise bracelets, and Shirley’s “Elke the Swedish Stewardess” wig, a plausible blond, roughly like Ilona’s. “Ilona Sonnenschein,” I gave him my hand. I’d even polished my nails. I could see his eyes widening. He hadn’t expected any sex appeal.
His eyes jumped to the view, clear across the valley. Then glanced at the house dismissively. Back to the view. I saw it through his eyes—fake Spanish with sixties touches. “I know it’s kind of a mishmash,” I apologized in my best white-lady voice.
He indicated the valley, unrolling like a carpet, bright in the morning air. “This view is what it’s all about, Mrs…. Sonnenschein.”
“Call me Ilona. And I’ll call you Ben.” I rattled him for some reason. He kept staring, then forcing himself to look away.
I walked him to a secluded patio under the ramada, sat across from him at the glass-topped table. “Ben, I’m going to tell you something in strictest confidence. Is that all right?”
Now he was curious, leaning forward eagerly. “You can trust me.”
“It’s about your partner. Alan Thompson.”
He looked so disappointed. Wounded even. “What about him?”
“What kind of business arrangement do you have with Mr. Thompson? Are you incorporated?”
“I don’t see why that’s any of your concern, Mrs. Sonnenschein.” His handsome jaw tightening.
“Ah, but it is,” I said, folding my hands before me. “Let me explain. A friend of mine, her husband actually, used to be in business with this man. His name was Jack West back then. They had a partnership. A construction company. Your partner waited until the company was flush, right ahead of groundbreaking on a big project, then drained the accounts.”
He went pale. Yes, that’s right, Ben. Your partner’s a crook.
I moved into the seat next to his, put my hand on his arm. I wore a good perfume, Ilona’s Dior, it rose on the heat from my body. The wind shook the bamboo chimes. Water splashed in the small fountain. “They lost everything. The husband committed suicide.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
I ran my hand over my sweaty neck and his eyes followed. Those long-lashed eyes, the colo
r of pool water, drank from my neck, my mouth.
“Who are you?” he asked, husky. “I happen to know Ilona Sonnenschein, and you aren’t her.”
“Does it matter? I’m a friend. I wanted to warn you.”
“Consider me warned.” He pressed his lips onto mine.
It’d been a long time since I’d really wanted a man. Maybe it was his desperation I found irresistible. I unlocked the house with the key hidden in the eaves, led him by the hand through the Californio-style living room, red tile floors and pony-skin rug, down the hall to the master bedroom with its low ceiling and heavy Mexican furniture.
We fucked like fat men gorging themselves at a casino buffet, stuffing ourselves with anything and everything. I kept the wig on, he seemed to dig it. He liked playing games. Good. He’d need that. He followed my lead.
We lay together for a while afterward under the big ceiling fan. I got us some ice water from the fridge—the ice was stale.
He drank, then he ran his cool hand up my hip, my flank. “I love this curve. Like a Gehry. Do you have a name?”
I leaned back on his sweaty chest, fleshy with muscle. “You don’t like Ilona?”
“I like her fine. I don’t want to fuck her, though. What’s it say on your driver’s license?”
“Miranda.” I licked the sweat from his shoulder. “Promise me you’re going to look into Alan Thompson, Ben. Call me when you figure it out.” I made him memorize the number of the cheap phone I’d bought just for the occasion.
* * *
Late that night, he sent a text while I was in the can. Need to see you. Tonight.
Did I want him coming here? I looked around my trailer. Ratty and unaesthetic, a seventies museum—the Swedish modern lamps, the avocado shag, the whitewashed Formica paneling, my grandparents’ club chairs. He would judge it. Mr. Tennis Club, the architect. But fuck it. I wanted to see him. Sure, come.
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