Los Angeles Noir

by Denise Hamilton

  “You rather go back to being trailer park trash while he lives up on the hill?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be like that. My attorney says the prenup has holes in it.”

  Clewiston shook his head. Second guessers. They hire his services and then can’t live with the consequences.

  “What’s done is done,” he said. “This will be the last time we talk. When you get the chance, throw the phone you’re talking on away like I told you.”

  “There won’t be any records?”

  “It’s a throwaway. Like all the drug dealers use. Open it up, smash the chip, and throw it all away the next time you go to McDonald’s.”

  “I don’t go to McDonald’s.”

  “Then throw it away at The Ivy. I don’t give a shit. Just not at your house. Let things run their course. Soon you’ll have all his money. And you double dip on the insurance because of the accident. You can thank me for that.”

  He was coming up to the hairpin turn that offered the best view of the Valley.

  “How do we know that they think it was an accident?”

  “Because I made them think that. I told you, I have Mulholland wired. That’s what you paid for. Nobody is going to second guess a goddamn thing. His insurance company will come in and sniff around, but they won’t be able to change things. Just sit tight and stay cool. Say nothing. Offer nothing. Just like I told you.”

  The lights of the Valley spread out in front of him before the turn. He saw a car pulled over at the unofficial overlook. On any other night he’d stop and roust them—probably teenagers getting it on in the backseat. But not tonight. He had to get down to the traffic office and write up his report.

  “This is the last time we talk,” he said to her.

  He looked down at the recorder. He knew it would be the last time they talked—until he needed more money from her.

  “How did you get him to go off the road?” she asked.

  He smiled. They always ask that. “My friend Arty did it.”

  “You brought a third party into this. Don’t you see that—”

  “Relax. Arty doesn’t talk.”

  He started into the turn. He realized the phone had gone dead.

  “Hello?” he said. “Hello?”

  He looked at the screen. No signal. These cheap throwaways were about as reliable as the weather.

  He felt his tires catch the edge of the roadway and looked up in time to pull the car back onto the road. As he came out of the turn, he checked the phone’s screen one more time for the signal. He needed to call her back, let her know how it was going to be.

  There was still no signal.

  “Goddamnit!”

  He slapped the phone closed on his thigh, then peered back at the road and froze as his eyes caught and held on two glowing eyes in the headlights. In a moment he broke free and jerked the wheel right to avoid the coyote. He corrected, but the wheels caught on the deep edge of the asphalt. He jerked harder and the front wheel broke free and back up on the road. But the back wheel slipped out and the car went into a slide.

  Clewiston had an almost clinical knowledge of what was happening. It was as if he was watching one of the accident recreations he had prepared a hundred times for court hearings and prosecutions.

  The car went into a sideways slide toward the precipice. He knew he would hit the wooden fence—chosen by the city for aesthetic reasons over function and safety—and that he would crash through. He knew at that moment that he was probably a dead man.

  The car turned 180 degrees before blowing backwards through the safety fence. It then went airborne and arced down, trunk first. Clewiston gripped the steering wheel as if it was still the instrument of his control and destiny. But he knew there was nothing that could help him now. There was no control.

  Looking through the windshield, he saw the beams of his headlights pointing into the night sky. Out loud, he said, “I’m dead.”

  The car plunged through a stand of trees, branches shearing off with a noise as loud as firecrackers. Clewiston closed his eyes for the final impact. There was a sharp roaring sound and a jarring crash. The airbag exploded from the steering wheel and snapped his neck back against his seat.

  Clewiston opened his eyes and felt liquid surrounding him and rising up his chest. He thought he had momentarily blacked out or was hallucinating. But then the water reached his neck and it was cold and real. He could see only darkness. He was in black water and it was filling the car.

  He reached down to the door and pulled on a handle but he couldn’t get the door to open. He guessed the power locks had shorted out. He tried to bring his legs up so he could kick out one of the shattered windows but his seat belt held him in place. The water was up to his chin now and rising. He quickly unsnapped his belt and tried to move again but realized it hadn’t been the impediment. His legs—both of them—were somehow pinned beneath the steering column, which had dropped down during the impact. He tried to raise it but couldn’t get it to move an inch. He tried to squeeze out from beneath the weight but he was thoroughly pinned.

  The water was over his mouth now. By leaning his head back and raising his chin up, he gained an inch, but that was rapidly erased by the rising tide. In less than thirty seconds the water was over him and he was holding his last breath.

  He thought about the coyote that had sent him over the side. It didn’t seem possible that what had happened had happened. A reverse cascade of bubbles leaked from his mouth and traveled upward as he cursed.

  Suddenly everything was illuminated. A bright light glowed in front of him. He leaned forward and looked out through the windshield. He saw a robed figure above the light, arms at his side.

  Clewiston knew that it was over. His lungs burned for release. It was his time. He let out all of his breath and took the water in. He journeyed toward the light.

  James Crossley finished tying his robe and looked down into his backyard pool. It was as if the car had literally dropped from the heavens. The brick wall surrounding the pool was undisturbed. The car had to have come in over it and then landed perfectly in the middle of the pool. About a third of the water had slopped over the side with the impact. But the car was fully submerged except for the edge of the trunk lid, which had come open during the landing. Floating on the surface was a lifelike mannequin dressed in old jeans and a green military jacket. The scene was bizarre.

  Crossley looked up toward the crestline to where he knew Mulholland Drive edged the hillside. He wondered if someone had pushed the car off the road, if this was some sort of prank.

  He then looked back down into the pool. The surface was calming and he could see the car more clearly in the beam of the pool’s light. And it was then that he thought he saw someone sitting unmoving behind the steering wheel.

  Crossley ripped his robe off and dove naked into the pool.

  NUMBER 19

  BY NAOMI HIRAHARA

  Koreatown

  The Korean women, lined up in black bras and underpants, pushed and pulled the flesh on their individual tables as if they were kneading dough.

  Ann watched for a moment and then dipped down into a steaming bath a few yards away. She was naked and unadorned, aside from a locker key dangling from a bright orange plastic bracelet around her wrist. She didn’t know why she even bothered securing the locker. There wasn’t much worth taking. Her beat-up jeans, size four, extra skinny, extra tall, and a simple T-shirt. A ratty bra with a rusty clasp and twisted underwire and matching panties. A fake leather hobo-style purse, bought at a discount store on Hollywood Boulevard, a couple of miles from her apartment. Platform shoes that stank of too much wear. She didn’t have a car right now, so she traveled with a monthly bus pass. In her wallet was a fresh twenty—for the tip her coworker Marie told her to bring—and a couple of ones.

  The spa had been expensive—a hundred dollars and then the twenty dollar tip—but Marie told Ann that she needed to treat herself when she was feeling down. “Who needs antidepressants?” sh
e had said. “Just get a salt scrub in Koreatown.” Marie was the only other waitress who bothered to speak to her at work. The other girls seemed scared of Ann, as if she had some kind of sickness that they were afraid to catch.

  Ann lifted her face from the hot water and brushed away wet hair plastered on her forehead. She tried not to stare at the masseuses working in the open spa, but it was hard not to. Marie had forewarned her about their lack of clothing. “Only makes sense, you know? It’s the same for the masseurs in the men’s section. They scrub off your dead skin and then rinse you off. Everyone gets wet. If they’re going to get soaked, they might as well wear bathing suits.”

  But these weren’t swimsuits—at least it didn’t look that way from the jacuzzi.

  About every ten minutes, a masseuse would leave her station and call out an assigned number into the open spa. Ann’s masseuse was Number 19, which was written and circled on the envelope she had received, along with two square pink washcloth mitts. The texture of the cloth was rough, like sandpaper. “You’ll feel like you’re getting rid of all of the asshole customers we had to deal with this past week,” Marie had told her. “A little pain for pleasure.”

  Ann was all for pain. She preferred hot baths—scalding ones, in fact. Her fingers right now were becoming shriveled, to the point that the outside layer of skin was almost melting off.

  “Nine-teen. Nine-teen.” One of the masseuses called out. The slick plastic table next to her was empty.

  Ann drew herself out of the tub. The tile floor was slippery and she clutched onto her washcloths and envelope while holding her thin cotton robe and towel over her bare front. The massage table area smelled dank and slightly syrupy—not a fragrance that she had ever encountered before.

  Number 19, her black hair frizzed from a bad perm and held back with bobby pins, must have been in her mid-forties at least. The skin around her jowls, below her armpits, and around her belly seemed soft and pudgy. Ann had seen that look before. It was comforting, reassuring. She could imagine melting in those fleshy arms so that her body would no longer be floating without an anchor.

  Number 19 took Ann’s robe and towel and hung them on a hook beside a steaming barrel of water. The envelope went on a shelf. “Lie down.” She nudged Ann toward the slippery plastic table. Even that gentle touch made Ann flinch—when was the last time someone had touched her bare back? Ann did as she was told, turning her head toward the left. She could see that the waistband of Number 19’s black panties was torn. The masseuse took one of the pink washcloths and Ann heard her squirt liquid—the seaweed salt treatment, no doubt—onto the center of the mitt.

  The slosh of water from the barrel came next. It was lukewarm, not hot like the jacuzzi’s water.

  Then Number 19 began scrubbing her shoulders, her backside, her legs. Ann now understood what Marie was talking about. All the bad residue from work seemed to be stripping away from her body, breaking up, disintegrating with each scrub and rinse of water.

  Number 19 then tapped Ann on the shoulder and gestured for her to turn over.

  Ann didn’t have much breasts to speak of. It didn’t bother her that they looked more like a chubby pubescent boy’s chest, rather than a woman’s. She had no desire to buy implants like a few of her coworkers. She remembered when her body was just developing and she was sitting in the backyard with her mother, aunt, and a girl cousin about Ann’s same age—maybe ten. Ann didn’t know why, but all of sudden her mother and aunt lifted up Ann and her cousin’s cotton shirts and undershirts, revealing puffs of growing breasts. They each squeezed a breast as if they were testing rolls of bread in an oven. The two women then laughed and returned to their cigarettes and gossip. Ann and her cousin didn’t know what all the fuss was about. Ann didn’t feel violated or abused, just that she wasn’t privy to a secret that her body apparently held.

  After the washing came the massage. Number 19 twisted her fists and fingers into knots that had developed throughout Ann’s back from carrying heavy trays of ceramic dishes. The pain shot down into the center of her lower body and even moved to her toes. Then came the slapping down her spine. The slapping made Ann feel delirious.

  No one really talked in the spa, so there was no sound of voices or music, only the sloshing of water, slapping, and scrubbing. The spa took on a rhythm that was more felt than heard.

  Ann herself wasn’t the type to initiate conversation, but somehow the loosening of the knots in her shoulders made her more bold. “When did you come here? You know, to this country?” she asked in a low voice, while Number 19 slathered moisturizer on her back.

  The masseuse paused for a moment. From the corner of her eye, Ann could see her frown and suck on the inside of her cheeks. It was as if Ann had accused her of doing something wrong.

  She took a deep breath and whispered in Ann’s ear, “Two year.” Number 19’s breath felt warm and actually smelled sweet, like fresh milk with sugar mixed in. She then did a last squeeze of Ann’s shoulders. “Very tight,” she said as Ann got up from the table.

  Ann didn’t know how to say waitress in Korean, so she mimed writing in an order pad.

  “Oh, that’s good job.” Number 19’s voice sounded sad, as if she knew that her job—cleaning naked bodies in black underwear—was anything but good.

  Ann attempted to correct the masseuse—she must have thought she was secretary or something—but Number 19 was already calling out into the open spa, “Nine-teen, nineteen.” Their session was officially over.

  Ann returned to the locker room to retrieve her clothes. The dressing room had a couple of hair dryers but the vanity area was so crowded that Ann opted to just comb her wet hair and let it air dry.

  When she went into the waiting room, the desk clerk and manager, a Korean woman with immaculate skin and oversized glasses, explained the spa’s tip policy. “Twenty dollars in envelope, and you put in here,” she said, pointing to a locked wooden box. “Make sure number is on the envelope.”

  Ann did what she was told, but felt uneasy. Why had Number 19 hesitated before explaining when she had come to this country? Her arrival or stay may not have been through legal channels, Ann figured. And the silence in the massage room—it didn’t seem to exist to promote relaxation, but to snuff out secrets. Would Number 19 get her twenty dollars? Ann wondered. She walked out the doors toward a driving range where golfers were hitting balls into a large green net, two stories high. Ann had learned to play golf when she was a teenager from one of her mother’s boyfriends. “Never know when you’ll need to know the game,” he had told her. She watched the golfers for a few minutes, debating whether she should go back into the spa and make sure Number 19 received her tip. But she decided against it. Who was she, anyway? She was an outsider. She didn’t understand the spa’s ways.

  That night Ann tossed and turned in her sleep. She had a nightmare and woke up gasping for air as if someone was trying to keep her from breathing.

  After that first time at the Korean spa, Ann knew that she had to feel the touch and hear the voice of Number 19 again. But it had taken her three months to save up that initial hundred and twenty-five dollars. If she wanted to go again, she would have to be more aggressive in placing money in her personal bank, an old pickle jar where she stuffed extra bills and change from her daily tips. She began collecting her neighbors’ empty soda cans and walking to a recycling shack near the local supermarket and waiting alongside homeless junkies to exchange cans for coins. Three weeks later she rolled the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies on a TV tray. She came up with fifty dollars in change. With her fiveand one-dollar bills in tips, she had enough to cover the spa.

  This time she was more bold in her questions. “You have a car?”

  “Bus. Two stops to Hobart.”

  Ann knew the bus line that traveled that route.

  “What’s your name?”

  “No name. Only number.”

  Ann asked her questions while lying on the massage table. She noticed that the tear in Num
ber 19’s underpants was getting larger and wondered why she didn’t use some of her tip money to buy a new pair. She ended up not asking her, but the question remained in her mind.

  Before she left, the masseuse stared up at Ann’s face.

  “Nice,” she said.

  Ann furrowed her eyebrows.

  Number 19 pointed to Ann’s eyes. “Very pretty.”

  * * *

  About two weeks later, Marie told her some bad news at work. “The bitch laid me off. Said I talk too much. I think it’s just an excuse because business has been so slow.” Marie ripped the apron from her waist and whirled the combination on her locker in the back room of the restaurant. “It’s just as well. I’m sick of L.A. I’m going back home.”

  Ann couldn’t remember where home was, but it was some state shaped like a rectangle in the middle of the U.S.

  “You can get another job.”

  “Yeah, another one at a dump like this. It’s not worth it anymore.” Marie removed her purse from a hook in the locker and looped it through her arm. “You know, Ann, you might think of moving on too.”

  Ann was jumpy all day. She messed up two orders and accidentally broke a juice glass. She was relieved that she worked the day shift and had the evening to herself. When she got home, she noticed that the pickle jar was only halffull of change, not nearly enough for a full salt scrub, but enough for the use of the jacuzzi. At least she could see Number 19. It was early evening on Thursday, past 7:00, so maybe she would be on her last customer. They might even have time to go out, have a cup of coffee, thought Ann.

  Number 19 was in the middle of a massage when she arrived. Her customer was a tall, thin woman, about Ann’s size. Ann watched from the jacuzzi, her eyelashes clumping together in the steam. Two other women were in the tub; one had placed a wet towel over her forehead and had closed her eyes.

  Number 19 seemed in an unusually good mood. She smiled a couple of times and dipped her head down to her customer’s ear. And then—no, it couldn’t be—it seemed that Number 19 was laughing. Ann wiped the sweat drops from her eyelashes. She stumbled out of the tub, her knees almost sliding on the tile. But Number 19 didn’t bother looking her way.