by Avery Duff
The paramedics told him. “She had some kind of seizure, looks like, called 911.”
Once he gave his ID, he jumped in with her. As they took off, he figured she’d tried to drive herself to the hospital and couldn’t handle it.
In his ER cubicle, his phone vibrated. He picked up. It was Erik, second time they’d talked in the last hour. The cops were dusting Unit 1, Erik was saying. Turned out, Alison’s keys were still in her ignition, so Erik pulled her car back in the garage, left her keys on the kitchen counter.
“Do I need to drag my tired ass to the ER?” Erik asked.
“I’m all right.”
“Hold still,” the nurse told Robert.
“What?” Erik asked.
“Nurse’s saying she’s never seen a man strong as I am.”
The nurse blushed. “I mean it. Don’t move,” she said, not meaning it anymore. She finished with him and began cleaning up. The hospital wall phone rang, and she answered, talking to a doctor.
“Tell me what went down today?” Erik asked.
Robert told him the intruder was wearing a ski mask, knocked him down with a pipe, and put a knife to Alison’s throat. Robert told him about the standoff inside the condo, too.
“He was pretty big, about my size. Think I marked his face up when I caught up with him.”
“Caught up with him? Whatever happened to taking a step back? You outta your fuckin’ mind?”
The nurse tapped his good shoulder. Whispered that Doctor Zweig would like to speak to him about Alison, and asked if he minded.
“I don’t mind at all,” he told her.
After the nurse relayed his message into the wall phone, she walked out.
“Well, are you?” Erik asked.
“Am I what?”
“Out of your fucking mind?”
“Hear me out,” he told Erik. “It wasn’t burglary. I think the guy wanted to kill me, kill both of us. I don’t know.”
“Hey, your stuff’s stacked up, ready to go. Patio door’s stuck from the storm. You two walked in and surprised him—that’s not it?”
“I don’t buy it. Guy knew I had a pistol, but he didn’t—”
“Hold up—now you’ve got a pistol?” Erik asked.
“Alison’s. Well, it belonged to her brother, but my point is, he knew there was a pistol and didn’t take it.”
“He tell you that, or you have a sixth sense?”
He explained how the attacker called his bluff with the unloaded pistol, the guy yelling how he knew it wasn’t loaded. “Meaning,” Robert told him, “he already saw it and didn’t steal it.”
Erik mulled it over. “Burglary down on the Peninsula? Simple to conceal; a pistol’s first thing he’d go for. Might be the only thing he grabs. So, you think the whole thing was staged?”
Robert knew to stay mindful of his nondisclosure agreement. If Jack’s prior bad behavior or the firm’s insurance missteps made it into a police report—a public document—Robert was done. His settlement money—all of it—would be gone and then some. Even so, why Jack wanted to hurt him now was based on what happened then.
But Robert needed to get what he believed into the record, so feeling his way forward, he said, “So, look, around the time I left the firm there was some . . . you might call it bad blood. And what I believe is—and I’m not accusing anyone of any wrongdoing. I believe a lawyer named Jack Pierce may know the intruder.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But I should make it clear, Officer,” very formal now, “I cannot talk about certain aspects of my employment at Fanelli and Pierce.”
“One of those nondisclose deals?”
“Like I just said. I cannot, and will not, discuss that.”
“Right, you cannot and will not talk about it now? So I’m not writing it down.”
“Right, Officer, you’re smarter than they say.”
Robert knew he needed to speak only to current facts. “Let me put it this way, Officer. Alison Maxwell and I were at the Santa Monica courthouse today. We were in Judge Rosen’s courtroom today. Mr. Pierce’s divorce was the only case on her docket today. I was there because Mr. Pierce invited me to come to court yesterday, and I saw him there today.”
“He dared you to come to court?”
“Asked me,” Robert said, but it had been a dare. “Based also on what I observed today, I believe that the intruder broke into our condo while we were at the courthouse or in transit.”
Erik digested those words. “Meaning Pierce would be alibied-up for the break-in. And you know he’s alibied-up because you saw him in court.”
Exactly right, Robert was thinking. What he said was: “I’m only telling you where I saw Jack Pierce today, Officer. That’s a matter of public record, and I was there along with several other witnesses. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about the break-in.”
But they were on the same page now, same paragraph. Erik said, “You’re gonna need hard evidence before you even think about accusing a big-time lawyer. You know that, right?”
“I haven’t accused a big-time lawyer of anything,” he said, because he hadn’t.
“I’m crystal on that, bro. But we both know, going off half-cocked? That’s what guys like . . . that’s what big-time . . . that’s what a certain type of person lives for. But what you just told me—about today—that might be helpful going forward.”
“Glad to help you with today’s break-in,” Robert said.
“I’ll write it up. Make sure you come by the station and sign it. It’s no good till you do.”
A severe woman in a white jacket came into the cubicle. About thirty-eight, slightly cross-eyed, her reading glasses hanging from a seashell-chain necklace.
“Will do, gotta go,” Robert said.
Erik told him. “Your girl’s lucky she lives with a maniac.”
Robert clicked off, and the woman said, “Mr. Worth. I’m Dr. Zweig.”
“Call me Robert,” he offered.
She picked up his chart and read it. “Tetanus shot . . . bruised ribs. I think you’ll live, Mr. Worth.”
“Looks like it. Alison, how’s she doing?”
“I’m not quite sure yet. Reading her chart, I noticed you were with her last time she was admitted to our care. Bruised wrists, that time. This time, a bruised neck.”
She wasn’t looking at him the way doctors look at patients. She looked at him like he was something else altogether.
“And it’s me with her both times?”
She didn’t answer, and he was blocked from explaining that Jack had assaulted Alison on the first visit.
“If these two sets of bruises, wrists and neck, are merely a coincidence, maybe you could explain it?” she asked, putting on those glasses now for emphasis.
“It is a coincidence,” he said. “And because it is a coincidence, I can’t explain it. Other than to say that it’s a coincidence. You might want to cool it before you get in trouble, Doctor.”
“I don’t plan to cool it about anything. Matter of fact, I may or may not take the next official step.”
That meant one thing: calling the cops about an abuser. Him. So he told her, “Tell you what, Doc. Let’s get that nurse back in here.”
“Why? Are you in pain?” She smiled for the first time.
“Not me,” he said, handing her a business card. “I want you to repeat what you told me in front of her. When the time comes, that’ll beef up my defamation damages against you and the hospital.”
“I never said that you—”
“You implied it, so let’s get her in here, get specific, and get this party started.”
She stared at his card. When she looked up, she tried to look the same as before. But she didn’t.
“Sad to say, I’m out of work. So I’ve got nothing but time on my hands to deal with situations like this. Like you,” he added.
“Oh,” she said.
Once she backed off, he explained about the break-in, what happened to Alison, and about th
e police report she would be welcome to read once it was available.
“Oh,” she said again.
“Now,” he said, “you gonna tell me how she’s doing, or are we going down that other road?”
In the elevator up to Alison’s room, he went over what Dr. Zweig had decided to tell him. Turned out, Alison was too doped up to tell her anything useful. That’s why Dr. Zweig had built up such a head of steam with him. He didn’t blame her. Abuse was what it looked like, and once they talked it out, Dr. Zweig was comfortable telling him this: Alison had an elevated heart rate from acute anxiety, leading to tachycardia, same as before.
Made perfect sense. After all, she’d had a knife to her throat. Her heart rate was probably elevated anyway, coming off their argument driving home in her car.
The elevator door opened onto the sixth floor. He followed the arrows to Room 665. He was already thinking about a room-number joke to lighten things up. Satan’s laid up next door in 666, something like that, then he stopped walking.
What was Dr. Zweig’s last question to him: “When these attacks come on, what were her initial symptoms?”
He explained what he had seen at Alison’s apartment. Then Dr. Zweig asked him about the latest incident, and he told her he hadn’t been there to observe it.
As they were winding up, Dr. Zweig shook his hand. Shook it twice, he recalled. Then she said, “After what she went through today, I’d be surprised if this didn’t happen.”
“Guess so,” he told her. “Me, too.”
That last exchange stuck with him. How her doctor would be surprised if Alison didn’t have another attack. Come to think of it, he would have been surprised, too. That’s what slowed him down three doors before reaching her room. What stopped him outside her door, where he was still thinking about it: elevated heart rate.
“Robert?” Alison’s voice, dope-groggy inside her room.
Heart rate elevated, he was thinking, and pictured Alison doing Kundalini yoga on the roof deck.
“That you?” he heard her asking.
He started to push open her door, but his mind coiled around what Dr. Zweig said: “I’d be surprised if this didn’t happen.”
He’d been with her in the condo after the attack. Then he left. And then it did happen.
His hand fell from Alison’s door, and as he walked back toward the elevator, he muttered, “Sonya . . .”
CHAPTER 42
Stanley thought the barren front yard of his one-bedroom stucco rental house reflected poorly on him. The first thing he’d do next week, he decided, was get some Mexicans over to plant some killer plants. No, he next decided, he’d pick out the plants, do the job himself. Learn everything there was to know about landscaping, save money, and get in a hard workout doing it.
Plants, not the water-using kind, he was thinking. The desert kind with fat leaves like movie stars planted to save water and be cool.
A cactus, he decided, unlocking his front door and going inside. A giant cactus.
“I’m all about the environment.” That’s what he’d tell dates now that he had a stash. He tossed Jack’s white package onto his kitchen counter, unwrapped the paper, and there it was: big stacks of wrapped hundreds. He opened the refrigerator door and slung his stacks inside, digging the idea of having cool cash.
“Cool, baby,” he said to no one in particular, picturing how he’d leave Tesla brochures scattered around so his dates could groove on his friend-of-the-planet persona.
Opening the cabinets, he pulled out the blender, Muscle Milk, whey powder, and a carton of blueberries. Shake time, baby.
Looking outside, he caught a glimpse of his Sikh mailman’s turban strolling away from his box, so he stepped out to the street to grab his mail. Alongside flyers for another new fitness place and Go Go Wok lay a small white package. Six inches long, an inch wide. There were no stamps, but it vibed Open me first, so he unwrapped it by his mailbox.
Seeing its contents, his palms began sweating instantly and stayed wet because the box contained a ziplock baggie of heroin. That familiar quick pulse started, too, back of his throat. And both sensations settled in on him and stayed there.
From Jack. He knew it. That fucker.
As he ran inside to his bathroom, Jack’s slurs in the parking lot surged at him. Once a junkie, always a junkie. Stanley recalled that truism in particular as he dropped the ziplock in the commode and flushed it.
“Junkie that, bitch!” he yelled.
But it wedged in the drain. Would not go down the chute. He grabbed it from the toilet bowl and unzipped it to dump the contents. Then the drug’s smell hit him, that whiff of vinegar, and he felt himself getting hard.
Ninety seconds later, Jack’s cruel, provocative behavior disappeared from Stanley’s personal calculus. He was on his landline; it was ringing. If his guy didn’t answer on this first try, he’d flush the stuff, but the guy did answer, and yes, he had an insulin rig. Quite a few insulin rigs, in fact.
When Stanley hurried out the door to stock up on rigs, his neighbor was kicked back in a lawn chair, slamming a beer.
“Shoulda saw her,” his neighbor called out. When Stanley kept going, his neighbor asked, “How long’s UPS been using porn stars to make deliveries?”
Stanley didn’t stop to wonder about the inane comment about UPS porn stars. Only one thing in his world was clear. His old dealer answering the phone, having rigs to spare? That was God’s hand at work.
And later, when he tied off in his kitchen to shoot up for the first time in twenty-four months and change, the last thing he remembered thinking was: Got twenty G’s, cash on hand, so I’m good to go for what, a year? Shit, I slow-track shooting this stuff, two years, easy.
CHAPTER 43
No yogistas streamed out of Amoroso walk street today, but Robert found the gate to Sonya’s easily enough. Her house was still and quiet, so he clanged her bell and waited. Nothing happened, so he gave it another try. Same deal. Maybe he’d walk down to Abbot Kinney, break down and grab a coffee at Intelligentsia and try again in an hour.
Then he heard a woman’s scream. Houses here were close together, but he was sure it came from behind Sonya’s bungalow. Another scream sent him rushing into her yard, tracking the pine-bark path toward her garage.
Midpoint of her house, another scream pelted him from behind a wood-louvered open window. Then another.
“Sonya?” he said. “Sonya?”
Through the slats, he made out a naked dude jumping off a woman’s prone body. Then Sonya rose from her bed, strolled toward him, and slammed the wooden slats all the way open.
“The hell are you doing?” Sonya asked, naked and unabashed.
“I was at your gate and—”
“Ringing my bell, I know. Who are you?”
“I’m Bob. I . . . saw your flyers over at the bookstore and wondered if . . .”
“Sonya?” That same dude stood in her doorway. Another dude beside him had a towel around his waist.
“You cool, Sonya?” one of them asked. The one with a towel.
“I’m good,” she told them. Lighting a smoke, she inhaled fiercely, swung open the louvers, and stared at him. “Kind of a bad time, Bob, don’t you think?”
“So sorry, really,” he said, looking at her, trying not to. “Just need a minute of your time.”
“Go,” she said, blowing a stream of cigarette smoke down at him.
“I heard you taught Kundalini yoga,” he said.
“Studied it a little, but no. I don’t know it so I don’t teach it.”
“Too bad. I have asthma, it sounded great.”
“It would be. It can give you total control of your breathing dynamic.”
He could swear she was checking him out and wondered if she planned to throw on a robe or something.
“I’m curious,” she asked. “When did you see my flyer?”
“About a week ago?” he said, guessing at a right answer.
“Thought the bookstore took ’em do
wn. Had to after some jackass reported me to the city about needing a license. I can’t teach here anymore.”
“Sorry to hear that. You said the breathing dynamic? Would that affect your heart rate, too?”
“If you’re advanced enough, definitely. Total control. I’ll start teaching at a studio next month. If you’re interested, my system could be as beneficial for asthma as Kundalini.” She leaned down, her back to the dudes. “Or a cup of coffee, Bob.”
From somewhere, she came up with a business card. He didn’t know how because she was perched now on the windowsill like a sleek, toned animal.
He said, “I read somewhere, with Kundalini there might be some risk of passing out.”
“Not really.” Then she smiled and added, “Well, not unless you wanted to. If you wanted to pass out, Bob, and you were skilled enough, it would be easy.”
Easy to pass out . . . if you wanted to.
His face hardened with realization. His eyes closed, and his mouth went dry. He didn’t say anything, he couldn’t, but Sonya did.
“I had a student, not too long ago, she was advanced in Kundalini. Actually, she was good enough to teach. For some reason, she quit coming to class.”
He looked up. “Was her last name Maxwell?”
“No,” she said. “It was Ellison. Maxine Ellison. Do you know her?”
Robert thinking: Alison Maxwell? Maxine Ellison? Close enough.
“Thought so for a second,” he told her, “but no.”
“Well, Bob, don’t be a stranger.” Grinding out her smoke, she said, “And be well.”
As Robert walked back to his car, recent memories gouged him.
“Alison Maxwell,” he said.
Saying it because that was her real name. The name he’d seen on her birth certificate. The name she had to use for Brian Maxwell’s lawsuit because she was, in fact, Brian Maxwell’s sister, his only living blood relative and administrator of his estate by accident of birth.
Alison Maxwell. A Kundalini yoga pro.
Not a novice like she told him that day he showed up at Sonya’s. The day he was supposed to pick up his blue Escort. The new car wasn’t ready, so he’d surprised her. Same thing the day his bike tire popped. He’d surprised her on the roof doing yoga. No, performing yoga. That was no novice on the roof when he first saw her, deep into Kundalini breathing. But once she realized he was there, she lost her balance. More than once, he recalled. Messing up on purpose, he was sure of it, to bolster her novice status in his eyes.