The Silent Second

by Adam Walker Phillips

  “This place gives me the willies,” Mike said.

  “Then why did we come here?”

  “They have a good patty melt.”

  The waitress brought us menus and waters and innocently asked Mike if he wanted a straw.

  “Of course I do,” he replied. “You think I want to put my lips on the same glass some pig drank out of?”

  More than a few heads turned in our direction.

  “Jesus, take it easy, Mike,” I whispered and slunk low in the booth.

  “I’m just busting balls,” he said.

  “Why do you have to be so antagonistic?”

  “Because these guys walk around with chips on their shoulders and there’s no one left to knock them off to keep them honest.” Keeping the police in check was a favorite topic of his. “The worst development of the last twenty years,” he went on, “is the cozy relationship between the press and the police. This is supposed to be a system of checks and balances. Now the Times reads likes a glorified Benevolent Society newsletter extolling the virtues of these everyday heroes.”

  What Mike never advertised was the fact that his father was one of those “heroes” who was killed on a random evening some twenty years earlier. Mike let the story slip one night under the powerful influence of too many Bushmills at the Anchor Bar on Third Street. Like his writing, the story was lean and filled with a few haunting details.

  Mike’s father was a detective and twenty-year vet on the force. He worked out of the Rampart Division and commuted all the way out to Covina, where Mike and his family grew up. On one of those drives home, Mike’s father pulled off the 10 Freeway to stop at a convenience store in El Monte and he stumbled onto a teenager beating the clerk senseless with a tire iron. The detective intervened but never saw the accomplice lurking in the aisle. The accomplice, whom they later caught and put to death, casually approached Mike’s father and stabbed him six times in the side with a Phillips-head screwdriver he had just stolen from a neighbor’s shed. “It was technically seven, but the first attempt didn’t puncture so it wasn’t counted in the total,” he told me that night. Ever the journalist, Mike had tracked down the investigating officers and convinced them to let him read the entire police report. He seemed to find comfort in the details.

  “We need to get back to the day when no one liked cops,” he explained as the waitress delivered his patty melt. “That way they don’t get too comfortable throwing their weight around without consequences.”

  “You got your Irish up today.”

  “For good reason,” he said and slid over a fat accordion file.

  “What’s this?”

  “A big story.” He smiled.

  The folder contained copies of countless real estate deals and contracts and spreadsheets. I flipped through them randomly as Mike explained what he had discovered.

  “Three buildings were recently purchased as part of a big community redevelopment program by my old friend Carmen Hernandez.” She was one of Mike’s favorite targets in his column. Under the guise of community activist and Latino community do-gooder, she ran a mini-empire that afforded her a beautiful family compound in Monterey Hills. She was a master manipulator in that hazy area between politics and business. Reciting bad poetry at charity functions was just part of her PR work. “The buildings are going to be converted into a women’s center,” Mike continued. “It’s all a sham. Dedicating a portion of your building to some social cause gets you a development grant from the city. They help buy the building and fund the construction.”

  “Where’s the scam?”

  “I said ‘portion’ of the building. Once it’s built, you can do what you want with the rest of it, including charging real rents. Under a ‘not-for-profit’ status, the city never sees a dime back.”

  “How do they get away with it?”

  “Mostly by having friends in high places. Councilman Abramian holds the purse strings to the redevelopment money in that area. What he says goes. He’s up for reelection this fall and must be trying to shore up his base with the Latino vote. As much as I dislike Carmen, she is true to her word. When she gets paid off, she delivers the goods. Now comes the interesting part,” he said, leaning forward. “Who do you think brokered all three deals?”

  “Langford.”

  “Who took the big shove last week.”

  Mike was on his game and he knew it. He had culled the documents and painstakingly created a matrix of all the names, connections, and overlap to create a narrative showing how the various participants were involved. It must have taken countless hours to do it, and it got me thinking about the “love what you do” fallacy. When Mike was in the middle of a story he was excited about, no one saw him for days on end. He was consumed by the work and driven by a manic anger to plow ahead to its conclusion. He would eventually surface looking haggard and a few years older.

  The self-help guru would tell Mike that the extreme level of passion he put into his work was because he had found a career that he loved. And the guru couldn’t be more wrong. For Mike, it was all about the struggle. He was most alive when embroiled in a scrap, whether it was calling out a pompous executive for his dalliances or exposing crooked parking-enforcement officials for selling handicapped placards. It had nothing to do with some moral code but everything to do with being in a fight.

  “This is right next to the Deakins Building, the one Ed owns,” I said, pointing to a map of the buildings in question.

  “It’s getting chummy all of a sudden, isn’t it? Does this name ring a bell? Arshalyous Begossian?” Apparently I was the only one who couldn’t pronounce his name.

  “It should. I just met with him yesterday about Deakins.”

  “He’s been brought up on ethics charges twice but cleared both times. They involved allegations of mortgage fraud. He is also rumored to be in tight with the Armenian Power.”

  “Claire was meeting with him.”

  Mike studied me for a moment.

  “I was wondering when you were going to tell me that little detail.” He tapped the manila folder. “Her name and her law firm pop up in these documents. They were working with Langford on the zoning. I’m not sure of the details but they have their hands dirty.”

  “What do you mean ‘they’?”

  “You know what I mean. Claire’s firm has only one real client.”

  “Why would Valenti get involved in this kind of stuff? It’s child’s play. Seems like a stretch.”

  “Listen, you got a nose for shiraz, but I got a nose for scumbags. And this one stinks.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What are you going to do?” he shot back. “I want you to talk to Claire.”

  “About what?”

  “This! You need to confront her.”

  I didn’t have much fight in me. My marriage was teetering and I didn’t want to do anything to tip the scale one way or the other.

  “What would I even say to her? So she has worked with people of questionable character. So have you. And so have I, for that matter.”

  “She’s running all over you,” he challenged.

  “No she’s not.”

  “Who left whom? And don’t give me some bullshit about it being mutual. In the history of relationships there hasn’t been a single instance of a mutual breakup. Is she sleeping with someone?”

  “Mike, it’s not about that.”

  “That’s a ‘yes.’ What’s his name?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. The last thing I wanted to tell Mike was about McIntyre and Claire. That was only more fuel to his fire.

  “She’s moved on, pal,” he said, taking the antagonistic approach.

  “Don’t call me pal.”

  “She’s moved on, buddy,” he corrected, which was even more irritating. “And I don’t want to see you sit here and take it. You want her back?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then go get her. If not, then ruin her.”

  “Great advice,�
�� I said, getting up from the table to head to the restroom, and far away from this conversation.

  “There are no more consequences to actions anymore!” he shouted after me. “Sometimes we have to set things straight ourselves.”

  I stood at one of the urinals and tried to push down the emotions Mike had stirred up about Claire. I simply wanted all of it to go away. I recalled that first week after the separation. She wanted space, and I got more than anyone would ever want. I spent a few nights in a business hotel downtown that catered to the nearby corporations and their global workforces who breezed through for a three-day stint in the Los Angeles office. Occasionally I ran into a lost German tourist who amazingly found pleasure in the sterile, empty streets of Bunker Hill at night. A friend convinced me to get out of the hotel lounge and spend some time with his family out in the Valley. There are times when someone’s generosity is almost enough to restore one’s faith in all humanity. My friend upended his family’s life by moving his daughter into the top bunk in his younger son’s room. I was given an open-ended invite, and he meant it, but I didn’t last more than a day. After a home-cooked meal and a cigar on the back deck, I settled into a preteen’s purple polka-dotted room. My feet hung over the edge of the twin mattress and I stared at a glow-in-the-dark constellation on the ceiling. And I never felt so lonely in my life.

  “Your friend has a big mouth,” a voice said behind me.

  I finished up at the urinal and turned to face two young officers. They couldn’t have been more than a few months from graduation. I could still smell the talcum powder from their haircuts.

  “I know he does,” I told them and headed for the sink. They fell in step behind me and stood off each shoulder.

  “He should know better,” the second officer chirped. They didn’t seem capable of formulating a compound sentence. I looked at them in the mirror. They were at an age where pride still mattered. And they were quick to defend it.

  “He’s sitting out there. Go tell him.”

  That didn’t go over too well. Much like Mike, I never was a big fan of the police, and my low opinion must have slipped into the tone of my voice, because I watched both of the young officers bristle and roll up onto the balls of their feet. The one on my left grabbed hold of my shoulder and spun me around.

  “Never mind telling us what we should be doing,” he said.

  “We’ll talk to who we want to talk to,” the other one finished.

  “Guys, I apologize for my friend out there. We don’t want any trouble.” I was hoping that was the end of it, but apparently I needed to be subjected to a speech.

  “He should learn some respect,” one of them began. “We put our lives on the line—”

  “—to protect and to serve.”

  “Do you know what kind of shit we have to put up with on a daily basis?”

  “The kind of bullshit we have to do while we’re out there making the streets safe for people like you?”

  The banter was tired but they did make a great tandem. I was grateful Mike wasn’t there to witness this. I had an image of an index finger and a thumb playing the world’s smallest violin.

  “Where are these mean streets that you speak of?” boomed a mocking voice. A pit formed in my stomach as my initial thought was that Mike had stumbled upon us and was going to turn this encounter into a full-blown incident. But no one had entered the bathroom.

  The young officers and I looked around trying to place the voice. Then we heard a newspaper rustle and realized that it came from one of the stalls. I looked to the two officers. One of them was confused and in no mood to investigate. The other wasn’t so quick to give up. He approached the stall.

  “What’d you say in there?” he asked the door.

  “I said, ‘Get your uniforms dirty before you start swapping war stories in a public restroom.’”

  Just as the officer was about to go tell the voice where he could put his advice, we all heard movement in the stall and then a detective’s shield slid out from under the door and settled at the young officer’s feet. He looked at his partner and together they saw their fledgling careers stumble before they could get out of the gate. They decided to quietly slip out of the bathroom. I started to follow them out.

  “Wait a minute, would you?” the voice beckoned. “I want to talk.”

  Unfortunately for me, it was longer than a minute. After five page turns I called out, “What are you doing, the crossword?”

  “Funny,” he grunted and finally emerged from the stall. “They have a great patty melt, but it doesn’t always sit well with me.”

  Detective Ricohr shuffled his feet out of the stall. His pants were still around his ankles. His legs were hairless and a color bordering on translucence. I conjured up a large, imaginary piece of cardboard just below my nose that kept my eyes from seeing what was below.

  “Thanks for intervening before,” I said, my gaze looking somewhere at the crown of his head.

  “You’d have thought those two punks were in the North Hollywood shootout,” he said with a laugh. “Still doesn’t make up for the nonsense your friend is throwing around out there. He’s begging for a beating.”

  “I feel sorry for the guy who gives it to him.”

  “Oh yeah? Is he tough?”

  “Only in print.”

  Detective Ricohr went to the sink and washed up. He then proceeded to tuck his collared shirt into the elastic waist of his cotton briefs and pulled the shirttails out the bottom. He caught my look.

  “My dad taught me this trick,” he smiled. “Keeps the shirt tight on the chest, no creases.” And then without missing a beat, “Who’s Paul Darbin?”

  Naturally, I knew the name, but the context in which I was being asked led me to stare dumbly at Detective Ricohr.

  “Paul Darbin?” I repeated, which is a sure sign that you either don’t know the answer to the question, or you are stalling to make up an answer.

  “Yeah, I think he works with you.”

  “Oh, Paul, sure I know him. We co-manage a group in Human Resources.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Has to be almost fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen years and it still took you a while to place the name,” he stated in an accusatory manner.

  “Sorry, the police academy bathroom setting threw me off. I know him from the office.”

  “Let me go over some names: Ed Vadaresian, Bill Langford, Paul Darbin, Claire Courtwright. All these names are connected and there’s one link—you know all of them.” He calmly stared in my direction.

  “Must be a coincidence,” I said but my voice faltered. Cops rivaled Catholic priests for the ability to elicit guilt with a mere glance. I subconsciously placed my hand over my heart to check the frantic beating.

  “You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  “No, I’ve been fighting a flu, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How is Paul connected?” I asked, trying to get the pressure off of me.

  “You tell me.”

  I debated telling the detective about the detail I discovered—Paul snooping in Ed’s work file—namely because it would put further suspicion on me. Maybe Detective Ricohr truly suspected me, or he was just pumping me for information. Either way I was in the middle of something, and it felt good.

  “I don’t have a clue,” I said.

  “Were he and Mr. Vadaresian close?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think they even really knew each other. I’m responsible for overseeing Ed’s group so he and Paul wouldn’t have had much contact with each other outside of the coffee room.”

  “I was looking through Mr. Vadaresian’s work emails,” he said. “There was some interesting stuff in there.”

  “I doubt it,” I told him.

  “Really? So you’ve been snooping in there, too?”

  “No, I doubt you were looking through his work emails,” I corrected. “Any request would have to come through and be approv
ed by me. And I don’t have any recollection of someone from the police submitting such a request.”

  It felt good to counterpunch his assault. He had some information but it was limited and he needed me to fill in the blanks for him.

  “So they are finally going to sell that building down in Lincoln Heights,” he said.

  “The Deakins?”

  Detective Ricohr picked up on my surprise.

  “I thought you were working with the Vadaresian family? They didn’t tell you?”

  “Who did you speak to?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  I hoped Rafi had heeded my advice and ceased this reckless pursuit to falsify documents and sell the building illegally. Apparently Detective Ricohr agreed.

  “You may want to tell that kid not to do anything stupid.”

  We emerged from the bathroom to find Mike waiting for us with a big smile on his face. “So the rumors are true. The police academy bathroom is a hot spot for anonymous gay sex,” he said before thrusting out his hand to introduce himself to Detective Ricohr. “Mike Wagner, nice to meet you.”

  “Alan Ricohr,” the detective replied, enthusiastically shaking Mike’s hand. I then watched Mike scramble to find a napkin to wipe off whatever was on his now-dampened hand.

  “Touché, asshole,” he laughed as Detective Ricohr sauntered out of the café.

  GIRLS IN SUMMER DRESSES

  The official part of the date lasted fifteen minutes. Cheli and I met at the Huntington Library, the former estate of a trolley car magnate and real estate developer at the turn of the twentieth century. His grounds were converted into a museum for his rare-book collection and exquisite gardens. For a mere twenty dollars, you could roam the estate and resent the wealth of someone who had died almost a hundred years ago.

  Claire and I used to make a day of visiting the Huntington back in the early part of our relationship. She’d pack a gourmet picnic basket and I’d pretend to be interested in yet another variety of camellia bush. Who would have guessed there were more than fifty? The disturbing part of meeting Cheli there was that I had chosen the place. Perhaps subconsciously I was trying to re-create the relationship I had with Claire.