The Silent Second

by Adam Walker Phillips

  “I didn’t know we were negotiating.”

  “Men are always negotiating,” he declared. “Let me start, to show my good faith. This is what I know about you. Recently separated from your wife of twelve years, having lost her to a younger and more successful man. Your career path, if charted on a line graph, would resemble a healthy spike twenty years ago and a relatively flat line since then. You have no children, no family in the city, deceased parents. You reluctantly do volunteer work and have no extracurricular obsessions like golf to occupy your free time. You have no real vices on any public record; you’re sensible enough with your money to know to buy an air conditioner in winter and Christmas decorations in summer. On the surface you are an upstanding citizen with a full life of relative comfort ahead of you. But underneath you are an incurably bored man, desperately searching for some scrap of validation to paste onto a very respectable but anonymous life.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” I joked, failing to mask how much the assessment angered me. “How much do I owe you?”

  “I’m sorry if this was too blunt. Now, it is your turn,” he said and settled deeper into his chair.

  “I don’t like this game. Plus, I don’t know anything about you.”

  “You must know something. Tell me what you know.”

  “You’re wealthy.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Extremely wealthy,” I corrected. “The kind of wealth that buys a lot of influence.”

  “We can debate that. But I will stop interrupting.”

  “Thank you. You collect art, mostly American and, by the looks of it, mostly ugly. You tend to buy up-and-coming artists and thus create the market for their work. After all, if Valenti owns them they must be worth something. You keep threatening to build a museum with your collection, but it has to be on your terms. There’s a pissing contest among the major metropolitan areas for who has the most culture. You exploit this by forcing the city to give you land leases for pennies on the dollar if you promise to let them pay for an elaborate building to house your private collection.” This elicited a smile from the old man. “Everything is a business to you, even philanthropy. You don’t give money away; you lord it over people. Nothing is free. Even the free money comes with some sort of barter to be collected at a future date. Life to you is one giant, evolving transaction in which two sides negotiate and one comes out on top.” I paused for a moment. “That felt good,” I said truthfully.

  “I told you it would,” he confirmed, showing little emotion. “I have one quibble, however, with what was otherwise an accurate summary. Business transactions are not a zero-sum game. You made it sound like there are only winners and losers, but for every deal you make, both parties must gain something. It’s simple math. Otherwise you would quickly run out of business partners.”

  “So who stood to gain by revising the city’s zones?”

  “A lot of people stand to gain.”

  “Ed Vadaresian didn’t. Bill Langford didn’t.”

  “I can’t be held responsible for the actions of people trying to exploit the work we are doing. Let me ask you, would you hold the manufacturer of a butcher knife responsible for murder because a housewife got fed up with her abusive husband?”

  “Your analogy doesn’t hold water when the people under your employ are involved.”

  “No one on my staff had anything to do with those murders.”

  “Who said Ed Vadaresian was murdered?”

  Valenti paused. “I assumed some nefarious conclusion to Mr. Vadaresian’s disappearance, but you are correct: we cannot be certain he was murdered.”

  “Why am I even up here?”

  “Because you cost me money.”

  “Whatever I cost you could be recouped by selling one of the lesser-known works of your lesser-known artists.”

  “You’re missing the point that you yourself made about me. It’s about the money. I don’t like losing money, even if it is a nickel. Why would I keep working like I am? Lord knows I have enough money to keep me living the way I do for decades. Enough money for my daughter and granddaughter to live like this for their entire lives. I like making deals. And this deal is not going as I wanted it to.”

  “Maybe this deal wasn’t meant to be.”

  That got him to sit up.

  “Mr. Restic, how can I persuade you to be more accommodating?”

  “Why does that sound like a threat?”

  “I didn’t make a fortune by threatening people,” he said. “I made it by making friends. I like to say, business relationships are like rabbits—they keep breeding new ones.”

  “You must have quite a warren.”

  “It’s a very productive bunch.”

  “So you want to be friends,” I stated.

  “I would enjoy that very much.”

  “And what does this friendship involve?”

  “One place to start is the Arroyo and this whole zoning disagreement. The other is with your acquaintance, Mr. Michael Wagner. I’d prefer he didn’t write the article, but if he does, I would ask that he treat us fairly.”

  “And what do I get?”

  “An exit out of your humdrum existence,” he answered. “I want you to work for me. You could be very valuable to us, and we in turn could provide equal worth to you.”

  As he spoke, I felt little pinpricks on the back of my neck and shoulders, and on the tips of my fingers, like the onset of an anxiety attack. I suddenly became very aware of my breathing and could feel my heart beating in my throat. Valenti paused to savor the discomfort his words were having on me. He pressed harder.

  “I know you want to break out of this life of yours. Prove to everyone and to yourself that you’re alive. And maybe in the process you win your wife back.”

  I found myself out of the chair and back in front of the wall of windows. I just wanted out from under that little man’s gaze. I didn’t want him to see how much his words rattled me. Adjusting to the night outside, my eyes darted from one flicker of light to the next, searching for an anchor to slow this whirlpool of thoughts in my head. I could feel the coldness of the air outside coming through the glass.

  “You’re on a treadmill, Chuck,” intoned the voice behind me. “All you have to do is step off.”

  Below was the spectacle of a great city, unfolding its collective drama while I watched from the aquarium on the hill. Suspended in this glassed-in room before the immensity of the night crystallized my insignificance. But with this realization came a soothing calm of acceptance.

  “I don’t want to be your friend, Mr. Valenti,” I breathed into the glass.

  CINDER BLOCKS

  They found the car on a barren street in an industrial area in southeast LA. There was little in the way of pedestrian traffic, as the loft movement hadn’t quite reached that section of the city. The only activity came from the huge rigs that moved in and out of the seemingly endless grid of small warehouses. Easy Mike’s car stood unnoticed for nearly seventy-two hours, as did his lifeless body hunched over the center console.

  I was in the middle of a touch base with one of my direct reports when I got the call. The illusion of associate development was paramount in the corporate world, and as such, these individualized sessions demanded my undivided attention. I let the call go directly to voicemail and listened to it later. Three words into the message, I knew it was bad news.

  “It’s Terry Ricohr.”

  The fact that he used his first name meant something was wrong.

  “What happened?” I whispered to the blinking red light.

  “Mike Wagner has been killed,” the voice answered. “Please call me.” After a long pause, “I’m sorry.”

  I drove down to the crime scene and parked in an open slot. I strode past a long line of angry truckers idling at the block’s entrance, where two police cars formed a pincer to keep traffic from entering. The off-ramp from the 10 freeway was one block over, and the truckers eagerly awaited the moment when they could dump their loads
and head off on the next run.

  Detective Ricohr met me at the end of the street and quietly alerted the patrol officers that I was a friend of the deceased. He led me down the street to Mike’s car. The driver’s side window was down, and even from this distance I could see the spray of black dots that covered the passenger side door.

  “We just have a couple of questions for you.” Detective Ricohr motioned to another detective, a middle-aged Latino with a bushy mustache and pockmarked cheeks. The man pulled himself from a conversation with a forensics technician and sauntered over. “This is Detective Lopez.”

  The man nodded and immediately broke into his questioning.

  “How long have you known the deceased?”

  “Almost ten years.”

  “What’s your relationship?”

  “Friends.”

  “When’s the last time you saw the deceased?”

  “Wednesday evening. He was at my apartment. He left around four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “Do you know where he was heading when he left?”

  I explained the lead he’d gotten on the buyer of the Holcomb Street properties, which then required me to explain all of the details surrounding the investigation that had begun with Ed’s disappearance.

  “Yes, Detective Ricohr has filled me in on some of this. Where were you between seven and ten in the evening?”

  “I was with Carl Valenti at his residence.”

  The detectives shared a look.

  “What were you meeting about?”

  “He wanted me and Mike to stop meddling with a project he is working on. Maybe he just wanted to separate us.”

  “Are you insinuating that Carl Valenti had a hand in this?”

  “Insinuating isn’t a strong enough word.”

  “Mr. Restic, have you ever known the deceased to use drugs?”

  “Mike? The guy never even took aspirin.”

  Detective Lopez made a few notes.

  “Did he have any enemies that we should know about? He rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in his column.”

  “He told the truth,” I answered.

  I detected a snicker from Detective Lopez.

  “Is there an issue, Detective?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You seemed to laugh just now.”

  “Did I? I apologize. I meant nothing by it.” Detective Lopez didn’t seem very sorry. “We just need to follow up on leads that could have led to your friend’s murder. Unfortunately, this process can bring out the ugly side of people’s lives.”

  “What ugly side?”

  “We all have ugly sides.”

  “Why don’t you enlighten me on Mike Wagner’s?” I challenged.

  “Mr. Restic, I just deal with what I know, and one of the things I know is that your friend wasn’t exactly a popular guy in this town. He wrote a lot of things about a lot of people, and some of the things he wrote people would say weren’t accurate. That tends to piss people off. Maybe he pissed off the wrong person.”

  “Fuck you,” I calmly told him.

  “Take it easy,” Detective Ricohr warned.

  “I’m not going to let him throw this bullshit out there.” “I’m only stating the facts,” countered Lopez.

  “So that’s how it goes, huh? You hold some kind of grudge against a man who wrote something you didn’t agree with. And now that he’s dead it’s payback time.”

  “I’m doing my job, Mr. Restic,” Detective Lopez replied icily.

  “Sure you are. Probably going to phone it in.”

  “Listen, I know you’re upset,” he said.

  “Oh, come on. Don’t try and take the high road with me, Detective. My friend wasn’t perfect, but he did his job well and that’s all he was doing. He deserves better.”

  “Which is exactly what he’s going to get. We work equally hard no matter who the deceased is.”

  In his words was a condemnation—Mike may not have been worthy of the hard work they were going to put into finding his killer but they would do it anyway.

  “No wonder everyone hates cops,” I muttered under my breath.

  Detective Ricohr stepped in and led me off to the side of the street before the confrontation escalated any further.

  “Mind if we sit?” he asked. “It’s my feet again.”

  I joined him on the curb. We sat there in silence for a few minutes and watched the proceedings like spectators.

  “Nice speech,” Ricohr said, breaking the silence. “I’m not sure if you were trying to get them to work harder or get them to blow you off entirely.”

  “I’m sorry, Detective. I lost my temper. He didn’t deserve all the things I said.”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “I probably owe him an apology.”

  Detective Ricohr told me to forget it. “Five years ago,” he began, “Detective Lopez and seven men in his precinct were accused of using department resources for weekend benders to Vegas. Not only did they take unauthorized vehicles, they used the sirens to clear the way during patches of traffic. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that hookers were also involved. It all came out in excruciating detail in your friend’s column. Detective Lopez got off relatively light, but it did cost him a few years of his retirement. I guess his ass is still a little chapped about it.” Detective Ricohr looked around conspiratorially. “Don’t tell anyone this, but I was a fan of his column.”

  “Really?”

  “It pissed me off to no end, but it was good.”

  “That’s probably the best compliment anyone could pay him.”

  Detective Ricohr stretched his legs and then pulled them back in. He rested his forearms on his knees and spoke into the ground.

  “The coroner took your friend back downtown. Is there anyone we need to alert? Family?”

  I shook my head. “His mom died years ago.”

  “Was he married?”

  “No.”

  The long silence sank in.

  “Do I have to do it?” I asked him.

  “It’ll make it easier for us if you do.”

  I looked around at the flat expanse of windowless cinder block and brick buildings, with their loading docks and chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. Every inch of land was entombed in concrete and asphalt, and yet there was an unintentional beauty about it. The lulling rush of the distant freeway traffic was the only sound in the otherwise quiet, still air. It was a very peaceful place at that moment.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go.”

  I had seen death before but had never actually felt the emptiness until my father died. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer three months prior, and his descent was almost immediate. Instead of a long, slow decline, it was like my father fell off a cliff.

  We decided his final days should be spent in hospice rather than in the cold, sterile hospital room at Mass General. We set him up in his own bed, and he lay there in a morphine haze. I was with him that morning when he suddenly woke up and looked at me with a lucidity I hadn’t seen in weeks. It was as if he interrupted his free fall and paused, suspended in the air for just a moment. We stared at each other for a few minutes. I had never seen him so afraid. Then his eyes closed, forever.

  I saw that same look on Mike’s face.

  The coroner’s building was a burgundy brick structure with front steps flanked by the kind of large, globetopped lamps that made it feel like the local library. I half expected a cheery volunteer to tell me where the card catalogue was located when I entered. Instead, Detective Ricohr led me down a long corridor to a viewing room not far from the refrigerators that held the bodies. The procedure was a blur, save for the one recollection that I wished I didn’t remember.

  Hours later, still nursing a drink at the bar in Union Station, I couldn’t get that image out of my head. I drifted back to the time of my father’s death. The day after he passed, I asked Claire to marry me. Sitting there in the train station, I had that same fear as when I had made
that decision—a fear of never wanting to be alone.

  “…I’m sorry,” Cheli whispered as we hugged.

  The waiter came over, but she waved him off.

  “So what do they have?” I asked.

  Cheli studied me and realized I was desperate for the details.

  “He was shot with a nine millimeter. We know that much from the casing found underneath the car. All the calls on his cell leading up to the murder were to you or to his office. The detectives are following up on some other ideas, but there isn’t a lot of hope it will bring much.”

  “What do you think of this Detective Lopez?”

  “He doesn’t think much of you. But he’s a good detective.”

  I would have felt better with Ricohr.

  “Mike’s cell phone was still in the car? What about his wallet?”

  Cheli nodded.

  “Then it wasn’t a robbery.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” she corrected.

  “It has to be connected to the Arroyo.”

  “Chuck, we can’t know that.”

  “What else could it be? They should be checking every building in that area for some connection back to Valenti and his crew. Probably building another concept mall or some equally useless development.” I was angry at that old man and his manipulation of the strings that ran Los Angeles. “Are you at least going to talk to them?”

  Her silence was my answer.

  “It’s not pointing that way,” she said cryptically.

  “Which way is it pointing?”

  “Mike ever use drugs?”

  “Just Bushmills. Why?”

  “In a search of the car, the police found a small bag of OxyContin, about ten pills. They already checked his records, and Mike didn’t have a prescription for them.”

  “Mike wasn’t popping pills.”

  “He was murdered a block off the 10 Freeway. It’s common in that area to have the buy take place close to the off-ramp. His window was down so he was speaking to someone—”

  “Let me guess. Detective Lopez’s theory?”

  “’I’m just stating the facts,” she said. “I’m not making any conclusions.”