I put down my book and picked up my cell phone from the night table. Then I scrolled through my emails and served up my lie. “It looks like I have an early appointment in the morning,” I said, as if I’d just learned this from one of my emails.
“A new job interview?” she asked.
It would have been easier to say “yes,” but I guess I was trying to soften the lie, so instead I said, “Not exactly a job interview. I’m going to see someone who’s in a line of work that I might be able to get into.”
“Sounds mysterious—what kind of line of work?”
“I don’t mean to sound mysterious.” I had meant to sound vague. “Let me see how it goes before I say anything more about it.” I set the alarm on my cell phone for five a.m.
Jenny looked over at me. “You don’t want to jinx it, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t blame you. We’ve been jinxed enough.”
“I’m sorry.” I kissed her on the forehead. “We’ll fight our way back.”
“I know,” she said. But I could hear the lack of faith in her voice.
“I promise we will,” I said.
She kissed me. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
*
I was out of the house and driving up Beverly Glen, travel mug in hand, sipping coffee, by 5:40. My binoculars were in the glove compartment. I hadn’t used them in a while. It had been over a decade since my investigative reporting had required a stakeout.
My plan was to start staking Ben out at six, and as it looked now, I’d be starting a little early. Of course, it was possible that Ben left for work—for his “specialized” commodities trading—much earlier than six. His workday might coincide with the hours of the New York Stock Exchange, or of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, or of a foreign stock exchange.
The point was that I might not get his schedule down for a few days, but during this first stakeout, I’d begin to get a handle on it. If I didn’t see Ben leaving for work, I’d stick it out until I had to leave for my first tutoring session at three. That way, I could at least begin to lay out Ben’s schedule. I could infer that he didn’t travel back and forth from his house to an office between the hours of six a.m. and three p.m.—unless his schedule differed depending on the day of the week. But eventually I’d find that out, too.
I didn’t stake out Ben’s house directly—that would have been too obvious. Luckily, there was a great alternative. There was only one street—Tiffany Circle—that connected Ben’s neighborhood to Beverly Glen, and Beverly Glen was the only way out of the neighborhood. So I parked my car on Beverly Glen, a half block up from Tiffany Circle. I had an unobstructed view of that intersection and its traffic light. My car was one of a handful of cars parked on the road, but it would be less conspicuous as the morning wore on. Beverly Glen was a busy thoroughfare connecting the Valley to the Westside, and soon the blur of traffic would obscure my presence.
Still, I didn’t fool myself. Parking here for nine hours straight could raise suspicion. A neighbor might call the cops. But I’d cross that bridge when, and if, I got to it, for it was possible that I’d get what I needed soon and be on my merry way. Ben might head to work in the next couple of hours.
I began my vigil, sipping coffee and waiting for Ben’s Tesla, or his Mercedes SUV, or his BMW. Over the next hour, cars pulled up to the traffic light, waited for it change, then turned either south to the Westside or north to the Valley. Most headed south to the Westside.
At 7:15, I perked up. Ben’s Mercedes pulled up to the traffic light. Its blinker indicated that Ben was going to turn left—north toward the Valley—which meant I’d already miscalculated. I had guessed that Ben worked on the Westside, so I’d parked my car facing south. I needed to pull a U-turn if I had any chance of following him, and pulling a U-turn was going to be near impossible. Traffic on Beverly Glen was now thick in both directions.
I started the car, hoping to force myself into traffic. I inched forward along the curb, blinker on, but no one was slowing down to let me cut in. I was also moving closer to the intersection, and I didn’t want to look toward the Mercedes for fear that Ben would spot me.
But I couldn’t help myself. Just before passing right in front of the Mercedes, I glanced over at it—
—and realized I had a long way to go before I learned how to play the stakeout game. Diane, Ben’s wife, was behind the wheel, and Mason was in the passenger seat, looking down at his spanking new iPhone.
Of course, I thought. How could I be so stupid?
Mason went to Harvard-Westlake. I should’ve expected to see him heading to school this morning. Not only did I have a lot to learn about preparing for a stakeout, but my investigative skills were rusty. I should’ve parked closer to Tiffany Circle. That way I could’ve seen who was behind the wheel. Or I should’ve used the binoculars.
A couple hundred yards past the intersection, I finally managed to merge into traffic. A quarter of a mile farther down, I turned into another housing development, then swung back onto Beverly Glen, and back up to Tiffany Circle.
I parked in the same place, facing south again, still betting that Ben would head to the Westside, and hoping that I hadn’t missed him.
By ten a.m., I worried that I had. Maybe he’d left minutes after Diane and Mason had. But I stuck with my plan to stay until three o’clock. My only break came just after one p.m., when I drove up to the strip mall just below Mulholland. I went to the bathroom, grabbed a sandwich at Starbucks, and noted that on my stakeout tomorrow, I needed to cover the twenty-minute gap I’d just missed.
At three o’clock, I left. I hadn’t seen Ben.
After my tutoring sessions that afternoon and evening, I told Jenny, over dinner, that I’d be leaving early again the next morning.
“I want explore that new job possibility some more,” I said. “But I have a lot to learn and a lot of questions.”
“Can you tell me a little about it?” she asked. “Or are you still worried about jinxing it? I’m really curious.”
I felt so bad about lying that I lied some more, just so I could give her answers. “It’s investing,” I said. And maybe it was. Maybe Ben had been telling the truth.
“Are you thinking of becoming a stockbroker?” she said. Her frown gave away her reaction. She was doubtful about that choice. So I pivoted a little.
“No—nothing like that. It’s a specialized kind of investing.”
“Is it commission-based?” That was her concern.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I know it’s stupid to take on something where the salary is commission.”
“If you’re making a career change, you should go for stability.”
I was about to say that the only way to have any stability these days was to already be wealthy. But I didn’t say that. It was absurd to pick a fight over a make-believe job.
“It’s working for an investment group,” I said. “It would be as stable as any other job. Whatever that’s worth these days.”
“That’s an interesting change.”
“Yeah… But I still feel nervous talking about it while it’s a long shot.”
She didn’t ask me any more questions, and I didn’t tell her any more lies. Not then, anyway.
The next morning, I was back on my stakeout, trying to uncover exactly what this investment job was. But Ben didn’t show up at the intersection of Beverly Glen and Tiffany Circle that day either.
So, on the way to my five-o’clock tutoring session, I decided I’d cancel tomorrow’s tutoring sessions in favor of doing a nighttime stakeout. My reasoning was that if Ben had left his house over the last two days, it must have been during the late afternoon, evening, or night.
But I didn’t wait until the next night for the stakeout.
I went to my five o’clock tutoring session, then canceled the others.
By seven-thirty, I was staking out my favorite intersection again.
Forty minutes later, a jol
t of adrenaline shot through my body: a Tesla was pulling up to the traffic light. But when I took a closer look at the silhouette of the driver inside, I realized it wasn’t Ben, nor was it Diane. It was the silhouette of some other person who had money to burn on a new Tesla.
But as the adrenaline receded, I suddenly realized that I felt good. I felt energized by this hunt, by this investigation, by this mission. I felt more alive—invigorated even—than I had in a long time.
I kept my eyes glued to the intersection, and I considered the research I’d done on Ben one more time. This had been another phase of the hunt that had energized me. When it came to putting together a person’s profile, years of investigative reporting had trained me well. I was good at online sleuthing.
But Ben had a very low profile on the Internet. It was as if he’d hired a cyber-security firm to scrub his presence from the web, especially when it came to information about the last four years or so of his life. Except for some public records, like the one listing the purchase of his current home, I hadn’t found much.
Still, that was a clue in itself.
He’d taken quite a big step up the socioeconomic ladder from his previous address. Movin’ on up to the east side, he finally got a piece of the pie. In this case, his piece of the pie was Bel Air. And my hunch was that his sudden change in fortune coincided with the first few deliveries of those bricks of cash.
Before he’d moved to Bel Air, Ben’s digital footprint on the web was bigger, though still not as big as it should have been—it appeared that some details, even from the earlier periods of his life, had been scrubbed from the web. What I did know was that he had worked as a manager for DirecTV in El Secondo, and he had lived in a middle-class neighborhood in Torrance. I couldn’t tell if this had been his first job, but it looked like he’d worked there for more than fifteen years. He had climbed the ladder into management during DirecTV’s period of explosive growth.
I also found that he’d graduated from UC Irvine with a business degree, and that his parents lived in San Diego. He appeared to have no other living relatives, which struck me as odd, especially because that was true on both his mother’s side and his father’s side. He was an only child, as were his parents, so he had no aunts and uncles.
But even stranger was the fact that there was no record of what Ben did for a living now. No record about his segueing from DirecTV to investing.
Zilch.
*
An hour and a half passed without much activity on Tiffany Circle, so I decided I’d cruise up to the Starbucks and grab a cup of coffee. It could be a late night.
But just before I started my car, I saw Ben’s gray BMW pull up to the intersection.
My first thought was that he was driving the most inconspicuous of his cars. When you owned a Mercedes SUV, a Tesla, and a BMW, the BMW was the most inconspicuous.
Its blinker indicated that Ben was heading to the Valley.
That meant I’d have to make a U-turn, for again I’d counted on Ben heading south. But there wasn’t much traffic, so that wasn’t going to be a problem. I just had to wait long enough after Ben drove by so he wouldn’t see my U-turn in his rearview mirror and become suspicious. He might notice that the car making the U-turn was the same model as the tutor’s car—the tutor who was too nosy for his own good. On the bright side, I drove a Camry, which was such a common car, it probably wouldn’t raise a red flag.
I wasn’t worried about actually trailing Ben. I’d trailed people as a reporter before, and I knew how to hang back and not be spotted.
The light turned green, and Ben swung out from Tiffany Circle onto Beverly Glen. When he drove past me, I started my car. Then I craned my head around and watched his taillights. As soon as they disappeared around the bend, just past the strip mall, I checked to make sure the road was clear in both directions, and pulled a U-turn.
I sped up until I saw his car up ahead, but I didn’t get too close.
I followed him through the Mulholland intersection and down into the Valley. His BMW snaked down Beverly Glen toward Ventura Boulevard. I caught a glimpse of the Valley lights glittering below, and I realized that the view had changed again. The lights now shone with hope. The Valley’s long dazzling boulevards led to the Promised Land.
At Ventura, Ben took a right, heading east. I was about a hundred yards behind him, but I sped up. If he made a quick exit from the boulevard into one of the adjoining neighborhoods, I didn’t want to miss it.
He didn’t make a quick exit. I ended up trailing him down Ventura for a few miles, theorizing about what he’d do next. He wasn’t planning on going far, or he would’ve turned west on Ventura and gotten on either the 101 or the 405. And he probably wasn’t headed out for a quick bite to eat, because he’d already passed dozens of eateries, which dotted this stretch of the boulevard.
When Ben hit Studio City, a pang of fear shot through me. What if the guy took a left turn onto Colfax and headed toward Valley Village—toward my house? Had my prying into his business set off some kind of alarm? Was I the reason he was on the move tonight?
Ben didn’t turn off onto Colfax; he took a left onto Tujunga. That still left open the possibility that he was headed to Valley Village—to my place—but it also added another possibility to the mix. I knew that on Tujunga, among the boutiques, coffee houses, eateries, and yoga studios, was a low-slung office building. Maybe Ben kept an office there. It would definitely be a great location if he wanted to keep a low profile.
On Tujunga, he slowed down as if he was looking for a parking spot. If so, he wasn’t headed to that office building—it had its own parking lot. I scanned the shops that lined the block, wondering which of them he was planning to visit.
He pulled into a parking spot, which meant I needed to find one too. I continued forward, past his car, making sure not to look over at him. Instead, I checked my rearview mirror so I wouldn’t miss him climbing out of his car.
That was when I noticed that he had some kind of paper stuck on the far right corner of his windshield. I didn’t think much of it then—I wrote it off as some kind of parking sticker—but that would soon change.
I found a parking spot far enough in front of him that he probably wouldn’t take note of me as I parked. He still hadn’t gotten out of his car. I weighed whether to get out of my car and find a place where I could monitor him, or just wait in the car until he got out of his BMW.
Seconds turned into minutes, and he still hadn’t gotten out of his car. What the hell was the guy doing just sitting there? Maybe he had arrived early for a meeting and preferred to wait in his car, rather than in the eatery or coffee shop where the meeting was to take place.
I couldn’t see what he was doing, only that he hadn’t gotten out of his car. But after another fifteen minutes passed, I had the wild thought that somehow I had missed him getting out of his car. Again I considered whether to get out. People were strolling up and down the block; I could easily blend in.
But then Ben did something strange. He pulled out of his parking spot, drove farther down the block, past me, and just as I was ready to pull out and follow him, he parked again, in a space four spots up from mine.
What was he up to? Why had he switched spots? The parking wasn’t metered right now; it was past eight o’clock. Besides, it wasn’t like the guy needed to save a buck or two.
Once more, he didn’t get out of his car, and this time I came up with a possible answer to the vexing question “Why?” But my answer was absurd.
He was on a stakeout, just as I was.
After another five minutes passed, that answer didn’t seem so absurd. Did his job entail surveillance of some sort?
My attention drifted from his car to farther up the block, where a string of women were trickling out of a yoga studio, their mats in hand. Some of them were strolling in our direction, and I unexpectedly found myself enjoying the sight of a couple slim and attractive women in yoga pants.
I hadn’t felt any kind of sexual
desire since I’d been fired. Up to that point, my sex life with Jenny had been great—for both of us. But after losing my job, I lost my desire in that department. When Jenny realized that my interest in sex was waning, and that it was a side effect of getting fired and nothing more, she tried to revive it.
Until the cancer diagnosis came down. Then she lost interest too.
Now, I suddenly wanted to have sex with her. My desire had come roaring back, and it wasn’t the slim women in yoga pants that had rekindled it. It was the stakeout itself—the hunt—and the entire investigation. And the bricks of cash at the end of the yellow brick road. I was feeling the same kind of transformative energy in the sexual desire department that I was feeling in other departments.
I looked back toward Ben’s car, and just then, one of the approaching yoga women starting tottering and swaying. And before she completely lost consciousness and collapsed, one of the other women caught her. Then, while holding on to her, this woman frantically shouted out for someone to call 911.
Ben leapt from his car and ran up to the two women. He put his hand on the unconscious woman’s neck as if he was feeling her carotid artery for a pulse. As people gathered around, Ben helped lay the woman down on the sidewalk. Then he pulled a penlight from his pocket, opened the woman’s eyes, and checked them, as if he were a doctor. He followed this up by gently putting his hand on the woman’s chest plate, and at that point, I actually wondered if the guy was a doctor.
But I knew he wasn’t. That would’ve definitely come up in my search. Ben Kingsley had graduated from UC Irvine with a business degree.
I supposed it was possible that he was a certified EMT. But that seemed even more ludicrous. From what I’d found, the guy had worked for DirecTV his entire career—until he’d segued into whatever he did now. And I was sure that whatever he did now wasn’t EMT work.
The only other possibility was that he had taken a CPR course.
But even if that was the case—which it probably was, since it was the most plausible explanation—that didn’t matter right now, did it? For all intents and purposes, my stakeout was over, interrupted by this emergency. And that was bad luck, because I was sure that if there had been no emergency, I would’ve been one step closer to discovering what Ben did for a living.
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