Not yet. I told myself. Not yet. But this is how it starts. Office flirtation, escalating to moments of temptation—alone together in the office, late at night, or traveling together on a business trip—Liz hadn’t done anything yet, but she could. And then the obvious hit me. My jealousy wasn’t a product of Liz having cheated on me, it was the result of my having cheated on her.
At 2:40, I started to suspect the kid wasn’t going to show.
I walked into our small suite of offices and tossed the envelope on Jendrek’s desk. “The kid didn’t show.”
Jendrek eyed me over the top of his reading glasses and shrugged. Then glanced down at the envelope and laughed, “We could always say he did and keep the ten grand ourselves.”
“That’s just what I need, to get disbarred over ten grand.”
“Just think of it, Ollie. You’d be saved from being a lawyer, from being a parasite on society. You’re young, you could still become a respectable person.” Jendrek laughed at his own joke and locked the thick envelope in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to his desk. He called it the smoking gun drawer. He said that was where he locked the smoking guns when his clients came in and dropped them on his desk as they confessed to murder. Life never really happened like that, but Jendrek had a drawer ready, just in case it ever did.
I took a seat in the chair opposite Jendrek. “So what now? What do you think?”
He didn’t have much to say. He rubbed his eyes and said, “Well, I suppose that kid didn’t really matter one way or the other. He was just a distraction, anyway. With Stick dead, it’s going to be tough to do much with this case. I guess I need to sleep on it.” Then he reached over and turned the speakerphone on. The room filled with a dial tone. “I told Ed Vargas we’d call him to tell him what the kid said.”
Jendrek dialed and Ed Vargas picked up on the second ring.
“This is Ed.”
“Ed, Mark Jenrek and Ollie Olson.”
“Hey guys. What’d Dave say?”
“Was that his name?”
“Yeah, Dave, David. I don’t know what his last name was. I never needed to know it.”
“Well, he didn’t show. So he didn’t say much.”
There was a brief pause, and then Ed said, “Well, alright, fuck it. I guess it doesn’t matter.” The sound of rustling paper briefly consumed his voice as he moved his mouth away from the phone. Then he came back on and said, “Sorry about that. I’m just trying to straighten some shit out. Everything’s a fucking mess around here.”
“If this is a bad time,” Jendrek started to say, but Ed cut him off.
“No, no, really, it’s no problem. It’s just … I’m sure you can imagine. It’s just that Dad was not the most organized person in the world, and the more I dig around trying to find stuff, the more of a fucking mess I realize everything is. He’s got paperwork everywhere.” There was more rustling, then he added, almost a mumbling afterthought, “That fucking wife of his isn’t making it any easier.”
Jendrek and I shot each other a look. Mine suspicious, his amused. “Well, I suppose we’ll need to talk sometime soon about this whole thing. We didn’t mean to bother you—”
“No, hey, look, it’s cool.” Ed’s mood had shifted quickly, as though he was trying to drown out his small burst of anger with a flood of ebullience. “Look, this whole funeral thing, all of this stuff, it’s just overwhelming. We should talk. Hey, why don’t you guys come on up to the house tomorrow night. We’re having the wake, but it’s really just a casual party for a bunch of people. Come on up—you know, if you feel like it, no pressure or anything—and we can talk. Or if not, we’ll talk Monday morning.”
Jendrek looked at the phone like he wasn’t sure what to say to it. “Uh, yeah,” he began, smiling at me. “We’ll talk either Sunday or Monday. Whatever is good for you.”
“I’m serious guys. Come on up to the house tomorrow night. We’ll all relax, cook some steaks, you can meet some of the people who knew Dad. It’ll just be a good time.” He paused for a second, and then added, “Hey, Ollie.”
I jumped at my name, surprised he was talking directly to me. “Yeah?”
“Hey man, I’m serious, come on up here tomorrow night and have a good time. Really. There’s going to be a shitload of people here. It’s no biggie.” He was talking like the two of us were old college buddies. I wasn’t sure what to say. I looked at Jendrek and shrugged.
I said, “Uh, yeah man, I’ll see if I can make it.”
When we got off the call, Jendrek laughed and shook his head. “Man,” he said. “Sounds like our boy Eddie is under some stress.”
“Sounds like he and Mom aren’t getting on too well.” I grinned.
“Maybe he’s realized he’s not going to inherit anything. That’ll sure fuck up your weekend.”
VII
I called Liz on the way home and got her voicemail. I checked my watch. It was damned near four. She was probably out doing something with her mother. They’d probably gone shopping. That would make sense. Walking the Gaslamp District, splitting a tostada and drinking cold Coronas at a Mexican place overlooking the street. That was the kind of thing they normally did together.
I tried to relax and look forward to a quiet evening at home. I tried to think about what I might do. Maybe read. Go have some dinner. Not do much of anything. Go to bed early, maybe get up early and go for a bike ride on the beach or a hike in the Santa Monica Mountains behind Malibu. It was a perfect time of year to be outside. The air was cool and clear and there were no crowds anywhere, all the tourists long gone.
But when I got home, all I wanted to do was sleep. I opened a beer and sat on the couch with a novel I’d been reading for what seemed like months. Five minutes later, I was out. Drifting through blackness toward a woman I hadn’t seen in a very long time, a woman who nearly destroyed Liz and me, or, perhaps, only permitted me to nearly destroy myself.
Her name was Morgan Stapleton and I only slept with her once. It was during the summer I worked at K&C. We were both so drunk at the time, I hardly remembered any of it. It was five years ago, and Liz almost never found out. When she did, I was sure it was over for us. When Liz and I finally patched things up, I was sure she’d never really forgive me, that somehow we’d never be able to get past it. And then, after enough time went by, it all seemed to fade far enough into the past that I stopped worrying about it. It was almost like it never happened.
But it did happen. And although I never thought about it anymore, her memory came back to me now. Dressed in a stop sign red gown, she stood on the stairs of the Vargas mansion, twirling a revolver on her finger and winking at me. “You haven’t changed a bit,” she said.
She always wore black when I knew her, but she looked good in red. I didn’t know what to say. I climbed a couple of steps toward her and stopped. “What happened to you?” I asked.
She laughed, throwing her hair back, just the way I remembered. “Same thing that happened to you. I turned into another unhappy person drifting toward middle age.”
“What?”
“Life doesn’t have to be boring,” she said, and stopped twirling the gun. She shot me on the steps and I awoke with a start.
The room was dark. It was after eight and I was starving and alone. The image of Morgan in her red dress sent a chill through me and I flipped on the light. I walked through the apartment aimlessly, washed my face, took some Tylenol. I was groggy, yet restless. I called Liz again. Still no answer. I didn’t feel like talking anyway, so not getting her didn’t bother me, but not knowing where she was did. Finally, I threw on a light jacket and headed down Montana Avenue on foot.
Even on a Saturday night, traffic is light in that part of Santa Monica. A few restaurants were doing good business, but the highbrow shops were all closed. The price of homes north of Montana had climbed into the stratosphere during the previous decade, while the apartments south of Montana, where Liz and I lived, had stayed oddly affordable.
On
weekends, when we had nothing to do, we would sometimes walk a few blocks north and peek into an open house, tricking the real estate agent into believing we were a studio couple in our early thirties. It was easy to do. Hollywood made fortunes for people so quickly, anyone could pretend to be worth millions. It was always a laugh. A three bedroom, two bath stucco home, 1800 square feet, could easily hit two million dollars. But the beach was twelve blocks away, the streets were safe, and the public schools were some of the best in the country. So there you go.
But that night I walked all the way to the water. I stopped on the way at Father’s Office, a tiny bar with the best hamburgers in the city. I drank two pints of Chimay like I was dying of thirst. Then I ate the burger, drank another pint, and wondered what had happened to my life.
Five years ago, I had been third in my law school class, just starting a summer job at one of the most elite law firms in the world. I was on the fast track to be living in one of those places north of Montana by the time I was thirty-five. It was like climbing on an escalator that would take me up and up and up for the rest of my life; to higher income, higher status, to the very top of the legal profession. But I got off the escalator at the very first floor.
It was a floor where people lived in one bedroom apartments, practiced law in a small suite of offices with a radical ex-hippy who’d lost the fire in his belly, and stayed in a once passionate relationship that was drifting toward sexless monotony. Washed up at twenty-nine. Could that really be right? Was I being too hard on myself? I thought of my dream of Morgan Stapleton, the paramour who nearly destroyed my life, and the words I’d put in her mouth: life doesn’t have to be boring.
I ordered another beer, my head already starting to swim from the first three. I started imagining another life. A life resulting from something radical, a dramatic shift of my own making. What if I left Liz? Given the way things were going, would she be surprised? Would she be hurt that bad? If I wasn’t going to marry her, why stay with her? What was I doing? Where was it all heading? What was the point?
When I’d finished the fourth pint of 12% Belgian suds, I was ready to order another when the light bulb went on. What if I didn’t need to leave Liz? What if she’d already left me? She hadn’t answered her phone all day. She’d gone out of town a day early to attend a conference with Ben Cross. What if they were in San Diego together, right now? Worse yet, what if they weren’t in San Diego at all?
I was out on the street and walking fast. My arms and legs tingled and my head buzzed, but I walked quick and smooth, like I was stone sober and ready for action. Ten minutes later, I crossed Ocean Avenue, through the perfectly trimmed strip of park that lines the ocean side of the street. Ocean Avenue sits on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Coast Highway and the beach beyond it. From the wood rail at the top of the bluff I looked down on the small row of houses that sat right on the beach. One of them belonged to Ben Cross.
I hesitated at the railing, feeling the breeze sweep up off the ocean and listening to the hum of the traffic below me on PCH. I wondered if Liz would really be so bold. And then I wondered if I cared. If she had already left me, even if only in her mind, and temporarily, wouldn’t I be free? Wouldn’t that be what I wanted, after all?
I took the pedestrian overpass over PCH and it dropped me on the beach. The strand, normally clogged with rollerbladers, bikers, and foot traffic, was empty—just a concrete swath across the dark, windswept sand. Ben Cross’s beachfront condo was a half mile north and I headed out, determined, the alcohol numbing me from the cold air.
It seemed to take forever to get there. I plodded along, focused on walking, feeling a dryness creep into my mouth. The rhythm of my footfalls coming faster and faster, keeping time with my escalating heartbeat, as my thoughts spiraled in a thousand directions, churning with the static roar of the ocean.
When I came to it, there were lights on inside. I stood on the strand, looking up, the bottom floor was a garage, so the deck loomed above me and back, behind a high concrete wall that shielded Cross’s property from the people who used the beach. I could hear music inside, something muffled, but mellow. The kind of thing I imagined Ben Cross playing while he cooked for Liz.
I crept closer to the wall, trying to hear, but the sounds remained jumbled. I looked for some way to scale the wall, to get inside, or for something to climb up on, but there was nothing. Great care had been taken to ensure that people on the beach could not get into the houses. Homeless people lived beneath the piers and in the park along Ocean Avenue, which made safety a primary concern of the wealthy who lived on the beach.
I don’t know how long I stood outside and listened. It felt like an hour, but it could have been only ten or twenty minutes. I began thinking about the warmth of the bar, having another beer, just going home and sleeping, for my own good. But I couldn’t, I had to find out if she was there. What good it could possibly do, I had no idea. What I would do with the information, I had no idea. But I needed to know, and that fact kept me lingering below his deck like a desperate, drunk, and possibly dangerous man.
And then I heard the sliding glass door open and the swell of the music—Van Morrison—then a woman’s laughter. There were a few clumsy steps on the deck. I could hear her pause and call back inside, “Come out here. It’s nice and cool out.”
Her voice was drowning in the sound of the surf on the beach and the wind in my ears, and I listened hard. Was it her? Crouched against the wall and looking up, I could see only the railing of the deck. I listened for more. I hunched down, ready to drop below the line of sight if anyone appeared. Then I heard his voice. “I’m coming, just let me get this first.”
I heard the unmistakable pop of a champagne cork followed by a squeal of feminine laughter. It made me cringe. The cork dropped to the pavement beside me. I thought of leaving, of creeping down the wall and away into the darkness. But I still did not know.
I stood paralyzed, like a man tied to a post watching the firing squad clean its weapons, slowly resigning himself to his fate, and growing impatient in the process. Then there were more footsteps. I saw Ben Cross appear at the rail, glass and bottle in hand, motioning back behind him. “Come here,” he laughed.
And she did. I saw her come from behind him. And, in the moonlight, a flash of blonde hair told me I was safe, for the moment.
Sunday
November 3
VIII
Liz called the next morning, her mother’s number appearing on the caller ID as I answered. They’d had a nice time. Shopping. The Mexican place. Same as always. What had I done? Nothing much. I was exhausted. Took a nap in the afternoon. Went to Father’s Office, had a burger and a beer. Came home and went straight to bed. I thought of the blonde hair in the darkness on Ben’s deck as I lied to her, figuring what could it hurt, I was the one who’d been the fool.
After that, I sat around all day, debating whether to go to the party at Vargas’s house. It seemed inappropriate. I didn’t know these people. I never met Don Vargas. The very idea of being there struck me as intrusive. But Ed Vargas’s invitation seemed sincere. At five in the afternoon, I told myself I’d drive by just to see what was going on. If it felt right, I’d stop in and say hello. Maybe I’d meet some people who’d been there the night of the shooting. It was just an excuse to do some work. Just being efficient. See?
What I saw when I got there was a mob scene. Mulholland Drive was lined with parked cars, tucked into the limited space along the road. There were two-dozen people milling around on the steps of the house, drinks in hand, enjoying the last minutes of a glowing and gorgeous November day.
I found a spot next to a driveway on the opposite side of the road. At the end of the driveway was a high black gate with a guardhouse and a short black man inside it, reading the paper. He smiled at me as I parked and I walked over to him.
“Am I okay here? I’m going on up to the Vargas house. I don’t think it’ll be too long.”
The man set the newspaper down and leaned
out the little window. He looked at my black BMW and then back at me. “At least it’s better than the last car I had park here. Some ratty thing. Broke down.”
“So it’s okay then?”
“It’s fine.”
I nodded my appreciation and stared up at the wrought iron gates. The driveway curved back behind dense bushes and no house was visible. “Hey,” I said. “Who lives here?”
The man looked at me with a grin and started to laugh. “What kind of guard do you think I am?” He motioned up the road with his chin as he returned to his paper. “Go on up to your party. We won’t complain.” He paused for a second, and then added, in a soft mutter, “We never do.”
I shrugged at his comment and started walking. About halfway between my car and the Vargas house, the smell of a barbecue and the sound of the Doobie Brothers’ “China Grove” hit me. As I crossed the parking area in front of the house and climbed the steps, people nodded at me. The music grew louder and the clusters of people got thicker until I finally went through the open front door to see a hundred or more people clogging the great room I’d seen empty two days before.
It could have been a frat party at a college known more for keggers than classes. That these people had been at a funeral only a few hours before seemed unimaginable. The glass doors to the deck off the back of the house were open and more people swarmed outside. There was a grill going somewhere beyond that. I could see the smoke from it wafting away from the house, out over the city, like lone clouds of smog against the otherwise clear sky.
Most of the people were young, under thirty, with only a smattering of people Don Vargas’s age. The nature of his business, I assumed, skewed the demographic. The market for fifty-year-old porn stars had to be small. Most of the people in this room were young and beautiful, with model looks, like they made their living with their bodies. Many of them showing off their goods even at a wake.
The Flaming Motel Page 7