by J. P. Oliver
I eyed the photo on the corner of his desk, the frame simple: it was of Fred and his mother. He had to be about twelve, the clothes on his back dirtied and tearing in some places. Despite it, he clung to his mother and smiled. Even with all the excuses in the world, he’d come out of a rough place unscathed.
Something compelled me to touch the photo, the young face beaming in it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I felt like a dark presence among Fred’s things. Bittersweetly, I imagined Fred would think of it in a glass-half-full type of way. For a moment, I tried optimism on for size: I wouldn’t be a darkness in his life; he would be a light in mine.
I turned away from the desk, shaking my head. Optimism didn’t fit me as well as it did Fred.
Begrudgingly, I yawned and made my way to the small guest room I was staying in. Fred had insisted, and since he would be footing the bill for a hotel anyway, it was cheaper this way. I had more work to do, but the all-night planning session had been a lot. A nap wouldn’t kill me, probably.
Flopping against the mattress, I buried my face in the fresh linen of the pillow. It smelled like the laundry, and like whatever detergent the housekeepers used to wash Fred’s clothing.
I fell asleep to the rumble of thunder, thoughtlessly thinking of how Fred was everything I was not.
6
Hassan
What I needed was a good, long drive. Alone.
I’d told Doc to take my next shift at the front door, and he’d fallen into line without question; Doc was a silent blessing. Jackson would have dove into a game of Twenty Questions if I’d asked him. Mikhail probably wouldn’t have cared.
But there was an understanding when it came to Doc. He was a sensible guy. Could read people easily, but had enough sense to not prod for answers.
After the dream I’d had, I was grateful. Uninvited flashes of it kept popping up throughout the morning: tousled dark hair, darker eyes, a caramel-colored back arching against the expensive white marble of a kitchen counter—none of it made focusing on paperwork or a buzzing computer screen easy.
I just needed to get out of the house, I reminded myself, grimacing.
Besides, just sitting around wasn’t getting me anywhere. There weren’t many leads where Frederic’s friends and family were concerned. Family was limited. Friends were famous and a bit excessive, a tabloid scandal scattered here and there, but were otherwise clean.
I could tell the dead-ends were starting to frustrate the guys. That was fine. I had a gut-feeling it wasn’t anyone Fred knew.
“Henry Carter.”
It was a name I hadn’t said out loud in years. Despite having it stored away in a darker corner of my head, actually saying it felt foreign. I shifted my phone from one ear to another.
Doc hummed on the other end of the line. “Got a social number? Uh, driver’s license or plates? Address?”
“I’ll text it to you. I want a digital trace of this guy within the last… five months.” I turned the keys, and the car engine settled underneath me. “Anything you can get your hands on. Nothing’s too small.”
“Alright. Give me the deets and half an hour. I’ll see what I can draw up.”
I felt a little bit of relief; maybe this is what Fred meant, knowing you could count on someone to do their job right. “Thanks, Doc.”
“No problemo, boss.”
In the silence that followed him hanging up, I took a deep breath. The other options had been exhausted, I reminded myself. Staring out the windshield, though, a conflicted feeling gnawed away in my chest.
It’s your job, I reminded myself. Buck the fuck up.
The town was about a half hour out of Los Angeles, a place on the shores north of Morro Bay that might as well have not had a name. It looked more rundown than I remembered; I was getting to used to the luxury of L.A.
Lots of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts lived up this way. People who wanted to get away from everything and everyone: a little slice of heaven. I remember calling it home, not too long ago. Henry Carter had, too, at one point. It was a place we had shared for years; driving into it felt like driving into old memories I’d tried to bury and forget.
I nudged open the glass door, a warped little bell ringing overhead as I did so. Walking into Sal’s Provisions was like walking into a dream. It was like it was frozen in time: not anything fancy, smelling of nylon boots and plastic tarps and an assortment of metal boxes, with its owner Sal standing proudly at the counter.
It met his eye across the vacant store.
“Well holy fuckin’ shit,” he chuckled. He set down the tackle box he was fooling around with.
“Hey, Sal.” I met him with a brotherly handshake before his hands turned back to his work.
“Long time since I seen you ‘round here. What’s bringin’ you up this way? Hiking? No, lemme guess it, hunting?”
“Something like hunting, yeah,” I said. He was a military man, like myself. We’d shared a few beers once. He was a good guy. “You seen Henry around here lately?”
I tried to keep it casual. His fiddling with the box came to a halt. “Henry?”
“Carter, yeah.”
“Shit, uh….” He looked off in thought, pulling out a package of tobacco as he did. Said it kept his mind sharp, which I thought was a crock of shit. “Last time I saw Henry… he was in pretty rough shape. Must’ve been…? Seven months ago? A little bit after the last time I saw you. Why, you lookin’ for him?”
I nodded slowly, rapping my knuckles against the counter. “Yeah.”
A hearty chuckle came out of Sal. It was the kind that made his stomach rumble. “Lookin’ to get back together, I’m guessin’?”
“Not exactly, Sal.” I glanced around, looking for signs of cameras, but there was nothing. When I’d first visited Sal’s store with Henry, there hadn’t been any kind of surveillance. We had both liked that. The privacy and how off-the-grid it felt. I sighed, looking from the tackle box to Sal. “I think he’s in some kind of trouble.”
Sal paused, smile fading fast. He liked Henry, or at least, he had a few months ago. “Trouble?” He mulled over the word before shaking his head, dropping the things he was fiddling with, and grabbing a Styrofoam cup. He spit the tobacco into it. “What kind of trouble?”
“It’s confidential.”
Sal whistled. “What, you workin’ for the government again or somethin’? Confidential—”
“It’s for a client, Sal.” I had the decency to look at least a little sorry; I knew Sal cared. We had all been friends, once. “I can’t say exactly.”
Sal looked at me for a long time. Eventually, he came to some kind of conclusion, because he started nodding slowly. “Alright. He’s in some kind of, er… trouble.”
“Most likely, yeah. Would you do me a favor?” I asked.
Sal caught on to it easily, reaching across the counter to give me another handshake. The first was a greeting; this one was a goodbye. “I’ll keep my eyes out for him. Let ya know if he comes by.”
I nodded, the ghost of a smile playing on my lips. “Thanks.” As I made for the door, I turned back to him. “You have my number.”
Sal hummed, thick fingers plucking at dainty lures. “Uh-uh, and you’ve got mine, Hassan.”
FRED
“—and so, I told him, if he wanted to see me undressed, he missed his chance and would otherwise have to cast me in one of his horrible exploitation films—darling, are you listening?”
I looked up from the drink in my hand to find Cordelia staring at me. “Of course.”
She pursed her lips rather theatrically. Everything about her was theatrical, from the old Hollywood curls in her hair to the way she held her champagne flute, a manicured pinky lifted off the stem because it was the ladylike thing to do. I suppose it was hard not to be dramatic when you were one of the most renowned daytime soap opera stars in decades.
“You weren’t listening,” she sighed loftily. “You’ve barely even touched your drink, Frederic.”
I humm
ed, taking a very pointed sip. We both smiled. “I’m sorry. I’ve just got a few things on my mind, that’s all.”
“Producing will do that to you.” Cordelia flicked her fingers, the bracelets on her freckled arms tingling. “Fry your brain. Make you forget things.”
“It isn’t the production.” I set my glass down, leaning my elbows on the table. For once, I appreciated Cordelia’s insistence that we have the most private booth in this little cafe. “Though that isn’t helping.”
“Well don’t let my love affairs bore you.” She smiled, wide and dazzling and rimmed with Fuck Me Pink lipstick. “What is it? Haven’t gotten a date in a while?”
For a moment something flickered in my memory: broad shoulders and a face I had to look up at. Cold eyes, and—“No.”
“Good darling, because with a face like that, you should have men and women practically breaking your door down.” She busied herself with taking some cigarettes out of her pocketbook.
I watched her hands as I spoke. “Do you remember Abella?”
“Redhead?”
“No, that was Emanuella.”
“Abella….” Cordelia thought a moment as she lit her cigarette. The drag she took seemed to illuminate some kind of memory. “Abella. Yes, of course, lovely girl. What about her?”
“Have you heard… anything about her at all? Where she’s ended up or who she’s working for?”
“No, darling.” Cordelia shook her head. “Last I heard, you were the last household she worked for. I think there were rumors about her taking on some nannying business in Santa Monica, but I think that was just that: rumors.”
“I was afraid you might say that….”
“Why do you ask?”
A waiter brought our food to us silently. I thanked him and Cordelia regarded him with one of her award-winning smiles. Sometimes she really got me; Cordelia was about twenty years older than me, but a friend nonetheless. Her heyday had been before mine, but it was because of her I had anything at all. She’d gotten me into the business, after all.
Cordelia looked at me, stamping out her cigarette with her one hand as she reached for her silverware with another. “You’re staring, darling.”
“I’m just remembering when I first met you.” I grinned to myself. “You haven’t aged a day.”
“It’s the Botox, love.”
“And, I was so nervous—”
“Frederic, please, you were the only one in that audition room that wasn’t nervous, don’t kid yourself.” She shot me a wry smile. “And you’re avoiding the question. Why ask about Abella now? It’s been years.”
Cordelia was right. Maybe I had been avoiding the question. I didn’t want to talk about it, but, at the same time…. “When she worked for me—what ended it, I mean, was she had stolen something of mine.”
“If it’s a matter of getting it back—”
“No, that’s not it.” I swirled my straw in my glass, needing to do something with my hands. My stomach twisted slightly. “I fired her.”
“You had every right to.”
“She had… issues.” Even now, the edge of guilt curled around my gut. “I don’t know. It’s just been bothering me. The way things ended. I should have been more… attentive in the matter.”
“Spoken like a producer with a conscience,” she hummed, amused.
I sighed. “I just want to make sure she’s all right. That firing her… didn’t destroy her life.”
Cordelia’s finger brushed over mine, stilling the straw, the ice rattling in its glass. “Frederic. People make mistakes all the time. People get fired. They move on. I’m sure there’s nothing to beat yourself up about. For all we know, she’s married and living on the beach in a little shack, blissfully unaware that you’re practically sweating in your Egyptian cotton blouse over her.”
I bit the inside of my lip. “You’re probably right.”
“Darling, I’m always right.” She withdrew her hand, sitting up a little straighter, proud of herself. “When have I ever steered you wrong? Trust me.”
Sharing a smile that imperceptibly put the topic to rest, I plucked up my fork. “Enough about me. Tell me all about who you are and aren’t undressing for.”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head, picking daintily at her salad. “No, we’re still talking about you. A source tells me that you’ve got a handsome new bodyguard prowling around on set now?”
I sighed, lips pulling into a poorly-suppressed smile. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”
Cordelia made a scandalized noise, swatting at me lightly from across the table. “So it is true! Why in God’s name have you not introduced me, Frederic?”
“He’s been very busy, Cordelia,” I said, parentally. “Besides, I doubt you two would have very much to talk about. He’s practically a walking talking brick wall.”
“Just your type.”
“Not exactly.”
“Hmph.” Cordelia pouted. “What do you need a bodyguard for, anyway?”
I paused, and felt the easy joy of the conversation get sucked out of the room. Cordelia must have noticed as well, her eyes snapping up to catch the troubled look that must have swept over my face.
“Remember when I asked the name of that private investigator?” I murmured.
“Al Stevens?”
“Yes.”
“Did he find anything?”
Slowly, I shook my head. Cordelia’s eyes widened. “He referred me to Hassan Meierz, instead. My bodyguard.”
“What for?” Cordelia’s voice, in a moment of rare discretion, lowered to a stage whisper. “Frederic, if you’re in some sort of trouble—”
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.” I waved laughingly, though the laughter was mostly for show. To soothe her nerves. “Or, well, it isn’t anything Hassan can’t handle. Him and his team. It’s just I seem to have a bit of a… stalker.”
Cordelia made a gasping sound, before sighing and reaching for another cigarette. “Jesus, Frederic. You ought to have told me sooner.”
“I didn’t want to concern anyone.”
“Well I am concerned. I have every right to be.” She pursed her lips at me. “Do you have any idea who it is?”
“I think it must be someone I know. It seems like they have a bit of an ax to grind, I think.” I offered a shrug, trying to keep this lunch date as casual as possible.
Cordelia thought a moment, huffing on the end of a long French cig. She was a beautiful woman, but had a sharp mind, despite how well she could play the fool, when it suited her. Decisively, she said, “Best to leave it to Hassan, then.”
I raised my flute slightly in toast. “My thoughts exactly.”
We each took a sip. She sighed loudly. “Well.” With a clap of her hands, it was as if the serious cloud that had settled upon our table had broken. Maybe she figured I needed a little piece of something normal for a change. In any case, I was grateful when she sang, “Enough about your problems, Frederic,” and launched into another ridiculous story from when she was younger.
Cordelia had told me to leave it to Hassan.
And, I agreed with her. For about two hours. Somewhere between the restaurant and home, however, I decided I couldn’t leave it alone, or to Hassan, or to any one person. After all, it was my business, too.
I had excused myself to the bathroom, where I had issued a phone call back to the house. Of course, I had to go through Doc answering the phone first, before he connected to me to Lorna, my house manager.
“Be discreet, please,” I asked carefully of her.
If there was anyone I could trust with discretion, I thought making my way home through the Los Angeles gridlock, it was Lorna.
About three hours later, there was a knock on my study door. When I opened the door, I had anticipated it would be Hassan standing there, with some new outline for security or itinerary, but instead it was Lorna. She moved into my room like a shadow, hands folding and unfolding at her waist.
“Have you found anything?”
I asked, biting back any sensation of hope.
Lorna bit her lip, shaking her head fervently. “I’m sorry, Mr. Reyes. There’s been no news of Abella at all since her departure.”
Disappointment crept up the back of my throat. “Nothing at all? No family, no other jobs, nothing from friends—”
“Nothing.” Her eyes swam with the depths of her apology. “We had friends within the staff, and in other households, but… there’s been no word of her at all. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, resting a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “It’s nothing for you to apologize for, Lorna. Thank you for trying.”
Dipping her head, he fixed me with a look that was warm and kind. I was thankful for it. As she made her way back out the door, I called to her one last time.
“Oh, and Lorna?”
“Yes, Mr. Reyes?”
“Let’s keep this between you and I. For the moment.”
7
Fred
“It’s fine, Doc, really.”
I gave the quiet man a reassuring pat on the shoulder, offering a relaxed smile. “It’s only for a few days. And, I’ll have Hassan with me.”
From where he was lingering near the front door, Jackson muttered just loud enough for me to hear: “Yeah, that’s what we’re worried about.”
In the driveway, Hassan had heard it too. Stuffing his duffle bag into the trunk of the car, he shot a pointed glare at Jackson, equal parts annoyed and exasperated. “Aren’t you supposed to be working, Jackson?”
Jackson squared his shoulders, shouting, “Yes, sir, Hassan, sir,” as he offered a dramatic salute, and I laughed as Hassan flipped him off in return.
Doc watched skeptically from the front porch with Jackson as Hassan turned to me, and—surely, I had to be imagining things now, because I could have sworn his expression softened a fraction when our eyes met.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
I shot him a thumbs up, already grabbing at the driver’s door. “Ready.”