by Sean Black
“Sold,” said Sofia. “But on one condition.”
“What’s that?” Dr. Mark asked her.
“I’m buying.”
“With my student loans who am I to argue?”
* * *
DR. MARK WAS RIGHT. The food was amazing. Sofia hadn’t realized how hungry she was until it arrived. She had the filet mignon with a Marsala sauce, while Dr. Mark wolfed down a New York sirloin. They split a bottle of Argentinian red wine.
“Oh, my God, this is so good,” she said, skewering a piece of bloody steak.
“I know, right. But save some room. The desserts are amazing.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I always have room for dessert.”
He stared across the table at her. “You really aren’t an LA girl, are you?”
She shot him a look.
“Sorry, LA woman.”
“Indiana. Until we moved out here.”
“For your acting career?”
“Actually,” said Sofia, “it was supposed to be my sister’s acting career. But I ended up getting offered a TV show instead.”
“Wasn’t that kind of awkward?”
“Well, yeah,” said Sofia. “But she was happy for me.”
“Cool sister.”
“We’ve always been close.”
Dr. Mark took a slug of red wine, then put his glass down. “You think that’s maybe got something to do with your career change? It wasn’t really your dream.”
Sofia hadn’t thought about it like that, but he had a point. It was a lot easier to give something up that you hadn’t really wanted in the first place. “I guess that was part of it. What about you? Did you always want to be a doctor?”
“Astronaut and football player were my top picks. Medicine was third.”
“What happened?”
“I have a fear of heights and I suck at pretty much every sport I’ve ever played. And I discovered I’m not bad at being a doctor.”
The waiter came over and refilled their wine glasses. Sofia was starting to feel a little light-headed. She wasn’t sure if it was the long day, the wine, or looking at Dr. Mark in the candlelight. It was probably a combination of all three.
“What about when you can’t help someone? Isn’t that tough?”
Dr. Mark’s smile fell away. He looked down at the tablecloth. “Yeah. When it’s someone older who’s lived their life, that’s not as bad, although it’s still upsetting, but when it’s someone young, it gets to me. I’d be a liar to pretend otherwise.”
“So how do you cope?” It wasn’t just an academic question for Sofia. Not anymore.
“I make sure I’ve done everything I could possibly do. I try to be there for the family as much as I can. But, even so, it’s tough.”
“You think Daniel will make it?”
“With a donor, yes.”
“And without one?”
“Barring some kind of miracle, no, he won’t. I wish I could tell you otherwise, but those are the facts.”
CHAPTER 32
Sofia woke to the sound of the Pacific Ocean. She looked at the clock on her bedside table. Five a.m. She was about to roll over and go back to sleep when last night’s conversations with Candice and then Dr. Mark came back to her. She threw back the covers, and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She could catch up on her sleep when they’d found a donor for Daniel.
After she’d gotten an Uber back from her date with Dr. Mark, Sofia had stayed up until after one running down leads as best she could. However tricky those conversations might be, she still had the baseball players to track down and get DNA samples from.
She walked into the kitchen, and while she waited for the coffee to brew, she stepped out onto the front porch. Fred was waiting for her. He cocked his head and stared at her with a single, beady eye.
“Yeah, I know. I look like crap.”
He squawked his agreement.
“Thanks. Very supportive.”
She went back inside, poured a cup of coffee, dug out some lunch meat, put it on a plate and took it back onto the deck for Fred. He wolfed it down. As soon as he’d finished it, he took off with a flap of gray wings.
“Ungrateful wretch,” Sofia called after him.
* * *
AIDAN WAVED Sofia over when she walked into the office at a little after seven. She took a seat next to him. “When did you start work?” she asked him.
“I’ve been here about an hour. You look like hell.”
“That seems to be the consensus.”
Aidan shrugged. “Just saying.”
“I went over to visit Daniel and his mom at the medical center last night and then I had dinner with Dr. Mark. You know, Daniel’s nephrologist.”
Aidan raised an eyebrow. “Dinner, huh?”
“I thought he could maybe give us some more insight into how long we have to find a donor.”
“Sure you did,” said Aidan.
“Come on,” Sofia protested. “This is serious. They’ve moved Daniel into the pediatric ICU.”
“What’s that?”
She turned to see Brendan walking in.
“Daniel’s condition has deteriorated. They’ve had to move him to ICU.”
Brendan grimaced. “Infection?”
“No,” Sofia told him. “His kidneys are failing faster than they’d thought they would.”
Brendan folded his arms. “So how are we doing with finding the father?”
Aidan reached over and grabbed a bunch of papers. He handed them to Sofia. “Not good. Or, rather, not good enough. So far none of the DNA samples we’ve gathered has been a match.”
Sofia thought back to how sick Daniel had looked lying in the bed in the ICU. She swallowed hard. They really needed to catch a break, and soon. “At least we can eliminate them from our search,” she said, trying for some kind of silver lining.
“True.”
“And we didn’t really think any of those guys would be a match. I mean none of them looks like Daniel. Not even a little bit.”
“Yeah. Actually, I’ve been thinking about that,” said Aidan. “Y’know, which of the men on the list might bear a passing resemblance to Daniel.”
“Which one?” asked Brendan.
“Only one I can see who he looks like is . . .” Aidan clicked a couple of buttons on his mouse and a picture of Wes Adams popped up next to a one of Daniel.
Sofia didn’t see the resemblance. “You think they look alike?” she asked, skeptical.
“You don’t see it?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
Aidan tapped at the screen. “Look, around the eyes. And the nose.”
She still wasn’t seeing it. She squinted at the two images. “Maybe. I dunno.”
“I’m telling you. There’s a definite resemblance. I think this is our guy.”
“In that case, what the hell are you doing here?” Brendan barked.
“Already on it. I tracked down a current address for him. Last night, after I left you, I swung by one of the addresses we had for him. He wasn’t there, because the house had just been sold, but the current owner gave me the forwarding address .”
“Nice work,” said Brendan. “Keep me posted. I’m going to head down to the hospital later and see if I can’t offer Candice some moral support.”
“She needs it,” said Sofia.
* * *
THEY WAITED until just after nine, when the traffic on Pacific Coast Highway had cleared to a more manageable level, then set out for the address Aidan had for Wes Adams in the Hollywood Hills. It seemed like a strange place for such a wealthy retired athlete to end up. Sure there were plenty of wealthy people living in the Hollywood Hills, but more established people with money tended to live on the West Side in the B neighborhoods (Bel Air, Beverly Hills and Brentwood). The Hollywood Hills was a little cheaper, and tended to draw a slightly younger, hipper crowd.
“So how was your date?” Sofia asked Aidan.
“Had to cancel so I could
spend the time trying to track down Wes Adams.”
Sofia wondered whether Aidan was trying to make her feel bad for going out to dinner with Dr. Mark. Okay, she had wanted to get as much information from him about Daniel and his condition as she could, but dinner had probably been overkill. She could have bought him a coffee and gotten about the same amount of insight.
“I’m sure she’ll understand,” Sofia told Aidan.
“Yeah, she was totally cool about it.”
Sofia decided to change the subject before Aidan circled back to her date with Dr. Mark. “So how come you’re so convinced Wes Adams is our man? I mean, apart from his facial features. Or is that it?”
“No,” said Aidan.
“So what else you got?”
“I dunno. It just stands to reason.”
Sofia definitely didn’t follow why it should.
“Look,” said Aidan, “which of these guys is likely to have actually impregnated Candy? A dolt like Witter, who looks like he could barely raise a smile, some drug-addled club guy, or a world-class athlete in peak physical shape like Wes Adams?”
“That seems like a pretty big jump. Maybe Witter’s sperm count was off the chart or something. Or one of the other guys’ was. You can’t tell just by looking at someone.”
“Okay, agreed. But it’s more than a hunch. Look at how many baby mamas Wes Adams has.”
Sofia had to confess she had no idea how many kids Wes Adams had fathered. “I’ve no idea. How many?”
“A dozen at least. I mean, there’s a dozen we know about. So there could easily be a lot more,” said Aidan. “You know what his teammates nicknamed him?”
She didn’t, but she had a feeling it was something jocky and gross.
“The Impregnator!” Aidan told her. “Wes Adams. He shoots, he scores. A chick so much as looks in his direction and boom! Her ovaries start dropping eggs like a factory chicken.”
“What a romantic image,” said Sofia.
“Hey, you asked why I think he’s Daniel’s father, and I told you. Facial similarities? Check. Proven virility? Check. Obvious reluctance to bag up his junk? Check. None of that is opinion. Those are just the facts. And none of the other prospects have checked out so far, which, by itself, increases the likelihood of Wes being our man.”
Okay, so Aidan had made a fairly solid case. Now all they had to do was get a DNA sample and they could see whether he was right or not.
Sofia’s cell phone rang. She recognized the number as belonging to one of the baseball players Candice had “spent time with.” She’d found his number and left a message the day before. In it, she’d claimed to be representing an attorney about an inheritance. She figured that might get more of a response than the real reason. It looked like she’d been correct.
This wasn’t a phone call she’d been looking forward to having. And definitely not with Aidan in the car, listening to every word. But time was of the essence and, hey, this guy was as much of a lead as Wes Adams was right now.
“It’s one of the baseball players,” Sofia said, her hand covering her cell phone.
“This I gotta hear. Put him on speaker,” said Aidan.
“No! And no laughing.” Sofia took her hand away. “Hi, Roberto, thanks for calling me back.”
“No problem,” said Roberto. From the background noise it sounded like he was in a bar. Sofia hoped he wasn’t out spending his fictional inheritance just yet. “You said something about someone dying,” he continued.
“Yeah, it’s kind of related to that sort of thing.” Sofia hated lying to people. She always had. But in this case she had to remind herself it was for the greater good.
“I have some money coming?” Roberto asked.
She had a feeling Roberto was not going to make this easy for her. It was partly her fault for making up a story. But she was fairly sure that if she’d left a message telling the truth he would never have called her back in the first place.
“Not exactly. But there is a very urgent matter I’d like to speak with you about. A matter of life and death, really.”
Roberto’s attitude changed. She heard him call for someone to turn down the music playing in the background. “Okay, lady, what you trying to sell me?”
Rather than convince him she wasn’t trying to sell anything, Sofia decided to dive right in. “Do you remember a young woman called Candice Carlson?”
“Not really, no.”
“You may have known her as Candy. Young, blonde, attractive. You would have met her with some of your teammates. Apparently, as Candice remembers it, you, her and some of your teammates . . .”
Next to her, Aidan was mouthing, “Put this on speaker,” over and over. Sofia ignored him. She was trying to think of a polite way to describe what had happened that still got across the nature of the events.
“. . . you and her and your teammates partied.”
“Hey,” said Roberto, sounding defensive suddenly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady. Whatever she’s saying I did, I deny it. Now, if this some kind of a shakedown, lemme tell you, I got no money.”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
Sofia went on to explain what it was about and why they needed a DNA sample from Roberto. Roberto was pretty sympathetic once she’d explained about Daniel’s condition. Not only did he agree to provide a sample, he also said he’d talk to the other guys for them. Sofia thanked him and ended the call.
Aidan punched down on the gas pedal and his Porsche hurtled its way up Sunset Boulevard toward Hollywood. Next stop was Wes Adams, and Aidan seemed in a hurry to meet him.
CHAPTER 33
By the time they reached Wes Adams’s house, a ten-million-dollar glass and steel temple to modern architecture tucked away high in the West Hollywood Hills, Sofia was starting to think there was more to Aidan’s theory than facts. As she had first suspected, Aidan had a serious man-crush on the retired NBA superstar. Part of her was starting to think Aidan wanted Wes to be Daniel’s father so he would get to hang out with the guy.
Just like stardom in Hollywood, Sofia had never really gotten people’s obsession with sports stars. So what if someone could throw a basketball, or a football, or a baseball better than almost everyone else? The idea that their skill somehow made them a better person than almost everyone else seemed bizarre. Even more bizarre when she looked at how most professional athletes behaved in their private lives. The sporting stars who stood out now were the ones who didn’t have affairs, take steroids or drive while drunk. They were a rare breed. Not that different from a lot of actors, really.
They parked on the street outside the house, and walked through the open gates and up the driveway. There were three cars parked outside: a Bentley, a Rolls-Royce, and an Aston Martin. Even with all those baby mamas, Wes Adams was clearly still making bank and living the dream.
Sofia and Aidan walked up the three steps to the front door, rang the buzzer and waited. Aidan took a step back and looked around. “Cool place.”
When no one came to the door, Sofia pressed the buzzer again.
“Hey, give the guy a chance, would you?” said Aidan.
From behind the door there was the sound of high heels clacking across a marble floor. A second later the front door opened. An improbably tall woman stood there. She must have been easily six feet four inches, and that was without the four-inch Louboutin heels she was wearing. She towered over Sofia, who had to step back to where Aidan was standing to be able to see the woman’s face. Something about her features seemed familiar, but Sofia couldn’t quite place her.
“Hi,” said Sofia, cheerfully. “I’m Sofia Salgado and this is my colleague, Aidan Maloney. We’re here to speak with Wes Adams.”
“Oh, my,” said the woman. “How unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate?” Sofia repeated. “Did we just miss him?”
“You could say that,” said the woman.
Slowly but surely it was dawning on Sofia why the woman who had answered the
door seemed so familiar. She looked back to Aidan. From the way the color was draining from his face she had a feeling that he was making the same connection.
The woman who had opened the door was Wes Adams. Or, rather, had been Wes Adams.
“Wes?” he asked the woman, his voice barely rising above a whisper.
“I told you, Wes isn’t here. And he won’t be back,” said the woman.
“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” said Sofia as, behind her, Aidan’s mouth silently opened and closed, like that of a goldfish writhing on a living-room carpet.
The woman put out a huge hand. “Veronica Adams.”
“Lovely to meet you, Veronica.” Sofia took the hand. “Can I ask where you got that nail polish?”
“You like it?” Veronica asked.
“Like it? It’s gorgeous.”
“Oh, I think it’s Sephora.”
“Really? What shade?”
“Hot Rose Pink.”
“I have to get that,” said Sofia. “Hey, do you mind if we come in? It feels kind of strange talking out here.”
The nail-polish compliment had worked. Veronica held the door open. “Sure.”
As she stepped into the hallway, Sofia caught a glimpse of Aidan. He looked as if everything he’d ever known about the world had just been destroyed.
CHAPTER 34
“What was that?” Aidan whispered to Sofia as they followed Veronica into a large living area with a view of a lap pool and beyond to downtown Los Angeles.
“What was what?” she asked.
“That nail polish Jedi mind-trick shit? He didn’t even ask what we wanted to talk to him about.”
“She,” Sofia corrected him.
“Sorry. She,” said Aidan. “But what was that?”
“It’s called building rapport. You should try it sometime.”
“If it had been Wes I might have had a shot, but with it being Veronica maybe you should take the lead.”
“Don’t worry, that’s the plan.”
“Can I get either of you something to drink?” Veronica asked them.