by April Smith
“Woman to woman? You’re not the only one on his plate. It’s that Oberbeck bitch-and-a-half, too, but that’s the way they are. Senior detectives, I love them to death, but they think they’re God’s gift.”
This was something else. Not just lunacy, but lunacy with a barbed point.
“Time-out. Are we talking about Andrew Berringer and Sylvia Oberbeck?”
“Why?” she asked, terrifyingly coy. “Who wants to know?”
I turned around and walked back to my car, making sure to grind my heels as deeply and destructively into as many of Margaret Forrester’s slithery garments as possible.
Which way—the freeway, or the streets? Where was I going? To the office. Why? To talk to Rick. Rick had called me, right? He had seen the posting on Richard Brennan and wanted to pursue the lead. It was hard work thinking these thoughts, like lifting fifty-pound boxes, stacking one on top of the other. I was in some kind of a wind tunnel. A hallway. I was doing this work of thinking, stacking up the awkward facts (Margaret was jealous, crazy, unreliable), and at the end of the hallway there was Andrew.
There was Andrew and Officer Sylvia Oberbeck, whose character became instantly revised, from sensitive first responder at the M&Ms’ to dumb jock blonde with the fake fingernails and neat French braid that I could never manage, voluptuous underneath the uniform, and canny, too; she never gave it away (neither of them did), but you knew how it worked, she was there every day in the trenches, liked drinking beer and playing pool, a working-class girl with a couple of exes, as lonely and miserable and reckless as the rest of the squad, which she was probably screwing on a regular basis.
He slept with Margaret, too? After her husband died?
Was that possible? Was I nuts?
I called him.
“What’s the matter? You sound upset. Is it about the case?”
“Are you seeing someone else?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I heard you’re going out with Sylvia Oberbeck.”
“No.”
“Tell me the truth and we can move on.”
“I’m not seeing Sylvia Oberbeck. Where did you get this information?”
“Margaret Forrester.”
“Margaret is pathological.”
“I know, but she says you’re screwing Oberbeck, and also, get this, that you slept with her when the Hat died.”
“Listen to me. Ana? Are you listening?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You’re not crying, baby.”
“Just tell me the truth.”
“Do you know what we call Margaret? The Black Widow. Do you know why? Because she killed the Hat. Might as well have. Might as well have pulled the trigger on the gun.”
“I thought it was a baseball bat.”
“Whatever! She pushed that sorry bastard into an untenable situation. And he was a really good man. Work late. Move up. Volunteer for dangerous assignments. Make money. Money, money, money. She’s a greedy lying bitch, and she doesn’t like you.”
“That’s clear.”
“She’s jealous as hell because you’re the boss—”
“And sleeping with you.”
“I’m sorry it came down this way. What can I tell you? This is how she operates.”
“I don’t care how she operates, all I care about is you and me. Is that pathetic?”
“Ana—”
“I can’t talk now, I have to get back. My supervisor’s calling. We have a suspect—a guy from Arizona, five arrests for rape, no convictions, name is Ray Brennan. Former marine.”
“Bingo.”
“Your idea. Good work.”
“Feeling better?”
“No.”
“What can I do for you, baby?”
“Tell me where you were last night.”
“Chasing a Spanish guy down an alley.”
“What went down?”
“Pickpocket.”
“Where? The Promenade.”
“Yep.”
“Catch him?”
“What do you think?” Andrew said. “Sixteen years old, runs like a rabbit.”
Rick said, “It’s about your ninety-day file review.”
“I turned in my files.”
“And every one of your cases says, ‘Unaddressed work due to the Santa Monica kidnapping.’”
“Be fair, Rick, not every one.”
I had not gone into the office. After speaking with Andrew, I had been able to drive no more than a mile from the police station before pulling over in tears. Now I was parked at a meter on the Palisade above the ocean, talking robotically on the Nextel, staring through the windshield into murky space.
“Where are your communications for the past ninety days?”
“They’re in hand notes.”
“But where are they in the file?”
“Who cares? What about the fax on Brennan?”
“Deal with it, and in your spare time get this assessment up to date. By the way, what is this about you wanting to open up an old case from the bank squad?”
“Nothing. I was trying to help someone.”
“The inspectors are coming in ten days.”
I forced myself to sit there, gazing at the ocean like the rest of the midmorning unemployed sleazebag degenerates in their trashy cars. I was doing work again, although this time the thoughts came easily off the conveyor belt, greased by their own logic.
Why was Rick suddenly on this? Because he had turned on me, too.
Kelsey got to him.
Through Galloway.
She had not liked my voice mail about patriotism and the American flag. Golly gee.
A Broadway tune came tap-tap-tapping along: “And good’s bad today / And black’s white today / And day’s night today …” Something-something-“gigolo.” Was that really the next line? I laughed out loud and put the tan Crown Victoria in gear. Everything was reversed, all right! “Polarized,” I think, is the term in photography.
I did go to the Federal Building—not up to the seventeenth floor to take care of the files like a good girl, but down to the subbasement of the garage, down to Hugh Akron’s darkroom.
This was now my shadow self, the inverted Ana, passing along the bare cinder-block corridor, following clusters of pipes. Soon the noise of blowers and whining car engines had faded, and acrid film developer had replaced the moldy scent of sweat coming out of the fitness center, and there was Hugh, all bones and lankiness, slicing off the edge of a photograph with the razor-sharp arm of a paper cutter he brought down with a surgical thwack!
“Ana-stasia!” He smiled.
That English charm went a long way. Rumor was he had been a pilot in the RAF and a pioneer in aerial photography, whose counterintelligence was vital to the Normandy landing, but that would put him way past seventy and doesn’t make any sense.
I have discovered Hugh Akron knows what to include and what to make sure stays out of the picture.
He always wore a Leica, eager to snap your picture, “Just for kicks,” and it was flattering, what the hell. Weeks later you’d get a black-and-white, and there you are, standing by the filing cabinet looking very documentary. The understanding was, you slipped old Hugh ten bucks in American dollars for contributing to your memory book. You didn’t really want the print, but you were not about to throw it away. Parking tickets? Play-off games? Wedgwood china? Airline discounts cheaper than cheap? Don’t ask, don’t tell, see the Brit.
The chlorine smell was overwhelming although the actual darkroom was behind one of the other doors. The counter space where Hugh worked, to a classical music station, was empty and scrupulously white.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, tan cheeks turning an appealing pink.
“I need to run a check through the DMV.”
It used to be you could run a background check on anyone who cut you off on the freeway, but there had been so many abuses the Bureau made it a censurable act to make unauthorized use of the DMV. You are n
ot supposed to do this. You are truly not.
Hugh moved to the computer. “Case number?”
“Left it upstairs.”
“Let’s approximate.”
He typed in something. A flute concerto playing on the boom box was blowing notes of unbelievable sweetness like bubbles drifting on the cold, still, pungent air.
“Name?”
“Sylvia Oberbeck.”
“California resident?”
“Yes.”
His long fingers danced over the keys. He had already accessed the Department of Motor Vehicles database and gone through the security check using, I surmised, not his own ID.
“Driver’s license?”
“Don’t know.”
“Vehicle registration?”
“Don’t know. But she’s an officer with the Santa Monica police.”
“That helps.”
I focused on the pleasing music. It was cold and white as a morgue in there.
“You’re looking peaked. Have you lost weight?”
“Probably.”
“Well, don’t lose any more, my love. Not on that tiny frame. What are you working on?”
He knew about the Santa Monica kidnapping because he had processed location shots of the Promenade. I said we had a good suspect who was also a photographer.
“What’s his background?”
“He knows how to use a camera. He was in the marines.”
“Check Stars and Stripes,” Hugh suggested. “Might have gone in for journalism.”
“Great idea.”
Already in progress.
Finally the printer stirred and presented the results.
“Thank you.” I folded the page into my pocket. “How’s the wedding business?”
“Lovely. Do you know Vicki Shawn and Ed Brewster, the firearms instructors? I took their nuptial picture right back there, just the other day.”
I stared at the sterile row of doors. “You mean she came down here wearing a wedding dress?”
“Well of course, what did you expect, body armor? This is what I’m really excited about, however, have I shown you?”
He scooped up the picture he had cropped and gathered a dozen like it.
“What is your professional opinion?” he wanted to know, standing back and folding his hands inside the bib of the rubber apron.
A platinum blonde with large breasts was lying tummy down on a bearskin rug, ankles crossed in the air. Another strode a hobbyhorse. Another, the old barbershop pole. It was classic cheesecake, healthy girls wearing nothing but G-strings, in soft-focus studio shots with phony stars of light in their eyes, poses so quaint they would not have offended Abraham Lincoln.
“Are the fifties coming back?”
Alarmed: “What do you mean by the fifties?” He lowered the blue aviators, peering closely at the prints. “This is the hottest thing. The Internet,” he whispered. “Hit the jackpot with this lot.”
My pits were damp. I wanted to flee.
“Hugh,” I said, and his big head jerked. “You’ve got mail.”
I left the money in an interoffice envelope.
It was odd to be on the other side of deception—I had always been the snoop, after all. But it turned out I was good at it, and in this new world of upside-down loyalties and reversed color fields, I moved with remarkable confidence, able to have several conversations with Andrew that smacked of normalcy. It is different when you know what you want. You behave like a phantom, clinging to walls and molding into corners to hear what you need to hear, coax what you have to coax. Unknown to him, our next few phone calls took on a subtle but interrogatory tone. I fairly purred with newfound interest in his preferences and found out things:
He wasn’t at all sure about his birthday; he might go up to see his sister in the Bay Area. The Harley would need a new muffler. Someone he had gone to high school with just died of a heart attack. He was swamped with work. Willie John Black could not be located, which was frustrating because we were soon to get a military ID of Richard Brennan. Ross Meyer-Murphy was calling Andrew every day, as he was calling me, demanding that we “get the guy.” The department had busted Laurel West Academy wide open with an expanding drug investigation that would hit the papers any day. Andrew wasn’t even getting to the gym. The most he could manage was a drink after work at the Boatyard or breakfast at Coffee Craze in the Marina, where he knew the beach ’n’ biker regulars. That’s right near me, could we meet there? I asked, guessing the answer. Well, he didn’t really get around that often.
The address on Sylvia Oberbeck’s driver’s license was a white stucco sixties apartment building in Mar Vista with a wire sculpture of three fish and ocean waves over the front entrance. I would take the G-ride because the Barracuda would have stood out in the residential neighborhood. Still, Andrew had a sixth sense on him, which I had to take into account, so instead of parking on the street I would pull into a driveway behind somebody’s car already tucked in for the night and watch the apartment through the rearview mirror.
Sylvia Oberbeck’s balcony was the one crowded with Japanese lanterns and discarded dining room chairs, an old TV. She lived alone (no other names on the mailbox). I once observed an athletic woman arriving on a mountain bike, which she hefted onto her shoulder and carried inside. She then emerged with Officer Oberbeck, and they drove off in her Mazda. This created a short-lived lesbian fantasy.
I would stay only briefly, not vibrating with tension like the rookie on stakeout I had once been, but a lazy predator on nature’s time. I was patient, collecting information. I wanted to be immaculately prepared—get it done, if it had to be done, with one swift blow.
Sunday morning I cruised by Coffee Craze and saw them together. They were sitting at a table sharing the newspaper—she in a visor with her hair in a ponytail, he wearing shades, a warm-up jacket and sweats. He sat hunched over his food, the way he does, concentrating on sawing something on his plate, glancing at a section folded back on the table. She lay back, inside the open tent of the paper, hefty legs in black exercise tights, one foot in a dirty old running shoe up on a chair.
Nothing even barely sexy was going on, and after a few nights of unremarkable surveillance, I was beginning to feel relieved. In fact, I was prepared to have a big laugh on myself. So he had been chasing a kid on the Promenade. So they were two old friends meeting for Sunday brunch. Andrew had been ducking me, but this was not a felony.
I sipped the coffee I had brought in the G-ride, almost ready to walk across the street and clap them both on the back as if it were all a happy coincidence. I watched as they split the bill and got into Andrew’s Ford, then followed at a distance as they ambled through traffic and eventually got onto the Marina Freeway, euphoric at the thought that I was just a silly, jealous girl.
The Marina Freeway is basically an access road, a short connection between the 405 and Lincoln Boulevard. It is not well traveled, especially on a Sunday morning. You could, if you timed it right, get three to five minutes of uninterrupted cruise along a straight-ahead stretch that pretty much requires minimal concentration.
And that, apparently, was the plan, for as soon as they turned onto the Marina Freeway, Sylvia Oberbeck’s head disappeared out of sight below the front seat, into Andrew’s lap, and stayed there.
The speed of the car dropped to thirty miles per hour. It began to wobble along the slow lane.
Instantly, an uncontrollable force like a conflagration consumed both me and the car as one. I revved the engine and leaned on the horn. Sped up beside them, made Andrew swerve. He saw me. I gave him the finger. Kept honking. Accelerated. He accelerated, but he couldn’t get away. We were one on one, expert drivers going ninety miles an hour in high-performance muscle cars. I pulled behind him, kissed his bumper. Drew up side by side, then gunned it and cut him off, forcing him to skid into the breakdown lane. I could see him swearing, spinning the wheel with grim concentration. Officer Oberbeck was sitting up now.
Our cars swiveled to
an uneven stop in a hot rain of pebbles. I threw my door open wide.
“Get out,” I screamed. “I know you’re screwing that bitch.”
He lowered the window half an inch.
“Will you calm down? Relax. I’m driving her home—”
“Get out!” I screamed again. “Get out of the goddamned car!”
I yanked the handle, but he had locked it.
Incredibly, I was still holding the coffee cup.
“Fuck you,” I cried and threw the hot coffee at his face. He flinched as it slung across the glass, splattering through the open crack and in his hair.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Let’s just go,” said Oberbeck. “That bitch is crazy.”
“We are talking about moving in together at the same time you’re screwing her?”
He made a move to open the door, but Oberbeck pulled him back.
“Don’t!” she said. “Just get the fuck out of here,” and hit the button so the window sealed tight.
Andrew hesitated, put the car in gear.
“Move away. I don’t want to hurt you, move away from the car.”
His voice was muffled. He let her cut him off from me, and now he was looking up, expressionless, like some red-faced lying civilian, safe behind the glass.
I picked up handfuls of gravel and pelted the departing car. I threw them and threw them and threw them and threw them until they began to slow down and float like shooting stars burning out in the empty air.
Fourteen.
That night the stars were obscured by a scrim of cloud. You could see airplanes, heavy with lights, marching toward LAX, and hear their booming vibration, but the sky was just a formless haze. Lying back on a beach chair on the balcony of my apartment, I wished for the enormity of the heavens to fill my sight, leave no room for anything but misty blue; to feel nothing but the soft worked cotton of my grandmother’s quilt wrapped around my body.
It was nearly 5 a.m. No lights were on behind the drawn window drapes of the opposite bank of apartments. Pale beige drapery was standard at Tahiti Gardens, which created a pleasing unity in the ziggurat pattern of jutting rectangular balconies, dark on dark. Some had plants, some had whirligigs and wicker and cats; from my corner unit I could see hundreds of insipid variations on a theme.