“He knows, Nancy. Believe me, he knows.”
I carried her luggage into the terminal and walked her to the security checkpoint. “Are you going to miss me?” She asked the question in almost a pleading way.
“Of course I’m going to miss you.”
I reached over, took her head into my hands, and kissed her forehead. “Have a good time and don’t forget to behave.” We kissed passionately and I started walking away. When I looked back one last time, she was still standing in the same place and smiled at me.
As I walked back toward the limo, I felt this bizarre and uncomfortable feeling come over me. The only other time I could recall such a feeling was when I said goodbye to my parents and went off to college. I guess one could call it separation anxiety, even though I had only known Nancy for a short time and would be seeing her again in a few days. Or maybe it was fear that I might never see her again.
I opened the door to the limo and jumped in. I lay my head back on the seat and simply looked up as I waited for George to pull away.
“It must have been a difficult choice between Maggie and Nancy,” George remarked.
“Why would you say that?”
George didn’t answer as he deftly pulled away from the curb and into traffic.
“Let me guess, Maggie told you something like we were engaged?”
“Something like that. She said the only thing holding you back from announcing your intentions was that you were still deciding on what size ring to get her.”
I looked straight ahead and asked, “Have you noticed anything strange about Maggie lately?”
Once again he didn’t answer, and I continued, “I care about Maggie, and I’ve had to drive her home twice just this week because she was so out of it. Her behavior has been unpredictable and outrageous. I’m really starting to worry.”
“She started seeing this guy a couple of months back. He drove a fancy car, dressed in expensive suits, and wined and dined her like he was some big-shot billionaire. Then he was gone. In short, he played her.”
“Maggie doesn’t get played. She’s the one who does the playing.”
“Well, this guy got her hooked on that new drug that’s all over the streets — a combination of heroin, cocaine, and amphetamine. It comes in pill form and it’s highly addictive after using it just a few times. From what I heard, he stole all of Maggie’s savings in just a few months then had her borrow a ton of money using her house as collateral.”
“I didn’t know anything about this.”
“She was too ashamed to tell you. She desperately needs help, Joe. I don’t like to get involved. I hear lots of stuff from the driver’s seat. Mostly I keep my mouth shut and mind my business. But Maggie is a sweet girl and has two kids. I figure if anyone can help her, it’s you.”
George dropped me off at my house. I walked inside, grabbed my car keys, and immediately drove to the office. It was still early and I didn’t expect anyone to be there, but just as I got off the elevator I bumped into Jack, the last person I expected to find. Then again, there was a good chance he never left the building last night. He immediately put his arm around my shoulder and led me into his office. The man reeked of cigar smoke, booze, and need I say, sex.
I sat down across from him as he opened a drawer in his desk and took out a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. He poured a shot for himself and offered me one, but I politely refused.
“I gather everything went well last night?”
“Wonderful!” He shot down the whiskey. It wasn’t even seven o’clock.
“I wasn’t aware that you knew them. A little heads up would have helped.”
“Ha! Like you need help. They loved your presentation and they have only one condition, but they were adamant about it. They want Maggie in any commercials we shoot and in all the magazine and newspaper ads we run.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“They’re in love with that girl. What, did she give them all blow jobs before I came down?”
I didn’t answer. I was in a state of shock as I watched Jack pour himself another shot.
“You fucking her all day must have given her that extra glow. Guys find that attractive in women.”
“She’s supposed to start her vacation today. She’s off for four weeks.”
“That’s fine, just tell her not to gain any weight. If anything, tell her to lose a few pounds. You know how the camera adds a few. I was figuring on at least a month before we start shooting and running ads. Is everything okay, Joe?
“Yeah, everything is great. I imagine she’ll be overjoyed.”
“Great! Maybe you two can work out a schedule that allows you to hook up before each shoot. Why take a chance? Don’t want that glow to disappear.”
The phone rang. Jack picked it up and I could hear a woman on the other end with a Russian accent. I took that as my cue to leave.
It was a lie that Maggie was on vacation. She simply wasn’t going to be around for a month. I had plans for her, and none of those plans included sunbathing or drinking margaritas.
I stopped at her desk and for the first time ever I infringed upon her privacy. I opened drawer after drawer, and there buried under a stack of files was a bag containing a bunch of little white pills, just as George had described. She was so gone last night that she forgot to take them home. Being a gentleman, I decided to drive over to her house and hand them to her in person.
There are con artists, like colonies of ants, spread throughout Los Angeles. They are vultures, but even a vulture knows when to stop chewing on a corpse. What this con artist had done to Maggie was beyond reprehensible. He not only took all her money but also left her addicted to a deadly drug, a mother with two young children. I would see to it that the miscreant would pay dearly for his misdeeds. Naturally, I would outsource the job to real professionals. I was adamant about hiring the very best. It was the only way I could ever guarantee the desired results.
Chapter Eleven
I parked in Maggie’s driveway, knocked on the front door, and was greeted by the lovely nanny who started screaming at me in Spanish. I handed her a couple of hundred-dollar bills, and suddenly she was speaking perfect English and quickly hurried off to wake up the lady of the house.
I walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table. I waited for a good half hour before Maggie appeared in a bathrobe. She looked terrible and nearly stumbled over a kitchen chair as she tried to walk over to the stove and pour herself some coffee. I grabbed onto her and sat her down then poured the coffee for her.
“What are you doing here?” Her voice was barely audible.
“Did you forget I drove you home last night? Your car’s back at work.”
“Oh yeah.” Her hands were trembling as she reached for the coffee. “Wow! I didn’t realize how much I had to drink.”
“You didn’t have anything to drink yesterday, Maggie. You can stop pretending now. I know about everything … the drugs, the pig who took all your money, everything.”
“What, are you here to fire me?”
“Please, Maggie, you know me better than that. But it hurts that you didn’t come to me for help and that I had to learn all this from someone else.”
“I was ashamed, Joe.” She looked down into the steaming mug.
“I know, but I thought we promised each other that if either of us got into trouble, we would go to the other for help and advice.”
She kept her head and eyes down, staring blankly into what appeared to be oblivion. I reached over and lifted her chin to look into her bleary eyes. “It’s time to make it all right again. Go upstairs and clean up. We have a lot to do today.”
“I need to stop by the office and pick something up that I left behind last night.”
I pulled out the bag of pills. “These?”
“I need just one, please.”
I handed her a pill and she swallowed it down with the coffee. She got up from her chair and started to walk up the stairs to her bedroom. I
followed. I had a terrible feeling that she might try something stupid, and there was no way I was going to take a chance.
I told her to leave the bathroom door open while she took a shower. I watched as she closed the shower door and turned on the water. Against a tidal wave of water, I could hear her crying violently.
While she got dressed, I got out a suitcase and started packing her underwear, clothes, shoes, toiletries, and other accessories. She pointed to drawers and a closet so I would know where to grab what she needed.
“My children, what about them?”
“They’ll be taken care of. When you start feeling better, I’ll bring them over to see you. They’ll be happy to get their mommy back.”
I emptied all of Maggie’s mail into a shopping bag, and I told her I’d take care of all the bills. I handed the nanny a few hundred dollars more and told her what I expected from her while Maggie was gone, making it clear that there would be plenty more money coming her way.
I put Maggie’s suitcase in the trunk, helped with her seatbelt, and drove to the bank where Maggie had taken out the loan against her house. We sat with a loan officer who took out the paperwork, added the accrued interest and late fees, and came up with a final total of $331,223. Luckily, I had my savings account in the same bank, and in a matter of minutes the funds were transferred to pay off the entire loan. I then opened a new joint account in both our names and put in $50,000.
We got back into my car and Maggie said, “I will never be able to pay you back.”
“Funny, you’re the second person to tell me that today. Have I ever asked you for anything back? This is not a loan, Maggie. This is family taking care of family. I only ask that you get better.” She hugged me, and I kissed her on the cheek.
We went to Gladstone’s in Malibu for lunch. Maggie was getting edgy and I gave her one more pill from the bag. It would be the last one she would ever take. We ordered a bottle of wine, crab appetizers, and lobster for our main dishes. I told her about the Japanese executives and how they insisted in the contract that she be in all the commercials and print advertising. She laughed and laughed. I said this might be the beginning of whole new career for her, one that paid a lot of money.
We drove farther up the coast and I pulled into the driveway of The Malibu Rehabilitation Center for Drug and Alcohol Abuse. It was regarded as one of the best treatment centers in the world. I got Maggie’s suitcase out of the car and we registered at the desk. An uneasy silence hung between us as we waited for an attendant to take Maggie to her room.
I dropped the bag of pills into a trash can outside the building and drove back home. I had let Maggie down, taken advantage of her at a most frightening time, and hadn’t noticed or refused to notice the apparent signs of distress. No amount of money I threw at her now would alleviate the pain I had caused or the guilt that consumed me.
I opened the door to my house at exactly five o’clock. I emptied the shopping bag full of bills onto the kitchen table, grabbed my checkbook, and opened a bottle of red wine. All the bills were overdue and all the credit cards were maxed out. It took me nearly three hours to finish. I paid everything off, put stamps on at least twenty-five envelopes, and walked to the closest mailbox to deposit them. I could have easily waited until the morning and dropped them off on my way to work. The letters weren’t going anywhere this late at night, but I just couldn’t wait. I had to get them in a mailbox tonight, or else I might go crazy with anxiety.
I walked back home. It was another beautiful southern California night. Couples were out walking and holding hands, others were walking pets, and I was wondering what the hell I was doing here … a place so distant and foreign from where I grew up.
I opened a second bottle of red wine, poured myself a glass, sat down on the couch in the living room, and listened to Sinatra. I was sound asleep when the phone rang at three o’clock in the morning. My first instinct before picking up the phone was that something had gone seriously wrong with Maggie. Phone calls in the middle of the night were never good. I picked the phone up and it was Nancy on the other end. She just wanted to let me know that she got a lovely room, was sleeping alone, and had a wonderful time listening to the speakers at the convention.
I didn’t bother asking the obvious question, “What the hell are you doing calling me at this hour?” That would have played right into her hands. I told her that I was also sleeping alone and that there were no guests lingering around. I knew that was the reason she was calling at this ungodly hour, but I kept my cool and was just grateful that she had followed my advice.
Chapter Twelve
Maggie wasn’t allowed visitors for the first two weeks at the rehab center, but since I would be driving that way to pick up Nancy at the airport, I figured I would try to bribe my way in. The week had passed relatively quickly, with few problems. It was eerie looking out my office window and seeing a substitute secretary in Maggie’s chair. I took comfort in the fact that Maggie would be back there in no time, unless she decided to pursue an acting career once she found out how much money she could make as the face of the Japanese auto company.
True to form, Nancy called every night at three in the morning, but I acted like it didn’t bother me. This morning at six I also got a call from her, reminding me to pick her up at the airport, like I could forget.
A couple of hundred-dollar bills to a caretaker smoking a cigarette in the parking lot got me in to see Maggie. I had to climb over bushes and a four-foot-high wall, but it was worth the adventure. “Fifteen minutes,” the caretaker warned me several times. I’m pretty sure I could have bought an extra fifteen minutes for a few hundred more.
Maggie was sitting at a desk writing out cards. I knocked gently on the sliding-glass door and she looked up, smiling broadly. In just a few days, I could see a marked improvement. Her complexion, which was usually flawless before her recent misadventures, was almost back to normal. Her eyes were alive again. She hugged me tightly, thanked me profusely, and started asking about her children. Yes, she was on her way to a full recovery, and this time I would be there for her, to help make sure there would be no relapses. If that made Nancy uncomfortable, too bad.
Chapter Thirteen
Picking up the most beautiful girl in the world at the airport would usually bring a huge smile to my face, but there was so much more to my lovely Nancy. The annoying calls in the middle of the night, to a less knowledgeable and giddy guy, might have been seen as proof that she was serious about the relationship, but I knew that she was just insanely jealous of all the other beautiful girls in Los Angeles.
To take the edge off Nancy’s arrival, I bought a gram of cocaine. It was a pleasure I occasionally indulged in, but I wasn’t a regular user of the garbage. Ironic, after just visiting a rehab center, but what the hell? For the moment, this seemed like my new normal.
I parked across from the terminal, took a hit, and walked to baggage claim. I immediately spotted Nancy at the carousel, her head buried in one of those Russian novels I had given her. I walked up to her and gently tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, smiled, and threw her arms around me, kissing me with such force that I nearly fell over another passenger.
I placed Nancy’s luggage, which weighed at least double what it did before she left, in the trunk of the car. I got into the driver’s seat, grabbed Nancy’s book out of her hand, and flung it into the back seat. After the initial welcome kiss, she had continued to read the book as we walked across the parking garage and got into the car.
“So, did you miss me?” She asked.
“Yes.”
“A whole bunch?”
“Yes.”
“Great!” she replied, reaching for the book, but I blocked her path.
“Don’t make me throw it out, Nancy. I see you didn’t work on your etiquette while you were off sunbathing in the desert.”
“Funny! If you didn’t want me to read the books, you shouldn’t have given them to me.”
“I hoped they would di
stract you enough so that you wouldn’t go off and screw the first guy who offered to buy you dinner.” I sighed, not quite believing what had just come out of my mouth. I waited for a witty reply, but she was quiet.
I desperately needed another hit of coke. I was getting edgy, but there was no way I would do anything in front of her.
I came to a stop at Century Boulevard and waited for what seemed like an eternity for the light to turn green. I switched lanes and got onto the 405 heading east, toward the 101, back to the Valley. I was not going to apologize.
“So you’re protective of me; that’s sweet, Joe.”
I looked at her and realized she wasn’t being sarcastic. “I promised you I would be faithful and I keep my promises, but I guess a little bit of jealousy never hurt a relationship. I’m kind of flattered.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes, but am I going to have to put out first?”
We entered the Smokehouse and were seated right away. I excused myself and went to the bathroom, closed the door to a stall, and snorted two large hits of coke. At the sink on the way out I looked in the mirror for any residue around my nose.
I sat back down at the table and watched Nancy scribble some incomprehensible formula on a piece of paper. I picked up the bottle of wine she had ordered and poured myself a glass. While scribbling with one hand, she was eating a piece of their famous cheesy bread with the other.
Suddenly, I didn’t mind that she was ignoring me. The renewed effects of the coke and the taste of the wine were all I needed. Looking at her was more than enough to keep a smile on my face. Or was it?
Nancy moved closer to me and whispered quietly, “I’m working on a formula for a smart bomb. It’s going to make me rich, but more importantly, it’s going to save millions of lives.”
“A smart bomb?” I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard her correctly. “Is that anything like a laser-guided missile?”
“Much more advanced than that.” She waved her hand, as if to dismiss my comparison as misinformed. “It’s a bomb designed with genetic markers to distinguish between the bad guys and the innocent.”
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