Remembering I had told Jennifer I’d talk to her after the closing bell, I called upstairs. Tasya told me Jennifer had gone out. I left a message. I figured that whatever girlish crisis Jennifer had been in a couple of hours ago had probably passed, but I could catch up with her later.
I took another swipe at my unruly, pale mop, gave it up for tousled, pushed Tycho onto the deck and followed my instincts out the door.
Chapter Seven
My canyon sweeps you majestically seaward, but it’s peaceful. Quiet. It affords you the illusion of living in some perfectly rural setting. And it’s true: my part of Las Flores Canyon is delightfully barren of a great many houses. However, the fact is that both Los Angeles county and the district of Malibu have declared my neighborhood to be an earthquake zone. Call it living dangerously and definitely on the edge. If a house slides down the cliff, it can not be replaced. If an owner wants to tear down their house and rebuild anew, they won’t get a permit: Las Flores Canyon, say the geologists, will see a finite amount of time on this earth in its present form. Those that live here take their chances. And so it’s a fairly deserted canyon, but those that take that chance assure themselves that’s the cost of the exclusivity they enjoy. To a certain degree they’re right. And I’m right, because I rent. But owning a two million dollar house in the neighborhood would not be my idea of a good time, especially since insurance that will protect you — financially — from earthquakes is expensive and somewhat prickly. And, anyway, two million would buy a lot of stocks.
And here’s what I love about living in Malibu: the street that I would logically take to get down the canyon is called Rambla Pacifico. It’s simply the most direct route to the Pacific Coast Highway. But you can’t take that street, because a mud slide happened on it more than 10 years ago and so a big chunk of it has been closed ever since. In most communities in the country this would be an outrage: unthinkable. In Malibu, where a lot of people’s house taxes are more than most American homeowner’s annual incomes, the road repair is not encouraged. It’s pretty much an added deterrent to wannabe star searchers if there is no road to get to their favorite movie or rock star’s house. It also, of course, makes it tougher for those same movie and rock stars to get home, but there’s a price for everything, or so everyone keeps saying. At some point you just have to start wondering if they’re right.
So, because Rambla is not available — nor likely to be anytime soon — I took Las Flores Canyon Drive, which swoops you down to the Pacific Coast Highway in a sort of roundabout fashion. Not the most direct route, but supremely beautiful. On this day, however, I didn’t look at the gnarled Eucalyptus trees that line the sides of the road. I didn’t pay attention to the cotton candy clouds floating over the horizon or the sun-tipped sea. Nor did I marvel at the lovely homes along PCH as I headed down the coast, or the occasional glimpses I caught of surfers or sailboaters or even the happy visual cacophony that is Santa Monica Pier once I got to where PCH joins up with the Santa Monica Freeway. I saw an internal stockticker — not such a newsflash, I guess — and I kept seeing Ernie’s face. As it was when we’d been together, and as I’d seen it at Club Zanzibar.
Taking the Santa Monica Freeway there’s an off-ramp where if you go left — north — you head towards Beverly Hills. Turn right you’re in Culver City. Guess which direction I chose? As I drove, I struggled with my bag, looking for the print out of the press release that just happened to have the Langton Group’s Culver City address on it. Quite the coincidence. At least I have a subconscious mind that believes in being prepared.
By LA standards, it didn’t take me long to find what I was looking for. A couple of false starts, a stop at a gas station to consult my Thomas Guide — the seriously thick book of maps that I’d quickly discovered is the secret to finding anything in LA — and I located the Langton Building, way down at the end of Arizona Crescent which is off Arizona Avenue which is off Centinela. The route was so convoluted, by the time I found the building there was absolutely no way I could convince myself that I was just planning on cruising by to take a look from the car. Although, had I been doing only that, the look from the car would have been impressive. From the vantage point of the single undergrad architecture course I’d taken, I recognized the Langton Building as having been designed in the Zig-Zag Moderne style. Probably built in the early 1930s, it looked like a friendly Art Deco fortress and, together with its parking lot, it occupied most of a whole city block. It looked as though the Gunnarson family had been doing things up in style for a very long time.
From the driver’s seat of my nondescript sedan I could see, along with the usual corporate array of late model cars, a couple of even more nondescript vehicles than mine parked haphazardly in the lot, the telltale mickey mouse ears — you know, those flat, black plastic discs on the car roof — fairly shouting: high tech equipment inside. I knew from watching television that this was likely to mean some sort of cop-like creatures were lurking in the vicinity. Something really was happening here.
Part of me had been thinking — hoping? — that, as I drove by, I’d see Ernie walking from his car to the building — or the other way around — and I’d ever so casually cruise into the parking lot, have a repulsive little reunion and say: I was in the neighborhood, now tell me, what the hell is up? And, of course, he’d tell me. It’s a funny fact that every time you picture something like that — something complicated going smoothly — when actually faced with the reality you always say to yourself: Just what the hell was I thinking?
So that’s what I did now: I berated myself for my recent naiveté. Then, still without anything that could be called a goal or a plan and with Ernie nowhere in sight, I cruised into the parking lot as casually as possible, slid into a spot marked “visitors” and sauntered determinedly to the entrance.
In my work, I’ve often had the opportunity to meet people on the telephone prior to meeting them in person: clients, coworkers, even office drones. In my experience, when you finally get around to seeing them face-to-face, telephone-met people never look like the pictures their voices have drawn. I remember, for instance, a guy I dated briefly a few years ago. A broker who also worked at Merriwether Bailey, we’d had reason to have telephone conversations a couple of times before our conversations started getting warmer and more familiar.
His voice seduced me. I don’t know what it was, but it held all of the right cadences to exactly push my buttons. Maybe the feeling was mutual but, despite company policy to the contrary, we exchanged home phone numbers: each eager to take what had blossomed into an odd little telephone romance to more personal levels. Which we did. Nothing too weird. Just first date-type conversations, but all on the telephone.
It didn’t seem strange to me: that location of our company, alone, occupied four floors of an office tower and he worked on a different floor than I did and in a different department. There was virtually no chance we’d meet at the water cooler or in a photocopy room. And even if they’d had company picnics at Merriwether Bailey, I probably wouldn’t have bothered going.
Considering the business we were in, neither of us was in a big hurry to take our relationship from virtual to reality. If you’re working 60 to 80 hours a week, a romance that requires no more maintenance than a pleasant half hour chatting in the evening can look pretty good. After a while, though, we were ready for some face-to-face conversations. To be honest, I was pretty curious to see the man behind super voice.
I don’t want to say I was disappointed when I finally met him. It wasn’t that he was gross, or anything. He was actually, when I think about it, reasonably attractive. He just wasn’t at all what I was expecting.
What was I expecting? Once I’d met him, I wasn’t sure anymore. I just knew he wasn’t it. But, what the hell, I let it ride. And he let it ride, or whatever, because we kept seeing each other for a while. Which was pretty weird. Every time I didn’t see him — on the telephone or in the dark — in my head, he’d go back to looking like the guy he’
d been before I met him. It was startling, because when the lights came back on, it would always give me this teeny jolt. Like: What the…? Oh, yeah. It was disconcerting.
Who knows, if we’d kept seeing each other, maybe my mental image of him would have aligned with reality, but we didn’t. And I don’t even know who ended it. I just noticed one day that he hadn’t called me and I hadn’t called him. And, more importantly, I didn’t care. I guess that’s what they call fizzling out.
Here and now, standing in the really-quite-impressive lobby of the Langton Building and trying to catch the eye of the receptionist, I was startled. She looked exactly as I’d pictured her. Right down to the tired-looking mauve twinset (OK: maybe I hadn’t imagined it mauve) and the well-cut but over-processed hair. It was remarkable. Nor was it a pleasant surprise, because her voice hadn’t painted a particularly pleasant picture and, what with that terminator crack, I hadn’t left things on the best footing.
Right now she was a picture in studied busy-ness. It was getting to be late-afternoon — maybe four-ish — but there was no sign of people leaving the office and the phones looked pretty lit up. Abnormally busy for this time of the day, I wondered? Or maybe I was just being paranoid again.
As I entered the office, she fixed me with a quelling glance, held up an imperious hand that told me she’d be with me when it was appropriate, and kept saying: “Langton Regional, how may I direct your call?” into her headset. It was the nasal voice that I remembered from earlier, so there was no mistaking her. I tried to compose my face in a pleasant and patient mask until she freed up a moment to talk to me.
Being patient was made easier by the fact that, while I waited, I kept my whole being tuned to… I don’t know… possibilities, I guess. Or at least a hint at the reason I’d come. I listened for an oddness, a wrongness, something off. I listened to her side of curt conversations, and I listened to — forgive me for sounding New Age, but I’d just moved to Southern California , so I guess I felt entitled — the vibe of the office. And, really, I heard a whole lot of nothing. Nothing interesting, anyway. And the reception area was constructed in such a way that the rest of building with its — presumably — teeming offices filled with busy workers might as well not have existed.
After a while I got bored and I did the thing I knew would get her instant attention and, if not, get me closer to what I wanted anyway. Without telegraphing my intent in any way, I calmly walked towards the opening that separated the airlock of reception from the rest of the office. That did it. Before I could even see what was beyond, she’d whipped off her headset and was on her feet to, it seemed, physically stop me if need be.
“Excuse me,” the same nasal voice. And she didn’t say it like she actually wanted to be excused from anything. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
I smiled brightly in the face of her obvious disapproval. “I could see how busy you were,” I said sweetly, “so I just thought I’d make my own way.”
“And you are…?” She did not say it sweetly.
“I’m here to see Mr. Billings.” Again, I’m a broker. Or, at least, I was one recently enough that I know how to get things without giving anything back. Emotionally, physically, whatever. It goes with the territory.
I once again got the feeling that this request produced the slightest hesitation, as though she were a bit unsure of what to do under the circumstances. And I noticed she cleared her throat before she answered, something that struck me as being based on nervousness, though I might have been jumping at shadows again. “He’s in… he’s in a meeting,” she said.
“He’s here then?”
She made a sound that could be taken for assent, but was not entirely clear.
“Well, call him then, please. He won’t want to have missed me.” I tried to look directly into her eyes.
She didn’t look back into mine. “I can’t,” that throat clearing again. “I can’t call him. In the meeting.”
“Fine,” I said and turning away from her, I headed for the inner sanctum. “I’ll go find him myself.”
“You can’t. OK. I’ll. Call. Him.” She did not physically stop me, but the effect was the same.
I turned towards her, arms crossed. “OK then. Call him.” It came out sounding like a challenge. And, really, I wanted her not to be lying. I wanted Sal’s information and all of my hunches put to rest. I wanted Ernie to be back there somewhere, doing CEO-appropriate stuff. But I didn’t think so. Not really.
She was back at her desk, putting on her headset. “What did you say your name was?”
“I don’t believe I did.”
“And you’re with…?”
“I’m an old friend.”
This last was a mistake. She was rude and possibly underpowered, but she wasn’t dumb and I could see something click into place as I said the words.
“You called earlier,” it wasn’t a question. And I noticed the headset was back on the desk. Without her head in it.
“That’s right.”
“I told you then that he’s unavailable. Why are you here?”
“So he isn’t here?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You did. You said it when I called earlier.”
“But I didn’t say it now.”
“Look, if he’s here, just call him and tell him I’ve come to see him. He will see me. And I happen to know he’ll be quite annoyed with you if you don’t.” This last was an overstatement, but I thought the situation warranted it.
“What kind of game do you think you’re playing?” She said it coldly. I had the feeling that she suddenly felt she understood something that I was completely in the dark about. At a loss, I shot for the same tone I’d started with.
“You’re telling me he’s not here?” I asked less than politely.
“You’d better show me some identification,” she said, surprising me. This was, to the best of my knowledge, outside the realm of a receptionist’s duties. Though, if nothing else, this incredibly odd request confirmed that things were not all they seemed to be at the Langton Regional Group. When receptionists start asking for identification from perfectly innocent (!) visitors, you know they’ve gotten orders from someone to do so. Someone not at all corporate who probably carries a gun.
“Excuse me?” It was all I could think to say.
“You heard me. If you are who you say you are — or who you aren’t saying you are — you won’t mind showing me your driver’s license.”
“This is ridiculous,” I told her. “I’m not going to show you my driver’s license. That’s crazy.”
She was adamant. “If you don’t show me your driver’s license, I’m calling security.” Which, any way you sliced it, was weird and getting weirder. And the weirdness was catching, I guess. Because, as she continued in this vein, it gave me my answer: Ernie wasn’t on the premises, or why wouldn’t she have just called him?
In any case, I wasn’t hanging around. I wasn’t even really sure why I didn’t want to give her my DL. Part of it was principle, sure. It was an invasive request. But a larger part had to do with not giving too much away. And that, again, was instinct. Pure instinct. At the moment I was a rabbit (or a deer or an elk or something else made of meat) and I had to get out of the forest.
I left the building and got back to my car without any real idea of what I was going to do next, but there were still two hours left between now and when I was meeting Emily for dinner. I left the parking lot, turning left instead of right and thinking I’d circumnavigate the building and see what I could see. See what? Ernie out back locked in a cage that the killer receptionist had constructed? A neon sign flashing the words: “Something Fishy”? Ernie in an office window waving a sign that read “help me”? Really, none of the above, but I did the circumnavigation anyway.
Turning the corner, almost the first thing I noticed gave me a new idea. A fairly dangerous idea, but what the hell? I was apparently in that sort of mood.
Near a side door w
as that necessity of the modern workplace: an outdoor smoking area. At the moment, Langton’s had half a dozen well-dressed workers ranged around a cylindrical chrome object, no doubt some sort of ashtray.
I parked in the next block, in front of a fast food place, went in, ordered coffee and a bagel to go, then sauntered towards the smokers — different ones by now, no doubt — with my take-out food providing a badge of belonging. If I did indeed work at that office, it would be weird to go for a coffee and a snack so close to the end of the day, but it probably wouldn’t be the kind of weird anyone would comment on. These days enough people work funny shifts and extra time that food and coffee can happen whenever. And so, I headed over with my goodies and made like I was mingling or thinking about smoking.
This was a scary moment to me. Scary even though I’d spent enough time working in large offices to know that not everyone knows everyone. Also, I knew that even if I was found out, the most that was likely to happen would be I’d be given the bum’s rush. Or carded again. Whichever came first. Still, it’s moments like these that make you realize that anthropologists are dead wrong about the history of humankind. At one point, no matter what they all tell us, we were herd animals. We all live with the fear of being discovered as not quite fitting in with the herd. We’re afraid that, should the leaders discover this, they’ll turn and kill us. With their bare hands or teeth or hooves or other sharp, pointy animal bits. This is a fairly universal human fear. And it’s one I’ve had periodically throughout my life — high school springs unasked to mind. But I’ve never had the feeling so strongly as standing outside the Langton Building with a bunch of smokers I’d never met before, praying dully to fit into their clique while I figured out if I’d need some sort of key or cardlock to get in the side door they’d all evidently come out of.
And, of course, they were all busy with their own lives and conversations and so barely noticed me. I relaxed against a stone bench and sipped my coffee, hoping I looked like I was enjoying a stolen moment in the afternoon sun and that I wouldn’t look too conspicuous not smoking.
Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money Page 9