Gold Hill

by Christian, Claudia Hall

  “Probably,” Seth smiled. “What it means to me is that we need to re-record everything we’ve done so far. That’s not such a huge deal since the orchestra knows their parts and the whole machine is working well. It’s just that . . . ”

  He reached a hand out to her which she caught midair. She smiled at him.

  “I want to go home.”

  “I bet,” Ava said. “How long do you think it will take to re-record everything?”

  “Couple weeks, tops,” Seth said. “Especially since Jeraine’s on board. I guess they set up everything at his apartment. We can get him the sound every night, they’ll mix it and add the sound track to the movie. We’ll know what we need to redo in the morning.”

  “Is that different from other times?” Ava asked.

  “That kind of turn around is unusual,” Seth said. “It can take months or years even, but since they’ve been through it and Jeraine is there, it should be pretty straight forward.”

  Ava smiled.

  “Schmidty said you were upset about something,” Seth said.

  “Did you tell Westword that my Dad had prostitutes at apartments he owns on Fourteenth?” Ava asked.

  “Of course not,” Seth said. “That would be really bad for Yvonne. Why?”

  Stunned by his words, Ava’s mouth dropped open and her eyes flooded with tears.

  “Wha . . . What are you saying?” She rocked herself back and forth.

  Seth jumped over to her. She let him pull her to him and cried into his chest. He held her as her tears became sobs and her sobs slowed to tears. He continued to hold her after the storm had passed and she clutched onto him like a life raft. When the words came, he shifted back to let her breathe.

  “It’s like an answer to a question I didn’t know I had,” Ava said. “Where did all the money come from? Why did we have such a big house? Private schools? Plastic surgery? It’s like I’ve always known and never known at the same time.”

  Her face was a wash of sorrow.

  “What happened?” Seth asked.

  “Barton wrote a story about Dad that says he . . . did that and . . . ”

  “Did?”

  “The building caught on fire,” Ava said. “There was a construction crew nearby, Jammy says it was one of Jake’s, they sprayed the building with water so the fire never got too hot so they found . . . bodies.”

  “How many?”

  “Four,” Ava said. “Ferg said the women were killed before the fire. If that construction crew hadn’t been there, no one would have ever known.”

  Seth’s face showed so much concern that Ava leaned back to look at him.

  “What?” Ava asked.

  “Nothing,” Seth said.

  “Dad had a press conference saying you told Westword because you’re mad that he solved the Saint Jude thing,” Ava said.

  “Politicians,” Seth said. “They will and do say anything.”

  “You know all about this?” Ava asked.

  Seth nodded.

  “Will you tell me everything? Not leave anything out?”

  “Are you sure?” Seth asked.

  “I need to know,” Ava said.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” Seth had the sinking feeling that when he was finished, their relationship would be finished too. She was too young to understand the dark side of love. It would take her decades to understand what he was telling her. “Let’s go inside where we can talk in private.”

  Ava got up from the lounger and went inside.

  For a moment, his heart constricted with pain and sorrow. Looking out over the ocean, every cell in his body longed to go back to this morning when they’d made love in the shower and laughed through breakfast. He closed his eyes to hold onto the memory for just a moment longer.

  Seth had never backed down from anything in his life. The woman he loved completely needed him to be that man today. He followed her inside.

  Chapter Two Hundred and Seven

  Dark Creatures

  Wednesday afternoon — 4:47 p.m. P.T./ 5:47 p.m. MT

  Ava was sitting on the couch in the living area just inside the sliding windows. Seth held out a hand to her. She looked at his hand for a moment, and then took it. He led her back to their bedroom.

  “I don’t know when Lizzie will be home from therapy,” Seth said. “They usually get dinner, but I know Schmidty wants to know what the producers decided. They should be here any minute.”

  She took a seat on the bed and he sat down next to her. When he turned, she got up and sat in one of the chairs at the small table near the windows.

  “Do you mind?” Ava asked. “I don’t want to talk about sex and my Dad and . . . whatever . . . there where we . . . ”

  Seth got up and went to sit across from her.

  “I’m not sure where to start,” Seth said.

  “Was my father . . . I mean . . . ” Ava said.

  “Your father owns rentals around town, mostly in that neighborhood, the Mayfair. Have you been there?”

  Ava shook her head.

  “They were built by the Air Force for housing near the end of World War II,” Seth said. “They . . . oh whatever. Last I checked, he owns three or four in that neighborhood.”

  “And the prostitutes?”

  Seth nodded.

  “How . . . I mean . . . ”

  Seth sighed. She looked up at him. She reached out her hand and he took it.

  “I don’t know what you want to know,” Seth said. “I don’t know if I have the answers you’re looking for.”

  “I want to know what you know.”

  “What I know . . . okay,” Seth said. “When I met your father, he was a young prosecutor hoping to become a DA. He wasn’t big or tough or . . . I’d been touring, writing music, making money . . . I’d already been to war and back. And Mitch was alive.”

  Feeling her eyes on his face, he glanced at her.

  “I always had the sense that your father was going places,” Seth said. “And that he didn’t mind doing what had to be done to get there.”

  “You didn’t like him,” Ava said.

  “I wish you’d met Mitch,” Seth said. “From the moment I met Mitch, he was my best friend. There I was, this weird kid that had lived on my own in New York City since the time I was ten. I bought my own clothes, cars, whatever – and I did what I wanted to do. Until Mitch got his driver’s license, I had a driver. And Mitch was my friend.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re saying,” Ava said. “You had all this life experience, money, fame, went to Vietnam, and were best friends with the super popular Mitch. Even though my Dad was just starting out, he acted like he was something special.”

  Seth nodded.

  “I can see that,” Ava said.

  “He worked his way up at the DA’s office while Mitch and I were working our way into becoming detectives,” Seth said. “Then we’d see him here or there. This case, that case.”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “I didn’t think about him,” Seth said. “Think about it. How many prosecutors can you identify by name?”

  “Two? Maybe three?” Ava shrugged.

  “That’s what I mean,” Seth said. “He was just there. We were just there. The first time I really noticed your Dad was . . . and maybe this is what you want to know . . . I don’t know.”

  Seth sighed.

  “You know Tanesha right?” Seth asked.

  Ava nodded.

  “Her mother took a job as a secretary for the District Attorney,” Seth said. “The first black District Attorney in Denver. He was appointed in 1983. He hired Yvonne as his secretary. I think that’s where your Dad met her.”

  “Tanesha’s mom?”

  Thinking, Seth fell silent. He nodded to himself, and then looked up at her.

  “Yvonne is a tremendous human being,” Seth said. “Gorgeous, more beautiful than any model or actress, any I’ve seen, at least. She is also kind and has a type of smarts – not book smarts, a type of people s
marts. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like her.”

  Seth smiled at his memory.

  “Mitch loved her completely,” he continued. “Not a sexual kind of love, but a kind of Mother Mary love. He thought she was an angel. Yvonne was married to Rodney and absolutely crazy about him. She could have been anything she wanted to be. Anything. All Yvonne wanted to be was Rodney’s wife and the mother of his children.”

  “And my father?”

  “Your father loves Yvonne,” Seth said. “I believe that’s true. I don’t know if it was love at first sight or . . . He worships her. He wasn’t married at the time. He told me once that he begged her to leave Rodney, but she just laughed. She thought he was joking. She couldn’t imagine what he was saying was true and he . . . wanted her.

  “Around the time Rodney was charged, she tried to kill herself.”

  “Yvonne?”

  “She couldn’t imagine living without Rodney; she didn’t want to,” Seth said. “She cut a tendon in her hand and . . . couldn’t be secretary anymore. After Rodney was in prison, she and Tanesha lived with her mom, but that didn’t work out. Her mom kicked her out and your father was there.”

  Seth fell silent for such a long time that Ava was about to ask him something when he sighed.

  “I think your father thought that with Rodney out of the picture, she would marry him,” Seth said. “But . . . Yvonne loves Rodney. She would cross every day off the calendar to count down until Rodney was home. That’s hard on a man, especially an important man, who wants . . . to be her world.”

  “Now, I’m not covering anything up here,” Seth said. “The truth is that I don’t know what happened. Something happened and Mitch and I were called out to one of those crappy motels on Colfax in the middle of the night. Tanesha was under the table, hysterical, and Yvonne . . . Anyway, they went to Denver Health – Yvonne and Tanesha. The next morning Yvonne was gone and Tanesha was still there. Bumpy talked Yvonne’s mother into raising Tanesha.”

  “The next time I saw Yvonne, vice had picked her up for solicitation,” Seth said. “She was strung out, cocaine I think, and working somewhere downtown.”

  Seth stopped to look at Ava. She nodded.

  “Why does that make sense to you?”

  “Because my father put her on a pedestal and she wouldn’t have him,” Ava said. “He’d have to knock her down to truly dominate her, to own her.”

  Not sure what to say, Seth gave a slight nod.

  “If my father loved her so much, why did you think he’d kill her?” Ava asked.

  “He’s fixated on Yvonne,” Seth said. “He’s told everyone that if anyone gets in the way of this . . . situation he will kill her. He will kill her rather than let her go. We – me, Bumpy, Mitch – we just tried to make things easier for Yvonne; that’s the best we could do. It feels horrible, awful, I tried to buy her once but . . . your father won’t let her go.”

  Seth sighed.

  “Westword says that he saw her every Saturday at eight in the morning,” Ava said.

  Seth nodded.

  “He told us he was playing golf.” Ava snorted. “But . . . But why not set her up as his mistress? He owns all those apartments. He could see her when he wants and . . . ”

  Her voice tapered off.

  “Yvonne doesn’t love him,” Seth said. “She never will. Yvonne loves Rodney. Until her light is extinguished from this world, she will only love Rodney. She has sex with men for money because your father told her that she was helping Rodney get better treatment in prison. She’s trying to make sure Rodney is well cared for.”

  “But . . . ”

  “She doesn’t know that Rodney’s out,” Seth said. “And of course, he’d never be out if your father had anything to do with it. He needed Rodney in jail to keep Yvonne doing his bidding. You know he blocked every petition to have the DNA in the case run.”

  “How did it finally happen?” Ava asked.

  “Rodney is an amazing philosopher. He started a dialog with a music artist about five years into his sentence,” Seth said. “They raised money for him and got the Innocence Project to take his case. An anonymous donor paid for the DNA testing.”

  “But Yvonne doesn’t know Rodney is out,” Ava said.

  “When whatever happened, Yvonne damaged her brain,” Seth said. “She can only remember what she writes down. So he may have told her, then kept her preoccupied for an hour and a half. She’d never remember.”

  “Why haven’t Denver Police . . . ?”

  “I’m going to tell you something that you already know,” Seth said. “All over the world, at every level of society, there are men with . . . appetites. These men find each other. It’s just a fact. They form alliances in order to develop communities to help each other fill their appetites. Each member is obsessed with some perversion so every interaction is a transaction, a give-and-take designed to ensure that every man gets what he craves. Some crave money. Some crave sex with girls or boys or animals or whatever else you can imagine. Most men crave power.

  “Yvonne is the total focus of your father’s obsession. And his circle is willing to help him satisfy his obsession because that’s the very currency they trade in, because he’s done the same for them day in and day out for decades.”

  “Who are these people?” Ava asked. “They sound so . . . creepy.”

  “Money men, not just business men, but investors, CEOs, bank owners, men who control or can reach out to control almost all the jobs in this city; that’s not to mention the cops, and prosecutors and defense attorneys and judges who can reach out with all the force of the law and change lives.”

  Ava’s face looked like she was digesting a bitter pill. She shook her head.

  “What do you . . . do about it?” she asked.

  “All we can do is try to make things a little better. Sometimes we’re able to step in and make it right. And sometimes all we can do is ease the suffering around the edges a little. That’s what everyone tries to do with Yvonne – ease her suffering on the hopes that one day, she will be free. But I’ll tell you this Ava, he will kill her before she’s taken from him. And his friends facilitate the transaction.”

  “Do you think he . . . killed . . . ?” Ava’s eyes filled with despair.

  “His circle includes some . . . shady elements,” Seth said. “They’ve kept all this business quiet and clean. I doubt most of the girls knew they worked for him.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “Yvonne lives in the four-plex on Fourteenth,” Seth said. “He visits Yvonne there. They would have known about him.”

  “And these shady elements?” Ava asked.

  “I don’t know about that,” Seth shook his head. “I could guess but . . . I honestly don’t know. Like I said, he is a part of a club that I know exists but have never been a member.”

  Ava’s chest seemed to cave. Her shoulders folded forward and her head hung down. Assuming she was grief stricken, Seth reached out to touch her face. When she looked up at him, she looked furious. Assuming she was mad with him, he leaned back. She shook her head and looked out the window at the ocean.

  “When I was hanging there . . . in that place . . . and that creature . . . and Bonita . . . and your song and . . . ” Ava’s voice held her deep grief. “I was able to shut my eyes, to look away, but this?”

  Ava shook her head.

  “I’ve stayed awake at night and wondered why I was able to withstand that creature? Why was its essence so familiar to me? What’s wrong with me that I could . . . hold out so easily when most people died?” She glared at Seth. “And now I know. My father might not be that creature, he might not have one living inside him like Saint Jude, but he is of the same ilk.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest.

  “He used his circle to get me my lab,” Ava said. “Didn’t he?”

  Seth nodded.

  “And my sister? Her spot at the DA?”

  Seth nodded.

  “Fuck.”
<
br />   “You’ve earned your lab now,” Seth said. “No one’s going to take it away from you. When you got there, I think everyone thought you would just be there for a year or so before you moved up the chain. But you’re still there. You’re still doing great work. You belong there.”

  Ava gave him a partial smile.

  “You know what I think,” Seth said.

  “What?”

  “I think we should go for a swim,” Seth said. “Shake off the parental blues, get dressed go out, dance until we drop, make love until dawn and do it all over again tomorrow.”

  “I thought you had to work tomorrow,” Ava said.

  “You can sleep while I work,” Seth said.

  “You don’t think I should fly back and facilitate this parental crisis?”

  “Nah,” Seth said. “Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Your father made his deals and took his chances a long, long time ago; he’s going to get his own consequences. There’s nothing we can do now.”

  “And Yvonne?”

  “Say a prayer that Yvonne makes it through this day,” Seth said. “Because if she survives today? She’s going to be fine. Rodney’s love for her is as strong as hers for him. He’ll find her and they will work out whatever needs to be worked out. If she survives today . . . ”

  Ava closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Praying for Yvonne.”

  “Oh,” Seth closed his eyes to say a prayer for Yvonne. His phone rang. “Do you mind? It’s Bumpy.”

  Ava shook her head. Seth answered his phone.

  “O’Malley.”

  “You heard this junk?” Bumpy asked.

  “Is he blaming the whole mess on me?” Seth asked.

  “How’d you know?” Bumpy laughed.

  “Have you seen Yvonne?” Seth asked.

  “I’ve been out at Dearfield,” Bumpy said. “We’re just coming into town now. But I just talked to Dionne. She hasn’t heard boo from Yvonne.”

  “That’s not good,” Seth said.

  “How’s Ava?” Bumpy asked.

  “Like you’d expect,” Seth said.

  “Poor girl,” Bumpy said. “How can two selfish stupid people have such a wonderful daughter?”