The Prince of Venice Beach

by Nelson, Blake

  “A couple days ago.”

  She thought about that. “The truth is,” she said, “the people who say they want to help me are exactly the people who are going to hurt me.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to understand.

  She stared down the street and shook her head. “But you don’t care about that. You work for them.”

  “No! But I don’t!” I said. “I just started. I’m trying to learn the business. I don’t know anything.”

  She barely heard me when I said this. She was watching the passing cars, waiting for a break in the traffic. Then her eyes locked back onto mine. “I’m gonna ask you, as a personal favor, to give me some time. To give me a head start out of here. To save my own life.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “It was nice to meet you, Cali,” she said. “You seem like an honorable person. But I’m gonna go now. And I don’t want you to follow me.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I swear.”

  “All right,” she said.

  I swallowed. At that moment, I knew I would do anything for her. I would help her in any way I could.

  Then she turned and ran across Pacific Avenue.

  I stayed where I was. Like she told me to.

  When she got to the other side, I remembered my phone. “Uh, Reese!?” I yelled across the busy street. “What about my phone?”

  “You’ll get it back!” she shouted.

  “How?” I yelled.

  But she had turned down a side street. In another moment, she was gone from sight.

  FIFTEEN

  Strawberry handed me my phone.

  “When did Reese give you this?” I asked her. We were standing outside the Pizza Slice.

  “Last night,” she said.

  I tried it. It still worked.

  “She’s pretty,” said Strawberry.

  “Yeah, she is,” I said.

  “Is she rich?”

  “Yeah.”

  Strawberry stared up at me, with her big eyes. “Rich people are dangerous,” she said.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “When the devil is bored and wants to talk to someone, it’s always a rich person he calls. Or someone who wants to be rich.”

  I glanced down at Strawberry as I put away my phone. “Who told you that?”

  “No one.”

  I was curious to hear more of Strawberry’s thoughts, but I had other things to worry about. I was now in a very difficult situation. I was getting paid to find a girl, who had just found me. What did I do now? What would a professional private investigator do? I tried to imagine Grisham in this situation. Or Bruce Edwards. They’d probably call whoever hired them and report exactly what happened. And get paid. I was pretty sure of that.

  But what about Reese’s mother? If she didn’t commit suicide, what happened to her? And who caused it to happen? And if Reese herself was in danger, wasn’t it my first duty to protect her? No matter what else happened? Wasn’t that the whole point?

  I called Ailis to see what she thought but she didn’t answer. She was probably in class.

  In the meantime, I decided to get a haircut. I went to Diego’s aunt’s hair salon near the marina. I didn’t know how such places worked in California. The only barbershop I’d ever been to was in Nebraska, where they played baseball on TV and you read fishing magazines.

  This place was all girly and it smelled like nail polish. I went ahead, though. Diego’s cousin Maria put me in one of the chairs.

  “So you want like, a surfer thing?” she said, since she could see the obvious sun and salt-water damage to my hair.

  “I just need it cut,” I said. “So it doesn’t look so…”

  “… like you cut it yourself, with a pocket knife?”

  I actually did cut it myself with a pocket knife. “Uh… yeah…” I said.

  So then she started combing it. That didn’t go well. I felt like Strawberry, having someone try to detangle the rat balls in my hair. I mean, mine weren’t as bad as Strawbs’s, but I still had some spots that no comb was going to penetrate.

  I watched Maria’s face in the mirror and suddenly felt embarrassed. Stylish Reese had seen me like this. I must have looked like a wild animal to her.

  Maria called her boss over to look at my tangled hair. They both laughed. The boss said: “That’s gonna cost extra.” But I don’t think she meant it.

  Finally Maria started cutting. It felt good in a way, the comb moving through my hair, the rhythm of the scissors snipping. It made me feel warm and sleepy, like I was being hypnotized. Maybe it was the feeling of human touch. I didn’t get a lot of that. Her hand moving my head forward, pulling it back. The way her soft fingers brushed across my hair, smoothing it, then pulling up a clump to cut it. My eyes started to close. A deep glow began to form in my chest. It was sort of heavenly.

  When I was done, Maria turned the chair around so I could look at myself. It looked pretty weird. It looked girly, to be honest, all neat and nice and trim. She asked me if I wanted it shorter still, and I said no. It would be hard enough to get used to already. And everyone would make fun of me, of course.

  Diego had told me to tip her and I did. But since I didn’t know how much, I think I gave her too much. It was worth it though. The whole thing was worth it. I thought I should do this more often. Once a year, at least.

  That night I went to GED class. I sat next to Jax, who had a few things to say about my new “college boy” haircut.

  “Dude, we’re in a college,” I reminded him, since that’s where we were.

  That night’s class was more discussions about the Civil War. We’d been talking about it all week. The teacher said, “If the South was fighting to preserve their slavery-based economy, what was the North fighting for?”

  A couple people tried to answer. Nobody really knew.

  I raised my hand: “I watched this video from Public TV?” I said. “And according to that, half the soldiers didn’t even know what the war was about. It was just a war. So people went. Because a war is like a really intense game of street basketball. It creates an aura that radiates out. And people are attracted to that, especially guys. They don’t want to miss out on the action. They want to see it, and be there, and be part of it. They want to get in the game.”

  Everyone laughed. But I was totally serious. The soldiers said that exact thing in their letters. None of the politics mattered in the end. It was the thrill of it. The drama. The challenge. There were people shooting at people, right down the road. How could you miss that?

  “Thank you, Robert,” said the teacher. “That’s a very mystical way of looking at it.”

  “Dude, you’re mystical!” whispered Jax. He gave me a fist bump.

  “Anybody else?” said the teacher. “Any other theories other than that wars create auras?”

  Everyone laughed at that. But I didn’t care. I was right. I totally was.

  After class, I met Ailis in the parking lot.

  “Do you want to look for Reese?” she said as we got in her car. She was being extra nice now, to make up for her freak out in the tree house.

  “Actually…” I said, putting my seat belt on. “I found her.”

  “You found her!?” gasped Ailis. “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Where was she?”

  “She came to the basketball courts.”

  “She came to you?”

  “I know,” I said. “It was very strange.”

  Ailis stared at me with wonder.

  “She told me her side of the story,” I continued. “It turned out to be more complicated than I thought.”

  “Like how?”

  I took a long breath. “She said her mom didn’t commit suicide.”

  “But she did!” said Ailis. “I looked it up myself. There were articles about it online.”

  “She seems to think something else happened,” I said.

  “Something else? Like what?”
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br />   “She didn’t say. It sounded like her dad might be involved.”

  “She thinks her dad killed her mom?” said Ailis in disbelief.

  “Maybe so,” I said. “I know. It sounds crazy.”

  “That’s impossible!” said Ailis. “That’s like something in a movie!”

  I looked out my window. “I know.”

  Ailis thought about this. We both thought about it.

  “Do you believe her?” said Ailis.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” I said. “It does sound crazy. But when she told me… I believed her. She has this way about her. She’s very open. And honest. And kinda vulnerable in a way. You want to help her.”

  Ailis frowned slightly when I said that.

  I began tapping the door lightly with my knuckle. “The thing is. What do I do about Grisham? I can’t take his money, if I’m not going to help him.”

  “You want to take yourself off the case?” asked Ailis.

  “What else can I do?”

  “Find out the truth!”

  “And how am I gonna do that?”

  Ailis didn’t know. I didn’t know.

  “I’ll call him tomorrow,” I said.

  “What are you gonna say?”

  “I’m gonna quit. I can do that. It’s just a job.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Ailis.

  I nodded. But the truth was, I had no idea.

  I could barely sleep that night. Would I be breaking some private-investigator code by quitting the Reese case? Would I ever get hired again? This was my dream job. This was the only thing I wanted to do.

  Early the next morning, I skateboarded to the beach. A nice swell from the southwest had come up and the early morning surfers were hurrying toward the beach. I wished I was going surfing. That seemed so easy, so uncomplicated.

  I cruised the boardwalk. The stalls were just opening up—the cheap sunglasses places, the surfboard rental. I wondered where Reese was at that moment. But I was glad I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

  And then in the midst of my worries, I had a different thought: Where was Mugs?

  I hated how that felt so unresolved. It occurred to me that this was the reality of being a private investigator. You might never know what the exact story was, or who was telling the truth, or what actually happened to the people you found or worked for.

  That led to another thought: What if I didn’t have the stomach for the private-investigator business? What if I was like one of those Civil War soldiers, attracted to the aura of war? It sounded so fun and exciting when you’re sitting at home. But now I was here, in the thick of it, experiencing the reality. And it wasn’t fun at all.

  I played hoops with Jojo and some other people that afternoon. Jojo was just shooting. No driving. No dunks. Just midrange jump shots. He made every single shot he took. It was a nice work out, a quiet game. Jojo could have that effect on you. Playing ball with him, just being in his presence, it calmed your mind. It reminded you that everything was basically okay.

  Sitting on the bleachers, waiting for the next game, my phone rang. It was an LA number I didn’t recognize. I took the call. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” said Reese.

  “Reese?” I said. I turned away from the basketball court.

  “I was wondering if you’d told my father’s henchmen where I was.”

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t said anything. I was about to call the guy who hired me.”

  “And do what?”

  “Quit.”

  “Really?” she said.

  “Well yeah, what else can I do?”

  “You could take their money and turn me in.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, a new warmth in her voice. “That says a lot about you as a person.”

  “I think in the future,” I said, “I’m only gonna take jobs where I know what is actually happening, who’s the good guy, who’s the bad guy.”

  “Are there many cases like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But those are the ones I want. I don’t like it when things get complicated.”

  “But isn’t everything pretty complicated when you get right down to it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I think it is.”

  “Well, you would know, I guess.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just…” I said. “You seem pretty smart about stuff.”

  “Me?” she laughed. “You’re the one who’s smart about stuff. Talk about street smarts! You get people to pay you to hang around and shoot baskets!”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right.

  “You want to hang out later?” she said. “I owe you a smoothie.”

  This completely threw me. I had assumed she was three states away and moving fast. “Like where? In Venice?”

  “Of course in Venice. Where did you think I was?”

  “I assumed you were… gone.”

  “I’ll meet you at six. But it’s gotta be someplace out of the way.”

  I told her to meet me at the Milk Bar Cafe, on Washington.

  She was late. I guess that made sense. I got a latte and sat at an outside table. I waited. And waited.

  She finally appeared, walking fast down the sidewalk. She was wearing a yellow summer dress and lipstick. She saw me and nodded from behind her big sunglasses. “Let’s walk,” she said.

  I jumped out of my seat and followed her down the sidewalk.

  We moved along through the crowd. “Can I have a sip of your coffee?” she asked me.

  I handed her my paper cup. She drank some and handed it back. I noticed the lipstick marks on the lid. They were the exact color of blood.

  We walked toward the pier and ended up on the beach, walking along the water. Naturally, I wanted to hear more about her family situation. What really happened to her mother? And if someone else was involved, who was it? But she didn’t want to talk about that. Instead, she wanted to hear about Nebraska and how I got from there to California at fourteen. I was like, why would you want to hear about that? But she insisted. And who could deny Reese Abernathy anything? Not me.

  So I did my best, telling about my birth family: my father who disappeared and my mother, a nurse, who was killed on an icy night trying to help at the scene of a car accident. Then my years in social services, my weird foster families, my horrible first year of high school, and the moment I realized I had to get out of Nebraska. And so began the planning, the scheming, and eventually my escape…

  After my story, Reese told about her life. Growing up back east. The move to California. How her supposedly “upstanding” father was unpredictable and ruthless and sometimes violent at home. He once pushed her mother off a chairlift in Colorado, and then claimed it was an accident. They moved around. Reese was always changing schools. Nothing stayed the same. They’d give her a horse, they’d take it away. They’d start her with dance lessons then stop. The happy life she imagined for herself, which seemed so easily within her reach, never materialized.

  “So what are you gonna do?” I finally asked. We had stopped at the water’s edge to watch the pelicans skim across the surface.

  “I don’t know. What do you think I should do?”

  “Can you prove anything about your mom?” I asked.

  “Not really.”

  “You’ve got no proof at all? Nothing you could show the police?”

  “The police do whatever my father tells them to do.”

  I nodded with sympathy. “So you’re stuck.”

  “I’m worse than stuck,” she said. “I’m one girl against a small army of very well-paid detectives. They’re gonna follow me forever.”

  I stood, pondering this.

  “Thank God I found you,” she said, her voice softening.

  “What can I do though?”

  “You can keep me sane.”

  “How am I going to do that?”
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  She looked at me funny then. She said: “By this. By talking. By hearing about your life.”

  “Does that really help?”

  “Yes, Cali, that really helps. Why do you think there’s therapists?” She looked at me closer then, like she couldn’t believe how clueless I was.

  Then she got this really practical look on her face. She pulled her hair back and knotted it behind her head. “Come here,” she said, stepping forward in the sand.

  “What?” I said.

  She grabbed my elbows and pulled me toward her. “This is called a hug,” she said. She put her arms around me and pulled me close. It was very innocent. It was like the hugs you get in foster care when your fake parents tell you to hug your fake brothers and sisters.

  “How does that feel?” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “I’ve hugged people before,” I said. “I’m not a space alien.”

  But inside, I was freaking out. It wasn’t that Reese wasn’t a girl any guy would dream of hugging. It was just so sudden. And so confusing. I was still supposedly looking for her. And being paid to do it.

  She settled into the hug a little more. She gripped me more tightly. It did feel pretty amazing.

  “Cali?” she whispered into the side of my neck.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “You’re supposed to hug me back.”

  “Oh,” I said, quickly putting my arms around her. “Sorry.”

  SIXTEEN

  The next day, I called Grisham. And I lied. I was not the best liar it turned out.

  “What ya got for me?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said, my voice tightening. “I’ve been everywhere. If she was here, she’s gone.”

  “Well, keep at it. I’ll switch you over to my assistant, she’ll reimburse you for expenses.”

  “Uh, actually,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”

  “Sorry kid, we can’t give you any more money.”

  “It’s not that. It’s that I’m… I’m going away for a while. I think you should get someone else.”

  “What?”

  “I’m leaving town. So I can’t work for you anymore.”

  “You’re barely working for me now, son. And I’m paying you good money.”

  “Right, I know. But I kinda want to chill out for now….”