I had placed a call to Badger the night I was dismissed by Valenti with a request to track down the real name and address of the gossip blogger who wrote the story about Jeanette. These sorts of mentions were universally placed by sources with motives—mostly public relations hacks but also people with personal axes to grind. Perhaps there was value in knowing what motivation drove the person who placed this particular story. Badger told me he would have the information to me in a few hours. But I never heard back from him.
After several attempts to reach him and having his phone go straight to voicemail, I decided to make the short drive over to his office/home in Echo Park during the lunch hour. In my previous dealings with him, the one constant was his reliability. Like many of his self-proclaimed merits, his “Johnny-on-the-Spot” moniker was consistently accurate. My mind raced at the possibilities and the growing fear that I, and my amateurish sleuthing, had set him on a course that had brought him into harm’s way.
I looked apprehensively at the large bay windows outside his office but couldn’t see past my own noonday reflection in the glass. I crossed the ten feet of sidewalk to the front door and entered the office.
It was ten degrees hotter inside than out. The air was still and rank. I didn’t see Badger, but the half-opened curtain leading to the back room sang out that if I wanted my answer, I needed to cross through it. My feet sank in the gold-plush carpet as I moved toward the back of the room. Passing the desk, I lifted up the yellowed newspaper. The gun was not there.
The curtain dividing the office space from the living quarters hung heavy on a metal rod. As I pushed it aside I took a step forward and leaned back at the same time; the bottom half of my body entered the room while my head remained in the doorway. I knew what was back there but wasn’t quite ready to confront it.
I saw the awkward figure sitting on the floor with its back to the wall. He was shirtless and had his hands bound behind him. His head, covered in a pillowcase, slumped down onto his shoulder in an unnatural position.
I suddenly felt nauseous and fought off a bout of the dry heaves. Then I heard rustling and realized that Badger was moving.
“Jesus!” I shouted and ran over to him. I ripped the pillowcase from his head and his hairpiece came with it. Even with the labored breaths reverberating throughout the room, it still felt like I was looking at a dead man. His skin was a sickly white, his eyes bloodshot.
“There he is,” his voice scratched, lacking its normal enthusiasm. “Give me a little water, would you?”
I found a never-washed glass on the sink in the bathroom and filled it up. I held it to his lips and he greedily drank from it. Most of the water just rolled down his chest, but those few swallows put some of the life back into him.
“What happened?” I asked.
He muscled himself upright. I heard the grinding of metal on metal as the handcuffs that bound his wrists rubbed against the drainpipe they were looped around. The skin under the cuffs was raw and even bloody, and blood spots on the pipe glistened against the rust, showing he had struggled mightily to break free.
“Get the key,” he instructed. “It’s in the top right drawer of the desk.”
I scrambled back to the front room and found the key among a pile of metal paperclips and bent thumb tacks. I thought of the humiliation he must be feeling, the equivalent of a cop having his squad car stolen. Badger had been overcome and bound with his own handcuffs.
It took me a few tries but I was finally able to release his wrists. “You’re a prince,” he whispered and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face.
“Tell me what happened,” I said as he returned to the room, recovered his hairpiece, and put it back on its rightful spot.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
I detected a tinge of embarrassment.
“What do you mean it’s nothing? Who did this? Did you get a look at them?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m very worried.”
“It’s not that,” he dismissed.
“It’s just something we do.”
“Wait…what? Something who does?”
“Yeah, a little role-play me and my lady friend like to do.” He might as well have said something about taking out the trash. It was a non-event in his eyes. “I must have said something that upset her. I never thought she’d take this long to get back.” He turned to face me. “Guy, I let you down.”
The man responsible for unearthing the seamy side of potential employment candidates, the one whom I was about to rely on to help me track down Jeanette, was too busy getting himself hog-tied to radiators to complete his duties and was asking for forgiveness. And for some reason I wasn’t even angry.
“I found your gossip blogger,” he said. “Sorry I couldn’t get this to you earlier but I was preoccupied.”
He handed me a slip of paper with a name and address. Putting aside whatever misgivings I had about his personal life and overall demeanor, I decided to engage him on a long-term assignment to help me track down Jeanette. He could do things I couldn’t and he had already proven to be very handy in unearthing information.
“I have another job for you,” I told him. “A big job.”
I explained everything to him, including details I’d withheld from Detective Ricohr. Badger nodded solemnly but the obligatory declaration of this job being the top priority never came. Instead, he sort of stalled like there was something more to be said.
“Does that all make sense?”
“Perfect sense,” he replied. “Full commitment required.”
“I would imagine.”
“Job could go in many directions.”
“Most definitely,” I said.
“And for an indeterminate length.”
“I guess so.”
He nodded his head but not in agreement.
“And this one isn’t for the company?” he asked.
That’s when I finally understood his apprehension. The job was sizable, and I hadn’t delivered on my half of the deal.
“What kind of retainer do you usually work on?” I asked. I had seen enough of the old movies to know how this worked.
“Let’s not make this about money, guy,” Badger scolded. “I’m helping you because you’re a stand-up guy who has always done right with me. I don’t work with just anyone, you know. This can be an ugly business and I am careful with whom I associate.”
It was all an act—the man clearly needed cash. I could see the army cot and hotplate and empty cans of refried beans and squeaky fan doing nothing against the heat. But there was the man’s pride to deal with. He needed to be begged.
“I insist. This is a big job.”
“I know what I am getting into.”
“And I can’t allow you to put forth such a big effort without an equal commitment on my end.”
“I know you’re good for it.” He waved me off but quickly added, “But if you insist, my standard fee is 400 a day plus expenses.” I was a little taken aback by how quickly he gave in. Times must have been worse than I thought. I went out to my car and got my checkbook. As I wrote out a check, Badger wet his lips in apparent anticipation of an expensed meal on my dime.
“One week advance good enough?”
“Whatever you think is right is right with me,” he kept up the charade. “And don’t feel you have to—”
“Take the fucking money, Badger,” I said, growing annoyed.
“You’re a prince,” he smiled as the check disappeared, with some effort, into the narrow slit of his two-sizes-too-small jeans back pocket.
He walked me out, a little lighter on his feet and showing no effect of the $2,800 of my money weighing him down. What started out as a side job to get central air in my house was turning into a gaping hole in my already bleak bank account. But I couldn’t begrudge Badger. This was, after all, his livelihood, and who was I to extort him just because I happened to save him from dehydration caused by a temperamental domin
atrix.
Out on the sidewalk, he gave me a sweaty hug and declared I was, yet again, his number-one priority.
PROGRESS
I got out of work a little early—like most people in corporate American do every day—and made the drive out to North Hollywood where the blogger lived. Traffic was decent for the 101 and I soon found myself steaming up and over the Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley.
The San Fernando Valley was a figurative, and on days like today, a literal purgatory. Flat, hot, and endless, the monotony of the basin mirrored the lives of the nameless people living there. The temperature outside flirted with a hundred degrees but never quite committed to triple digits despite its best efforts.
The apartment complex was deep in North Hollywood where the streets and buildings were laid out in perfect symmetry, inheriting the same form and function of the orange groves they replaced decades prior. I went through glass doors that led to an open courtyard where a blue-green pool sat untouched for yet another year. The apartment was on the second floor in the back, and I took one of the four outdoor staircases.
The woman who answered the door was a frumpy maiden much younger than her image let on. She lived in a cramped studio with sagging bookcases and a worn throw rug on top of even more worn wall-to-wall carpet. She led me to a spot before a small air conditioner that was as effective against the heat as a fan blowing air over a bowl of ice cubes. I sat on a cheap folding chair. She relaxed on the edge of a futon and pulled one leg up under the other so she could pick at her toenails while she spoke.
“I got an email through the site and it just said that they had information on a family member of an important man in the city. They were vague with the details, particularly how important this man was.” She retold the events leading to the publishing of the article with a detached, almost bored expression. It was as if she wanted to convey to me that this job didn’t matter to her and she rather hated it but was resigned to doing it. For now, anyway.
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing. Total radio silence. I wrote it off as a crank—you get a lot of these. Though part of me sensed this one was legit, I wrote back and never got a reply. Until four days ago. I got an email late in the night that laid out all the details, the baby out of wedlock, the underage angle, and most importantly, the identity of the important man.”
“Who was it?” I asked. I needed to confirm if we were talking about the same family. The woman eyed me suspiciously, trying to figure out my angle, if there was one.
“If you represent the family, then you should already know, right?”
“But I first need to know if you know.”
“Oh, I know who it is.”
“Did you verify the source?” I asked.
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have pushed the story otherwise.” There was an element of nicked pride in her response, as if she was hurt that I questioned her ethics in publishing unseemly stories about people’s private matters.
“And they are credible?”
“As credible as it gets,” she responded mysteriously.
“What does that mean?”
She suddenly felt the power shift over to the futon and took the opportunity to exploit it.
“Can we work out a deal?” she asked tentatively. She was as new to the shakedown as I was. I had stopped by the ATM on the way, expecting this moment. I placed twenties in various amounts in various pockets in case she played hardball and I could claim “all the money I got” routine. Little did I know that fifty bucks was all it would take. I gave her the extra ten because I felt bad for her.
“So who was the source?”
“The source was the source,” she answered with a riddle and the annoyingly sly expression people make when telling riddles.
“Your source was Jeanette Schwartzman?”
The woman touched the side of her nose. We apparently were switching from riddles to charades.
“How did you know it was her?” I asked, still not quite believing it. The logic wasn’t working.
“It was her. We met in person, and she had pictures on her phone with Carl Valenti. She looked just like the girl in the photos. And they knew details that made me very comfortable they were who they said they were.”
“Who was she with?”
“Some boy, sort of effeminate, probably Hispanic but I shouldn’t guess ethnicity without being sure.” I had never believed Nelson was involved in anything nefarious but now it was a question if he and Jeanette were in on something nefarious together. “I don’t think he was the father.”
“Why do you say that?”
She gave me a “don’t make me say it out loud” look. She wasn’t comfortable discussing people’s ethnicity and it seemed she was equally uncomfortable discussing people’s sexuality.
“Let’s just say the baby didn’t look like him,” she said, avoiding anything inappropriate. For a gossip blogger, she held pretty high standards.
The fact that the person behind the placement of the story was the subject of the story itself was a puzzler that I still couldn’t quite comprehend. I probed to see if Jeanette gave any kind of insight into why she was doing it.
“I asked her that. She was vague and didn’t really want to answer. She was quick to point out that it definitely wasn’t for money. I sort of believed her.”
I moved off the events in the past and focused my attention on the future. Standard practice in Corporate America was to conclude every meeting with someone asking, “What are our next steps?” It was an admirable attempt to convince everyone that, although we had just sat around talking nonsense for fifty-five minutes, it wasn’t without purpose and we needed concrete proof that it was all worthwhile. Humans have an enduring desire to feel like we are making progress.
For me, I didn’t want to let a lever go un-pulled. I needed this woman as an ally if Jeanette ever contacted her again. And although it was unlikely, perhaps she could be used to lure the girl back home. But I didn’t want the woman to think that she could exploit this situation for more money. Given her recent negotiation skills, I deemed this risk rather low.
“We could use your help, if you are up for it.” I handed her my business card and scribbled my personal number on the back. “If you ever hear from Jeanette, please call me first. The family would be grateful.”
She watched me take a quick glance around the cramped studio apartment and her face expressed a look of shame. I never intended to make her feel bad. It was an unfortunate habit of mine when meeting people like her in Los Angeles. I felt the urge to piece together their history that led them to their current situation—a bright, personable-enough woman with a set of values still intact, sitting in a crummy apartment, picking her feet, and waiting for the sun to go down to provide at least a modicum of relief from the heat.
“Never thought I’d end up in a job like this,” she said, as if sensing what I was wondering.
I pointed to the card she held in her hand.
“If some copy editor positions open, I’ll let you know. We could always use a good proofreader.”
This appeared to bring a little bit of brightness to her day. My desire for progress equaled everyone else’s.
With one step in purgatory, I decided to make the full leap into hell.
Pacoima was another ten miles from the North Hollywood apartment. On the drive there, the flirting-with-triple-digits heat was consummated and never looked back. The change in temperature from the climate-controlled car to the blacktop surface of the parking lot at Sheila Lansing’s convalescent home involved a thirty-degree swing. The initial thrust was oddly pleasant, like the first moments of a hot shower. But then the oppressive nature of the heat enveloped me and for a brief instant, I thought I would collapse on the walk from my car to the front door of the home. The heat coming off the pavement somehow felt hotter than the one scorching the back of my neck.
The handle on the glass door was as hot as a pan left carelessly over an unattended b
urner. I scurried into the lobby and eagerly breathed in the antiseptic-scented air. “It’s a hot one,” the front desk attendant chirped. “My word,” I replied. “How do you handle it?”
“It’s a dry heat, so it’s not so bad.” Dry or not, that kind of heat was unbearable.
“I’d like to see Sheila Lansing.”
“Why, of course. Let me have someone show you there.” She picked up the phone and scanned the numbers. “The old girl is getting quite a treat today,” she said absently.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“So many visitors in one day.”
The attendant put the phone down when she saw a young man in scrubs passing by. She asked him to escort me upstairs. I looked around and but didn’t see the attendant I was really interested in.
“Is the other attendant in?” I asked casually. “I forget her name but she’s Filipino, dark hair, wears it in a braid.…” They didn’t seem to make the connection. “A little heavy-set?”
The front desk attendant and my escort shared an awkward look.
“Tala? She’s not here today.”
“Do you expect her?”
“Hard to say, honestly.”
There was hesitancy in her voice. To me it sounded like Tala hadn’t been to work in a while and no one seemed to know why.
I was led upstairs to the second-floor balcony. A mister and fan system blew micro-droplets of water that provided instant relief when it touched your skin but tasted like rust when you breathed it in.
Sheila was in her normal spot, covered again in a blanket though this time with a light cotton fabric. She was the only resident out at that time.
“Ms. Lansing, the heat index is—” but the old woman cut off the attendant before he could finish his warning.
“If I like it, I like it,” she reasoned with a dismissive wave. “You’re back,” she said to me.
“Surprised to see me?”
“A little. Must be bad news,” she guessed. “What happened to her?”
“She hasn’t come home.”
“That’s not so bad.”
“And she’s a new mom.” I let those words sink in. She stared at me but didn’t give much up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The Perpetual Summer Page 13