by Lois Greiman
Or was she his current fling? Maybe that’s why he hadn’t called Elaine. Maybe he had a thing for freaky cat ladies with faces like hot cross buns. I had to admit it was possible. There are, after all, boy bands and sea anemones to remind us that weird shit happens.
But maybe I was on the wrong track entirely. Maybe she had Solberg bound and gagged in her cat room.
I scowled. It was almost dark, so I drove around the block again, slowly, casing the neighborhood. As is the L.A. way, the houses were packed together like copulating pickles on the dusty hill. I parked on Dayside Avenue and waited another fifteen minutes. The sun sank with lethargic slowness. I exited the car, took a deep breath, and cut across the first lawn like a golfer surveying the eighteenth hole.
Nobody’s dog ran out to chew off my leg. No one zapped me with a stun gun.
All was well. Still, by the time I had reached Pershing’s house I was experiencing chest pains and blurred vision.
In the end, though, neither my medical problems nor my brave expedition did me a bit of good. Unlike her kitchen and living room, the window to her cat room was completely shuttered, except for a narrow track well above my head.
I drove home with a thousand errant thoughts floating like confetti in my mind, but the prevailing one was that I was either mentally ill—or a really kick-ass best friend.
5
A friend is someone who’ll bike to the ice cream shop with you, even when you don’t look so great.
—Brainy Laney Butterfield,
shortly after getting her orthodontic headgear
B Y SUNDAY NIGHT I felt like my brain had been squeezed through a ringer washer.
My phone was on the fritz. I’d gained one and a half pounds, and my bathroom was beginning to smell like it was organizing a rebellion. So I called the phone company, ate a carrot stick, and prayed, since there was no way I could afford a new septic system.
Frustrated and nervous, I graduated to eating Doritos by the handful and considered everything I knew about Solberg: He was short, he was irritating, and he laughed like a jackass.
I slowed down on the Doritos and dug a little deeper; oh, all right, he was smart, he was rich, and he was obsessed with computers. That seemed to be a recurring theme. So where was he getting his techno fix if not at his own domicile? Maybe he was hiding out at a friend’s house, lying low until whatever troubles were blowing blew over. But, according to everyone who knew him, that friend had better have a computer powerful enough to blast Solberg into the next millennium, or the Geek God would never be happy. And what were the chances of Solberg having a friend anyway?
Feeling crazy and alone, I finally phoned Elaine and invited her to a movie. She agreed. Apparently, she didn’t have more than a couple other offers to turn down since Solberg had become her main squeeze. I shuddered at the thought and eyed her across the table.
We were in Fosselman’s, my post-theater feeding grounds, and my favorite ice cream parlor in the universe. The little brick structure had been built in 1919 when Alhambra was probably a cow town instead of a squished annex of West Coast insanity. I’d like to think it’s the stained-glass lights and historic ambience that draws me to it, but it might just be the butterfat content of its desserts.
“So what’d you think of the movie?” I asked. Hugh Jackman had been the box office draw. He’d taken off his shirt on more than one occasion. It had been something of a spiritual experience for me.
“I don’t know.” Elaine shrugged and fiddled with her lemon sorbet. Its calorie content probably ran into the negatives. “I thought the supporting characters were a little lackluster.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and wondered what the hell supporting characters had to do with Hugh Jackman’s naked chest.
“And some of Hugh’s lines were a little flat. For a hundred and ten million, you’d think he could have given a more inspired performance.”
“A hundred and ten mil,” I said, masticating thoughtfully. “For that kind of money he should have been able to take off his pants, too.”
She gave me a smile. I almost winced at the pathetic effort—talk about a lackluster performance.
I didn’t want to broach the topic, but I couldn’t avoid it any longer. “About Solberg, Elaine, I—”
She glanced up suddenly. “Hey. Did I tell you I’m going out with the ice cream guy?”
I shifted gears rustily. “The ice cream guy?” I echoed.
She bobbed her head. A young man stood behind the glass counter. He couldn’t have yet reached his twenty-third birthday, but he wore the expression typical of every male who wanders across Laney Butterfield’s path—a twisted meld of wistful hope and goofy adoration.
“You know the ice cream guy?” I asked.
“I think his name is Andy.” She didn’t bother to glance his way. He shuffled from foot to foot, studiously ignoring his patrons. I’d seen the syndrome a hundred times, but it never failed to fascinate me.
“And you met Andy . . . ?”
“Couple minutes ago,” she said, “while you were ordering.”
“Uh-huh.” I shoveled in the last of the whipped cream and reminded myself I did not hate her, even though I was pretty sure young Andy would have the kind of stamina that would put Secretariat to shame. “Approximately how old do you think Andy is?”
She shrugged. “Age only matters if you’re a perishable food product.”
“Are you sure?”
“It was a line in a play I auditioned for once.”
“Uh-huh. ’Cuz sometimes I feel like a banana.”
She gave me another smile. I felt my heart sink. I had asked her out in an attempt to convince myself that she wasn’t all that fond of Solberg—probably didn’t even really like him. Maybe she was just attached to his car. He had a hell of a car.
She took a minuscule bite of sorbet, then pushed it aside. “You ready to go?”
“You didn’t finish your . . .” I glanced at it. “Ice.”
“I’m full.”
“Sure. You probably had lots of air today,” I said, and rose to my feet before I asked if I could finish her dessert. I didn’t like sorbet. But I had once eaten a full bag of Cheetos in a single sitting. I hate Cheetos.
Seconds later, I was sliding onto the passenger seat of Laney’s vintage Mustang. It was primo, but it took a buttload of upkeep, or so said my idiot brothers. As it turns out, though, upkeep is no problem for Elaine. She has a herd of seventy-two grease monkeys who would give their spleens to do the work for free.
We jumped onto the San Bernardino Freeway, headed west, then zipped onto the 5. It was nine-thirty on a Sunday night, so there weren’t more than a million cars doing the highway bump and grind. At rush hour, it’d be more like a lap dance. Nearly devoid of actual movement, but heavy on perspiration.
Laney lives in a block-shaped apartment building in Sun Valley. It’s not a great section of town, but her landlord will periodically refuse to accept her rent. He’s about ninety years old, and it’s probably the sight of her that keeps him breathing.
“How’d the soap audition go?” I asked, and settled cautiously into a cane-back chair. She had decorated her apartment with lovingly selected primitive pieces, which meant the furniture might collapse beneath one’s weight at any given moment, especially after one has eaten her weight in high-caloric treats.
She waggled her head in a so-so motion as she poured two fluted glasses full of something that looked like pulverized seaweed. Elaine doesn’t drink alcoholic beverages . . . or eat, a nasty habit that goes back to our teens but has become exacerbated since our move to Movie Star Land.
“I haven’t gotten a callback. Kale and aloe,” she said, and handed me a glass. I had tasted her concoctions before—all reputed to be wondrously beneficial . . . by civilizations that thought bloodletting was medicinal gold. “But there’s another part I’m going to try for. I’d play opposite Brady Corbet.”
“That’s great.” I didn’t know who Brady Corbet was. But
I’d be thrilled to see her opposite Pippit the three-legged wonder dog if that would make her forget about Solberg. “Do you need help running lines?”
“Sure.” She disappeared for a moment, then emerged from her bedroom with a few sheaves of paper.
I eyed the truncated pile. “Short movie?” I asked.
She gave me a copy. “Just a side,” she said. “They didn’t give me the whole script.”
“Ahhh.” I actually understood the lingo. It’s virtually impossible to live in L.A. without a little entertainment retardation rubbing off on you. “What’s the title?”
“Bronx Moonlight,” she said, skimming the first page.
Wow. “So who am I?”
“You’re a crook.”
I thought about my actions over the past couple days. Mail theft, false identities . . . Seemed about right. “Okay.”
“Your name’s Hawke.”
“Great. Who are you?”
“I’m Sugar, your accomplice. It takes place during the Depression.”
“All right, Sweet Cakes,” I said, employing my best lisp. I’m not sure who I was trying to imitate. Cagney maybe, or a cockatiel with hearing loss.
“It would be best if you didn’t make me want to slap you,” Laney said.
“I’ll make a note,” I said, and read silently through my part. Now, I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure the script would make Gigli look like a box office smash.
“So I was just apprehended,” she said, glancing at her papers. “By the coppers.”
“The coppers,” I repeated, using my Cagney voice again. “I like the sound of that. If this shrink gig don’t work out, maybe I’ll try acting.”
“Please don’t,” she said with feeling, then, “Anyway, I’ve been caught and they’ve knocked me around a little.”
“Bastards! Can’t trust no stinkin’ coppers.”
She gave me a flat stare. I thought my dialect was getting better. “Now they’ve caught you.”
“They’ll never take me alive.”
“They already did. So here we go: ‘Hawke,’ ” she said, her voice faint, as if she were short of oxygen and maybe a couple of brain cells. “No. Not you, too. Why did you come? You shouldn’t have come.”
I found my part with my finger on the line. “I couldn’t hardly stay away, could I, Sugar?”
“You can do anything you want, Hawke,” she murmured. “Always could.”
I chuckled where it said to do so. Whoa. Sounded bad, but the show must go on. “Just so happens I wanted to see yer mug,” I intoned. “How you doin’, doll?”
She tilted her head. “I been better. But just hearin’ yer voice . . .” She smiled wistfully and reached out as if to touch me. “I missed you.”
“I guess I sorta missed you, too.”
“Then blah blah blah. The cop says to take me away, then . . .” She paused and winced. “No!” she wailed. “Take me, too. I’m as much to blame as he is.”
“You stay, Sugar,” I said.
She stared into my eyes. “I guess we had a good run while it lasted, huh?” she mused, seeping drama from every perfect pore.
“All good things gotta come to an end.”
“All right,” Elaine said, her voice casual again. “So then we exchange a meaningful glance and whip into action.”
I looked up. “We do?”
“Yeah. We’re hardened gangstas.”
“Do we get away?”
“Of course,” she said, and took a sip of juice without even wincing. “Sugar was raised on the mean streets of New York.”
“Well, good for her.” I followed her example with the juice. It wasn’t going to replace champagne, but the Ipecac people were in for a horse race. “Would you do your own fight scene?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” She shrugged. “Wyatt showed me how to throw a punch.”
“Wyatt?”
She plopped down on the couch, tucking her feet up under her nonexistent thighs. “You remember, the self-defense guy.”
“Oh, yeah.” Wyatt had been a first-class hotty, and crazy about her. “Are you still seeing him?”
“No. Not since . . .” She stopped abruptly and fiddled with her script. “Not for a while.”
Not since Solberg, I interpreted. Shit.
I refused to fidget, and raised my so-called beverage. “Well, Sugar and I don’t need no stinkin’ Wyatt in our lives. I grew up with brothers.”
“Of course,” she said, and tried a smile. It was unsteady near the corners. Shit and damn. “The McMullen version of survival of the fittest.”
“Do unto others before they sober up,” I said.
That damned smile again. It made me want to cry . . . or hit someone. A million years of college and a Ph.D. couldn’t change my Irish ancestry.
She cleared her throat. I knew the question was coming long before she spoke the words. “By the way, you didn’t find out anything about . . . um . . . Jeen, did you?”
I didn’t know where the hell to begin. “Listen, Laney, I’m sure—”
“It’s okay,” she interrupted, and stood abruptly. “Really.” She brightened her smile a couple watts. “I’ve decided to move on.”
“Move on?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It’s not that big a deal, Mac.”
“What’s that?”
“The fact that Jeen dumped me.”
I felt my bicuspids grinding, but she smiled again. The expression didn’t reach her eyes. Hell, it didn’t get all the way to her nostrils.
“He probably met someone else.” She shrugged. “I can live with that.”
Maybe, I thought. But he can’t. Not if I find him.
“Still . . .” She finished off her drink. “I’ve been thinking.”
Dark premonition settled into my stomach. Or maybe it was the kale.
“Maybe I should go to Vegas.”
“What? Why?”
“Just because he . . .” She paused and set her glass aside. “Just because we’re not an item doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. I mean, what if he’s hurt?”
“Then my job’s done,” I said.
“What?”
“His job’s probably not done.” Clever cover, if Elaine was a concussed guinea hen. Unfortunately, she was a drop-dead gorgeous girl with a stratospheric IQ and a strangely fragile heart. A heart I couldn’t bear to see broken. What if she went to Vegas? What if she found Solberg? What if he really had lost his last marbles and was shacking up with some bimbo whose cup size was found at the latter end of the alphabet? What then? “Listen,” I said. “Don’t do anything rash, huh? I’m sure everything’s fine.”
She shrugged.
“Just give it a few more days. He’ll turn up.”
“You think so?” Her eyes looked misty.
“I’m positive,” I said, and swore on my brothers’ future graves to redouble my efforts to find the knobby little nerd.
6
Let us talk about oxymorons. Common sense, for instance.
—Sister Celeste,
first-hour English
I T WAS WELL past midnight when I arrived at Solberg’s house. Or, more correctly, when I arrived half a block down the street from Solberg’s house. I’d called him a couple dozen times on my cell phone on the way there, just to make sure he really wasn’t home.
Either he wasn’t or rigor mortis had already set in. No one could resist the phone that long and still be breathing.
My heart was pounding and my mouth felt dry when I turned off the Saturn, but damn it, no one dumped Brainy Laney Butterfield.
I was going to get to the bottom of this. In other words, I was going to find Solberg, and if he was still alive, I was going to kill him.
I sat in the dark and ruminated. What the hell am I doing? was the first thought that zipped through my head. But I was fueled with twelve thousand fat grams and girlfriend rage, so finally I pulled the keys from the ignition, shut off the dome light, and stepped silently into the night. Ok
ay, “silently” might be something of a misnomer, since I dropped my keys on the street and they rattled like a fifty gun salute. But I did step into the night. Streetlights lined the curving boulevard, but it was still relatively dark.
I hadn’t returned home after Elaine’s. Instead, I had driven straight to La Canada after her horrific “I don’t give a damn” performance.
Luckily, I wear black as a matter of course. Not because it’s slimming. When you’re as naturally svelte as I am, you don’t have to worry about such mundane considerations. I just wear it because it’s chic. And God knows I’m nothing if not chic. I glanced down at my footwear. Reeboks. Can’t get classier than Reeboks. At least if you’re a prowler.
Little bits of gravel crunched under my shoes. I paused, listening, then continued on. I would have liked to cut across the lawn, but the sprinklers were at it again, so I stopped at the end of Solberg’s drive and glanced casually up and down Amsonia Lane. My heart didn’t jump out of my chest. Casual. Not a creature was stirring. Which meant the children must be nestled all snug in their beds.
The climb up Solberg’s drive felt like the ascent to Everest. Not that I’ve ever scaled Everest. In fact, I didn’t even like StairMasters, but still . . .
My heart was beating like a mixer on high speed by the time I reached his front door, but I put on my devil-may-care face and leaned on the bell. Inside the house, his chandelier was still blazing and his odd techno bell chimed.
There was no other noise. I tried again, holding down the button and counting to ten. Still nothing. The tinny song faded into oblivion. Maybe I was just trying to delay the inevitable when I pushed it a third time. But the results were the same.
I glanced around again. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have survived the shock if I had actually seen someone, but I was absolutely alone. All evidence indicated that I might also be insane.
I’d called the sheriff’s department and been coolly informed that the La Crescenta precinct was doing everything it could—which, I determined after about thirty seconds of conversation, was just short of nothing.