“The girl at the courthouse. You claimed when you were arrested that it was his daughter who threw the rock.”
“Jesus.” I laugh. “How the fuck do you know that? And don’t say Carissa.”
“My connections at the SFPD are multiple and varied.”
I toss the notebook onto the low table in front of the couch. “I looked for her. I looked hard,” I tell him. “There’s no record of any child. No connection to any of his mistresses or wives. He had a son who died —”
“Marianna Andreas,” Bates says. “She had a daughter in Greece. A child born with a port-wine birthmark on her neck.”
“And Simpson is not on the birth certificate. The daughter’s name is Tina and she has disappeared so radically, so completely off the grid, there is no trace.”
“Except you saw her at the courthouse. Just after her mother would have been sentenced for 25 years for a crime her lover pinned on her.”
“That’s a great story, but it’s a dead end. The girl might as well not exist.”
He smiles at me like I am a child and pulls something else from his briefcase.
“I thought you might be interested in this.”
He hands me a folded page torn from a magazine. I open it but can’t make much sense of it in the shadows.
“Can I?” I step towards my kitchen and the table and overhead light there.
“By all means,” he says, gesturing with his gun, like it’s his house and I’m the guest.
In the kitchen I hit the switch for the overhead light and spread the article on the sticky Formica table.
It’s a glossy spread from Gun and Garden. A slick regional publication that covers the Southern and Western United States. I read the lede and shake my head.
“A farm-to-table restaurant and inn opened in the San Ysidro Mountains? Sounds lovely, but I don’t know what it has to do with Simpson.”
“Look.” He points at a collection of pictures with the barrel of his gun and I lift the page he’s pointing to and tilt the picture towards the light. It looks like a group shot of some staff. A farmer and chef, a beaming woman in a red suit, a bunch of people in white polo shirts, all of them standing in front of the white stone staircase that leads up to a two-story stone building.
Paintbrush Inn and Resort opens its season with a fundraising gala.
“You gotta connect some dots for me because I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Here.” He points at a woman in the very background. A blonde with her face turned away, revealing what looks like a port-wine birthmark on her neck just below her jaw.
For a moment the thrill is high-octane. It’s drinking Everclear on an empty stomach. It’s dizzying.
But then my training kicks in and I look for the holes.
“It could be a shadow.” I really don’t think it’s a shadow.
“That’s a weird shadow.”
“What are the statistical odds of that being her?” I say the words, but my brain is buzzing. It is buzzing in a way it hasn’t buzzed in so long.
“Statistical odds are not really interesting to me. The debt you owe me, however, that is very interesting to me.”
“So what am I doing?” I ask.
“You’re going to a party. And you’re going to find out if that’s her.”
“The girl from the courthouse?”
Bates nods.
“What’s the angle?”
“No angle. No story. I just want to know if it’s her.”
I look at the picture; the woman had clearly been trying to get out of the shot when the picture was taken.
After all this time, could that be her? Simpson’s daughter? The angry girl by the garbage can? I looked for years. Even went to Greece while on assignment in Turkey to track down the records of Tina Andreas’s birth.
I suddenly remember how her approval of my screamed obscenities had sent something like lust through me.
Something I’d never felt before.
The truth is I don’t even know this girl and she’s made me feel so much.
I hate it.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask. “Why do you care about the bastard daughter of Dale Simpson?”
“That’s irrelevant.”
“Nothing is irrelevant,” I say. I have no idea why I’m questioning him. What perversity is crawling through me. I want to find out if it’s Simpson’s daughter. I’m dying to.
Maybe it’s my fucking exhausted soul.
“What’s your angle? Black-market drugs? Is he competition on —”
He lifts the gun, points it at my forehead, but I’ve been here before with guns pointed to my head. My heartbeat doesn’t even change.
“That’s it, isn’t it? You’re trying to take out the competition.”
The sound of the pistol being cocked is cold and dangerous in my quiet apartment. Across the hall there’s the sound of Mrs. Mendoza waking up her kids, like she does every morning before dawn. I hear Abel. I fucking love Abel, this kid has a trouble streak a mile wide. You can’t be a jaded asshole around a kid who only wants to get into trouble.
Bates’s eyebrows lift and now I feel my heart start to beat. It’s old mechanics remembering their work. And for a second, I’m relieved. Relieved that I can still feel something.
Maybe that’s why I pushed Bates.
“He’s ten, isn’t he?” Bates asks. “The boy next door.”
“Put the gun down,” I breathe.
“You understand the parameters of the job you’re doing?”
“Simpson’s daughter,” I say. “That’s it.”
“And my reasons for anything are —”
“Irrelevant.”
“And —”
“None of my fucking business,” I lie.
“Sensible man,” he says with an approval that makes my head hurt. He uncocks the gun, holds it at his side. “Buy a tux. The party is in two days. You need to sleep and get a hair cut. Try to eat something, too. You look like a skeleton.”
A thick, ivory envelope is tossed on to the table. I don’t even have to look at it to know that it’s the invitation to the opening gala.
“I’ll see myself out,” he says and heads towards the door, the gun still in his hand and I imagine him walking through the door and out in the city like that. And I imagine no one stopping him, because the menace around him is just that powerful.
I test my thumb on the edge of the invitation — the envelope is not addressed. I can’t imagine Bates has a house, a kitchen with dishes. A couch in front of a TV. A washing machine. The idea is ridiculous.
He sleeps in a coffin maybe? Upside down in a closet.
“What’s the charity?” I ask, like that might be a clue as to who the woman in the picture might be.
“Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.”
“Oh!” I laugh. I laugh and I laugh even as bitterness churns through my guts. “That’s fucking rich.”
But it’s also a check under the column of proof that the woman in the picture is the girl from the courthouse.
Simpson’s daughter. Trying to right some of her father’s wrongs? Maybe. Trying to pretend she’s not as guilty as he is? Maybe. Creating a smokescreen for her father’s crimes? Maybe.
Simpson’s daughter, after all this time?
Finally?
“One more thing,” he says, tucking his gun away into the back of his pants. Again, he reaches into that briefcase like he is a legit business man and not a stone-cold killer. I flinch this time because the tension is so goddamn thick.
The man threatened to murder a ten-year-old boy.
I let him put a gun to my head just so I would feel something again.
It was hard to say which one of us is more fucked-up.
“Simon,” he says. “If I wanted you dead —”
“I’d be dead already. I get it. But the nerves are a little shot.”
But it isn’t a weapon balanced on his palm.
It’s the snow globe. My sn
ow globe. The family in front of the Golden Gate Bridge snow globe.
“The glass broke,” Bates says, like he’s sorry. “But Carissa thought you might want it.”
Silent, I take it. My throat is thick and my eyes burn. My hands shake. I don’t say anything. Not thank you. Nothing.
“I’ll expect an update from the party,” he says and I nod, not even questioning how that’s going to happen, because words are all clogged in my throat.
The family holding hands, facing that yellow and pink sun, they look naked without the snow. Vulnerable without the glass.
God, that family is so fragile.
I want it to not matter. I want it to not hurt.
When Bates is gone, I throw the snow globe away.
SIX
Simon
I DRIVE ALONG THE COAST, the ocean on one side the mountains on the other, to Santa Barbara then turn East and drive into the hills.
Tommy is talking to me on speaker. Beth pipes up every once in a while. They are a package deal these days and I am happy for them, if not just slightly annoyed by their constant joy.
“I’m worried about you,” Tommy says.
I’m annoyed by that, too.
“I don’t have choice, Tommy,” I say. “It’s Bates. You didn’t have a choice either, remember?”
I don’t mention the part about how I don’t need a choice. Don’t want one. I am going into this assignment like a rookie reporter with his first big story. I practically have an erection.
“It’s not that, it’s…you just seem different lately.”
“That’s because you’re different lately,” I tell him. Tommy was never as hard as me. As cold. As driven. But falling in love with Beth has changed him and Tommy now is a whole lot closer to the guy he should have been.
Sweet almost. Kind. Almost. He smiles. And laughs.
I don’t do any of those things.
Who am I, now? I think.
“Are you mad at her?” Beth asks.
“Because she’s Simpson’s daughter?”
“No, because she threw the rock that got you arrested.”
“I got arrested for the knife,” I say. “It wasn’t her fault.” I don’t say that I admired her. That the teenage me had been attracted to her. That feels like a million years ago. A different person.
“Do you think she’ll recognize you?” Tommy asks.
That had occurred to me.
“No way, ” Beth says. “You’re six feet tall and jacked. Teenaged you was a pencil I could put in my pocket.”
“Thanks for that assessment.”
“What’s your story for being invited?” Beth asks. “I mean, you’re going to have to talk to some people. Cocktail banter and everything.”
“Well, don’t you worry about me and cocktail banter,” I say. “I excel at cocktail banter. I am a cocktail banter master.”
“Says who, exactly?” asks Beth. Doubting my banter skills, and I don’t blame her. I use them on the job. With my friends I’m a whole lot more taciturn. I often don’t know what to say. How to talk about what I’ve seen. And done.
It’s easier pretending to be someone else.
“Says everyone. Says the motherfucking Queen of England,” I say, and they laugh, which is what I wanted. But God, it feels hollow. It feels empty. It feels like I’m pulling more strings, telling more lies. Pretending all the time, and Tommy and Beth are supposed to be my friends.
My family.
“Keep in touch?” Tommy asks and I have that sense I sometimes get with him, that what happened to us at St. Joke’s still haunts him.
That he would, if he could, keep us all next door so we could knock good-night on the walls and put his mind at ease. It hurts him that we don’t know where Rosa’s baby is or how Rosa is doing, and that Carissa is somehow involved with Bates.
And it hurts me that it hurts him.
“Yeah,” I say. “Talk later.”
I disconnect the phone from the Bluetooth. I rented a souped-up Cadillac for the weekend because my 2010 Jeep with the CD player isn’t going to help with the story I am telling this weekend.
Wealthy. Philanthropist. My mommy had money. I like the irony of that. Mom had money instead of a brain tumor that killed her.
I follow the directions through the scrub brush to the dirt side road off the two-lane highway. A funky metal sign in the shape of a paintbrush wildflower indicates the way to go. The Cadillac bumps down the dirt road, takes a dip down into a valley and the stone building appears alongside a creek. Green fields in the background. A side parking area full of cars far more fancy than my souped-up Cadillac.
This is the place.
The sun is setting behind the house and a lineup of people in cocktail dresses and tuxedos are entering the building. There are white lights wrapped around trees and I can hear music playing through the car windows.
It is a party. A beautiful, elegant party.
And usually I love beautiful, elegant parties. Because they’re filled with beautiful, elegant women and open bars and shrimp cocktail.
But this one feels rotten. Poisoned.
Because she’s here and, by association, him.
I drive up to the valet station and step out of the car, grabbing my tuxedo jacket from the backseat where I’d spread it flat. I’d rented the car but bought the tux. I’m not a vain man, but I am tall and wiry and I look better than I should in the slim-cut tux with the classic bow tie.
James Bond ain’t got nothing on me.
“Welcome to the Paintbrush,” a woman in an elegant red cocktail dress, holding an iPad says. She’s very pretty in a classic way. Timeless. “I’m Megan.”
“Thank you, Megan.” I smile at her then take in the building, which, I have to admit, is stunning. Really beautiful. It clearly had been an old farmhouse at one time but they’d blown it up a little. Modernized it. There is a long wing on either side.
“Wow,” I say. “The pictures don’t do it justice.”
“It really is special, isn’t it?”
I whistle and she smiles. “Who do we have to thank for this beauty?” I ask, pretending like I haven’t read every single thing printed about this place and its owners Megan Grossmore and Penny McConnell.
Megan has the experience in management and marketing. Penny is the chef. Megan does almost all of the interviews, except for one on the Food and Wine website. Which, frankly, was a pretty shitty interview.
Penny was dull. A farmgirl from Iowa with a nearly myopic interest in organic farming. And butchering pigs.
“Actually, ” she says with a proud little smile. “The property has been in my family for generations. My business partner and I took it over two years ago and we turned it into the Paintbrush.”
“You own the hotel?” I say like I’d never heard of such a thing.
“The executive chef, Penny McConnell, and I.”
“Well, my hat’s off to you and your partner,” I say, pouring on the charm. “Will we get to meet her tonight?”
“Penny is going to be a little busy in the kitchens. She’s got something really special planned for everyone.”
“I can’t wait,” I say.
“Can I have the name your reservation is under?” Megan asks me, as pleasant as can be and I give her the alias I RSVP’d under.
“Simon Quadir.” After my father’s favorite Pakistani cricket player of all time, Abdul Quadir, the best leg-spinner to ever play the game.
“You will not be spending the night?” she asks, checking the iPad she carries in her hand like a clipboard.
“Not this time, unfortunately.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Quadir. Please feel free to join our other guests in the restaurant for cocktail hour. Dinner will be served at 8:00 pm. And we sincerely thank you for your support of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.”
I follow the sounds of the party through the elegant entryway. Smiling staff are everywhere, standing behind desks, looking so fucking eager to he
lp me.
Excuse me, I imagine saying, any of you throw a rock at the San Francisco Court House, eight years ago? Any of you have a port-wine birthmark under your chin? Any of you have a father who has single-handedly killed hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Any of you easing your conscience by throwing this lovely gala for the children your father would have dead because they don’t have access to his medicine? Anyone?
Yeah. No.
If there is one thing I know as an investigative reporter, it's that stories only come to the patient and the bold.
Once, I sat under a tree outside a village in the Philippines for two days, proving my commitment to the village Lakay. The story amounted to nothing, but I send the man a case of Marlboro Lights every year.
A server comes by with a tray full of champagne glasses. I take one as a prop, but don’t drink it.
Stories come to the patient, the bold and the sober.
Except for the night in Moscow two years ago.
The dining room and bar are made of stone and glass and clear-varnished wood. It is elegant and rustic all at the same time. The room is full of people drinking champagne and eating appetizers being passed around by servers wearing denim aprons with leather fasteners. The man behind the bar is hand-squeezing some oranges and explaining his mixology process to a beautiful woman who seems inordinately interested.
There’s a quiet spot at the end of the bar and I turn to watch the crowd. There are about seventy people here tonight and I recognized a few of the higher-ups from the Los Angeles Children’s Hospital. I talked to them several times in trying different angles against Simpson. And for a moment, I worry about my cover but we’d only ever talked on the phone. Or via email.
I continue my rundown of the place.
The women in red cocktail dresses and the men with red ties and black suits are staff, senior to the men and women with the aprons. I take appetizers and drinks from every blonde woman I can and I don’t recognize any of them.
Perhaps it’s odd that I think I would recognize her. The girl by the garbage can. Not just because of the birthmark, but by her eyes. Those deep brown eyes. And the way she radiated with energy. Even dialed back, a person with that kind of intensity would be noticed. Would be singular.
Special.
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