Orange County Noir

by Gary Phillips

  "Carl, can you meet me tomorrow morning for breakfast?"

  The head of park security, former FBI, wanted to eat with me?

  "Carl, are you still there?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Yeah you're still there, or yeah you'll meet me?" he asked.

  "Why do you want to have breakfast with me, Jeffrey?"

  "Look, I know you were good at your job, Carl."

  I did my job but I don't know that I was actually good at it. I only know that I showed up every day.

  "Have you found employment yet?" Jeffrey asked.

  "I've got a lot of irons in the fire," I said, a lie.

  "I may have a job for you, Carl."

  "Me? Why?"

  After a moment of silence: "Maybe I feel a little guilty about the way it went down with you, Carl."

  Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

  What the hell did I have to lose?

  We met the next morning at a Carl's Jr. across the street from the main library on Harbor Boulevard and Broadway, three miles north and a world away from the park. He chose the place. Fast food didn't seem like much of a gesture toward reconciliation. Was the Carl's Jr. a play on my name? There were plenty of tourist joints around the park that served better breakfasts. And there were restaurants near the stadium and diners and cafes farther east in Orange or Tustin where park employees often went to escape the crowds and to enjoy food that was less generic than tourist fare. I asked myself what Sherlock Holmes would have made of Jeffrey's wanting to meet here and I arrived at this: the Carl's Jr. at Harbor and Broadway was a place we'd likely not be seen by anybody who knew either of us (most of the patrons and some of the employees didn't even speak English). Only three miles from the park, we were virtually guaranteed of being strangers to anyone we might meet.

  In this, I was right.

  But it was the last time I'd be right for a long while.

  I parked my Camry next to Jeffrey's SUV.

  He sat at an inside booth, nursing a coffee and browsing the morning paper. He grinned when he saw me and extended his hand to shake without sliding out of the booth to stand. "Morning, Carl." He was dressed "resort casual," khakis, loafers, monogrammed golf shirt. The face of his expensive wristwatch was black and of a width and diameter about half that of a hockey puck. I'd come in my suit and tie, which felt ridiculous in a Carl's Jr. But this was a job interview, wasn't it? And my Aunt Janice always said that one can never be overdressed, either for church or for a business meeting.

  I slid into the booth across from Jeffrey. "So what's this all about?"

  "Maybe you want to get yourself a coffee and a roll before we get started," he said, folding away his newspaper.

  I was hungry (after all, this was supposed to be breakfast) so I did as he suggested.

  "Well, that ought to fill you up," Jeffrey said when I returned with my tray.

  A coffee, orange juice, jumbo breakfast burrito, and side of hash browns . . . Why not? This wasn't a Weight Watchers meeting! But Jeffrey looked at my tray like it was piled with fresh, steaming shit. He couldn't resist putting on superior airs. I'd seen it in my days at the park. Fine, he was Ivy League. Then Quantico. Good for him. But what kind of former undercover agent is constitutionally unable to conceal his smugness at least some of the time?

  "I'd like to engage your assistance," he said.

  "What?"

  "It's about my wife."

  I put down my breakfast burrito.

  Jeffrey leaned toward me over the Formica tabletop. He smelled of expensive cologne, which mixed strangely with the greasy odors from the breakfast foods. He pushed my tray toward the napkin dispenser against the wall and tapped his fist on my forearm, a "man's man" gesture of intimacy. I fought the impulse to pull away.

  "You're a good man, Carl," he said. "I knew it even when I was letting you go, but I had no choice."

  "Yeah?"

  "Look, I know damn well that corporate policy and fear of litigation should never trump a man's twenty years of good service," he continued. "But you'll have to trust me that I had no choice. Do you trust me, Carl?"

  It was actually twenty-three years, but I didn't correct him. "Would I be here otherwise, Jeffrey?"

  "Good." He leaned back into his side of the booth.

  I picked up the breakfast burrito and took a bite, unsure of what else to do.

  "I want to employ you as a private detective," he said.

  Once again I put the burrito down. "Me?"

  He nodded.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I need you to shadow my wife."

  "Oh? I see. But still ... why me?"

  "It's a delicate job, Carl." He lowered his voice. "Look, I'm well known in law-enforcement circles. You understand that. Every city in this county has its own little chief of police, but just as there's only one park, one citadel, there's only one me. So I can't go to a regular agency. You know that the park expects only the most respectable behavior from its top employees. And also from their wives . . ." He looked to me for some kind of response.

  "Oh, right."

  "I need to know the truth about her. But I can't allow anything unsavory to ever get out. Understand, Carl?"

  "Sure."

  He looked around the Carl's Jr. When he was sure nobody was paying us any attention, he removed from his front trousers pocket a roll of cash held together with two rubber bands. He set it on the tabletop and then slid it across like a shuffleboard disc into my lap. "It's two grand, all in twenties," he said. "It'll get you started on the job."

  I hadn't held so much cash in my hand at one time since my vacation in Bangkok (where cash passes out of your hand instead of into it).

  "I need your help, Carl," he said, his expression suddenly strained.

  They sure as hell didn't teach this at Quantico, I thought. It turns out the bastard was as pathetic a human being as the rest of us. (Or so I believed at the time.) Anyway, I admit I enjoyed his muted anguish. But I was clever enough not to show it. "Okay, Jeffrey. I'll help you."

  He removed a reporter's notebook from his back pocket and gave it to me. "You got a pen?"

  I patted my shirt pocket. No pen.

  He gave me a Bic.

  "You might want to note down what I'm about to tell you," he said.

  "Right." I flipped the pad open. Just like that I was a private eye.

  Jeffrey's wife Melinda was thirteen years his junior. They had no children together, though on weekends Jeffrey's four young daughters from two previous marriages occasionally visited their home, which was located near the golf course on a quiet cul-de-sac in Anaheim Hills. It was a million-and-a-half-dollar property. Melinda held no job, but kept busy with volunteer work at the children's hospital in Orange. She worked out on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at a Pilates studio on Imperial Highway and on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a private trainer (female) at the twenty-four-hour fitness club. Her body was well toned. She drove a two-year-old, leased Mercedes E-class and her blond hair was just the right shade for her skin color, just the right length for her bone structure. She got her manicures, pedicures, and facials at a salon on Lakeview that was run by a Vietnamese woman named Tran, and she shopped for groceries at the Vons Pavilions in the Target shopping center on Weir Canyon Road. She rarely ventured off the hill to the flats of Anaheim, which were generally too seedy for one of her refined sensibilities. In conversation at the tennis club she poked fun at the park and all it stood for, assuming a position of cultural superiority, even though it was the park that provided her husband with the means to keep her in luxury. She seemed a predictable third wife for a man like Jeffrey. No surprise there. What's funny is that you might not suspect a woman like her would also appeal to a man like me, but after shadowing her for just a day or two, I found myself becoming very fond of her, despite her superficialities, her arrogance, and the fact that, quite literally, she didn't know I existed.

  "She's seeing another man," Jeffrey had told me at Carl's Jr. that first mornin
g.

  But I discovered nothing that suggested infidelity. Not in the first week, nor in the second, nor the third. I faithfully kept at it, every day and every night. Melinda took conversational French classes at Fullerton College on Tuesday and Thursday nights from 7 to 10 and enjoyed a few happy hour margaritas every Wednesday with her girlfriends, some of whom were actually as well groomed and physically fit as she was.

  Otherwise, she was rarely out of the house after dark. Further, I can say with certainty-because I'd snuck into the backyard to peek through a window-that there was nothing illicit about the two consecutive afternoon visits from the plumber; also, the Latino gardeners and the Polynesian pool boy merely did their jobs, unlike the stereotypical shirtless lotharios you find filling their professions in porno films. Melinda wasn't seeing anybody and nobody was seeing her (except me, of course). Even Jeffrey saw little of her, working long days that often stretched past midnight. I thought Melinda must be the loneliest woman in the world, poor thing. But I kept my notes and my increasing faith in her goodness to myself. Jeffrey had instructed me never to contact him, which was just as well as I'd lost my cell phone a few days before he hired me as a PI and hadn't had time to replace it since I'd started shadowing his wife.

  Actually, I was glad to be rid of my cell phone.

  It felt good to be cut off from everyone in the worldexcept Melinda.

  Of course, I did speak in person to some of those in her life. For example, I used one of the hours when Melinda was in the Pilates studio to visit her dry cleaner, who occupied the same strip mall. I initiated conversation with him by pretending to be one of her neighbors. He agreed with me that she was always very friendly. Unfortunately, I couldn't get details from him about the particulars of her cleaning and laundering needs (such as whether he'd ever been asked to work out unusual or incriminating stains on either her outer- or underwear). Believe me, I took the job seriously. I was thorough. Melinda's French teacher at Fullerton College, a sixtyish woman called Madame Juliette, who I'm not sure believed that I was a visiting professor from Cypress College, told me only that Melinda had exceptional pronunciation and above-average vocabulary skills. When I met Melinda's supervisor at the children's hospital in Orange, a small man in a wheelchair, I claimed to be a reporter for the O.C. Weekly who wrote the "Volunteers Among Us" column. He told me Melinda had a wonderful way with children and lamented the fact that she and Jeffrey were childless. The receptionist at the Anaheim Hills Tennis Club told me, after I'd slipped her a series of twenty-dollar bills, that half of their married members cheated on their spouses, often hooking up with their mixed-doubles partners, but that Melinda was in the faithful 50 percent, a paragon of marital constancy.

  The woman was an angel.

  Why would I ever want to murder her?

  But wait, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

  Approximately three and a half weeks into my surveillance, Jeffrey called me at my apartment at 2:30 in the morning. The lateness of the hour was not as distressing as it might seem; after all, I was only ever home between midnight and 5 a.m., otherwise always shadowing Melinda, and so the middle of the night was the only time I was available for communication.

  "You're a hard man to reach, Carl."

  This was the first I'd spoken to Jeffrey since Carl's Jr. Now, in the background of his call, I could make out the sound of light traffic, as if he were phoning from the side of a freeway. "I've been on the job, Jeffrey." My answering machine was empty so he obviously hadn't tried that hard to reach me.

  "Good man," he said.

  I liked being called that. "I've compiled copious notes about your wife's every move these past few weeks," I said. "That notebook you gave me is just about full. And I'm pleased to report that, to date, my observations indicate-"

  "That's fine, Carl," he interrupted. "We'll discuss your observations later. Now, I want you to just listen to me."

  "Oh, okay."

  "Tomorrow I want you to take the day off. Get a haircut, go to a movie, wash your car, whatever. Just stay away from Melinda. It's critical that she not suspect she's being watched."

  "Oh, I've been very careful about that, Jeffrey." Or had I left more of a footprint that I thought? Maybe talking to a few of her neighbors the day before hadn't been such a good idea.

  Jeffrey continued: "Now get this part right, Carl. At 11 o'clock tomorrow night, not a moment later, not a moment sooner, I want you to park your car in front of my house. Bring your camera. I'll see that the front door is unlocked and the silent alarm turned off. Just quietly walk in."

  "Now wait a minute," I said. "I'm not so sure about breaking and entering and-"

  Again, he cut me off. "It's my goddamn house, Carl. You won't be `breaking and entering' because I'm inviting you to enter, understand?"

  "Oh, right. But why?"

  "Because tomorrow night the other man will be there, in bed with my wife."

  What other man? I thought. "How do you know, Jeffrey?"

  "Trust me, I know."

  "Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

  "Take a picture of them together. That's all. Then get out. The master bedroom is at the back of the house."

  This was an ugly business. But it was a little exciting too. And while I still privately doubted that the Melinda I'd observed these past weeks was actually having an affair, the prospect of seeing her naked and in flagrante delicto (and photographing it!) held an undeniable appeal. I didn't know if I wanted to be right or wrong about her. I'm sure you understand.

  "Any questions, Carl?"

  "Where will you be during all this, Jeffrey?"

  "Don't worry about me, buddy. I'll be all right."

  I hadn't been worried about him.

  "I'll call you at this same time tomorrow," he said.

  I slept little that night and the following day passed at a snail's pace despite the fact that I followed Jeffrey's advice by getting a haircut, washing my car, and seeing a matinee. After eating a hamburger for dinner at the Carl's Jr. where Jeffrey and I had breakfasted (call me sentimental), I returned to my apartment to watch jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and three CBS sitcoms. I left my apartment only after the fireworks ended at the park. I cruised up and down Harbor Boulevard for forty minutes, casually observing the tourists on the sidewalks outside the motels. They were all shapes and sizes, though I'd guess they tended a little more toward fat than the national average. At 10:30 I turned off Harbor and headed east on Katella Avenue past the Angels' stadium to the 57 freeway, then I took the 91 to Imperial Highway and headed up Anaheim Hills Road almost as far as the golf club. I parked in front of the darkened house at 10:56 p.m. (I know the exact time because I jotted it on the last page of my reporter's notebook.)

  At 11 P.M. I pushed open the front door, which was ajar, and went inside.

  Darkness. Silence.

  There seems little point in my describing the interior of the house except to say it was what you'd expect in such a neighborhood-stylish and neat. I didn't take it in much beyond that. Interior decorating is not my thing. Besides, my mind was elsewhere. I flipped on my flashlight. The hallway that led to the back of the house was lined with framed photographs of Melinda and Jeffrey smiling together in various locations, such as Japan, France, Florida. I turned a corner and saw the closed double doors that led to the master bedroom. Still, no sound from within. Surely, no sex. Melinda was likely just sleeping inside, alone. That'a girl, I thought, only halfdisappointed by what I was not going to get to see.

  Of course, I still had to open the bedroom door and look inside just to be sure. It was my job.

  I wish I hadn't done it.

  By the light of a reading lamp burning beside the king-size bed, I saw Melinda sprawled on the rumpled bedspread, her vacant eyes open and askew. Most of her clothes had been ripped off her body. I knew right away she was dead. Poor Melinda. There were red marks at her throat and blood on one of her swollen lips. She'd been knocked around and then strangled and then, you
know ... It was ugly. Even twentythree years of working security at the park doesn't prepare you for something like this. At first, I didn't know what to do. Had Jeffrey been right about a lover in the house, a lover turned murderer? Had I arrived only a few minutes too late to save poor Melinda? Or might the killer still be hiding in the house? I turned and looked around the room.

  But I was alone.

  At least, I was alone until the police arrived just three or four minutes after I'd entered Melinda's bedroom.

  Jeffrey hadn't shut off the silent alarm, the bastard.

  "Officers, officers!" I shouted as they burst into the bedroom. "I was just about to call you!"

  They pressed around me, their automatic weapons pointed at my face, and shouted for me to show my hands and to lay spread-eagled on the floor, which I did. My training in security prepared me for such treatment; they were only taking proper precautions.

  Still, I tried to explain: "The killer may still be in the house!" I shouted. One of them wrenched my arm behind my back to apply the cuffs. They weren't interested in what I had to say, though one of them recited my Miranda rights. "Look, you've got it all wrong, guys! I work for Jeffrey, I'm private security!"

  Somebody hit me hard with his elbow in the back of my head. My face hit the floor and I tasted blood.

  Then he hit me again.

  The next thing I knew I was in the back of a patrol car.

  "Just shut up!" the driver said every time I tried to explain.

  It was not until an hour later in the police interrogation room that I realized how completely I'd been set up. Should I have seen it coming? Maybe, but I possess a trusting nature. And Jeffrey is a formidable enemy, particularly when you don't know he's your enemy. The interrogator told me that "poor, distraught" Jeffrey had managed to communicate through his tears that he'd had no contact with me whatsoever since the day he fired me from the park. No phone calls, no meeting at Carl's Jr., no private investigation.