by Ian Bull
“What’s wrong? You’re shaking,” she says, finally looking at me.
“Me? You’re the one shaking,” I say, then realize we’re both trembling.
“I’m agoraphobic and I’m scared to leave the house. Why are you shaking?”
“My manager was killed and her funeral is in four hours. Plus, I kicked a paparazzo in the kneecap and I just found out he’s pressing charges against me.”
“We’re a mess.” She leans in and whispers in my ear. “But Steven is still alive, right?”
My shocked face answers her.
“I knew it!” She says it loud enough that Vaik glances in the rearview mirror.
“Wait until we get back to the beach house,” I whisper.
Thirty minutes later, Vaik takes his twenty percent tip and drives back out the gate. I close the front door and find Trishelle pacing in the living room with the curtains drawn.
“You okay? You want more light in here?” I ask.
“No, dark is good,” Trishelle whispers as she twists the front of her sweater into knots.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to come,” I say.
“No, helping you will help me get better. It’s one of the reasons I came.”
“We need music.” I turn on the stereo and cue up a Lauryn Hill album from our childhood that will both comfort us and hide our conversation from anyone eavesdropping on us. Major Glenn’s demonstration spooked me, and I’m not taking chances.
“How did you know about Steven?” I whisper.
“Because you love him. You’d be with his family right now if he’d been killed.” She pulls me to the couch and plops me down on the cushions next to her. “Talk, Girlfriend.”
I spill my guts about the shooting, about how my temper made me kick Le Clerq, and how Steven is alive. I tell her the LAPD and the FBI are asking questions and expecting answers. I explain how Major Glenn Ward and Carl tried to short-circuit Steven but ruined everything, and how Steven probably blames me for it. We love each other, but I’m a self-centered bitch and he’s restless and impossible. Now, Steven will never stop his crazy quest to prove himself until he gets killed again. I end up crying on her shoulder and she pats me on the back like I’m a baby.
“What do you want most of all?”
“I want him to come back and be here with me.”
“Then you’re going to have to help him.”
“Help him? He’ll be killed for sure!”
“He seems to have a talent for staying alive.”
“I can’t believe you’re taking his side,” I say, and retreat two sofa cushions.
“You think you can stop Steven?” Trishelle asks. “Xander Constantinou and Rolando couldn’t stop him in the Bahamas, thank God. We’re alive because of him. We owe him.”
“And I can give him everything he needs. A job. Money. A life.”
“But that’s not what he wants.”
I’m amazed she’s not agreeing with me. “I’m confused.”
Trishelle nods with quiet patience, like Mr. Orser did for both of us in high school math class when we didn’t understand the equation. Trishelle breaks it down just like he used to do.
“Do you think Steven can accomplish this alone?” she asks.
“No. He’s in over his head.”
“You have money and influence. Do you think you could help him?”
“I don’t know…maybe,” I say, then cross my arms. “But he’d never accept it. He doesn’t trust me farther than he can spit right now.”
“That’s why you have to earn his trust again. Help him. Find something he wants so badly that he’ll believe you again and come back to get it. And then you convince him to stay and let the others take over.”
“He won’t stay.”
“He might, if we show him the LAPD and the FBI will do a better job. It’ll force him to collaborate,” she says.
“Carl thinks we should do everything we can to stop him.”
Trishelle throws up her hands. “He’s another reason why I’m here! Where is that handsome cue ball anyway?”
I remember that she and Carl had a brief attraction at the end of our Bahamas madness. “Carl’s on some important mission.” The moment I say it, I resent that Carl’s not here to take the blame with Glenn for driving Steven away.
“The best way to make Carl and Steven come back is by doing things ourselves. They can’t stand that,” Trishelle says.
“If I help him and he dies, I won’t be able to live with myself.”
Trishelle crosses the two cushions between us and takes my face in her palms. Her brown eyes are wide and intense. “You and Steven could have escaped Elysian Cay without me. But you convinced Steven to turn back for me.” she says. “Now it’s our turn to help him.”
My cellphone rings. It’s my agent Paul Telles, but I don’t want to answer.
“Shall I?” she asks when she sees the name. I nod, handing her the phone.
“Hi Paul, it’s Trishelle Hobbs,” she says, sounding like the old Trishelle again. “No, I’m in town as her friend, not her manager. Julia has to go to Rikki Lassen’s funeral in a few hours. That’s the priority right now. Tell the police we’ll talk with them about Le Clerq tomorrow. The press can wait too….
She lowers the phone and covers it with her hand. “He insists on coming by. He has a plan,” she whispers.
I just wave my hand, which means whatever, just handle it.
“Come by after nine p.m., we’ll have plenty to talk about,” she says, and hangs up.
We share a smile. I’m glad she came. We’ll figure out our own plan by then.
Chapter 15
* * *
Steven Quintana
Day 6: Thursday Night
San Francisco, CA
After I found Mike and Julie Bigler’s lost car keys in the wet sand, the grateful honeymooners from Chillicothe, Ohio gave me a ride all the way to San Francisco. I avoided my funeral and instead went to Union Square and got three hundred in cash from an ATM, and then found a barber shop on Sutter Street. A lovely film-noir movie fan named Andrea dyed my black hair a light caramel color and cut it short and spiky, while Johnny Hartman sang on the CD player.
“Do you look different enough now?” she asked.
“As different as I can look without getting plastic surgery,” I answered and gave her a big tip. Then I climbed Nob Hill and checked into the Fairmont Hotel, paying cash.
After a three-hour nap, I drift downstairs into the hotel bar, the Tonga Room, and hide in the back, in a hut made from palm fronds. While tourists sip their Mai Tais and plan their cable car strategies, I drink a virgin daiquiri to load up on healing calories while reading my obituary in the Chronicle. My parents interred my cremated remains at the Columbarium out in the Richmond district. That’s a nice choice. My obit is short. I went to St. Ignatius High School, then UC Berkeley, joined the Army my senior year after 9/11, became a Ranger and served with distinction, then disappeared into the gaping maw of Los Angeles, where I became a tabloid photographer but was shot dead while riding in manager Rikki Lassen’s car. A wasted life in fifty words.
I go out to the hallway, find a payphone, and call my brother, Anthony. I let it ring once, then hang up, then call again and hang up. Thirty seconds later, the payphone rings and I answer.
“Yo.”
“Yo,” Anthony says back. “Is this your new number?”
“Pay phone.”
“You missed a nice service. We put a very pretty green metal urn into a nice bronze drawer with a little plaque on the outside.”
“I read the obit. I started strong, then turned into a fuck-up.”
“Never too late to change. You don’t often get to say that to a dead man.”
People pass and I face the wall. “How’s mom taking all this?” I ask.
“Mom’s confused, but trusting in God. She told me that for your real funeral, you’d better not be cremated, and the service better be Catholic and at St. Mary’s.”
“And dad?”
“He blames Julia Travers for all this.”
There’s the word: blame. Who’s to blame for Rikki’s death? Me, not Julia. What can I blame Julia for? Being famous? Paying Glenn to wreck my computer? Trying to stop me from getting killed? You can’t compare the two. I can’t blame her for anything, but right now I don’t completely trust her, either.
“Was anyone else there?”
“Two photographers. They took photos, but when Julia didn’t show up, they left.”
My small mother with the big voice shouts in the background, banging dishes, cooking another meal for her husband and her one good son, the high school chemistry teacher. She’s complaining about the lazy men in her life, yet she’d never allow them to cook for her anyway.
“What’s she making?”
“Lemon chicken and rice, with plantains and spinach.”
It’s my favorite meal and my Irish-American mom cooks it for my Mexican-American dad to perfection. “I should go.” I hang up before the ache inside makes my voice crack.
I go back to my seat and sip my banana daiquiri so fast that I get an ice cream headache. My mom and dad and brother will talk about me over dinner, and curse the trouble I’m causing them, but maybe they know I’m trying to make up for my mistakes. Or at least Anthony does.
Recorded thunder echoes through the restaurant and pipes hidden in the palm fronds above kick out mist, like I’m a vegetable in the produce department. In the middle of the Tonga Room is a rectangular pool, which was once the hotel swimming pool, until they transformed the interior into retro-Polynesia. Floating in the middle of the pool is a pontoon raft that holds a three-man band, and they kick into a Hawaiian version of Stevie Wonder’s “I Just Called to Say I Love You.” People applaud and head to the dance floor.
The bass player is a stocky Chinese guy in a Hawaiian shirt named Walter Louie. Extending my right hand, I gesture like Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. He grins, recognizing me. We watched that movie a hundred times as teenagers. Walter was born in Hong Kong, then came to San Francisco for high school, where we became friends.
The band tears through twenty top American hits from the last half-century, ending with Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” Walter grabs the microphone. “Thank you, San Francisco. The Tropical Breeze Band will be back in fifteen minutes.”
Walter corners me in my hut and hugs me so hard that he squeezes the air out of me. I pound on his back for mercy.
“Oh, sorry,” he says, and releases me.
I fall into my chair. Every bruise stings and oozes liquid inside my shirt.
Our waitress appears.
“Hey, Walter,” she says and places a Jack and Coke in front of him. “Does your friend want another virgin daiquiri?”
I grip the table and suck air, trying to inflate my lungs. “Water,” I say.
She hurries away.
“You okay?” Walter asks. “You don’t look so good.”
“I got shot. You squeezed my wounds, dude.”
“Sorry, man. I’m a hugger.”
She brings water fast and leaves even faster. Air reenters my lungs and Walter’s grinning face comes back into focus. We grasp hands in a soul shake like we’re back in high school.
“You still an officer of the law?” I ask.
“Sheriff’s deputy in Contra Costa County. Four days on, three off.”
“And you get to play your music at the Tonga Room.”
“And I get benefits. You should try it. It’s not too late to start fresh, especially after what you’ve been through.” He takes a long sip of his drink, then sighs and smiles.
“I’m in a jam and I need your help,” I say.
“Of course, anything you need. Hey, want to go fishing tomorrow? The spring salmon run is happening just outside the Golden Gate. If I don’t get lucky with a pretty tourist by closing time, I’m leaving from DiMaggio’s Wharf by six a.m.”
“Did you hear what I said? I need your help.”
“I heard you. And I want you to go fishing tomorrow morning,” Walter says.
“Okay.”
“Say it. Say that you’ll go fishing.”
“I just said I’d go,” I say.
“No you didn’t. You said ‘okay.’ Just say the words.”
“I’ll go fishing with you tomorrow,” I say.
He salutes me with his Jack and Coke and takes a long satisfying sip, then smacks his lips and sets it down. “Now…how can I help you, hombre?”
“Is your brother still a cop in Hong Kong?”
“He is. Cush gig.”
“In Hong Kong, TV producers are casting contestants for a fight to the death competition for an online gambling show where the winner gets rich and the losers die. That’s all I know, but the fighters will probably be criminals or illegal immigrants, people desperate enough that they’d pick this as an option.”
Walter smiles with condescending patience. “Do you know where in Hong Kong?”
“I don’t know. But it’s happening now.”
“That’s not much to go on,” he says. “Seven million people live in Hong Kong. And worse stuff than that happens every day. It’s an obscure thing to worry about, don’t you think?”
I yank up my shirt and reveal the moist bandages with the oozing wounds underneath. “They shot me for asking about it in an email. What happens in Hong Kong worries me a lot.”
“Put your shirt down,” he says with disgust, waving his hand at me. “You’ll scare the tourists with that shit.”
“So can your brother help me?” I lower my shirt and drink my water.
Walter looks at his watch. “It’s the middle of tomorrow there. We can Skype him in the morning before we get on the fishing boat, and he can ask around. How does that sound?”
“That’s not enough. I want to go to Hong Kong myself. Check it out.”
Walter takes another long sip of his cocktail, but he’s not drinking; he’s holding it there to give himself time to answer. The drummer hits his high hat and Walter looks over and waves.
“My next set is starting.” He starts to get up.
“You said you’d help me.”
“The world thinks you’re dead, and you want to get on an international flight to HK?”
“If anybody can do it, you can. You and your brother are Hong Chow bigwigs, right? All the Chinese cops and army guys are members of the secret Hong Chow, I thought.”
“I’m no bigwig. You’re talking about my Uncle Han. He’s connected. But it will cost you. You sure you want that?” he asks with a narrow smile.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay. When I finish my gig, we’ll walk down the hill to Chinatown and ask him.”
Chapter 16
* * *
Robert Snow
Day 6: Thursday Night
Maui, Hawaii
Tina and I step out of the condo and walk onto the patio next to the ocean. We’re staying on the edge of the Lahaina city limits in a gated community called Puamana. Condo units on expansive lawns surround a clubhouse that was once a sugar baron’s mansion in the 1920s. With gigantic mango and banyan trees everywhere, the place looks like a Pan Am poster from the early days of Hawaiian air travel.
People assume we’re newlyweds, which I don’t mind. Tina even looks like a bride in her white cotton dress. I’m trying to look cool with my Hawaiian shirt and white linen pants, but I still look like I work at a Trader Joe’s.
We walk across the patio to the edge of the beach. “You like the place I picked?”
Tina glances at the green Maui Mountains, the blue ocean, and the golden setting sun, but doesn’t seem impressed. “It’s okay,” she shrugs.
She’s been all business since we got here. While she made my changes to the intros, I pulled off the impossible and got a photo of Rico in a Dodgers cap. Maybe I’ll get lucky with her later tonight. I visualize my future: Boss Man will approve the intros, production schedule, and budget, we’
ll eat a nice dinner, and then he’ll wish us good luck in Hong Kong. We’ll come back here, stroll on the beach, then return to the cottage and watch another Peter Heyman crash video to get our juices flowing and enjoy another night that’s the perfect mix of pain and pleasure.
“So are we going to meet Boss Man here?” she asks.
“No, we’re going to meet him there.” I point at a sleek, three-level white yacht motoring into view. A white speedboat is already zooming away from the yacht to pick us up.
“Nice,” Tina whispers.
Maybe I have finally impressed her…although it’s not my yacht.
On the ride out, the setting sun turns the white hull of the yacht flickering orange. The ship’s neon display lights pop on, lighting up her name in incandescent blue: Clairvoyance. The speedboat pulls along the stern, and we step onto the back swim platform. A boatswain points for us to head up a short staircase to the bottom deck.
The back deck has no chairs or furniture. Instead, there are four white containers each five yards wide by fifteen yards long. They’re filled with water, and shapes move inside them.
Two men stand on either side of the glass doors that lead to the interior of the yacht. They wear jeans and black t-shirts that show off their physiques. They do not look friendly.
Then, coming out to greet us is the man I most want to be—Boss Man.
“Welcome, my hardworking producers. It’s an exciting time,” he says, crossing the deck to greet us. He’s just under six feet tall, stocky and muscular, with short black hair and black stubble flecked with gray on his chin. He wears loose blue jeans and a white silk shirt, and he seems tan and relaxed, except for his intense blue eyes. He grips my hand and smiles.
“You’ve done everything you promised. I appreciate that,” he says and points at me, then turns to Tina with an even bigger smile. He takes her hand and shakes it very slowly.
“And it is a pleasure to finally meet you, Tina Swig. I judge a leader by the team he builds, and Mr. Snow’s most impressive move was hiring you.” He stares hard at her and holds her hand longer than I like.