Kissing the Beehive
Page 9
I sat down next to them. "Hi, sweet potato."
"Hi, Dad."
"Hi, Lou." He didn't even deign to look at me.
She turned to me and smiled. "How was your trip?"
"Okay."
"How's Greta Garbo?"
"Okay."
The three of us sat there like Easter Island heads, staring into the off. Louie saw something in the corner of the yard and skulked off in that direction.
"How come when I was a kid we used to have great dogs, but when I grew up I chose him? The only male on earth with permanent PMS."
"Gee, Dad, you're in a good mood. Want to have a catch?"
"I would love to." I got up and went into the house for the baseball gloves and ball. They were on a table in the hall next to the mail. I looked it over and saw an express letter from Veronica. I appreciated the fact she hadn't called, but wasn't in the mood to listen to her right then, so I put it down and went back outside.
As a youngster, Cass was the best Little League baseball player around. She threw like a pro and could hit the ball into next week. Things changed as she grew older, but she was still the best person on earth to play catch with. For her birthday a few years before, I had bought her a ridiculously expensive baseball glove. Opening the package, she took the mitt out and buried her face in it. Then she rubbed it up and down her cheek and said in an ecstatic voice, "It smells like the gods!"
We tossed the ball back and forth, the first throws slow lobs to warm up our arms. That sound, that immortal American sound of a hard white ball slapping into the pocket of a leather glove: father and his kid together. After a few minutes, I nodded at her and she began throwing much harder. I loved everything about this. The knots in my head from the last few days began to undo themselves. This girl could throw both a curve and a knuckleball, two things I had never been able to do in my life. Sometimes I could catch them, sometimes they were so tricky and well thrown that I was completely baffled and they sailed by, back to the fence. I was in the midst of retrieving one of those when Cass broke her news.
"Dad, I've met someone."
About to throw her the ball, I dropped my arm instead. A smile grew on my face. "Yeah? And?"
She wouldn't look at me, but she grew a smile too. "And, I don't know. I like him."
"What's his name?"
"Ivan. Ivan Chemetov. His family's Russian. But he was born here."
This was dangerous ground. I knew anything I said now would determine how open she would be with me about what was really going on. Forget it. "Have you slept together yet?"
Eyes widening, she giggled. "Dad! How could you ask that? Yes we have."
"Were you careful?"
She nodded.
"Is he a good guy?"
She opened her mouth to speak, stopped, closed her eyes and said, "I hope so."
"Then mazel tov. I'll kill him the minute I see him, but if you like him, I'll wipe my tears and shake the man's hand." I flipped her the ball. She caught it with the most subtle little twist of her hand. My beautiful girl. "Does he play ball?"
"You can ask. He's coming over in half an hour."
We continued our catch until Ivan the Terrible rang the bell. The dog moped toward the door to see if anyone was bringing him food. Cass sprinted, while Dad held the baseball a little too tightly and tried not to scowl. I had been ruing this moment for years. Like the character in the Borges story who tries to imagine all the different ways he can die, I had wondered a hundred different scenarios of what it would be like to meet the fiend who deflowered Cassandra Bayer. Shake his hand? Spit on it, more likely. Perverse as it sounds, even when she was a little pixie I had thought about the day when . . . and now here it was.
Ivan. Ivan the Terrible. Ivan Denisovich. Ivan Bloomberg, one of the biggest assholes I knew. What was his last name, Chemetov? Cassandra Chemetov? Say that one fast three times.
"Dad, this is Ivan."
Half a head shorter than Cassandra, he had the kind of chiseled Slavic features and brushed-back long hair, short on the sides, you often see in Fascist art of the twenties and thirties. A handsome boy, but hard enough looking to open a can of peas with his stare. Add to this the fact he was wearing a T-shirt that covered arms roughly the size of Popeye's and Bluto's combined.
"Mr. Bayer, it's a pleasure." His shake was surprisingly gentle and long. "I've read all your books and would love to talk with you about them."
I asked the pitty-pat questions fathers are supposed to ask on first meeting the suitor: What do you do? Freshman at Wesleyan University, wanted to major in economics. Where did you two meet? In New York at a Massive Attack concert. Not knowing whether that was a rock group or a military group, I wasn't about to ask. We chatted and I half-listened to his answers. What really caught my attention was the look on Cass's face. The way she gazed at Ivan resembled the expression of a saint having a religious ecstasy on one of those camp Italian postcards. No sexy "I wanna eat you" or "Ain't he sweet" look. Hers was one-hundred-proof adoration. Coming from my notably cool and rational daughter, it said everything.
The phone rang. I walked over to the porch to pick it up. "Hello?"
"It's Frannie. You were at the cemetery today, right?"
"Yes."
"So you saw what they wrote on Pauline's stone? Why didn't you call me?"
The kids were watching. I turned and walked a few steps away. "To tell you the truth, Fran, I thought you might have done it. To get me stimulated or something."
"Stimulate yourself, Sam! I'm not interested in desecrating gravestones to get you off your ass. Whoever did it's going to have me breathing in his face, believe me. Mrs. Ostrova's a nice old woman and this upset her. She was the one who discovered it. I guess she was up there right after you. Jesus, who the fuck would do that? Write 'Hi' on a gravestone?"
"Hi, Sam. They were saying hello to me, Frannie. That's what gave me the creeps."
"Yeah, whatever. Listen, next time anything like this happens again, you call. Okay? You want my help on this, you help me back. Otherwise, I'm going to kick your ass like I used to. Got me?"
"Gotcha, chief."
"And one other thing: Hi, Sam!" He sniggered and hung up.
I took the lovebirds out to dinner. After forcing myself to stop thinking about his fingertips on her skin, I realized Ivan was an outstanding young man, and I could easily understand her infatuation. He was intense and enthusiastic in equal measure. He spoke respectfully to Cassandra and gave her his complete attention whenever she spoke. More important, he seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say. He was also one of those fortunate people curious about all sorts of things at the same time. Economics was no more important than the last novel he had read. He had been a state champion wrestler in high school. Granted, he exuded a faint aura of arrogance. But I would have been arrogant too if I'd been as on the ball and engaged as him.
At the end of the meal, Ivan said he'd heard about my new project and had brought along something that he hoped would interest me. Reaching into his knapsack, he pulled out an inch-thick wad of papers that looked like an unbound movie script. Since hearing the story from Cass, he had been doing some research for me. Another Internet Cadet, he had driven his Porsche brain all over the information superhighway, picking up a variety of available data that might be helpful. Thumbing quickly through the pages, I saw documents from the county district attorney's office, articles from regional newspapers about the murder, an old piece in Esquire magazine by Mark Jacobson I'd already read about the death of Gordon Cadmus . . . It was a treasure trove.
"Wow, this is terrific stuff! Thank you very much, Ivan."
"I would really like to help out in any way I could. I love doing research."
"I may take you up on that. Let's see what's needed and then we can talk some more about it."
When we got back home, they went out again. I stood at the window watching them leave. The silence in that room was very loud. I was happy for Cass, but knew tonight marked in
some profound way the beginning of the end of our relationship as it had been for so many years. She had a lover now, someone who wanted to hold her and hear her secrets. Letting go of the curtain, I sadly wondered if she had played catch with him yet.
Feeling a wave of middle-age self-pity break over me, I shook myself like a wet dog and decided to do some reading – Veronica's letter, Ivan's information.
The dog was planted in my favorite chair, sound asleep and making unattractive wet sounds. More than once he had snapped at me when I tried to rouse him from said chair. I wasn't about to go through that again. I sat on the couch and pulled some reading glasses out of my pocket.
I heard a noise upstairs. There had been a series of break-ins around the neighborhood. That made any sound ten times more suspect when you were alone in the house. I stood up slowly and walked on tiptoe to the staircase. I listened for more, but nothing came. There was a hammer on a side table and I picked it up. For a while I had considered buying a gun for the house, but that only made you part of the problem. The hammer would have to do.
At the top of the stairs I saw a light on in my bedroom. I hadn't turned it on. Stupidly, I strode over and kicked the door open. Veronica was sitting in the rocking chair by the window. Heart racing, anger and relief chased each other around in my stomach. "How did you get in?"
"I know how to open doors."
"You know how to open doors. That's great! Welcome to my house, Veronica. Why didn't you just call and say you were coming?"
"Because I was afraid you'd tell me not to. You didn't answer my letter."
"I just got it!" I went to the bed and sat down. There was this hammer in my hand. I looked at it and dropped it on the floor.
"I was so scared, Sam. I thought you'd never want to talk to me again. I was going crazy." Her voice cracked on the last word. When she spoke again, it was too loud and agitated. "But this is my life! Not yours or anyone else's! Why am I always apologizing for what I've done? Don't you think I feel bad anyway? Don't you think I look back and say, 'How could you have done that? What got into you?' "
I turned and looked at her. "Did you write on that gravestone?"
She stared at me, shook her head. "What are you talking about? What gravestone?"
"Forget it. Never mind." But the problem, the new worry was I didn't know if she was telling the truth. She'd already lied to me, acted in porno films, broken into my house . . . What else was Veronica Lake capable of doing?
As if reading my mind, she said, "You don't trust me at all anymore, do you?"
"You're not who I thought you were."
"Who is, Sam? Who is?"
The next morning Veronica and Cassandra met. It went very badly. Veronica and I had slept, fully clothed, in my bed. In the middle of the night I woke up and saw her, wide awake, staring at me. I got up and went into the guest room.
Cass was in the kitchen eating breakfast when I got downstairs. I told her Veronica was there and she raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't know she was coming."
"Neither did I. We'll talk about it later."
Veronica appeared a few minutes later looking like hell. I introduced them. Cass tried hard to be friendly and warm but Veronica was withdrawn. She wouldn't eat anything and answered Cass's questions with short, curt sentences that were just short of being rude. It was one of the most uncomfortable meals I had sat through in a long time. Luckily Ivan came by and the two kids drove off to happier lands. When they were gone, I suggested we take the dog for a walk.
It was overcast and chilly outside. Veronica wore a light shirt. I offered her a jacket but she wouldn't take it. Crossing her arms over her chest, she walked with her head down.
"Did you read the letter I sent? No, you didn't have time. There was nothing in there except poetry by Neruda. Can I say it to you?
And our problems will crumble apart, the soul
blow through like a wind, and here where we live
will all be clean again, with fresh bread on the
table. . . .
Because the dark-faced earth does not want suffering;
it wants freshness-fire-water-bread, for everyone:
nothing should separate people but
the sun or the night, the moon or the branches.
We walked on silently. A car passed and honked its horn. I jerked and looked up quickly. It was a neighbor, giving a big wave. I waved back.
"Do they like you around here, Sam? Do you have a lot of friends?"
"No. Just people to wave to. You know me – I'm not very social."
"But I'm your friend. I'd do anything for you!"
She said it with such anger that my own reared and shot right back. I wish it hadn't. "And that's the trouble, Veronica. You were friends with Donald Gold and look at what it led to."
She gasped, stopped, and put a hand to her cheek. "You son of a bitch!" She ran down the street before I could say anything else. Stopping once, she turned and looked at me, then started running again.
He don't look dead to me. But maybe that's 'cause we're in L.A.; out here they tan your body before showing it."
"Frannie, shut up. The guy's dead."
"That's right – he and his dad are playing Ping-Pong together in hell."
We moved past the open coffin of David Cadmus and sat down on some folding chairs nearby. There were only two other people in the room – a smoky-looking brunet and a guy whose beeper kept going off. Welcome to L.A.
A day before, McCabe had called to tell me David Cadmus had been murdered in a drive-by shooting. "Boy, that completes the Cadmus circle, huh? Like father, like son."
He said he had friends with the Los Angeles police who would fix it so we could have a look around Cadmus's house before anything was removed. We were on a plane six hours later.
What was strange was that the last time I had seen Cadmus, he had been white as a sheet. In death, he had the deep tan of a beach volleyball player.
Los Angeles is a town where you take your chances, but other than my editor Aurelio Parma having been held up at gunpoint at the American Booksellers Association convention, I'd never known anyone there directly touched by crime.
After a minute or two of silence, Frannie leaned over and said, "Let's get out of here. I don't have that many respects to pay to the Cadmus family."
Outside he pulled a pair of snappy-looking sunglasses out of a pocket and slid them on.
"Nice glasses."
"Armani. What else? You want something, you get the best."
"Then how come you rented a Neon, Giorgio?"
He kissed the air between us and walked over to the beige rental car that looked like a large lump of bread dough on the rise. "Hey, this car's okay, Sam. It gets about a thousand miles to the gallon and that's what matters out here."
Inside it was like a microwave oven. Thank God the seats were made of cloth or else our asses would have melted onto them like grilled-cheese sandwiches. Frannie turned on the air-conditioning but that only made it hotter.
We drove out of the funeral home parking lot onto Pico Boulevard. "Cadmus's house is not far from here. About ten minutes. There's a fabulous place for ribs on the way – you ever been to Chickalicious? They also make these hot wings . . . well, you'll taste them."
"Don't you think we'd better go to his house and look around before we eat a ten-ton meal?"
"Fuck no! Crime makes me hungry."
Pico Boulevard was still showing the haunting effects of the last L.A. riot. The farther away we got from Beverly Hills, the more burned-out shells of buildings we saw. It reminded me of the aftereffects of a tornado – why had the funnel touched down here and destroyed one place, while the building next door was business as usual? I said that as we passed what was once an Indian food store.
Frannie ran his hand through his hair. "Riots are always a good excuse for kicking your neighbor's ass. The guys who owned that place probably overcharged their customers for years. When the riots came – payback!"
"How do you know this area?"
"I had a girlfriend who lived around here. Lucy. Lucy Atherton. Big beautiful thing; head like a lion. Lied more to me than any other woman I've ever known. The things I found out about her after it was over . . ."
"What were you doing in California?"
"I told you, my wife was a TV producer. I used to come out here all the time."
"To see Lucy?"
"Sometimes. Here's the place and hey, look! That's where we want anyway – Hi Point Street. Sounds like a 1950s pen. Let's eat."
We pulled into one of those omnipresent pocket shopping plazas you see all over California. A video rental store, fish-and-chips restaurant, hairdresser, and gourmutt McCabe's choice for the day – Chick-alicious. He parked in front so we had a good view into the place. "Frannie, everyone in there is wearing a Malcolm X T-shirt and hates us already."
He waved it off and got out of the car. "They may hate you, but I'm a brother. Watch." He walked to the door and threw it open. Those brothers didn't seem thrilled to see him. In fact, first they gaped at him like he was nuts, then the real hard looks started. I followed as warily as I could, ready to make a Road Runner U-turn in a microsecond. Then from behind the thick glass windows someone came out, looking the meanest of all.
"Frannie McCabe! Ronald, get your ass out here and see Frannie McCabe!" The owner, built like a Rottweiler, was wearing a Chick-alicious T-shirt and an emerald green baseball cap, the name of the restaurant spelled out on it in fake diamonds. He and Frannie embraced. When another guy in a full apron appeared from the back, McCabe hugged him too. The customers looked at each other and slowly settled back into their chairs and rib dinners. I could feel relief leaving my pores like steam.