The Infinite Blacktop

by Sara Gran

  “It’s possible,” Marcus Mikkelson said. He looked at his hands, which were black with oil and soot. “Cops searched the area, found nothing, no glass, no spike strips, nothing like that—”

  I started to interrupt him, but he stopped me.

  “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible,” he said. “Here’s what I think: I think something—coyote, deer, gravity—shook some rocks down from the mountain. Like”—he held up his hand in a circle, to indicate rocks around Ping-Pong ball size—“but not circular. Shale-type rock; I’m no geologist, but you know what I mean: pieces of rock with sharp edges. Little knives. So I think, small rocks on the road, too dark to see them, too drunk to see them, no room to avoid them anyways, drives over them, in course of doing so kicks them back down the mountain, so to speak, blows out his tires, loses control of the car, and bang. Horrible. Terrible. Goodbye.”

  * * *

  I drove out to the freeway and over to Topanga Canyon, in between the meat of the city and Malibu, to see where Merritt lived. The canyon, which was really the side of a steep, mountainy, hill, at first look seemed like unspoiled wilderness. But everything is spoiled.

  After some twists and wrong turns I found the house where Merritt had lived and the road where he had died. The house was gone. There was a construction site where it used to be. Spoiled and spoiled again. Out in front of the site was a two-pronged sign stuck in the dirt for pool designs. Maybe the humans of Los Angeles would miss Merritt, but its real estate developers would not.

  Next I found the spot where Merritt had driven—or was pushed or manipulated or otherwise forced—off the road. There was a little pull-over landing about thirty feet away and I pulled over and parked and looked down the curve of the road. Thirty feet away and I could barely see the spot on the edge of the curve. The road hugged the mountain and was just wide enough for two modern cars to pass each other and if one of them was a wide-load truck you’d have a problem. There was no guardrail. On the other side of the road—the side that wasn’t a mountain, or as they called it in California, a hill, was a cliff that went right down to the bottom of the canyon, about a forty-foot drop into eucalyptus and sage.

  It would be an easy place to fall.

  It would also be an easy place to get killed.

  * * *

  Ann’s old art dealer, Carol Vines, lived in Beverly Hills, retired, rich, and bitter—not bitter from work, but from death.

  “Everyone’s gone,” she said. We sat in her backyard, which seemed to go on for acres. Carol drank gin and chain-smoked. It was 11:00 a.m. I drank iced tea. I would drink in the morning if it made me feel better, but it didn’t, just left me confused and angry by the afternoon. “My husband died not long after Ann. In between Ann and Merritt. They were both close friends. Then my sister that same year—the same year as Merritt. Then—well. That doesn’t matter. That’s not what you’re here for.”

  “Did you like being an art dealer?” I asked. It didn’t have anything to do with the case. I was just curious if life had brought her any joy.

  She nodded. “Loved it,” she said, and I was reassured. “I just couldn’t do it anymore after everyone died. I’d rather drink. Anyway. Ann. You asked if she had friends. Well, she knew a lot of people. I don’t know if any of them really knew her. I don’t know if they were friends. She was odd. That’s the thing about creative people, why I loved working with them—all crazy, but each crazy in a different way.”

  “How was Ann crazy?” I asked.

  Carol thought for a long time before she answered.

  “Ann kept her crazy to herself,” she finally said. “The best kind. She kept it all inside and let it build up and build up until it all came out in her work. And sometimes, you know, in her life.” Carol smiled a little. “She wasn’t one of those people who loved drama or seemed especially emotional. But somehow there was always activity round her.” Carol made a little marionette motion with her hands. “Like a beehive. Well, Ann and her bee thing, you know. Always some kind of situation. Other women did not like her. Well, I did. But she was distant to women. She wanted to be left alone and make art. She went to parties, she wasn’t a recluse. But she didn’t like to do press, even when she did do it, didn’t . . . how can I put it? She didn’t want to be caught. Didn’t want anyone to pin her down and really take a look at her. And once you reach a certain level of, maybe not fame, let’s say renown, you’re going to get attention, and you’re going to get a lot of it.

  “Now men, men never really see women at all. The more famous you are, the less they see you. That’s one thing I know. You can spend a lifetime around men without them ever really seeing you.”

  Carol was starting to get drunk, which was not a bad thing for an investigation or, I figured, her day.

  “What do they see?” I asked.

  “They see one of two things,” Carol said, with no malice. “They see someone who can solve all their problems—someone who can make their dick hard, make them rich, make them grow their hair back. Or they see the mean old lady standing in between them and all of that. The witch. That’s me. You don’t believe me now, but wait until you’re my age. You will. You’ll see how fast you change from one to the other. And Ann, Ann didn’t fit into either category, and that made people uncomfortable. And it made her very uncomfortable, too, I think—always being looked at, never being seen.”

  “What about Merritt?” I asked. “What did he see?”

  Carol thought for a minute. “Merritt was different. Well, like I said, they’re all different. But Merritt didn’t mind Ann’s success at all. He saw her. Really saw her. Everyone wants to know why the men do so well in this business and the women have such a hard time. Well, it’s the wives. Men have them. Women don’t. They make it all work. Now Merritt, he was no wife. But he had some security about him. Some confidence. He didn’t mind if she got more successful than him. He didn’t mind driving her to an opening or doing some laundry or whatever. I mean, I don’t know who did the laundry. I don’t think he was ready to be Mr. Mom. I just mean that he knew who he was. He didn’t have anything to prove.

  “That being said, their relationship was rocky. Very much in love, but rocky. Never monogamous. Neither of them was ready to settle down, and if you’re not ready by thirty or forty or whatever they were, I don’t know when you will be.”

  “What about Ann’s death?” I asked. “Do you think she was drunk?”

  Carol shrugged again, this one more of a life-is-complicated shrug.

  “Well, they say she was. She was drinking more, that was for sure. I don’t think Merritt was a good influence on her in that regard.”

  I asked about Carl Avery.

  “Carl and Merritt were close,” Carol said.

  “What about Ann?” I asked. “Were they close?”

  “Oh, that,” Carol said. “They worked it out.”

  “Merritt and Ann?” I asked. “How did they work it out?”

  “Merritt and Ann and Carl,” she said.

  I stopped.

  “What?” I said. “Sorry, I mean—Merritt and Ann and Carl?”

  “Well Carl,” she said. “That guy—that’s exactly what Ann wanted to avoid. Exactly what she didn’t want. Carl Avery is bloodless. Talented, but bloodless. Everything about him—now him, he wanted a wife. What I just said? About how men see women? Him. That’s him. Carl needs a woman to complete him. He needs a woman to be his blood. To bring him to life. But Merritt, Merritt had everything he needed. He loved Ann. He didn’t need anything from Ann. Good artists—the best artists—are wild animals. They’re not ordinary people. Carl didn’t have a wild bone in his body.”

  “Wait,” I said. “So what went on between Carl and Ann?”

  “Nothing went on,” Carol said. “Carl was in love with Ann.”

  “Carl was in love with Ann?”

  “Love,” Carol said, with a third shrug. “I mean, call it what you want. But he wanted her, wanted to be with her.”

  “Car
l and Ann?”

  “Oh yeah,” Carol said. “I thought you were a detective. Yeah. Carl and Ann.”

  * * *

  I called Linda Hill, Merritt’s art dealer, one more time.

  “I was wondering about Carl and Ann,” I said. “About that thing they had.”

  “Oh my God,” she said. “I forgot all about that.

  “It wasn’t really a thing,” she went on. “Well, Carl wanted it to be a thing. He had feelings for Ann. God, I can’t believe I forgot all about this. Well, I guess I can believe it, because it seemed like a big deal at the time, but it all came to nothing. You know, Ann and Merritt were not a traditional couple, because he was so nuts, and maybe she was, too. And neither of them was interested in, you know, family-type stuff. But they were very much together. And Carl, he thought—well, who knows what he thought? But he had designs on Ann. And after she died, he blamed Merritt.”

  “Blamed Merritt how?” I asked.

  “Oh, not that Merritt had killed her or anything like that. But that Merritt was a bad influence on her. And I think, if I remember right— Oh, I don’t know what happened. They had some kind of a fight. Carl and Merritt. Some kind of a big blowout, I think, over it. But they fought all the time. I can’t remember it all. Merritt and Ann are gone. There’s no reason to carry this stuff around in my head anymore. It’s over. Let someone else keep them alive.”

  For now, that someone else was me.

  * * *

  For no reason I drove down to the end of Santa Monica Boulevard and found myself at the bright and shimmering Pacific. In Santa Monica I ate a sandwich at a vegan café and looked through the Richter file again. There was a timeline: as far as Christopher had been able to put together, Merritt had last used his car the night before the accident, coming back from a party in the Hollywood Hills. The address of the party was typed neatly under the item. Mulholland Drive.

  I drove across town to Adam Dubinsky’s office, where I exchanged a few uncomfortable formalities with Adam and used his reverse directory. While I used it Adam spoke on the phone to someone in what I thought was Ukrainian but I wasn’t sure. Adam sounded frustrated and defensive. Maybe that was just his accent. Maybe that was just what Ukrainian sounded like. Before I left I remembered to ask Adam if he knew anything about some of the odd things in the file—especially the letter. The letter that had been returned to Merritt.

  You are my friend.

  I love you.

  I miss you.

  “I really don’t remember,” Adam said. “That’s kind of your job now.”

  Adam gave me one of his non-smiles and did something with his forehead to indicate that I was annoying him.

  “Cool,” I said. “Right. Thanks. Very cool.”

  The house on Mulholland Drive wasn’t in the reverse directory, so I’d gotten my daily dose of fuck you for nothing. I left Adam’s office and drove up to the house. According to my map, it was fourteen miles away. The map did not show, unless you knew what you were looking for, that those fourteen miles were mostly uphill about forty-five degrees. I didn’t know Los Angeles well enough to know, until I got there, that this was moneyed territory; I was just beginning to understand that while other cities organized themselves on the horizontal plane, Los Angeles neighborhoods went up when they went up and down when they went down.

  And the farther up you went, the tighter the security. I found the address. There was a bald man in a black suit standing guard at the start of the long, uphill, drive. At the end of the long drive was a pair of large, strong, iron gates. They were not decorative.

  I stopped by the bald man and rolled down my window. He approached.

  “Help you?” he said.

  “Who lives here?” I asked.

  “That’s personal information,” he said, which was stating the obvious, but there was nothing to be gained from judging his capacity for subtlety. Everyone’s got a job.

  “Well, here’s the thing,” I said, and then I told him the thing—that I was working for Adam Dubinsky, that I was on the Merritt Underwood murder case, that there was a party in this house a few days before Merritt died.

  He asked if I had a card.

  I pretended to look in my wallet. “Shit,” I said. “I ran out.”

  I’d never had a card. I wrote my name and the hotel phone number on the back of one of Adam’s cards and handed it to the bald man.

  “Maybe someone on your team could check me out,” I said. “Give me a call.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “We’ll see.”

  * * *

  It was a few days later that I got the call. James Voorstein. A security guy. I knew who he was. He protected politicians and celebrities and other people who could afford him.

  “I know Adam well,” he said on the phone, making it clear that Adam’s good name was the only reason I was getting a call. “What’s the story?”

  I told him the story. He listened carefully and asked perceptive and particular questions, some of which I answered and some of which I couldn’t.

  “OK,” he said at the end. “I’ll talk to the homeowner. If he agrees, I’ll set up a meeting. If not, there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  He called again the next day: the homeowner agreed. He would see me. Time and place to be determined.

  “It’s Anderson Schmidt,” Voorstein said, and let that sink in.

  “Wow,” I said. “OK. Thank you.”

  When we got off the phone I went downstairs and drove to the library downtown. I asked a librarian in the art department if she knew who Anderson Schmidt was. The librarian was in her thirties and wore cat-eye glasses and Dr. Martens boots. She seemed to be a specialist.

  “You mean the artist?” she said.

  “Yes?” I said, realizing I probably did.

  She made a face of something like bliss.

  “Do you want to see the books?”

  I did want to see the books. She came out from around the counter and walked me toward the shelves.

  “You like him?” I said as we walked.

  “He’s my favorite,” she said. “Everything he does is so playful. So tangible. But also beautiful. It’s like he’s spiritual and childlike at the same time. I mean—I’m sure he would say childish, not childlike. I have no idea what he would say. But yes. My favorite living painter.”

  I didn’t really understand any of that. I asked her something else.

  “If you could meet him,” I said, “and ask him one question, what would that question be?”

  She thought and thought until we reached his section. I wondered what it would be like to have your own section in the library.

  The librarian pulled out a pile of books for me, big heavy books with glossy color pages. I asked her to show me her favorite paintings of his and she did. They looked like cartoons. Like cartoons made by someone who wrote graffiti. I saw what she meant about them being childish, in a good way.

  “I would ask him,” the librarian finally said, “if he would sleep with me.”

  * * *

  Two days later Anderson Schmidt met me at Chez Jay in Santa Monica. Everyone at Chez Jay seemed to know him and seemed to be happy to see him. Anderson had messy hair and giant hands. His clothes were expensive and didn’t fit him right and his nose was sunburned. He was one of the most successful artists of his generation, and by far the richest in Los Angeles.

  “Boy,” Anderson said, after ordering a corned beef sandwich with extra pickles on the side and a beer, which I immediately imitated, sensing genius at work. “Merritt Underwood. I haven’t heard that name in years. What a guy. Such a character. Such a gifted SOB.”

  “So you liked him?” I asked. Our glasses of beer came and they were cold and perfect. I knew I’d been right to copy Anderson’s order.

  “Oh, I loved Merritt,” Anderson said. “What an SOB. He was nuts. NUTS. Total alcoholic. Total crazy man. But he would give you the shirt off his back. Boy, did we fight. Cats and dogs.”

  “What’
d you fight about?” I asked.

  “Everything,” Anderson said, smiling. He seemed to really relish the memory. “But mostly art. I met Merritt when he was young, but I always felt like he was my equal. Intellectually, I mean. If I thought anyone else was my equal artistically, I’d have to kill them.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes,” Anderson said without hesitating. “But Merritt wasn’t, so you can cross me off your list of suspects. Very talented, but he was Merritt and I’m me. And I’m better. Usually.”

  “Who should be ON my list of suspects?” I asked.

  Anderson shrugged. “Everyone else? Life is mysterious. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that.”

  He did not.

  “So there was a party,” I said. “A couple of days before Merritt died?”

  Anderson nodded. “Back then we had parties every week. Almost every night. Before we got old.” But you could tell from the way he said it that he didn’t really think he was old. “Had I known . . .”

  Of course there was no way to finish that sentence—had he known Merritt was going to die just two days later, there was likely much he would have done differently.

  Everyone dies. And everyone is always surprised when it happens. I couldn’t understand it. It isn’t a secret. It’s not like no one ever told them.

  Then again, when Mick, Constance’s other assistant, told me Constance was dead, I didn’t believe him. I didn’t believe him the second time. The third time, I smacked him across the face, as hard as I could, and my fingernail cut his cheek and left a scar.

  “So the party,” I began again. “What was that like? You had parties like that before?”

  “All the time,” Anderson said. “Merritt had his place in Topanga; Paul January had a big warehouse in Santa Monica; Carl Avery was in Venice. We’d paint all day—well, all afternoon—then one or the other of us would head over to the other’s studio around eight or nine and start drinking. If we hadn’t started already. I was married to my first wife. Trina. She was insane. Obviously. Only an insane woman would marry me. My current wife is almost as crazy, but she likes to stay home. We stay out of trouble. Most of the time. Anyway. We had parties often. The other painters would come, women”—I noticed that for Anderson, these were two separate categories—“and students, whoever was around. We had a blast. Usually ended with a fight, but that’s what men do.”