Void Moon (1999)

by Michael Connelly

  "Oh, sure. You just let me know. Here's my card."

  LeValley offered a business card and Cassie took it. She noticed through the living room's picture window a car pulling to the curb behind the Boxster. Another potential buyer. She decided it was time to ask questions while she still had LeValley alone.

  "The ad in the paper said the Shaws were anxious to sell the house. Do you mind me asking how come? I mean, is there something wrong here?"

  Halfway through her question Cassie realized she had used the name of the owners. Then she remembered the letters on the wall of the girl's room and knew she was covered if LeValley noticed the slip.

  "Oh, no, it has nothing to do with the house at all," LeValley said. "He's been transferred and they are anxious to make the move and get settled in their new place. If they sell it quickly they can all move together, rather than him having to commute back and forth from the new location. It's a very long trip."

  Cassie felt she needed to sit down but stood still. She felt a terrible dread engulf her heart. She tried to remain steady by placing her hand on the stone hearth but was sure she was not hiding the impact of the words she had just heard.

  It's a very long trip.

  "Are you okay?" LeValley asked.

  "Fine. I'm fine. I had the flu last week and . . . you know."

  "I know. I had it a few weeks ago. It was awful."

  Cassie turned her face and acted as though she were studying the brickwork of the fireplace.

  "How far are they moving?" she asked, as casually as was possible considering the fears welling up inside her.

  She closed her eyes and waited, sure that LeValley knew by now she wasn't here because of the house.

  "Paris. He works for some kind of clothing import business and they want him working on that end of things for a while. They thought about keeping the house, maybe renting it out. But I think realistically they know that they probably won't be coming back. I mean, it's Paris. Who wouldn't want to live there?"

  Cassie opened her eyes and nodded.

  "Paris . . ."

  LeValley continued in an almost conspiring tone.

  "That's also the reason they would be very interested in any kind of an offer. His company will cover him on anything below appraisal value. Anything within reason. So a quick, low bid might really be able to turn this. They want to get over there so they can get the girl into one of those language schools this summer. So she can start learning the language and be fairly integrated by the time school starts."

  Cassie wasn't listening to the sales pitch. She stared into the darkness of the hearth. A thousand fires had burned there and warmed this house. But at the moment the bricks were black and cold. And Cassie felt as though she were staring at the inside of her own heart.

  In that moment she knew that all things in her life were changing. For the longest time she had lived day to day, carefully avoiding even a glance at the desperate plan that floated out on the horizon like a dream.

  But now she knew that it was time to go to the horizon.

  2

  ON the Monday after the open house Cassie got to Hollywood Porsche at ten as usual and spent the rest of the morning in her small office off the showroom going down her list of call-backs, studying the updated inventory list, answering Internet inquiries, and running a search for a customer looking for a vintage Speedster. Mostly, though, her thoughts remained concentrated on the information she had learned during the open house in Laurel Canyon.

  Mondays were always the slowest days in the showroom. Occasionally there were leftover buyers and paperwork from the weekend but as a rule very few first-visit car buyers came in. The dealership was located on Sunset Boulevard a half block from the Cinerama Dome and sometimes it was so slow on Mondays that Ray Morales didn't mind if Cassie walked over and caught a flick in the afternoon, just as long as she had her pager on and could be recalled if things started hopping. Ray was always cutting Cassie a break, starting with giving her the job without her having any valid experience. She knew his motives weren't entirely altruistic. She knew it would only be a matter of time before he came to her to collect the return. She was surprised he hadn't made the move yet; it had been ten months.

  Hollywood Porsche sold new and used cars. As the newest person on the six-member sales force, it fell to Cassie to work Monday shifts and to handle all Internet-related business. The latter she didn't mind because she had taken computer courses while at High Desert Correctional Institution for Women and had found she enjoyed the work. She had learned that she preferred dealing with customers and salesmen from other dealerships over the Internet rather than in person.

  Her search for a Speedster of the quality her customer sought was successful. She located a ' 58 convertible in pristine condition on a lot in San Jose and arranged to have photos and the particulars overnighted. She then left a message for the customer saying he could come in the next afternoon and look at the photos or she would send them over to his office as soon as she got them.

  The one test drive of the day came in shortly before lunch. The customer was one of Ray's so-called Hollywood hard-ons, a name the fleet manager had come up with himself.

  Ray religiously scoured the Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety for stories on nobodies becoming overnight somebodies. Most often these were writers who were snatched from penniless obscurity and made rich and at least known for the day by a studio deal for a book or screenplay. Once Ray chose a target, he tracked down the writer's address through the Writers Guild or a friend he had in the voter registrar's office. He then had the Sunset Liquor Deli deliver a bottle of Macallan Scotch whisky with his card and a note of congratulations. A little more than half the time it worked. The recipient responded with a call to Ray and then a visit to the showroom. Owning a Porsche was almost a rite of passage in Hollywood, especially for males in their twenties - which all the screenwriters seemed to be. Ray passed these customers on to his salespeople, splitting the commission on any eventual sale, after the cost of the whisky.

  The test drive Cassie had on Monday was a writer who had just signed a first-look deal with Paramount for seven figures. Ray, fully aware that Cassie had not sold a car in three weeks, gave the "up" to her. The writer's name was Joe Michaels and he was interested in a new Carrera cabriolet, an automobile that would price out at close to $ 100,000 fully loaded. Cassie's commission would cover her draw for a month.

  With Joe in the passenger seat, Cassie took Nichols Canyon up to Mulholland Drive

  and then turned the Porsche east on the snaking road. She was following her routine. For it was up on Mulholland that the car and power and sex all blended in the imagination. It became clear to each customer what she was selling.

  The traffic as usual was light. Other than the occasional pack of power bikers, the road was theirs. Cassie put the car through the paces, downshifting and powering into the turns. She glanced at Michaels every now and then, to see if he had the look on his face that said the deal was done.

  "You working on a movie right now?" she asked.

  "I'm doing rewrite on a cop film."

  That was a good sign, his calling a movie a film. Especially a cop movie. The ones who took themselves too seriously - meaning they had money - called them films.

  "Who's in it?"

  "It hasn't been cast. That's why I'm doing rewrite. The dialogue sucks."

  To prep for the test drive Cassie had read the story in Variety about the first-look deal. It said Michaels was a recent graduate of the USC film school and had made a fifteen-minute film that won some kind of studio-sponsored award. He looked maybe twenty-five years old tops. Cassie wondered where he would get his dialogue from. He didn't look as though he had ever met a cop in his life, let alone any outlaws. The dialogue would probably come from television or other movies, she decided.

  "You want to drive now, John?"

  "It's Joe."

  Another bingo. She had called him the wrong name on purpose, just to see if he
would correct her. That he did meant he was serious and ego-driven, a good combination when it came to selling and buying automobiles that were serious and ego-driven.

  "Joe, then."

  She pulled into the overlook above the Hollywood Bowl. She killed the engine, set the brake and got out. She didn't look back at Michaels as she walked to the edge and put a foot up on the guardrail. She leaned over and retied her black Doc Marten work shoe and then looked down at the empty bowl. She was wearing tight black jeans and a sleeveless white T-shirt beneath an unbuttoned blue Oxford dress shirt. She knew she looked good and her radar told her that he was looking at her instead of the car. She ran her fingers through her blond hair, newly cut short so she could wear the wig. She turned abruptly and caught him looking at her. He quickly looked past her, out to the view of downtown in the pastel pink smog.

  "So what do you think?" she asked.

  "I think I like it," Michaels said. "But you have to drive it to know for sure."

  He smiled. She smiled. They were definitely moving on the same plane.

  "Then let's do it," she said, careful to keep the double entendre working.

  They got back in the Porsche and Cassie sat in the passenger seat a bit sideways, so she was facing Joe. She watched as he brought his right hand up to the steering column and it searched for the ignition and keys.

  "Other side," she said.

  He found the keys in the ignition on the dashboard left of the wheel.

  "That's a Porsche tradition," she said. "From back when they made cars for racing. It was so you could start with your left hand and have your right already on the gear shift. It's a quick-start ignition."

  Michaels nodded. Cassie knew that little story always scored with them. She didn't even know if it was true - she had gotten it from Ray - but she told it every time. She knew Michaels was imagining himself telling it to some sweet little thing outside any number of pickup joints on the Sunset Strip.

  He started the engine and backed the car out and then drove back out onto Mulholland, over-revving all the way. But after a few shifts he picked up on the nuances of the gearbox and was taking the curves smoothly. Cassie watched as he tried not to smile when he hit a straightaway and the speedo hit seventy-five in just a few seconds. But the look came over his face. He couldn't hide it. She knew the look and what it felt like. Some people got it from speed and power, some got it in other ways. She thought about how long it had been since she had felt the hot wire coursing through her own blood.

  Cassie looked into her little office to check for pink phone slips on the desk. There were none. She moved on through the showroom, running her finger along the spoiler of a classic whale tail, and past the finance office to the fleet manager's office. Ray Morales looked up from some paperwork as she came in and hooked the keys from the Carrera she had used on the test drive on the appropriate hook on the fleet board. She knew he was waiting to hear how it went. After all, he had invested more than a hundred dollars in Scotch whisky.

  "He's going to think about it a couple days," she said without looking at Ray. "I'll call him Wednesday."

  As Cassie turned to leave, Ray dropped his pen and pushed his seat back from his desk.

  "Shit, Cassie, what is up with you? That guy was a hard-on. How'd you lose him?"

  "I didn't say I lost him," Cassie said, too much protest in her voice. "I said he's going to think about it. Not everybody buys after the first test drive, Ray. That car's going to run a hundred grand."

  "With these guys they do. With Porsche they do. They don't think, they buy. Cassie, damn, he was primed. I could tell when I had him on the phone. You know what you're doing? I think you're psyching these guys out. You gotta come on to these guys like they're the next Cecil B. DeMille. Don't make 'em feel bad about what they do or what they want."

  Cassie put her hands on her hips in indignation.

  "Ray, I don't know what you're talking about. I try to sell the car, I don't try to talk 'em out of it. I don't make them feel bad. And none of these guys even know who Cecil B. De Mille was."

  "Then Spielberg, Lucas, whatever. I don't care. There is an art to this, Cassie. That's what I'm saying and what I've been trying to teach you. It's finesse, it's sex, it's givin' the guy a hard-on. When you first came in here you were doin' that. You were moving, what, five, six cars a month. Now, I don't know what you're doing."

  Cassie looked down at his desk for a moment before answering. She slid her hands into her pockets. She knew he was right.

  "Okay, Ray, you're right. I'll work on it. I guess I'm just a little out of focus right now."

  "How come?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "You want some time, maybe take a few days?"

  "No, I'm cool. But tomorrow I'll be in late. I've got my see-and-pee up in Van Nuys."

  "Right. No problem. How's that going? That lady doesn't call or come around anymore."

  "It's going. You probably won't hear from her unless I fuck up."

  "Good. Keep it that way."

  Something about his tone bothered her but she pushed it aside. She averted her eyes and looked down at the paperwork on his desk. She noticed that there was a fleet report on a stack of paperwork to the side of his work space.

  "So we have a truck coming?"

  Ray followed her eyes to the report and nodded.

  "Next Tuesday. Four Boxsters, three Carreras - two of them cabs."

  "Cool. You know colors yet?"

  "The Carreras are white. The Boxsters are coming arctic, white, black and I think yellow."

  He grabbed the report and studied it.

  "Yeah, yellow. Be nice to have these locked in before they get here. Meehan already has a contract on one of the cabs."

  "I'll see what I can do."

  He winked at her and smiled.

  "Thattagirl."

  There was that tone again. And the wink. She was getting the idea that Ray was finally getting around to wanting to collect on all of his goodwill. He'd probably been waiting for her to hit a drought so she'd feel she had less choice in the matter. She knew he would make his move soon and that she should think about how to handle it. But there were too many other things that were more important on her mind. She left him in the office and headed back to her own.

  3

  THE offices of the California Department of Corrections, Parole and Community Services Division, in Van Nuys were crowded into a one-story building of gray, precast concrete that stood in the shadow of the Municipal Court building. The nondescript design features of its exterior seemed in step with its purpose: the quiet reintegration of convicts into society.

  The interior of the building took its cue from the crowd control philosophy employed at popular amusement parks - although those who waited here weren't always anxious to reach the end of their wait. A maze of roped-off cattle rows folded the long lines of ex-cons back and forth in the waiting rooms and hallways. There were lines of cons waiting to check in, lines waiting for urine tests, lines waiting to see parole agents, lines in all quadrants of the building.

  To Cassie Black the parole office was more depressing than prison had been. When she was at High Desert, she was in stasis, like a character in those sci-fi movies where the journey back to earth is so long that the travelers are put into a hibernation-type sleep. That was how Cassie saw it. She was breathing but not living, waiting and surviving on hope that the end of her time would come sooner rather than later. That hope for the future and the warmth of her constant dream of freedom got her past all the depression. But the parole office was that future. It was the harsh reality of getting out. And it was squalid and crowded and inhuman. It smelled of desperation and lost hope, of no future. Most of those surrounding her wouldn't make it. One by one they would go back. It was a fact of the life they had chosen. Few went straight, few made it out alive. And for Cassie, who promised herself she would be one of the few, the monthly immersion into this world always left her profoundly depressed.

  By
ten o'clock on Tuesday morning she had already been through the check-in line and was nearing the front of the pee line. In her hand she held the plastic cup she would have to squat over and fill while an office trainee, dubbed the wizard because of the nature of her monitoring duty, watched to make sure it was her own urine going into the container.

  While she waited Cassie didn't look at anybody and didn't talk to anybody. When the line moved and she was jostled she just moved with the flow. She thought about her time in High Desert, about how she could just shut herself down when she needed to and go on autopilot, ride that spaceship back to earth. It was the only way to get through that place. And this one, too.

  Cassie squeezed into the cubicle that her parole agent, Thelma Kibble, called an office. She was breathing easy now. She was near the end. Kibble was the last stop on the journey.