Tell No Lie, We Watched Her Die

by Richard Sanders

  He served 16 months and was released five years ago. He was released 10 days before Amanda Eston was found dead.

  >>>>>>

  I asked the bureau chief, JoEllen Sanchez, for help. How do I track down a homeless person, or possibly a former homeless person? She suggested various agencies—Bring LA Home, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the Shelters Resource Bank, LA’s Homeless Blog, church groups—and said things would go better if I knew the person’s real and full name.

  I said I did. “Norridge Morris.”

  JoEllen looked at me. “Norridge Morris?”

  “Norridge Morris.”

  She started laughing like I was one of the bigger idiots ever put on this earth. “You don’t know much about fashion, do you?”

  >>>>>>

  Turns out Norridge Morris was one of the great success stories on the LA—and now national—clothing-design scene. Three, almost four years ago, a pair of local entrepreneurial-minded young guys began noticing Morris on the streets. He always slept in the same alley, always wore capes and hoodies and T-shirts painted with these bizarre faces. The two guys, Jake Kaufman and Bobby Rubin, were really taken by the faces. Unique. Tribal. Haunted. They told Norridge, when he was lucid, they were looking to start a fashion line, and they thought his faces would be cool on women’s clothes.

  It took the guys nearly half a year of talking to gain Norridge’s trust, but eventually they did. The called the label Crazy Face, and Norridge, the third partner, began turning out whole troops of new faces.

  They placed their first order at Kitson’s main boutique on Robertson. Fifteen T-shirts, five hoodies. Gone in one day. Kitson’s reordered. Forty T-shirts, 25 hoodies, one cape. Gone, gone, gone.

  By now Crazy Face had its own trademarked logo and was selling wildly in chains all over the country. Hell, even I unknowingly noticed it. The waitress at Reggie’s with the stick figure T-shirt? That was a Crazy Face.

  >>>>>>

  STUPORSTITIONS

  The label’s offices were located in downtown LA, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. When I called, Norridge said he was really busy, but when I told him the Amanda Eston video going around had been found in his stuff, he decided he could squeeze me in.

  I found a parking garage and walked a block to the building. A guy with a sandwich board was picketing in front of the entrance. He had a scraggly, toxic mustache and an Oakland Raiders cap propped on top of a sweatband. According to his sign, three unions were calling for a boycott of Crazy Face because the company was refusing to negotiate over benefits.

  Pretty ironic. In the space of a few years, Norridge Morris had gone from being homeless to being picketed.

  In America, this is known as a win.

  Crazy Face had its headquarters in a fourth-floor loft big enough to hold 18 or 20 bowling lanes. A few staffers were talking to each other in the reception area. “Ronald Reagan? Ronald Reagan? You’re saying Ronald Reagan was gay?” A well-dressed woman with a black eyepatch took me to Norridge’s window-walled space.

  He was a gracious, courtly gentleman with a lion’s mane of long gray hair, wearing pressed khakis and a Crazy Face T-shirt. His voice was street-graveled but deliberately formal, like he was on the verge of bowing each time he spoke.

  Three women wearing jeweled flip-flops and not a whole hell of a lot else were in conference with Norridge.

  “Ladies,” he said, “would you kindly give us a moment?”

  A man of old-fashioned manners, who still called women ladies.

  When we were alone I told him more about the video. I said that a collector—no names—had bought his leftovers at a storage auction. The inventory included early Crazy Face prototypes, foreign currency, a flask and a disk.

  “I confess, I’m boggled,” Norridge said in his soft croak. “The whole thing just boggles me.”

  “You remember the disk?”

  “I barely do. That whole time in my life is one bad blur. I remember…I remember my extreme interest in Amanda Eston, yes, of course, but my life then was one stinkfish blur.”

  “You remember how your interest started?”

  “I had no idea who she was. Some big actress. She was hosting this charity event, raising money for street people. They were giving out free food. That’s why I went. That’s the first time I saw her.”

  “That’s when it happened?”

  “It was like being swept up in a windstorm. I was…I was possessed. I was head-to-foot possessed. The things I did. I was spinning in a storm to do the things I did.”

  “Letters, threats.”

  “Arrest.” Norridge looked at me, 4,000 memories running through his eyes. “I paid my price.”

  “What happened when you got out?”

  “I promised myself I would leave her alone. I bore no animosity toward her. I told myself it wouldn’t be right to bother her. Then I heard she’d died. Little over a week after my release. I heard she’d died and I felt like I’d died too. I was broken all to pieces, started drinking heavy again.”

  “And?”

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t go near her or her place again. But after she died, I had to. I had to make one last visit. I went by the house a few days after, it was night. Place was cop-taped off, padlock on the door. But there were trash bags out in back. Somebody I guess had cleaned out the nonessentials and dumped them in the back. I went through it. Mostly Weight Watchers boxes, spoiled food. But there was this disk. In a case. I didn’t know what it was, some music I thought, but I figured maybe it meant something to her, so I kept it.”

  “You never looked at it?”

  “Man, I had no computer. I had nothing to play it on. I just kept it. Then…then it all went pretty quick after that. I got pretty booze-fucked after that. Maybe I put it in storage. I was putting things in storage back then, but I don’t remember what. All I can remember from those years is one thing. I loved her. Even today, telling you the truth, I still love her.”

  The woman with the eyepatch came in—sorry to interrupt, but we need a sign-off on these right away. She spread a dozen promotional photos of Norridge on his desk.

  He perused, head going back and forth. “I’m sorry, darling,” he said like gravel slowly falling from a dump truck. “I’m afraid I have to say no.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look how I look. I’m all…puffy. And that smile. That wet-noodle smile. What’s with that, that fake-noodle smile?”

  “You wanna see more?”

  “Or else schedule a reshoot. I’m sorry, these won’t do.”

  She scooped up the photos and left.

  My brilliant observation: “You’ve done all right for yourself.”

  No argument from Norridge. “When Jake and Bobby found me, I had nothing. Had a total of two dollars in my pocket, only because somebody had paid it back to me after a month’s time. I was totally skint. But they helped me. They got me into AA.”

  “I know Bill myself.”

  “Then you know.”

  “I know you can walk in there with a lot of stuporstitions in your head.”

  “Yes, indeed. But those guys… You know, I signed a contract with them, never even consulted a lawyer? I tell that to people, they look at me. But those boys never did me wrong.”

  “I hear sales’re good.”

  “Flying off the proverbial shelves. Plus we’re branching out. Hats, handbags. And this.”

  He reached into a drawer, produced a cell phone with one of his faces embossed on the top.

  “Fantastic brand extension,” he said. “Comes with a prepaid phone card, 100 free minutes.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Take it. Have one.”

  “I can’t.”

  “It’s good to go.”

  “Company policy—I can’t accept gifts.”

  “It’s not a gift. Give me a dollar, we’ll call it even.”

  >>>>>>

  A BAD PLACE TO BE

  The protestor with the sand
wich board and the Raiders hat was still outside the building, steadily mumbling to himself like he was saying the rosary without the beads. I did a little mumbling myself as I walked back to the parking garage. How much of Norridge’s story could I buy? Probably a hefty slice of it. I was willing to believe much of what he said, willing to believe he had nothing to do with her death. I just wished there was more left to his memory. I wished there was a stronger chain of evidence between him finding the video and the video ending up in Grady Alexander’s hands.

  No matter what, though, his story pointed out the fundamental insanity of the situation. I was trying to bid $12 or $15 million for something somebody had tossed in the trash.

  I was maybe 100 feet inside the parking garage, fumbling in my pocket, making sure I had my ticket, when I heard the noise behind me. A thumping, a rhythmic smacking, like somebody was banging on something hard like wood.

  I turned around and saw the protestor in the garage’s lunar light. Oakland cap, fungusy mustache. He was running behind me, knees knocking against his sandwich board.

  What the hell is his problem?

  I found out. He pulled a gun from under his board, raised it in my direction and took a running shot.

  A hundred square feet of rear window glass blew out of the Honda S2000 next to me.

  What did I do, cross a picket line?

  I dove to the front of the S2000, ducked between its grill and the garage wall and reached for my Glock. His sandwich board made a beautiful target. I hit it twice, sending him staggering backward. He bounced off a parked Buick Lucerne and stumbled for cover behind a cement column.

  Then it was quiet.

  “What the hell is this?” I yelled.

  “What do you think?”

  “No fucking idea.”

  “You know what we want.”

  “What? What d’you want?”

  “No fucking around. You know what we want.”

  “I don’t. And who the fuck is we?”

  He answered with a staccato burst of gunfire. Very articulate.

  Quiet again.

  I waited, tense, watching. Long as he stayed in the shadows behind the column I wasn’t getting a shot.

  I saw a big Yukon Denali two cars over from me. Good cover, better angle. I stood in a crouch, started firing at him and scrambled over to the Yukon, my shots echoing off every surface of garage cement.

  I let a few seconds pass, then began crawling to the other end of the Yukon. From there, I thought, I’d get a good perspective on the guy.

  I’d just reached the rear fender when a blast of gunfire behind me riddled the Yukon and made all the garage walls billow gray.

  I jumped back to the front of the Yukon and looked. An insanely ugly guy had just come running around a corner of the garage. He had two rows of hair rutting back across a shaved head. Looked like tire tracks on his skull.

  He kept firing at me from the shadows—it was like being shot at by antimatter—until he disappeared behind a column.

  This was a bad place to be. I frog-jogged back to the S2000 and ducked down. The protestor began shooting at me. The tire-track guy began shooting at me. Together they were setting off 468 echoes in the garage. You couldn’t hear God scream in that noise.

  They had me triangulated. They had me trapped.

  Finally, a lull. They were waiting, looking to see what comes next. I took the Crazy Face phone out of my pocket, found its number and laid it on the ground in front of the S2000.

  “Okay,” I yelled. "Okay. I have what you want.”

  “Glad to hear it,” said the protestor.

  “Let’s talk.”

  “Just slide the gun out.”

  “Not a fucking chance. We’ll talk on even terms.”

  The protestor thought about it. “Two to one isn’t even.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I stood up, slowly came out from behind the S2000. They stepped away from their respective columns. Each had his gun trained on me. I switched mine between them, my cell hidden in my other fist.

  “Just come steady,” said the protestor. “Come ahead.”

  I walked carefully out into the open, putting distance between myself and the S2000.

  “That’s far enough.”

  Probably was. I pressed the button on my cell.

  So much darkness in the world these days, you know?

  It was Arnoud Shuyler’s taped voice, playing on my cell but coming through a call to the Crazy Face phone, volume turned to high.

  Darkness all around, Mr. McShane. All around.

  They were confused. They shifted their heads to the S2000.

  So much darkness these days some people can’t even see it.

  I shot the protestor in the shin, just below the sandwich board. He fell to the floor screaming in pain.

  So much darkness they think they’re still looking at the light.

  The tire-track guy took a wild shot at me. I hammered him with a bullet to his ribs.

  Neither would stay down forever. I ran for my rental. I was gone faster than the Times Square clean up after New Year’s Eve.

  >>>>>>

  I once knew a boxer, or ex-boxer, who told me about his last fight. He thought he was holding his own until the end of the sixth round. “I went back to the corner,” he said, “my own cut man passed out from the sight of my blood. That’s when I knew how bad I getting beaten.”

  I was starting to understand exactly how he felt.

  >>>>>>>>>>>>

  CHAPTER 4

  UNOBLITERATED

  UNDER THE MOUNTAIN

  My life has become an obsessive search for messages. You send an idea out, then you wait and keep looking through your email and text messages and call logs for a response. Has anyone seen it yet? Has anyone gotten back? Or, if you haven’t sent an idea out, then you’re constantly searching for something to have an idea about. You’re looking for something new, somebody else’s idea, some new report from the field, some new twist on an old story.

  But the message I got a little after 8 that night fell into a different category. It was a message I’d been waiting for but never expected to get—not without many more pain in the ass calls from me first.

  It came from Robby Walsh’s office, informing me that my interview request was being granted. Mr. Walsh would be available in the ayem tomorrow. He’d meet me at his house, just outside of Reno.

  How about that: Just a few hours after a pair of jumpers try to fuck me over, Robby Walsh wants to talk.

  I’m not drawing any conclusions—I’m just noting the proximity of time.

  >>>>>>

  I caught a flight the next morning, rented a car and followed the directions they gave me. Interstate 80 east of Reno, then two turn-offs onto smaller roads. Dust blowing, clouds hurrying by, and that strange phenomenon of mountain country, where everything sounds like it’s in the distance.

  I was approaching the area where Robby’s address was supposed to be when I saw a white granite mountain and some kind of high-altitude hallucination. The outlines of a house—a huge white glistening single-level house—seemed to be growing out of the base of the mountain. It was like the mountain was giving birth to the house.

  No illusion. The exterior stone of Robby’s residence was the same white granite as the mountain’s and it was built right into the base. The house was an extension of the mountain, white granite molded out of white granite, the house melded into the mountain.

  Impressive. Thing was, there was no way to get in. The house was semi-circled by a high white granite wall. There was no entryway, no opening. Where do you go from here?

  I sat there, confused, until a guard appeared at the far end of the wall and waved me over. He was wearing a plain khaki uniform, a lapel-attached walkie-talkie and a large, prominently displayed holster on his right hip.

  He anxiously studied my driver’s license and Real Story ID. “You’re expected.” Sigh of relief all around.

  He then told me wh
ere to drive and it seemed like he was saying to go straight into the mountain. Where? Then I saw it: A tunnel, a cave entrance, had been carved into the bottom of the mountain.

  A second guard also made a nervous check of my creds at the entrance, then raised the barrier to let me through. Fluorescent high bays hung on the other side, lighting up a whole network of connecting passageways running beneath the mountain.

  A third guard took my keys, wanded me with a hand-held scanner and asked me to hand over my Glock. Like the others, he was shaky but very polite and professional.

  Yet another checked my name on his clipboard. “Mr. Walsh will see you in the drawing room,” he said with a sense of announcement.

  Among the many passageways available, he picked the one closest to us, taking me through maybe 150 underground feet of boulder-built white granite walls and supporting archways. The pace was slow, deliberate, almost hospital speed. We passed utility rooms—generators, water pumps. All the rooms were on one side of the passage, away from the body of the mountain.