Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

“What did Ray tell you about Nelson de Wilde?” I said.

  “Why?” she said after a beat.

  “There’s another video by Brenae,” I said, and told her about my conversation with Ray, and finding After-Parties, and the footage of Nelson and Calvin leaving a party together. “Zania de Wilde told me that her father knew James Compton. If Ray has disappeared, is that enough evidence to follow up?”

  “You’re sure it’s Nelson and Calvin in the video.”

  “Positive.”

  “I’d like a copy of that video,” she said. “As soon as possible. Where are you?”

  I told her.

  “Wait there. I’ll get there as soon as I can,” she said.

  “That’s great,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “You let me know if you hear from Ray, okay?” the detective said. “And just stay put.”

  She hung up. I wedged my phone into my jeans.

  “What’s up?” said Yegina.

  “Some developments with one of Hal’s students. And Ray’s missing. Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s just being Ray.”

  I told her that Detective Ruiz wanted to pick me up.

  “Really?” Yegina sounded disappointed.

  “It won’t be for a while. Let’s have fun now,” I urged her. I turned and started walking in the direction of the bar, which was a half-dozen black scalloped awnings down the block, glowing with studded-leather lights. “You got a great parking spot,” I said, feeling like part of me had been swept high above, ripped and tossed by a rising storm, while below my normal bantering self carried on with her normal evening. “Next Friday night you wouldn’t get within two miles of here.”

  “What was the bit about James somebody?” said Yegina, following me.

  “Some investigating I did about Ray’s brother,” I said. “It’s probably not credible, though.”

  “You’re starting to talk like them,” said Yegina. Her wing gently poked my shoulder.

  “Not for long,” I said.

  We threaded through other pedestrians, mostly groups of wealthy older women, and men in jeans and crisply ironed button-downs or tight T-shirts. They all smiled at Yegina and slid their eyes over me.

  “Hey—weren’t you going to ditch the cloak?” she said. “It looks itchy.”

  “I need the sackcloth tonight,” I said. “I need to stay awake.”

  THE BAR WAS CALLED CAMDEN, and like many L.A. tribute venues, it was the embodiment of esque. The violent, chaotic joy of British punk had been massaged to a design theme here—rather than a dirty grotto with bad lights and cheap beer, Camden flattered its patrons with well-placed luster, each lamp circled in a studded leather shade, mahogany walls wearing discreet bands of red and blue. Black-and-white photos of snarling bands were labeled with cheerful handwritten comments, and the drink menu opened with a silver zipper. Dee started apologizing for the place as soon as we spotted her, her hair deranged to spikes and her eyes inked with sharp corners. She looked slightly more gorgeous than insane. A typical Dee appearance.

  “Did you come as a vampire strawberry?” she asked me with dubious delight.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “Right on,” said Dee. “Unsexiest costume in West Hollywood is actually a distinction when you think about it.”

  “I’m trying not to,” Yegina said as she gazed around the decor with a puzzled frown.

  “It’s bloody offensive, isn’t it?” Dee whispered. “Turning Johnny Rotten into a cocktail,” she said. “But the drinks. Are. Amazing. Try a Captain Sensible.”

  “Any updates from Janis about the crisis in Valdivia?” I said.

  Dee’s face hardened.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  “The crisis in Valdivia has been settled,” she told us, her voice icy. “No further investigation by the school. Early retirement for Hal. A golden parachute. A certain student banned from campus but allowed to finish his degree. Apparently, Hal was very persuasive, especially with the collectors he’s helped to get bargain prices on the artwork of future stars.” She made air quotes with her hands. “‘We don’t want to take down a giant over one simple error of judgment,’” she said in a mocking tone. “That’s what the chair told her. And they were all thrilled about the new museum downtown.”

  “What a crock,” I said.

  Yegina was frowning and picking at her gauzy sleeves. She had fallen for Hal’s persuasion, too. And his vision. It was hard not to.

  “This isn’t Janis’s scene,” said Dee, gesturing around the dim bar. “Or I wouldn’t have left her alone tonight. She was going to tuck in and read her biography of Georgia O’Keeffe, but when I left, she was just staring at the blank wall.”

  There wouldn’t be any investigation. No news reports. Shoe Cathedral would open, to strong reviews. The school year would unfold, Erik would graduate, Layla would have her open studio, Zania would gripe her way through undergrad life, and in March, a year from the night Brenae shot herself, Hal would announce that it was time for him to step down. The tributes and venerations would start. The great director. Decades of mentorship. Hundreds of protégés expressing their gratitude and praise. And then a second tide of press would rise about the Goetz Museum, lofting Hal once again. Meanwhile, where would Janis be? Finishing her chemo, or getting sicker. Facing another budget shortfall. Listening to Bas propose layoffs and cuts. She had lost. I could not think of what to say.

  “How are you holding up?” Yegina slid her arm around Dee, giving her a squeeze.

  “I’m all right.” Dee blinked. “Getting used to gossiping about radiation and lymph nodes instead of exhibitions and openings.”

  Her inked eyes began to glisten.

  “Listen,” Yegina ordered her, “this is your night. Enjoy yourself for all of us.” She gestured around the crowded bar, her wing bobbing. “Look at everyone here for you.”

  Dee gave a stiff nod. “That’s what she said. I better get lit now, or she’ll be pissed with me.” She widened her fake smile and sauntered off to talk to someone else.

  “Thank you,” I said to Yegina, impressed. “That was the right thing to do.”

  Yegina nodded and scanned the bar. “Not what you hoped would happen.”

  “I didn’t think he’d be patted on the back and congratulated,” I said. “You did?”

  Yegina continued to watch the room. She seemed taller and more rooted at once. In the dimness, her black makeup transformed her face to a stark mask. “Hal was their biggest fund-raiser for twenty years,” she said to the distance. “LAAC is the house that Hal built. But once he leaves it—” She shrugged and focused on me. “Janis hired you for a reason. She wanted someone to find out Brenae’s story. You did. Or you started to. Just because Janis made her move doesn’t mean that yours is over.”

  I pictured Janis in the LAAC parking lot, staring at the main building, the sloping green shaded by eucalyptus trees. LAAC is by and large a marvelous place. I want it to thrive. Being here today makes me lean away from the public exposé. Janis believed in institutions. She’d been certain that LAAC would do the right thing.

  “Drink?” said Yegina, gesturing to the already crowded bar. “I’ll buy one for you.”

  “How about three,” I said bitterly. “I can get them.”

  “Might take a while, Strawberry.” She smiled, eyeing my wig.

  “Fine,” I said. “Thank you.”

  As Yegina moved off to order us a Minor Threat and a Voidoid, I searched for a corner to hide in. I dialed Ray, expecting no answer. The phone went to voicemail.

  Five minutes passed, and Yegina had made no headway with the bartender. I plunged through the bar’s packed other side and thrust my red-wigged head into the bartender’s eyesight. Red had a tried-and-true effect that Yegina had overlooked in her pitying dismissal of my outfit. People noticed a color they habitually stopped for. Within moments, I had two martinis myself. Forget the cute cocktails. It wasn’t that kind of night. I waved to Yegina to give up and checked my
phone again. No calls or texts.

  “Thank you, blokes, for coming tonight,” said Dee, her accent thicker than usual. “Show’s about to start.” She’d taken the small stage and was standing in that swaying, long-legged way that rock stars stand, as if they are hanging from their mics. Dee gestured at a pianist and drummer joining her and launched into her first song. It was not punk at all. She had an airy, nocturnal voice that slid from octave to octave, then abruptly darkened and deepened. Dee was the aural manifestation of Goth Moth, part shadow, part winged creature.

  I felt a tug on my cloak.

  “It’s you,” I said to Yegina. “You’re the music.”

  She smiled, took the drink, and swayed beside me as Dee sang three songs. I wished fleetingly that Yegina and I were having a night like old times, would go home late to her house with some spicy takeout, gossiping about everyone and everything we’d seen.

  Instead, Yegina nodded at someone across the room. It was Bas Terrant, our director, and a fling of Yegina’s that had quickly ended in professional friendship. He’d become a big supporter of hers. He would be devastated if she left the Rocque.

  “I may have to go outside for just a teeny-tiny bit,” she said to me.

  “You mean outside with Bas?”

  “It’s to talk about the new museum,” she said. “He knows. He e-mailed me this afternoon to tell me he has some ideas about how I could negotiate for myself and for the Rocque.”

  At this point, I wondered who in L.A. wasn’t aware of Hal’s “secret” plans.

  “You should go,” I said, resigned.

  “Come with us,” said Yegina.

  “I need to be here when the detective shows up.”

  “I’ll wait, then.” Yegina squeezed my arm and gave me her whole attention. In her look, I saw the specter we were fighting together that night—not Hal’s future or Brenae’s story, or Hiro hurt and Ray missing—but a simpler, plainer ghost. We were both older now. The last eight months had altered us, and the once-sought consolations of a perfect cocktail and an attractive, mingling crowd no longer suited us. We didn’t want a carefree, forgettable evening. We wanted responsibility and change. Yegina was seeing her chance, and she deserved to seize it.

  I shoved her. “Go.”

  She fluttered away, her wings glittering. The room was filling with more people: Dee’s crew from the Rocque shuffled in all at once, casting their skeptical, amused looks at the decor. But their faces shone when they looked at Dee. She pranced and crooned, her long legs slamming in sharp boots. She was not an impeccable singer—her voice went flat on every fifth note—but she threw herself into it, her usual stylish charm deepened by grief.

  I swayed a little, trying to let the music pull me out of my mounting anxiety. Janis defeated. Ray missing. Yegina leaving the Rocque. Too much for one night.

  Several songs later, Dee took an intermission, and I decided to go outside to wait for the detective. As I maneuvered past some woman’s squishy front, apologizing, I heard a squeak. “Mary.” My head was spinning from the martini and the noise in the bar, and it took me a moment to piece together the red hair, the freckles, the big hips. A curtain-like, pink paisley dress.

  “You’re here,” I shouted to Layla and her astonished gaze. “Why are you here?”

  “Why are you?” she shouted back.

  “I’m friends with—” I shouldn’t mention Dee. “One of the bartenders. You?”

  “I know the guitar player. From LAAC.”

  The light in the bar cast Layla’s face blue, and deepened the haunted look in her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I said.

  She cupped her hand to my ear. “Erik’s at the Valdivia police station. He’s claiming he murdered Brenae Brasil—remember, the suicide at LAAC last March? It’s freaking sick. I couldn’t stay, and I can’t go home to our apartment.”

  I opened my eyes wide. “Erik killed someone?”

  She gestured at me to follow her to a nook, against a mural where the boy hooligans of The Damned grinned through layers of disintegrating cream pie. The noise lessened.

  “He didn’t pull the trigger,” she said. “It’s so complicated. I hate him right now. I hate Hal, too.”

  She looked genuinely hurt and confused. And vulnerable and pretty, in a way I hadn’t appreciated before. Layla’s presence was a shock to me, but she seemed untroubled by our encounter, as if it were natural to bump into another person from the art world, and more particularly me, who had so closely witnessed her past few days.

  “Don’t mind me, gallerina,” she said, pushing my arm. “I shouldn’t have told you. You barely know me. You should go have a fun night.”

  “What happened with Brenae Brasil? What did Erik do?” I said.

  “He saw her that week. He used to hook up with her sometimes, back in undergrad,” she said. “He went to see her because Hal sent him. Hal told Erik that Brenae was threatening to—”

  Dee took the stage again, and there was a roar of approval, interrupting our conversation.

  The band smashed and strummed, and Layla leaned closer to me to be heard, but I still only caught phrases: “list of demands . . . video projection . . . victimized women . . . if he didn’t meet her demands . . . she would do a performance artwork called Gun-Shot . . . Hal didn’t think she was serious. He thought she was being ridiculous, actually.” Dee began singing, and the instruments quieted. Layla kept talking. “Hal knew that Erik and Brenae had been close. He thought Erik could tone her down. So Erik went to her studio, and then two days later she was dead. But he told me all along that he didn’t do anything to her. He just left.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “Now he’s changed his story. Because suddenly he feels so guilty that she killed herself.”

  None of this was in the police report. Hal had claimed to be completely blindsided by Brenae’s suicide. Not fed a list of demands about women’s rights on campus, or else Brenae might shoot herself, as an artwork and a protest. Watch me. What else had he erased from her computer?

  “You look totally confused,” said Layla.

  “I am,” I said. “I didn’t know any of this. I was just excited to see Hal’s show come together.”

  “Me too,” said Layla. “Welcome to my screwed-up life.”

  Dee’s song got to the bridge, and the music hit peak volume. Layla and I stood together, facing it all until the song ended.

  “Nice hair color, by the way,” Layla said dryly.

  “It looks better on you.”

  To my surprise, her eyes glistened. “Come with me,” she said. “Pearson, Zania, and I are going to meet at Nelson’s place,” she said. “We need to hash out what we can do.”

  “I don’t think so,” I yelled back. “I’d be barging in.”

  Layla shook her head. “You could shed new light. I already know what Pearson is going to say. What Zania will say.”

  I didn’t trust any of it. Ray missing. Layla’s sudden appearance at the same bar. This invitation.

  “I’ve got to find my friend,” I said. “I’m riding home with her.”

  “Okay,” she said, looking disappointed. “I’ll be here if you change your mind.”

  The air in the bar had thickened with breath and shouts, and the farther I got from Dee, the better she sounded, all the flaws in her voice erased by the volume of the audience. Outside, streetlights soaked the avenue, and the sidewalks filled with glittering people. I looked up and down for the detective but didn’t see her.

  Yegina wouldn’t go far. I texted her. Where r u?

  Waiting for drinks at Sink. Come!

  I looked around for Sink. I walked up and down the street, staring into windows, accidentally body-checking a young woman in a group heading in the other direction.

  “Ouch,” she said, treading on my foot with a very high heel. Pain shot up my ankle. I yelped and staggered sideways, leaning into a cool wall for balance. She didn’t turn around.

  Layla wasn’t here by accident. Her offer wasn’t spon
taneous. It was a lure or, at the very least, a dare. For me. Come with me. Why? Because I knew something. Because I knew what Ray knew.

  Whoever had beaten Ray’s brother had not quite killed him, but left him to die. Calvin’s killer was not a murderer by nature. He couldn’t bring himself over the brink of it. But he was a planner. He’d left the Boyle Heights hotel room in the clothes of his victim. He’d left no trace. And if pushed again, he would plan again, attack again, and leave no trace. This time with help.

  The night air had a heaviness I rarely felt in Los Angeles. A storm was coming. I breathed it in, still hesitating. Go on to Yegina, or stay here and wait outside for my ride. I called the detective and got her voicemail. Called again. Voicemail again. I stared down the avenue of headlights, thinking of all the mountains ringing this city that I couldn’t see. Then I thought of Ray and the car ride with the fado music, the heartbreak inside it, heartbreak that went beyond logic or explanation, which was Ray’s grief over his brother. You couldn’t just let that kind of heartbreak go. It had to consume you first, with rage or vengeance or self-destruction. Ray hadn’t gotten on a plane last night. Whichever acts he had done in the past twenty-four hours, he had known they would be mistakes. Now I had to make my own. I had a hunch about where Ray was, running out of time. I left Alicia a long message, limped back into Camden, and wove through the crowd. Layla was leaning against a wall with two martinis in her hand, her head tipped back, her long lashes shuttered. She looked like she was preparing for a séance.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She opened her eyes, gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “Want a drink?”

  I stared at the clear liquid in the glass. The sunken green oblong of the olive. I saw Nelson’s hand slipping into Layla’s shirt, holding her breast.

  Be yourself, Ray said. Play the part. Play impulsive, innocent Maggie.

  “Want to share my cab home?” I said, taking the martini. “They can drop me off first and you can keep going to the Palisades. I can’t handle this place for much longer.”

  “Good call,” she said. “One last drink. Then we’ll go.”

  THE EFFORT OF SPEECH WAS too much. Everything was too much for my body: the night air, the sidewalk. My legs. My legs couldn’t recall how to walk. They fumbled and jellied, and I stumbled against Layla. She held me up by looping my arm over her shoulder and we lurched along. “You don’t drink much, do you?” she said through clenched teeth.