His car was gone, but I saw the girl taking out her kayak. The water was flat with almost no waves, and when she climbed in, she hardly got wet. She let the kayak drift for a few moments, dragging her hands in the water, the swells gently rocking her. She was staring off into the distance, but it was more like she was staring into herself.
She sat up, adjusted her seat, and got ready to paddle. A shadow passed over her like there was a cloud above, but the sky was clear. She was frightened of something, but I knew it wasn’t the water or sharks or nothing like that.
She started paddling like mad.
They say the Gabrieleno Indians who used to live here took their canoes to the islands, and when I saw her I believed it. I’d need a motorboat to keep up.
She went out at dawn every day, so I started fishing in the mornings around Malibu. It’s perfect ’cause I’d just got a month-long remodeling job on a kitchen in Encino. I fished a bit, then took the scenic route up the coast and over the mountains on Mulholland into the Valley.
Someone needed to watch out for her. I figured it might as well be me.
* * *
When Velma strode into Reggie’s office and shut the door without a sound, he knew he was in for a tongue-lashing, the kind that flays your skin and makes your knees weak, the kind that doesn’t care about chain of command, the kind that sends you back to the first time you broke a window.
“Reggie! You’re pissing me off! I got the most respect for you, but this shit’s gotta stop.” Velma paced back and forth in front of his desk. “I’m sorry about Audrey leaving and everything, I’m sorry your life is fucked up. Whose isn’t? I know you’re off doing somethin’ on the side. I don’t give a damn if you got a woman. I don’t give a damn if you’re scamming. I just want you to do your fucking job!”
Reggie noticed her breasts straining against her blouse, making a gap between the buttons, and remembered how at the July Fourth police picnic last year, Audrey had dubbed her Perky Perkins. What made him think of that now?
“I got my own job to do,” Velma ranted. “I don’t need yours, too. You’re never around when we need you. Like a jerk, I’ve been covering for you, figuring you’d snap out of it. Newcomb comes looking for you, and I tell him you’re taking a hands-on approach to the Oakwood situation. I say you’re making a point to get to know everyone in the neighborhood by name.”
“That’s a great idea,” he said.
“Fuck, Reggie! This is a fucking hard job. We’re out there pulling twenty-four-hour shifts, and you aren’t giving us shit! We all got fucking problems, Reggie. I’d like to see my own kid once in a while.”
Reggie let her run out of steam, let the silence sit there like a cold dumpling. “You’re right. I appreciate your calling me on it.”
Velma sank down in the chair beside his desk. Her rage spent, she looked tired, like the job was getting to her, too.
Reggie noticed a videotape in her hand. “What’s that?”
She tossed it on his desk. “It just came in from the Houston FBI—the surveillance tape from George Bush Intercontinental Airport. The one with Li’l Richie.”
“You take a look at it?”
She flared up again. “I don’t fucking have time for everything, Reggie!”
Reggie picked up the tape and leaned back in his chair. He let her stew in silence for a minute, then said quietly, “I need another week, Velma. Can you give me that?”
She glared at him hard, like a woman looking at her man who says he’s given up drinking. Then she shrugged.
Reggie continued, “Sometimes you have to disappoint people you care about to do what you gotta to do. It’s not okay. I know that. You have to live with yourself, knowing you’re letting everyone down. But sometimes you don’t have a choice.”
“That’s some righteous bullshit,” she said.
“You’re right, but you have me under the gun. It’s the best I could come up with.”
She almost smiled.
“Bring me up-to-date on the San Juan case,” Reggie said. “I’ll take a look at the tape later.”
* * *
It almost made Scott laugh.
He was trembling, it was so funny. Mr. Yuppie had asked if he was all right. Scott said he was fine but had forgotten to take his medicine that morning. That shut him up.
What amused Scott was Mr. Yuppie running his hands over the side of his BMW, saying he had almost bought one just like it instead of his new Ford Explorer, caressing the rear fender, sliding his hand over the trunk with Vivian stuffed inside.
Then Scott said—he couldn’t help himself, it popped out like a hiccup—“You wouldn’t believe the trunk space in this baby,” and he giggled, and Mr. Yuppie smiled pleasantly (though you could tell he was thinking about the medicine Scott mentioned), and Scott felt almost disappointed he didn’t ask to see the trunk. The look on his face would have almost made it worthwhile.
When did bodies begin to smell? he wondered. Didn’t their bowels release at death? Maybe good ol’ Viv was too constipated to let go. He hadn’t wanted to kill her. It was an accident, really. All these stupid women with their stupid questions, asking Why this? Why that? like the world was supposed to make sense, pretending they cared, but really only wanting to control you.
The world was a better place without Vivian Costanza, he decided. He’d done the universe a favor.
After poking around the house like two amateur detectives, Mr. and Mrs. Yuppie decided $625,000 was too much to pay for a two-bedroom shack on the edge of Oakwood. They had to see the place to figure that out? Scott offered to show them more modestly priced homes in Mar Vista, with better neighborhoods, lower crime, and bigger yards, but they were exhausted from the shock of it all. He knew the type: They’d wait until prices went even higher, then, in a panic, they’d buy at the top of the market. He watched them get into their shiny green Ford Explorer, brand-new. They probably paid top dollar for that, too, so worried about being left behind that they didn’t foresee rising oil prices and the bottom falling out of the SUV market. Suckers, he thought. He was glad when they drove off.
He couldn’t stand dealing with people anymore.
* * *
Fear caught her in bursts of panic when she glanced at the calendar, or when she was driving on the freeways between client appointments, when she let her mind wander and worry. Connie tried to rationalize it away: She was only a week late, and she was accustomed to skipping periods during training or when dieting. But a second week passed, and she had to admit that she wasn’t in training, she was eating well, and she was having sex.
Connie called her sister Marge.
“Did you take a test?”
“I don’t need to. I know.”
“What are you going to do?”
Connie was silent for a moment. She hadn’t thought that far ahead yet, the anxious waiting for blood making her irritable, overriding her personality like a persistent migraine. She’d had a couple of abortions in her early twenties, and it dawned on her that she was close to thirty, and if she ever wanted children, she’d better start thinking about it. It also occurred to her that she shouldn’t wait until she found a man to marry, a man who wanted children. That might never happen. She was suspicious of single women who had children out of loneliness or desperation, blaming some fictitious biological clock. Yet somehow, she felt the child inside her wanted to be born.
“Are you still there, Connie?”
“Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Have you told Scott?”
Another flash of fear washed over her, only this was different, a fear that spread from deep inside her womb, a burning sensation that made her want to leap out of her skin.
“No,” Connie said.
“How serious are you about him?”
Serious, not serious, what strange words to use, she thought. “He’s great and we have fun . . . but there’s something I don’t trust about him.”
“Like what?”
/>
Connie thought of their dinner at Gladstone’s, how angry he’d become when she mentioned Laura. She was glad she hadn’t asked about the restraining order. And the way he looked at her when he wanted her, as if she were something to eat. “I can’t describe it. It’s like I’m not always sure how he’ll react to things.”
Her sister sighed heavily, then breathed silently, listening so intently that Connie could almost feel her. “He hasn’t hit you has he?” Marge’s voice was barely a whisper.
“No,” Connie said carefully. She knew what Marge was thinking: that people with abusive parents seek out abusive relationships, and that even though they never saw their father hit their mother, he came as close to it as a speeding train to the walls of a mountain pass. After they left home, they wondered if, in his rages, he hit her when they weren’t around.
“Well, follow your instincts, girlfriend. Don’t even think of marrying him if you feel you can’t trust him.”
Marriage, Connie knew, wasn’t an option. She didn’t dare tell Marge that in a sense, they were engaged, or at least Scott’s mother thought so. If Marge knew she had played along with such a ridiculous charade, she might figure her sister deserved what she got, which was sort of what Connie thought herself.
After Connie hung up, she made an appointment with her gynecologist for later in the week. She then made herself a tuna sandwich with tomato and avocado. The food tasted unusually bright and good, and she wondered if it was due to the pregnancy.
It was late afternoon. She decided to take the kayak out, and paddled up the coast almost to Pepperdine University. Out here she could think, her fears fading with the rhythm of her arms as they pulled her through the water, swells lifting and dropping her like the chest of a breathing animal. Out here she felt safe. Nature protected her. She felt at home, daughter to mother ocean, sister to dolphin and pelican.
An image came to mind of the child floating in her womb, and of her floating on top of the waves. It felt perfectly natural, as it should be: a pregnant woman in a boat on the sea. As she propelled herself through the water, dipping her paddle in long, steady strokes, a power she never knew before diffused through her, her fear transforming into a protective maternal ferocity; she felt she could conquer anything.
Hours later, when she pulled the kayak onto the beach beside her house, she knew she would keep the baby.
* * *
Scott had several hours before it was dark. He cruised around Venice, up and down the canal bridges, then down through the alleys. New construction was everywhere—like the unfinished sets of a Broadway musical—one of the by-products of the blazing real estate market. Plots hopelessly contaminated by oil rigs that had dotted the shore in the twenties were now being cleaned up and built on. Opportunities lay everywhere: for building contractors, for Mexican laborers, Realtors, landscapers, home buyers. And for murderers with bodies to dump.
Scott found several prospective spots where the ground was soft, where laborers had grated the sand for foundations, but he discarded them for one reason or another. One lot was too close to a house, another too visible from the street. He crossed a bridge to the other side of Dell Avenue where they were rebuilding a damaged sidewalk along Carroll Canal. He watched the Mexican laborers pack up for the day, right in the middle of filling a ditch. He could see that they planned to level the earth, pack it, lay rebar on top, then pour cement.
The spot was perfect. He waited impatiently for the laborers to leave.
The sidewalk ran in front of a little park for the ducks, between a vacant house for sale and a house under construction. Scott looked around, hoping one of the laborers had left a shovel. No such luck, but in the duck park, propped up beside a trash can, he found an old spade used for cleaning up dog poop.
He planned to wait until after nine, when everyone was done walking their dogs, and inside for the night. The houses here might cost a million dollars, but it was still Venice, and people didn’t wander around much after dark.
He parked on Venice Boulevard thought of taking a walk, but worried about his car getting stolen with Vivian’s body in the trunk. Wouldn’t that surprise the guys at the chop shop?
So he sat there, fretting about what could go wrong, from collapsing under Vivian’s weight to a police cruiser catching him in its headlights just as he lifted her out of the trunk, scenes he imagined with such intensity that he began to shiver and hyperventilate. His thighs itched madly. He scratched so hard he left white streaks in the fabric of his pants; the itching got worse.
He felt as if his body were contracting into itself, as if his head might explode straight up through the roof of his car, like a cartoon character eating hot chili. At twenty to nine, he couldn’t wait any longer.
He drove around the block and parked in the alley behind an abandoned liquor store. He cursed the whiteness of his car and tried to hide it under an oleander bush. He stepped into the street to see if it was visible.
As a car crested the arch of the canal bridge, its headlights hit his Beemer, and his license number popped out like a sign for a Vegas strip club. Jesus!
He reparked his car on the other side of the store. There were no bushes to hide under, but at least it was hidden from the street.
He walked back to the trunk and unlocked it. He looked around and listened: ducks, traffic on Washington, a car alarm several blocks away. He opened the trunk.
She lay on her left side, knees bent. He slipped on the black driving gloves he’d jammed into his pocket. He grabbed Vivian by the wrist and yanked her arm; her flaccid body flopped toward him like a fish. As he pulled her out, he jumped back, horrified by her half-purple face, but then realized it must be her blood settling.
She seemed heavier than before. He sat back on the fender, grabbed her around the waist, and pulled her to a sitting position. Then he stood, flipped her left arm around his neck, grabbed her waist with his right arm, set his teeth, and leaned back. He staggered a few steps, hoisting most of her bulk on his right hip. God, she weighed a ton. No ballerina here.
When he reached up with his left hand to close the trunk, he saw one of her shoes caught in the carpeting. He thought of sticking it in his pocket, but decided to leave it there with her purse. He’d take care of them later.
Suddenly, the ducks started squawking wildly. Scott heard someone coming. He looked over Vivian’s shoulder and saw a small man with a Great Dane that was lunging at the ducks. The man could barely control the animal, grappling with both hands, yanking the dog up over the bridge, angrily yelling “Come!” ten times in a row, as if the dog might finally understand.
He was too busy with his dog to notice the man standing there with a dead body.
After the man with the dog disappeared, Scott staggered up the narrow street, Vivian’s feet dragging beside him. Her head rolled onto his shoulder, her hair in his mouth. The smell of her scalp sickened him. His right arm throbbed with pain.
Car lights floated up and over the canal bridge. He swung Vivian’s body toward him and buried his head in her neck. He hoped the driver would think he saw a pair of young lovers overcome by the romance of the canals, the smell of jasmine in the air, the soporific lapping of the water against the rowboats. The lights passed over them, then continued down the grade to Venice Boulevard.
He nearly gagged on Vivian’s perfume, her large breasts pressed against him. He almost dumped her right there, when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure strolling away from him on the other side of the canal. It was enough to remind him why he was there, the consequences of being caught. Get control of yourself! It’s not much further, he told himself, trying to placate his panic. He shifted the body to his left side and recommenced his slow, bumpy shuffle.
He staggered with her past the duck park, nearly slipping on guano, then, gaining his balance, dragged her past the vacant house toward the new construction. He stopped where the sidewalk ended at the open ditch, the edge ragged with rebar. He stood with her in his arms and looke
d around. Lights from inside the houses reflected on the water like riverboats at night; the houses appeared to be moving. He heard the sounds of dishes being set for dinner and faint classical guitar music.
Quickly, he heaved Vivian into the pit. A shiver tore through his body; he rubbed his triceps and waited to catch his breath. He walked back to the duck park, grabbed the spade, and hurried back. The ducks scooted out of his way. He knelt beside Vivian and wiped off her neck with her blouse. Had he touched her any other place without gloves? He didn’t think so. He looked at her feet: Both shoes were now missing. Damn! He’d have to look for the other one on the way back.
He leaned on the spade; his arms had hardly any strength left. He gritted his teeth. Pushing from his lower back, he dug a shovelful of dirt. It made more noise than he expected, but no one seemed to notice. He tossed the dirt into the pit, as he’d seen the Mexicans doing that afternoon. He discovered a way to quietly slip the spade into the sand, guiding it with the sole of his shoe. He paused between shovelfuls, listening. Either they’d find the body tomorrow or they’d cover it with cement. At this point, he hardly cared. He simply wanted to be done with it.
In five minutes, he’d covered her. He leveled out the sand to the height of the rebar. He wondered if the Mexicans would notice that their work had been done for them. He hoped they’d be too hungover to notice.
As he backed up from the construction area, he swept away his tracks with a T-shirt one of the laborers had left. He put the spade back in the duck park, then looked around for Vivian’s shoe.
A woman approaching him on the road slowed and shortened the leash to her terrier. “You looking for something?” she asked, her voice polite, mildly alarmed.
Scott had been standing under the glow of a streetlamp. He stepped into the shadows, slowly, so as not to alarm her. “My little girl says she dropped her stuffed rabbit out here. She was in the duck park with her mother this afternoon. She won’t go to bed without it.”
Good Morning, Darkness Page 21