Be the One

by April Smith

  Joe shrugs.

  “I saw him at the ball game. He must have followed us. He must have hung far enough behind so we couldn’t see his headlights in the rain. Then, after we hit, he drove up, checked out the body, and an idea began to form in his pea brain. He certainly knew who was in the car and exactly how to find us. His uncle probably picked up the plane ticket.”

  “Do you know the General?”

  “Not personally.”

  “I saw Nora with him in the casino. Talking business. She said it had to do with taxis for the hotel.”

  “I’m sure it did.”

  Cassidy waits. “The General is a drug dealer, Joe.”

  “He is also the only game in town.”

  “Please.”

  “You want a guest to go from the airport to the hotel, you have to use his cars, or the guest never gets there,” Joe snaps. “Think I like it?”

  “Calm down. I don’t want to get into a big moral thing. I’m concerned about Nora.”

  He wipes the back of his neck. “Why?”

  “She’s the one who has to deal with him on a day-to-day basis. He’s a seductive man, in his way.”

  It takes about three seconds for the pink flush to shoot through Joe’s cheeks.

  “I take offense at that.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you—”

  “She’s fine, I told you, I can take care of my own kid. She’s doing great, so drop it.”

  “If I were you I’d find another taxi company. Or start my own.”

  Joe shakes his head incredulously. “You just won’t let go.”

  “Sure I will. I’ve got my own drama. Now the cops think the extortion letters have to do with me.”

  “You?”

  “They accused Pedro and me of blackmailing Alberto, can you believe that? I almost came off the wall. Pedro and me. Trying to exploit our own player.”

  Joe makes a dry exasperated “Huh?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Tell me this. When you were talking to them, was there anyone else present in the room?”

  “No.”

  “Not your boss?”

  “He was in the meeting.”

  “Not your private attorney? Not general counsel for the organization—”

  “No!”

  “Do me a favor. Next time a cop wants to hassle you—”

  He pulls out his wallet, removes a card.

  “—you state that you will not consider any kind of conversation without a lawyer present in the room. This is Harvey Weissman’s cell phone. Twenty-four hours a day. This is outrageous. Two cops, trying to fuck you both ways.”

  Joe walks on ahead, kicking at the wild lavender that bends over the narrow trail. A handful of gnats roils against the slanting sun. Cassidy’s face is prickly. It is stupid to be taking a hike in business clothes. Her loafers are covered with silky red dust.

  Without turning around Joe says, “Did you mention my name?”

  “No, I did not.”

  They walk in silence. The air has taken on an empty heated hum that swells from the woody manzanita and poison oak crowding the hill in a dense impenetrable maze. A lizard startles, or a bird; otherwise they are alone. In the middle of four million people you can still disappear into the shrub forest of the Los Angeles foothills.

  But then the brush gives way to a clearing and the trail widens out to a well-traveled path, flat enough to reflect the pinkish light like a coin. Ahead is an amazing surprise: an abstract modern sculpture on silver pilings twenty feet high, metal squares and curves on top of a platform like an oil rig. The sculpture has been positioned on an open rise so that it confronts the towers of downtown.

  “Did you know this was here?” she asks.

  “No. I’m just flying by the seat of my pants.”

  They walk underneath the platform and weave between the pilings, but the packed dirt smells like urine so they go out into the sunshine at the edge of the embankment, which cuts away abruptly to a steep slope of decomposed granite and rounded boulders that have fallen and rolled and hit rock and split apart.

  Due east, as the hawk flies, is the steadily growing skeleton of the sports and entertainment center.

  “I’ve always said downtown is the heart and soul of LA. If downtown dies, LA dies.” He waits. “You realize Alberto has to turn himself in.”

  “As long as you tell the police that you’ve been getting threats, too.”

  “I can’t be involved.”

  “It was your damn car. How do we explain that?”

  “You two took it for a ride.”

  “No way! I’m not going to lie about that.”

  “I have to stay out of it for now.”

  “Why do you get to stay out of it while we look like two irresponsible children?”

  “I have to. Until the financing is in place.”

  “Give me a break, you didn’t just say ‘the financing’—”

  “Stop acting like an airhead, you’re smarter than that.”

  She spins away. Joe grips her, hard.

  “Where you play is one thing, where I play there are no rules. Things happen in the dark. Getting from A to Z is never clear. You sweat? I’ve got flop sweat. We’ve dug a hole more ways than one. Most of the money still has to be raised. It’s a balancing act right now, a house of cards. From the beginning there was fierce opposition from the city council, people are upset about using the city’s money, but we got it, despite a rat’s-nest of mayoral politics in which I was one of the major rats. If there were a whiff of scandal around me now, public funding would dry up and it’s not inconceivable the rest of the project would evaporate, and believe me, none of us would survive it.”

  Suddenly Cassidy has the shakes, as if her vital signs had plummeted.

  “The minute Alberto admits he killed that woman, his life is over.”

  “I’m sorry it happened, I truly am.”

  “You can’t pretend you weren’t there. We all have to share the responsibility—”

  “That’s where you are wildly incorrect. No, we don’t.”

  “Let’s not do anything until we hear from Pedro.”

  “Please, haven’t we given him enough chances—”

  Desperately, “Pedro’s down there checking it out. Maybe she was still alive. Maybe Monroe came along and killed her—”

  Joe is still gripping her shoulders. She has underestimated his strength.

  “This is craziness. At some point, you have to make a choice. Alberto or me.”

  Her body, by itself, resists, jerks away, the leather soles of the loafers slip forward, she pitches back, and for an instant they both scramble without balance at the edge of the canyon until Joe plants his feet and pulls her back up over the crumbling rock.

  They cling to each other.

  “Monroe is a loose cannon. He could be ten feet away right now. Let go of it. We’re running out of time.”

  “All right.” Her own voice sounds far away; from a place that is unfamiliar and without hope. “I suppose you’re right.”

  Joe whispers, “I thought we were talking about getting married.”

  Cassidy nods into his damp shirt.

  He kisses her forehead and lets his arms drape heavily around her.

  “What I love about you,” he says, “is that you believe it matters.”

  She stands quite still, breathing fast and shallow.

  JUNE

  22

  Brad Parker is drafted by the Dodgers in the fifth round. Pepper Parker shrieks like a car alarm when Cassidy calls to inform the family. The following day a package is delivered to the stadium containing three dozen sudden-death chocolate-chip brownies and a card with a photograph of a lizard hanging upside down. Its green toes suck onto a twig. Its black eyes bulge with shock. Inside they’ve written, Can’t wait to seal the deal! With deep appreciation, The Parker Family.

  In the lull after the draft Raymond sends Cassidy on pro coverage, scouting minor league teams from Sa
n Diego to Salt Lake City, foot soldier in the department’s objective to stockpile reports on every professional ballplayer in America. Still, the rewards are infinitesimal. Pedro always says, “The worst player in the majors is better than the best player in the minors,” and in fact after nine days of effort Cassidy will only be able to report one or two guys who are maybe capable of playing in the bigs.

  It is past midnight when she finally turns down Route 133 to Laguna Beach, past thinking, past the numbing buzz of Taco Bell coffee and diet Coke, past even Bruce Hornsby and the Range, cranked up so you’d think the band was right there, hanging in the back with Edith.

  A deer runs through the headlights. Cassidy’s reaction time is zip. She rolls into the intersection of Broadway and Beach Street grateful to still be alive, comforted by an Englishy compound of white plaster and brick with a red London telephone kiosk out front.

  Eucalyptus trees drape the streets in shadow but the drugstore window is afloat with plastic sailboats, sand buckets, shovels, an outsized yellow sun, the effect as artificial and melancholy as the deserted center of the village itself, where solitary fountains play and just one spark of human life remains outside Hennessey’s Tavern—half a dozen Asian kids, the last of Disco Night, smoking cigarettes and waiting for a bus.

  Cassidy could easily fall into Papa’s but bed sounds a lot more warm and fuzzy, and that’s about her only thought, drifting like a pink cloud in the mind, as she drives along Glenneyre to Shadow Lane and cuts the engine.

  The air is wet, down to fifty degrees, feels good. Edith hops out and makes for the tea tree, gray-green and somber having shed its white blossoms, while Cassidy hauls out her backpack and laptop, leaving the burrito wrapper/highway map gradu for the morning. At the same time, somewhere nearby, a car door closes gently and a male voice calls, “Cassidy?”

  She turns, weighted down.

  A man comes toward her across the unlit road. She watches dully, slowed by fatigue and a stubborn belief in the safety of her own street despite the vacant bushy dark.

  He reaches inside his jacket.

  And pulls out a badge.

  “It’s Nate.”

  “This is a surprise.”

  “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Should I be scared?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “After I call my lawyer.”

  He gives an impatient bobble, a bend of the knees.

  “You don’t need a lawyer.”

  She searches the shadow for his eyes.

  And believes him.

  She unlocks the Dutch door and they enter a settled damp, as if surf grass were growing out of the walls.

  “How long have you been waiting in the car?”

  “Let’s just say, can I use your john?”

  She points the way. Turns on the lights. Goes out for the mail. Ineffectually runs water over dishes she had left in the sink.

  “Coffee?”

  Detective Allen shakes his head. He is wearing a dark blue suit. It is unnerving to have a cop from Florida wearing a dark blue suit in your kitchen at one in the morning. And his face, she decides, is not quite the professional mask he would like it to be. The face leaks worry, around the blondish eyebrows and thin-set mouth.

  “This morning we were contacted by the Dominican police. There is some concern for your personal security.”

  She must be really tired because she was about to make a joke about concern for personal security and Kotex pads, but she has the feeling that even if she did say something incredibly embarrassing and crude, Detective Allen (unlike Travis, for example) wouldn’t flinch—he doesn’t seem the kind of man who enjoys watching a woman make a jerk of herself.

  “You guys should have been concerned in the parking lot of the Coast Grill,” she says, jerkily sarcastic instead.

  Sure enough, Nate Allen doesn’t flinch.

  “Are you doing physical therapy for that hand? In your spare time, right?”

  Cassidy leads into the living room.

  “Listen, I’ve broken so many bones …”

  Switching on a pair of lighthouse lamps.

  “Cute.”

  “They were here.”

  “I like this place. Like a ship.” He looks around. “You should be using those window locks. Is there an alarm system?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  They stare at Edith, lying flat with nose between her paws, possessing all the physical menace of a bleached-out bathroom mat.

  He pulls over a spindle-backed chair.

  “So you, basically, you live alone—”

  “I live alone but I’m never home. Because I travel a lot, as you can see. I like you, Nate—I can call you Nate?—”

  “Been called worse.”

  “—but I don’t get why you keep popping up.”

  “Popping,” he echoes. “Does that mean I’m toast?”

  “Here. At the stadium. You really think I’d have anything to do with that scum Monroe?”

  “We have to follow every possible—”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Detective Allen clears his throat. “You mention that scum Monroe—”

  “Can I interest you in a Tylenol and a beer?”

  Steadfastly, he shakes his head. She gets up and grabs the backpack. All she wants is to be allowed to go to sleep.

  “We’re dealing with a political situation that goes back a couple of hundred years, along with some majorly inadequate criminal personalities, ” Detective Allen says. “This all didn’t start with Monroe.”

  Cassidy pulls a Corona from the fridge, pops the cap, downs two extra-strengths in a belchy acrid wash.

  “Let me guess. It started with his uncle.”

  She returns to the living room and resolutely crosses her feet up on the coffee table.

  “The uncle’s a player,” Allen agrees, “but corruption is a way of life down there, especially now that drug-trafficking routes are changing, from Mexico through the Caribbean.”

  “Right.” She yawns. “Forgive me.”

  “In the south they’ve got countries that produce the stuff, in the north they have the buyers—in between twelve hundred little islands with easy ins and outs. It’s a perfect package for the drug lords, especially when guys like the General, who work for the Colombian cartels, are also running the governments. But I’d have to say that money laundering for drug dealing trash is not the General’s worst offense. His worst crime, by far, is owning a bad Italian restaurant.”

  Cassidy chokes on the beer.

  “The post office address in Nagua, where Alberto was instructed to send the money, turned out to be a restaurant called Roma 3. I just heard from my Dominican counterparts this morning. They’ve managed to trace the ownership of the restaurant through some byzantine twists to the General.”

  Cassidy sits up, alert.

  “Evidence the General is behind the blackmail threats?”

  “A link.”

  “More than that!”

  Allen rubs the bridge of his nose, observing Cassidy through slightly lifted pale blue eyes.

  “Things are also changing inside the DR,” he goes on. “There’s a young generation of movers and shakers who want to replace the island mentality, get rid of the old system of corruption and get into the twenty-first century—make some money—legit—and spread it around. They come to the US to get educated. The lieutenant in charge of their investigation, Ramón Molina, he and I went to the same police academy in Fort Pierce, Florida.”

  “He’s the one who talked to Pedro.”

  “Correct.”

  “And Molina is on to the General?”

  “He’s a general, all right. They’re looking to try him for war crimes. Apparently he personally oversaw the massacre of about ten thousand Indians under Trujillo. Molina is mounting a major task force—assuming he doesn’t wind up in little pieces in the trunk of a car. They do that. Torhire and kill federal agents. Well, that just ain’t gonna fly anymo
re.”

  “So you’re saying,” says Cassidy, with just a little buzz on, “that’s why I need an alarm system?”

  “No,” replies Detective Allen. “I believe the danger to you is much closer to home.”

  She watches as his reserve gives way; the tight features soften, guardedness running out like flour from a sack.

  “I’m concerned about your relationship to Joe Galinis.”

  “What do you know about—”

  “We know.”

  She glares at him.

  “You were seen getting into his car outside the Glendale police station.”

  “I am stunned. I am totally freaked—”

  “Spare me.”

  “—I thought this was America.”

  “We also know,” Allen rolls on, “as a result of Molina’s investigation, that the General has been laundering Colombian cocaine money through the Gran Caribe hotel.”

  The pressure inside Cassidy’s skull pumps a few more hundred pounds per cerebral inch.

  “—They usually do it through the casinos.”

  The detective’s tone remains even.

  “The scale of the money laundering in the Gran Caribe could not be happening without the full knowledge and consent of Joe Galinis.”

  “But Joe has nothing to do with running the hotel—”

  A hard impatient knock sends Cassidy springing to her feet.

  “Easy.”

  Detective Allen goes to the door and says, “Yo.”

  Two male Laguna Beach police officers wearing heavy jackets are waiting in the lamplight. They exchange identification with Detective Allen. Cold air sweeps in and Cassidy can hear a police radio from a patrol car in the street.

  “I’ve secured cooperation from the local jurisdiction,” Detective Allen explains, “to provide surveillance on your home. They’ll be coming by each shift.”

  “This is an invasion of privacy, I swear I will call my lawyer—”

  Flashlight beams pierce the foggy windows where the officers have gone around the back.

  “We’ve done a thorough background check, we know a lot about Mr. Galinis. For example, he is currently under investigation for tax evasion.”

  “Did you also know, and you probably do, he’s a great fuck?”

  She’s said it. The incredibly embarrassing, crude jock thing.