“I see what you mean. Not exactly Miss Congeniality, is she?”
“She’s been like that every time I’ve talked to her. And yet when the camera’s on her, she transforms into a different person.”
“Okay, that’s officially weird.”
“I know.”
They moved back into the parking lot and stopped near the area where the big rigs parked. A loud diesel generator clattered nearby, providing power for the trailers.
She took in the semi rigs and the busy crew marching around with earnest looks, arms full of cases and bundles of cables.
“It’s a big production.”
“This is nothing compared to Vegas or Cabo.”
“Still, it’s interesting to see.”
“I agree. Listen. If you don’t mind, let’s get you situated in the lodge, where it’s nice and warm. It’s freezing out here, and I need to get over to the bridge.”
“Trying to get rid of me while you rub mittens with the models?”
“I’m an open book, aren’t I?”
“Just be careful. I’ll bet there are some pretty hot ski instructors here.”
“Aren’t all ski instructors hot? I don’t really know. I don’t ski. But I imagine it’s like being a tennis pro. Hotness is just part of the job description.”
“Leave me at your peril, Black,” she teased.
“Come on. Let’s get some coffee and I’ll scope out the lodge to ensure you aren’t attacked while you’re waiting for me.”
“By anyone but ski instructors.”
“Just tell them you’re poor. They hate poor people.”
“Elitist swine.”
“That’s more like it.”
Sylvia was the only customer in the lodge, with three service staff for company, and after bringing her a steaming cup of hot chocolate Black departed, eager to reach Bill and hear the latest. He found his way back to the trailers and stopped by the nearest, holding his cell phone up to confirm he had a signal. It was weak, only two bars, which he hoped would be sufficient. He pressed a speed dial number and held it to his ear.
“Black Investigations.”
“Roxie. It’s me. I made it.”
“Super.” Nothing more. Roxie wasn’t particularly talkative, and he could hear her fingers flying over her keyboard in the background. No doubt sending personal messages on company time.
“Listen, I’ve been thinking about this. I want more on Zane. Pull his credit report. Phone records. Credit cards, if you can. I want to know if he was in Cabo when we were.”
“Does it bother you that what you’re describing is totally illegal?”
“Really?”
“Uh, yeah. We’ve had this discussion before. Does the word ‘felony’ ring any bells?”
“If you can’t do it, say so. Maybe Stan can.”
“I’ll have it for you by the time you get back. But I swear, if I get caught, I’m totally ratting you out and playing dumb.”
Black resumed walking, eying the bridge a half mile away. “I’d expect nothing less.”
When he hung up, he did a quick estimation and figured he could make it to the bridge in ten or fifteen minutes. Not seeing any transportation, he resigned himself to a long slog and set out for the lake, his hiking boots crunching against the icy snow as he moved off the pavement and onto the trail that led to the bridge. The snow crackled underfoot with each step, and his feet were already freezing after five minutes of walking.
A snowmobile roared by Black as he made his way along the lake. Black saw strands of long hair blowing from under the passenger’s helmet as the contrivance pulled past him, and then another snowmobile eased to a stop beside him.
“Sorry I can’t give you a ride, stranger,” Jeanie called from the back. The driver turned his goggled face and stared at Black before giving him a shrug. “But if you want, I’ll radio for another snowmobile.”
“Nah, I can use the exercise. I gather Demille’s on the bridge with the crew?”
“You know, I haven’t seen him for a while. I don’t know.”
“Go do what you need to do. I’ll be along in a few minutes. By the time someone gets out here on one of those things to haul my fat ass over there, I’ll be at the bridge.”
“Okay. And for the record, I’ve seen fatter.”
The snowmobile rumbled away, leaving a cloud of snow and exhaust in its wake. Black put his head down and pulled his jacket tighter, his hands in his pockets, and continued onward, wishing he’d thought through how cold it was going to be when packing for the trip.
As he neared the bridge he could see bright lights focused on it from either end. Four figures held reflective plates to better train the lighting on the model standing in the center of its span, one hip cocked out, a bright red jacket and goggles her concession to the winter weather.
Suddenly an explosion sounded from behind him, a deep boom that echoed through the valley, causing Black to start. A high-pitched whistle reached his ears, and then the center of the bridge detonated in a bright orange ball of flame, vaporizing the model instantly and sending huge pieces of the wood and iron sailing through the air. Black stood, stunned, unsure what had just happened, and then screaming reached his ears as the terrified crew reacted to the unthinkable.
Snowmobiles and a heavy truck rumbled toward him from the lodge and flew past him, filled with grim men racing to try to help. Black was frozen in place by the enormity of what he’d just seen, his brain refusing to process the unthinkable. Jeanie’s snowmobile came racing back with her gripping the handlebars, the original driver nowhere in evidence.
“Jump on. I don’t have much time. One of the crew is wounded. They’re doing everything they can, but I need to coordinate getting a helicopter up here to airlift him out.”
Black swung his leg over the saddle and they lurched off, the growl of the motor deafening as she goosed the throttle, his thoughts racing as they bounced along. When they reached the edge of the parking lot, she stopped and he leapt off. Sylvia had come over from the lodge and was standing on the periphery of the small crowd that had gathered, horrified expressions on the spectators’ faces, murmured speculations drifting on the breeze as he approached. Sylvia ran to him and studied his wind-burned face.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. It sounded like a…like a big gun. Artillery. But where would anyone get an artillery gun up here?”
Jeanie stepped around them. “They have howitzers for avalanche control,” she said simply and jogged off to the lodge, her radio glued to her ear.
Black took in the scene and spotted a face he hadn’t been expecting. He pushed past Sylvia and through the crowd to where the tall figure was in a hushed discussion with one of the crew members.
“Demille! What are you doing here? I thought you were on the bridge.”
“I came back to use the can. What the hell happened?”
“The bridge is gone. We think it was one of the howitzer shells.”
“Howitzer? What in the name of God are you talking about?”
“Apparently they have them here to trigger avalanches.”
“And someone fired at the bridge?”
Black held Demille’s stare. “Someone obviously did.”
Jeanie returned, followed by Trish and the wardrobe woman.
“What about Hailey?” Demille asked Jeanie, his voice lower.
Trish looked confused. “Hailey? She’s not in this shoot. She’s in makeup.”
Demille shook his head and walked away.
Trish grabbed Jeanie’s sleeve. “What? What happened?” Trish demanded, her voice now tinged with panic.
“Demille changed models for the shoot. Hailey was on the bridge, not Veronica,” Jeanie said.
“What does that mean, she was on the bridge? That’s impossible. She was just here.”
Black looked over at the smoking wreckage of the bridge in the distance and couldn’t meet Trish’s eyes. When she collapsed in a heap, he barely ca
ught her, preventing her from hitting her head against the hard asphalt. The realization that her pride and joy was dead, coupled with the altitude, proved to be a cocktail too strong to stomach.
Chapter 21
The trip back to Los Angeles was subdued. Sylvia sat beside him in silence, the stereo on low, any joy in the air sucked from it by the image of the smoking crater where a promising young talent with her whole life ahead of her had been extinguished like an errant cigarette butt. Black had phoned Daniel but it went to voice mail, and he decided that he wouldn’t take it personally when he fired him. He got a call back three hours later from Gunther, who explained that Daniel was in the air, on his way to Argentina for trout fishing in Patagonia with his entourage for several days, and would likely be in touch when he got back, there being no cell service in the wilds of South America.
A beige blanket of smog welcomed them back to the City of Angels as Black pulled over the Grapevine and into the San Fernando Valley. Black wondered how it must have been fifty years earlier when it was largely farmland, like much of Orange County. No smog, that was certain, with just a few people, the dense crush having not yet begun, the final push to the sea still to come. It was evening by the time they made it over the hill and into L.A., and neither of them was in the mood for company. The road had left a film of dust and fatigue, and the explosion had destroyed their peace of mind along with the bridge.
Black dropped Sylvia at her place and stopped at the liquor store on the way home, this time not even trying to resist the siren song of amber relief in pint bottles, or the allure of carcinogens that would lay waste to his lungs just as the memory of Hailey’s disappearance in a blinding orange flash had savaged any belief in a reasoned or fair universe.
He sat out on his shabby little terrace, taking long pulls on the liquid fire and belching smoke at the heavens like an angry dragon, and wondered how he was going to catch the callous murderer who was targeting the models. He could still see the hysterical absence of reason in Trish’s eyes when she’d come to, the denial of the truth, the unwillingness to believe a reality that had robbed her of the only thing she held dear. It hadn’t surprised him when he’d spoken to Jeanie, halfway to L.A., and been told that Trish had been sedated and hospitalized, rambling and incoherent, the trauma of her loss too much for her brutalized psyche to endure.
His phone rang at ten. He held up the bottle, barely an inch remaining, and punched the call button on.
“Are you still awake?” Sylvia asked.
“Yep.”
“Drinking?”
“How’d you know?”
“I just know.”
“Ah.”
“Is it helping?”
“Some. Not really.”
“Thank you for taking me.”
“Welcome.”
“Stay out of the shower, okay?”
“’Kay.”
“Good night, Black. Get some sleep.”
“You too.”
Morning came too early, bringing with it the too-familiar pounding in Black’s temples, the cotton mouth and fetid breath that promised a day of misery. He forced himself to rise even as he coughed up a piece of something he hoped wasn’t vital and staggered into the bathroom, the air feeling thick as he moved through it, his lungs laboring greedily, every nerve ending seemingly a pain receptor designed specifically for his torment.
And yet, through it all, he felt no remorse. He’d done it to himself, knowing full well the price he’d pay, a sort of chemical self-flagellation, an ethanol penance that was as avoidable as it was agonizing. The shower head sprayed warm needles at his skull, each one the accusatory finger of an angry god, and yet some part of him felt good that he had the familiar discomfort to contend with rather than being forced to focus on the prior day’s debacle.
He managed to keep a muffin down at the coffee house, and the second cup of Costa Rican Christmas Surprise actually had him feeling somewhat human. He considered going into the office but decided that he was in no shape to deal with Roxie, who would take one look at him and make it her life’s mission to torment him. Instead, he’d go by Eric’s tattoo parlor and see if anything had changed. Now that he was effectively unemployed again, awaiting a confirmation from Daniel that was purely a formality, he had nothing but time on his hands, and dozing in front of Eric’s shop was as good a way to waste his time as any.
He texted Roxie a terse missive about being out for the day getting his car worked on and set out for the tattoo parlor. When he arrived, the shop was still dark. He checked his watch and then strolled down the street to verify the operating hours. On the door was a hand-scrawled sign advising customers that he would be at the convention center in booth number 2760, today and tomorrow. He belatedly realized that Roxie had told him about the show, and time had simply slipped away from him.
Black had never been to a tattoo trade show, but he couldn’t think of any reason not to go – he had the time, and there was always the chance that Eric would slip up publicly, emboldened by the crowds. It was a long shot, but he didn’t have any other options, so he returned home, pulled on a pair of jeans and a black long-sleeved concert T-shirt, and headed for the hall, feeling suitably disguised. The chances of a narcissist like Eric remembering him at all were slim, but without his trademark fedora and suit, Black could have been invisible.
The convention center was sparsely attended, the tattoo crowd apparently not as compelled to participate as the event organizers might have hoped. Black bought a Harley Davidson baseball cap inside the hall and kept his sunglasses on, further increasing his resemblance to most anonymous white males wandering the aisles, with the exception that he didn’t have tattoos crawling along his hands or up his neck, or piercings distorting his features and plugs distending his earlobes.
He easily found Eric’s booth, a humble affair like countless others in the lower-rent section of the show, manned by Eric and his new friend from Berlin, who Black had to admit looked fetching in a tube top and lacquered-on black jeans that revealed her body art in all its glory. He moved by the booth without either of them noticing him and continued to the end of the aisle, where there was a seating area for attendees with scattered chairs and tables.
Black took a seat and read though the pile of brochures he’d collected as part of his cover, and was amazed at the number of products being offered – more so that anyone would want to pay to have any of the procedures performed, than that someone was manufacturing products to aid in the process.
Eric didn’t move from the booth for an hour, and as it approached lunchtime, Black’s hangover built to epic proportions. If the ravaging his body had taken processing the alcohol wasn’t enough, the cigarettes had been icing on that toxic cake, and he was more than paying for it today. His attention was attracted by movement from the front of the booth, where the Berlin tattoo artist was walking toward him, her gait drawing the admiring gaze of many of the gathered males in the area. Black waited until she’d moved past him and then followed her at a discreet distance.
She entered the bathrooms and returned a few minutes later, and then headed to the food court, where she bought two lunches consisting of greasy pizza slabs and sodas. Black decided that nourishment seemed like a reasonable idea and did the same, doubling up on the six-dollar pizza slices in deference to his resource depletion from the night before. He ate quickly at one of the Formica-topped tables, surrounded by a collection of humanity that would have been at home in the bar scene in Star Wars, inked in every possible area of their bodies, some including their faces and shaved heads.
Upon his return to the seating area adjacent to the booth, he spied Eric slipping a pint bottle of bourbon to his German friend, who poured half of it into each of their soda cups after glancing around to ensure there were no security guards patrolling the aisle. Black felt a pang of envy and wished he’d had the forethought to sneak in a little headache remedy to spice up his Coke. As it was, demons danced the tarantella in his skull, and he had
n’t had the presence of mind to bring so much as an aspirin. He fumbled his phone from his pocket and checked his email, expecting the message from Daniel to be in his inbox, and was surprised he still hadn’t been canned – no doubt due more to the lack of cell phone tower investment in rural Argentina than Daniel’s acknowledgment that he’d been warned about Black not having enough advance time to guarantee anyone’s safety.
He glanced surreptitiously at the booth. The Berlin artist was giggling at some joke, and Eric had his trademark punk smirk plastered on his face as they toasted with their soda cups and finished their cocktails. He felt a stirring of hope at the woman’s body language as she touched Eric’s arm and played with her hair as she laughed, but that was dashed when two lanky teens dressed entirely in black, with dyed black hair and elaborate piercings and tattoos, stopped at the booth and began a discussion. Black cursed inwardly and wished death upon them, to no effect, and they continued chatting with Eric and the artist while Black’s dreams slowly faded.
Then they moved along to bore the next exhibitor, and Black’s optimism returned. Ten minutes later the artist went to the bathroom again, and when she returned, she grabbed Eric’s hand and dragged him from the booth. Black watched out of the corner of his eye, his breath quickening – he’d been dragged like that before, and he had a pretty good idea what it meant.
He let them get a fair distance ahead of him and watched as they moved into the unlit conference room area, where there were at least twenty meeting rooms for presentations – not a big draw at this kind of a retail-oriented show, but heavily used for trade shows. Eric’s comely friend tried the doors until one opened, and after peering inside, she switched on the lights and pulled Eric in after her.
Black took photos of them entering the room, but that wasn’t going to be enough. He needed something concrete if he was going to sway Roxie. He waited five minutes before approaching the door, wary of any sign that they were exiting. When he didn’t hear anything, he carefully depressed the door lever and cracked it open.
BLACK Is the New Black Page 20