Damage Control: A Novel

by Denise Hamilton

  Tyler switched to 6th Street, the car swaying and sashaying through the leafy old homes of Hancock Park.

  I recalled a long-ago tiki party that Anabelle had taken me to around here. She’d introduced me to a delicate blond boy and we’d necked in a sea-green pool while chlorine steam rose around us. He was Anabelle’s second cousin, pale and beautiful as a tubercular swan. Later, I heard he’d OD’d on heroin at Raji’s.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Secret location,” Tyler said.

  I rolled my eyes in the dark.

  Tyler was about my age, with slim hips and a swimmer’s broad shoulders. He had a wide, open face anchored by a classic Roman nose and was one of those men who never lose their boyish enthusiasm for skullduggery and secret codes. His loafers, khaki pants, and rumpled, button-down shirts screamed preppie, but in my limited dealings with the guy, I’d also noticed a subversive humor that suggested not all his edges had been buffed smooth.

  It took awhile before I realized Tyler’s car radio was tuned to a Spanish-language station. I reached out to switch it.

  “Hey now,” Tyler said. “I like to listen to the DJ banter. Keeps my Spanish from getting rusty.”

  “That’s impressive.”

  Just then a Lady Gaga song came on. I listened to see how they would translate bad romance into Spanish, but Tyler quickly changed the station. “Ugh, what a caricature.”

  “But she’s in on the joke. All those fabulous costumes and killer voice and irresistible pop hooks. As Courtney Love sang when we were kids, ‘I fake it so real I am beyond fake.’ I admire Gaga’s audacity.”

  Tyler snorted and shook his head. “Chicks are weird.”

  But he put the song back on and I thought I saw his fingers tapping to the beat.

  “You think the old goat killed her?” he said as it ended.

  “Who?” I said, still seeing the video in my head, Lady Gaga’s machine-gun breasts firing at the smoldering skeleton on the frilly white bed, a cigarette dangling between her lips.

  Tyler was silent.

  “Senator Paxton is hardly an old goat,” I said, annoyed. “But no, I just don’t see it.”

  “So maybe Paxton’s wife did it. She found out they were having an affair and decided to off her rival.”

  I laughed. “Doubtful. I know the family, Tyler. I went to school with Paxton’s daughter. They’re not capable of murder.”

  Tyler’s upper lip curled. “Everyone’s capable of murder if you give them the right reason.”

  “Or the wrong one, I guess.”

  We contemplated this as the big Spanish houses flew by in the moist green dark.

  Water rationing had begun in L.A., the first step in our slow devolution back to a dusty Mexican pueblo. But the people in these big homes seemed determined to defy the law; from every direction we heard the whispered hiss of lawn sprinklers.

  “Faraday wants me to reconnect with Paxton’s daughter,” I said after a while.

  “You sound unsure about that.”

  “We had a falling-out senior year in high school. I haven’t talked to her in years.”

  “You young people and your feuds,” said Tyler.

  “I’m serious. It about killed me. I felt like an Aztec sacrifice whose heart is ripped still beating from my rib cage.”

  “That’s a bit dramatic.”

  “Don’t you remember what it was like at sixteen? Everything so raw and close to the surface.” I paused. “Naw, maybe not, you’re a guy.”

  “Everything was raw, all right,” said Tyler.

  “Okay, sex too. The most tantalizing mystery of them all. But we wanted love too. We obsessed over it. We were inseparable, you know. We followed the same bands, studied together, ate exactly the same things. She held my hair back in a grotty club toilet when I barfed after too much Jack Daniel’s. But she changed. And then she went back east for school and I stayed here, at UCLA. I heard she married some trust fund guy and they moved to Berlin. She was going to paint and he’d write at night after his bank job, financing the reconstruction of Bosnia. I remember thinking they were a twenty-first-century Scott and Zelda. And being very jealous.”

  “But remember what happened to them—she went crazy and he drank himself to death.”

  A premonition seized me and I laughed it off.

  “Well, they’re back in L.A. now, living in Palos Verdes, so I guess they’re doing okay.”

  He gave me a jaundiced look. “I guess you’ll find out soon enough. So fill me in, Silver. What’s your story?”

  I told him I’d been a flack since college, when a work-study job had landed me at UCLA’s external relations department. I liked the problem-solving part of the job but was so shy I could barely answer the phone. Luckily, a raspy-voiced PR veteran had taken me under her wing.

  She told me, “Nobody cares about you. They’ve got bigger things to worry about. So just pretend you’re playing a role. Think Katharine Hepburn in the old movies. Brisk. Competent. Cool and poised.

  “ ‘But I’m not any of that,’ I protested.

  “She cocked her shellacked blond head, blew out a lungful of cigarette smoke and leaned in so I could see the freckles on her leathery chest. ‘So what?’ she said. ‘Nobody can see inside you. If you project confidence, over time you will become that person. Guaranteed.’ ”

  I turned to Tyler. “And damned if she wasn’t right.”

  “After graduation, UCLA offered me a full-time PR job. I moved up the ranks and eventually landed at UC San Gabriel, where they made me a vice president. It was a sleepy place until a scandal hit our Reproductive Clinic. We had a Paraguayan doctor who’d patented a fertility procedure with incredible results. Couples flew in from around the world to get a miracle baby. He was written up in People. Then the lid blew off.”

  “I remember that,” said Tyler. “Wasn’t he shuffling the eggs and using his own sperm?”

  I nodded. “It was a PR nightmare. Everybody blamed everyone else and the parents started suing everything that moved.”

  “Epic fail,” said Tyler. “I don’t envy you. Angry parents are the worst.”

  “Well, that’s what I thought at first. But then something kicked in and I realized I liked the challenge. I represented the university and we’d been swindled by this guy too. So I got all fired up about getting justice for my school. And I started to enjoy the hurly-burly of the media, the horse trading, dealing with lawyers. I guess that makes me one sick puppy.”

  Tyler just grinned and made a right turn onto Western Avenue.

  “The school gave me a fat promotion after that, but ungrateful wench that I am, I jumped over to Sitrick and he put me to work in the dotcom mines, representing twenty-three-year-old billionaires in trouble.”

  “Why’d you leave Sitrick?”

  “Thomas Blair offered me more money. Now, could you please tell me where we’re going?”

  Tyler shot me a conspiratorial smile. “The murder scene.”

  “Emily Mortimer’s apartment?” I said, aghast. “Count me out, dude. We’re crisis consultants, not private eyes.”

  Tyler leaned back against the headrest. “At Blair, we believe in being proactive.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said impatiently. “And we do our own investigations. But this is foolhardy. Won’t the crime scene be roped off?”

  Tyler pulled out an LAPD press pass. A younger Tyler with shaggy hair and aviator glasses stared back at me.

  The laminated tag read: “Matthew Tyler. Staff Writer, New Times Los Angeles.”

  “Didn’t that paper fold years ago?”

  Tyler winked. “Sure it did. But I still know some cops. That’s why Blair hired me. He likes journalists. We know how to work a story.”

  “Trust me, Faraday doesn’t want you doing this.”

  “He wants results. He doesn’t care how I get them.”

  I considered asking him to drop me off so I could get a cab back. But the city wasn’t exactly crawling with
cabs at this hour. Or any hour, really. No, I’d wait in the car and call Faraday. But then I remembered my boss’s admonition about cell phones.

  We parked off Normandie and Tyler led me past necking teenagers, homeless men in doorways, and squat brown women balancing woven baskets of laundry atop their heads. A taco truck parked in an alley advertising Kogi Korean BBQ Tacos was drawing a lively crowd.

  Emily Mortimer lived in a 1920s Art Deco apartment building called Hawksmoor that had once been grand. Its frosted glass entrance was emblazoned with a wrought-iron hawk, its wings spread in flight.

  A cop stood guard just outside. More cops were inside, checking ID before letting residents through.

  I tugged on Tyler’s arm. “Let’s go back to the car. We’ll find a pay phone and you can call your cop source.”

  Instead, to my horror, Tyler threw off my arm, strode up to the cop, and held out his press pass, thumb blocking the paper’s name. “Media,” he announced. “Who’s working this case?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said the cop, “but I’m going to have to ask you to keep moving unless you have business inside this building.”

  “Is Detective Lewis here?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  “How about Perez?”

  “All questions are being handled by Media Relations. Sir, you need to stand back.”

  Tyler retreated down the block and I pushed through the crowd to catch up, pleading with him to leave.

  Instead, Tyler stepped behind a palm tree and pulled out a pair of binoculars. Stealthily, he trained them on the tenant mailboxes. Then he told me to wait there and walked across the street to a convenience store.

  To hell with this, I thought, pulling out my cell phone to call Faraday.

  Just then a TV van jumped the curb and screeched to a stop, almost running me over. Two cameramen climbed out and began to unload gear. The cop walked over to tell the van to move.

  Tyler reappeared with a quart of milk in a brown bag and whispered, “Quick now!”

  He grabbed my arm and steered me inside the lobby.

  “I’m sorry, sir, ma’am,” said a cop inside. “This is a crime scene. You can’t go upstairs unless you have proof that you live in this building.”

  Tyler looked stricken. “What happened?”

  “We’re not releasing that information right now. But tenants are in no danger.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  I looked longingly at the door.

  “It’s okay, honey,” Tyler said in a worried tone. “Didn’t you hear him say it’s safe?”

  “ID, please,” the cop intoned.

  “Hey, babe, did you bring your ID?”

  “No,” I said, tugging and shooting him rusty dagger looks. Any moment now, we’d be revealed as imposters and hauled away by the police. We’d both lose our jobs. The bank would foreclose on my house and my mother and I would be out on the street. Despite myself, I gave a muffled sob.

  “The premises have been secured. It’s okay, ma’am,” said the policeman, misinterpreting my fear.

  “She’s worried about the baby’s nighttime feeding,” Tyler said, holding up the carton of milk. “The movie just let out and we’ve got to relieve the sitter.”

  “Name and apartment number, please,” said the cop, flipping pages on a clipboard.

  “Garland. 7B,” Tyler said without hesitation.

  The cop found the name and frowned. “He already came in.”

  I thought I might hyperventilate. Damn Tyler and his stupid plans. I opened my mouth but found I couldn’t speak.

  Tyler had no such problems. “That was my brother,” he said easily. “His wife kicked him out so he’s staying with us.”

  The cop squinted at us. “Then why didn’t he relieve the babysitter?”

  “He’s no good with kids.”

  The cop got out his phone. “I’m calling 7B. He can come down and identify you.”

  I sidled closer to the door. I’d run like hell once I hit the sidewalk. Let the cops chase me. I’d tell them it was all Tyler’s fault.

  The elevator doors opened and a Latino family walked out, leading a pit bull puppy on a pink sequined leash. At the same time, the on-air talent from the van and her camera people marched in. The pit bull broke free and ran to the TV reporter, jumping up and trying to lick her. The reporter screamed.

  In the ensuing commotion, I darted out the door and down the sidewalk, not stopping for two blocks. Tyler was right behind me.

  “Don’t you ever do that to me again. That was beyond stupid. You could have gotten us arrested.”

  “It almost worked.”

  “And what were you planning to do once we got up there?”

  “I told you, I know people,” Tyler said, smiling.

  That infuriated me until I realized he was smiling at a man in a sport coat walking by, talking on a cell phone.

  “Sinclair,” Tyler called softly. “Hey, Sinclair, what’s up, buddy? Ain’t parking a bitch?”

  The man in the sport coat gave Tyler a suspicious once-over that I could only describe as coppish. He flipped his cell phone shut and approached. After a quick nod, Sinclair said, “Let’s walk.”

  We stopped in an alley next to a Dumpster that overflowed with putrefying trash.

  “Jesus,” said Sinclair, wrinkling his nose.

  “Cloud cover,” Tyler said. “No one’ll bother us here.” He bounced on his toes and grinned at me. “Not so eager to leave now, I’ll bet.”

  Then he lowered his voice and asked Sinclair, “What can you tell me about Emily Mortimer?”

  Sinclair pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. The tobacco crackled as he inhaled. For once, I didn’t mind. The smoke disguised the garbage reek.

  “What does a high-octane PR firm care about a murdered girl?” Sinclair said, blowing out smoke.

  “We’ve been hired by her employer,” I said.

  Sinclair’s eyebrows went up. “Ah, yes. The esteemed senator.”

  Tyler looked around nervously, but the only eavesdropper was a large brown rat that stood on its hind legs, chittering atop the bags of trash.

  Relax, buddy. We’re after a different kind of trash.

  “Our client wants to nail this scumbag as much as you do,” Tyler said earnestly. “But his political enemies are already sharpening their knives. And the media will manufacture a scandal if they can’t uncover one. Any details you have would help us.”

  Sinclair shook his head like he didn’t know why he let himself get talked into these things.

  I thought I knew. It was green.

  “Off the record?” Sinclair said. “She was found naked in bed. She’d been strangled with a scarf. No sign of forced entry. Her purse and BlackBerry are missing.”

  “Go on,” said Tyler.

  “I’m keeping strict accounts.”

  “Like always. Now tell me something that won’t be in the LAPD press release.”

  “Ziplock bag of prescription pills found in her bed stand. The coroner’ll run some tox panels, but we won’t know anything for a few days.”

  “My employer will show his usual gratitude,” said Tyler.

  Sinclair threw down his cigarette and ground it underfoot. He inclined his chin several blocks over. “They won’t let you upstairs,” he said.

  “I’m good,” Tyler said.

  The detective walked off, crunching on broken glass. The sound echoed down the narrow alley.

  Tyler took out his cell phone and stared at it, considering. He flipped it shut.

  “We better go back to the office.”

  He walked off quickly. I ran to keep up, stumbling as my heel caught in a pothole.

  “So Blair pays him to pass on information?” I asked.

  Tyler turned. “Not at all. Mr. Blair hires off-duty policemen to provide security at concerts and parties that he organizes for clients. Detective Sinclair’s brother-in-law owns a private security firm.”

  “Isn’t that illegal
?”

  “It’s perfectly legal. Your twenty-thousand-dollar signing bonus was legal too. Did you appreciate that, Maggie? Did you buy yourself something nice? Treat your family to a Mexican cruise? Put a down payment on a car?”

  My palms began to sweat. I was still on probation. And I’d already spent the bonus to pay Mom’s oncologist. Though I wasn’t about to tell Tyler that.

  Two months into my job at Blair and already my mind was walling itself off into compartments. But it wasn’t just me; the whole company was honeycombed with secrets. Should I tell Tyler why Faraday had wanted me along tonight?

  I said, “Faraday told you to play everything by the book tonight, and you took a huge chance back there that almost backfired horribly.”

  Tyler dismissed my concern with an airy wave.

  “He always says that. Gives him plausible deniability. But he doesn’t care.”

  “He’s a control freak. Of course he cares.”

  “So touching, this innocence of yours.”

  Tyler made his thumb and forefinger into a gun, then playfully shot me.

  “Pow-pow,” he said, tilting up his hand and blowing off imaginary smoke. “It’s dead now. Buried and gone. Welcome to the real world, Maggie.”

  He smiled like our boss, which reminded me that Faraday had done something to his mouth. His teeth, shiny and straight and . . .

  “Did Faraday whiten his teeth?”

  Tyler nodded. “Just the two in front.”

  I flashed on Faraday’s crocodile smile.

  Why hadn’t I seen it before? What else did I know that my brain couldn’t dredge up?

  “He ought to shell out the dough for the rest,” I said. “It looks weird. I mean, the guy’s in the image business.”

  “Go ahead. Break the news to him.”

  “Not me.” I shuddered.

  I still thought Tyler was a dick, but our close call back there, or maybe my furor afterward, had torn down some wall. We were less competitive and more chatty. And I still had so many questions about Blair.

  “That guy Fletch,” I said. “He seems really bright, but a little Asbergersy, don’t you think?”

  “Our own feral youth. You know his story, right?”