But he forgave himself the error. There was still time. Discovery didn’t close until sixty days out from trial. There was time to find what his instincts now told him he was missing. What had been hidden from him.
He stood up like a soldier and stared out the little kitchen window and dialed the number of a man whom he knew to keep late hours. While the phone rang he admired the quiet poise of the lemon trees in the moonlight.
“My brother,” he said, when Malloy the Boy picked up. “Let’s say, hypothetically, I had a human resources question for you. How wired are you on the human resources side?”
Upstairs, Ruben lay in his bed, perfectly still, his hands flat, palms down, on his sheets. He took shallow and terrified breaths, as if even the movement of his own respiration would rattle him to pieces.
He couldn’t sleep. How could he sleep? How would he ever sleep again?
Instead he lay in silence, staring at the ceiling, frozen, eyes wide as two moons. For hours he lay awake, thinking of the night man.
November 20, 2009
Shenk the Shark cut through the water, working a choppy but steady Australian crawl, up and down the lanes. He wore a baggy yellow swimsuit and big round goggles and he had his long hair baggily gathered under a swim cap. A middle-aged man, getting his laps in, too young to give up on exercise, too old to care how he looked doing it.
Splashing away now: cresting and falling, cresting and falling; the ungainly flip turn at the wall. He made a half-decent speed, if he did say so, although it was nothing compared to the athletic young man in the next lane, who moved through the water slippery and swift as an eel. The young gentleman’s name was Paolo Garza, and he was twenty-four years old, and he did not yet know he was the man that Shenk had come to see.
Malloy the Boy had gotten him close, but not all the way. But that was OK. Jay had taken the baton, taken the scraps of info Malloy had put together, and decided it was time for some emergency measures—time, almost literally, for a fishing expedition.
Try to hide a secret from Shenk, you white-shoe bastards, and Shenk will root it out every time.
Paolo Garza, when not doing his job as a radiological technician at Valley Village Hospital, was quite the avid swimmer, a fact that Shenk had divined by some light stakeout work. He had also divined that, stroke of luck, Garza did his swimming at a modest Thousand Oaks country club—modest enough that two twenties and a five, slipped to the right valet, had bought Shenk admittance for the evening.
And so here he was, floating to a stop as young Garza pulled himself dripping out of the water and into the night.
“Showing some good form out there, young man,” said Shenk, coming out of the water one lane over and a moment behind. Garza, who had begun toweling himself off, raised a hand and dismissed the compliment with an airy wave.
“You shoulda seen me in high school.”
“Come on, now,” said Jay, grabbing a towel of his own. “If you’re old enough to feel old, then where does that leave me?”
Garza laughed, towel wrapped around his waist, and cocked a hand on his waist. “You look like you’re doing all right, sir.”
“Sir,” Shenk said, aghast. “Now you’re just being cruel.”
Garza laughed. “My apologies. I’m Paolo, by the way.”
“Jay.”
“Pleasure.”
“Likewise.”
Paolo Garza had a sleek tan complexion and a very slight trace of an accent—Brazilian or Chilean or something—that gave him a hauteur, like a displaced Latin aristocrat. Gay or not gay, his voice had a kind of offhand sparkling effeminacy, which lately had become not only acceptable, in certain quarters anyway, but well-nigh fashionable. Jay liked him, right away and completely; there was a self-confident savviness about the lad. He wore earrings in both ears, tiny gold studs that caught the early moonlight.
“I’m gonna hit the hot tub,” said Shenk, very casually. “You in a rush?”
Five minutes later, each holding a beer from the bar, they slid together into the boiling roll, both of them leaning back with eyes shut, letting the water do its relaxing work.
The reputation men have, for being bad at making friends, is only true in certain circumstances. Try getting their heart rates up, try getting them more or less naked, try making it a Friday night and bringing the temperature down to an early-evening cool. Sprinkle a handful of stars across the velvet of the sky. Set them down in a small bubbling pool, with the temperature hot enough to bring beads of sweat to the temple, to slow down conversation so there is room for long, contented sighs.
Men will get to talking, as did Paolo Garza and Jay Shenk, about their own lives or the busy life of the world. Garza had strong opinions about Republicans in Congress (pricks) and Breaking Bad on AMC (fantastic). And then Jay took hold of the conversation and turned it, like a thing on wheels, toward its destination.
“Were you working today?”
“Every day but Sunday,” said Garza. “Nine to five. What about you?”
“Oh yes.” Shenk raised his beer, and so did Garza. “I work pretty much all the time, since my wife died.”
“Ah,” said Garza. “I am so sorry.”
“Oh, it’s all right. She had cancer. It was—you know. Nothing we could do.” Shenk sipped; Shenk sighed, sadly. He took a moment, gazed over Paolo’s shoulder at the water of the club pool behind the jacuzzi, the blue water accented by ripples of moonlight. He had brought up Marilyn as a transition, as a bridge to the conversation’s next promontory; he had brought her up in character, but now she was here and momentarily he was lost in remembrance—in character and not; fake Jay grieving the death of fake Marilyn; real grief forever alive in the real man. Marilyn had gone quick, thank you, all-forgiving God, his loving Marilyn transformed in a handful of weeks from the amused and amusing pillar of his every day to a frail shell, turned sideways in her hospital bed because it hurt to sit upright. He went in with little Rubie every day: he held the boy up where she could see him, and reach to smooth his hair where it stuck up.
Now Shenk told this kind stranger about her illness. About how hard the doctors had worked. All of them: the doctors and the nurses and even the radiology department. And of course Garza, brimming with sympathy, proud of his tribe, took the compliment. Took the bait.
“That’s nice to hear,” he said. “That’s what I do, actually.”
“No kidding?” said Jay, all innocence. “You’re a doctor?”
“No, no. I’m a radiology tech.”
“Oh,” said Shenk, and then: “I know.” His eyes had been closed, and now he cracked one open, just enough to see Garza peering confusedly at him, not getting the joke.
“What?”
“I said I know who you are, Paolo.”
“What does that mean, you know?”
“Again, my name is Jay Shenk. I’m a lawyer.” He paused to let this much sink in. “I represent the family of Wesley Keener.”
“Oh my God,” Garza said, too loud. Aghast. A pair of bikini-clad young mothers, each with a wineglass, glanced over from a cabana. “You’re a snake.” He jerked away, as if Shenk was a real snake that had slithered out of one of the bubble jets. “Oh my God.”
“The problem I’m having,” Shenk went on, calm as he could be, “is that the HR department over there refuses to tell me where I can find Dr. Barbara Allyn. She was your boss, right?”
“This is insane.” Garza flipped out of the hot tub and stood at the edge, one hand on his hip, water streaming down his chest and legs.
“She was your boss until she abruptly retired. Right?”
Garza pointed at him. “How dare you!”
“How dare I?” Now Shenk became indignant, pointed back up at the radiology tech. “This lady was party to a surgery that had disastrous results, and then she retired. Three days later. When we sue, she submits a written response, hopes no one will follow up.”
Shenk was worked up now; his spine stiffened with righteousness. He slapped a fla
t hand on the water, and it jumped. “But no one will tell me where she’s retired to, so I can ask her some more questions. She’s, like, incognito. But you—you, my friend, you worked with the lady for six years. You were colleagues. Friends. You know where she is, don’t you? Paolo? Don’t you?”
Garza said “Oh my God” again. But he was still standing there. Arms crossed. Dripping. Looking up at the moon.
“Look.” Shenk spoke slowly. Shenk stayed in the water. “You feel affection for Dr. Allyn. You feel loyalty. You don’t want to see her get in any trouble. I commend you.”
“That woman,” said Paolo Garza, “is a saint.”
“I do not doubt it.”
“She did nothing wrong. With the Keener boy. Nothing.”
“Right!” said Jay. “Exactly. Doctors are good people. They tried their best to help my wife, and I am sure they tried their best to help Wesley Keener. But mistakes happen. Accidents occur. And if Dr. Allyn did nothing wrong, I just need her to tell me that. Isn’t that fair? Shouldn’t everyone who was part of this thing be on the record telling exactly what happened?”
“I mean—” Garza made a noise in his throat, something like uch or ugh. Then he put up his hands. “She’s a good woman. A saint.”
“You already said that.”
Shenk held Garza’s gaze for a long moment. Whatever the truth was about Dr. Allyn, this kid had a good heart in him—he could see that pretty clear. “Look, Mr. Garza. Something happened. The family deserves to know. Right?”
He waited, and he had him—he knew he had him.
“Paolo? Right?”
January 21, 2019
“Are we joking here?” the movie star said. “Is this a fucking joke?”
The movie star was wearing a metallic coat. He peered out into the darkness that surrounded him, squinting and scowling, demanding an answer. He was holding a prop up over his head, furious. A crowd of people stared back at him, the incandescent center of the universe, a movie star under hot lights. Technicians, set decorators, boom ops, assistants with clipboards and walkie-talkies, everybody frozen in the force field of the star’s displeasure.
“Is this seriously what this thing looks like?” he said, wielding the slender black prop he’d grabbed angrily from the other actor, a far lesser star who was smiling nervously, like a hostage hoping for rescue. The offending item was a thin black tube with a red light glowing at one end. The movie star shook it like a cheap toy. “This is what it looks like?”
“No.” A voice spoke from the darkness, a placating voice over a public address system; the director, wherever she was in the darkness of the soundstage. “We’re gonna sexy it up in post.”
“Uh-uh,” said the movie star, shaking his head. “Fuck that. I don’t work cheap. I won’t do it. I told Barry I wouldn’t, and I won’t.”
The set the movie star was standing on was some kind of futuristic library. Behind him were rows and rows of book-lined shelves, disappearing up into darkness to give the trompe l’oeil effect of continuing forever, infinite knowledge. The movie star, the hero, some sort of sci-fi detective, had been stopped at the entrance to this archive by a guard cutely referred to as a “Librarian,” who was reading his mind with a gadget that was supposed to look sleek and futuristic, but which the movie star thought looked like a bunch of fucking bullshit.
It looked pretty impressive to the Rabbi, who was just inside the threshold, peering inside. Looking at the set, just three high wooden walls and a painted floor, Ruben felt a kind of pull from it—a welcoming sense of a new reality being made available to him. Despite the smell of sawdust, despite the extension cords that snaked below his feet, taped at junction points to the ground, he felt like he could walk ten yards, step over an invisible line, and begin a new life in whatever alternate reality this was supposed to represent.
“The only reason I’m doing a fucking TV series,” the movie star fumed, gesticulating with the unsatisfactory prop, “is because I was told it was gonna look right. If it’s gonna look like bullshit, I’m not interested.”
“It’s gonna look great,” said the voice on the PA.
“Don’t baby me, Jackie. I won’t be babied. Barry promised I would not be babied.”
The movie star scowled and peeled off the metallic trench coat. Ruben recognized the man from a dozen different movies but couldn’t summon his name. He was wide-bodied and pug-nosed and brutishly handsome, and for a second Ruben thought it was James Gandolfini, from The Sopranos, until he recalled with a disappointing jolt that that man was dead.
“You know what?” said the star. “Forget it.”
“No, please,” said the voice on the PA, starting to sound pleading. “Let’s get one take.”
“No.”
“One take, Bobby. Please.”
“Honestly, man?” said someone at Ruben’s ear. “This could go on all day.”
Standing at Ruben’s side, offering a lopsided smile, was a bald-headed Black man with broad shoulders and a wide smile, sharply dressed in khakis and a blazer. “Bart Ebbers.” He stuck out a friendly hand. “How you doing, young man?”
“I’m OK.” Ruben’s hand felt tiny in Ebbers’s. “Is now still a good time?”
“No time like the present.” Ebbers pointed to the movie star, now trying to make his point by snapping the offending prop over his knee but struggling even to bend it. “We’re gonna get three rounds now of this guy calling UTA, UTA calling the producer, everybody working each other up, then chilling each other out. We got ten minutes at least, Mr. Shenk. That’s it, right, Shenk?”
“Yeah. But—Ruben is fine.”
“Well, it’s good to meet you, Ruben. Only a shame about the circumstances. Rich Keener, you know?” He shook his head, exhaled noisily. “You hate to see it.”
“I know,” said Ruben. “I know what you mean.”
“Come on.” Ebbers sighed again, tilted his head toward the massive door behind him. “We’ll talk outside.”
Ruben followed, hurrying to keep up with Ebbers’s confident strides, watching him point and smile at a cameraman; at a thin guy in a headset and a black T-shirt; at another guy, sitting behind a bank of small-screen computers, who rose for a fist bump and a hug. Ebbers’s name badge ID’d him as the deputy chief of security for the Warner Bros. lot, and at his waist was the unmistakable bulge of a firearm.
Outside, Ebbers explained that he didn’t normally sit in on shoots. He was just doing it today because of Mr. Fancy Pants in there, bitching about props and everything else.
“None of these dudes want to admit there’s no such thing as a movie star anymore, so they all gotta be divas, make sure everybody knows that they’re slumming it, doing the small-screen stuff, even though there won’t be a theatrical business, five, ten years from now. Know what I’m saying?”
Ruben nodded. “Sure.”
Ebbers waved to a pair of young women in cafeteria whites, strolling the broad avenue between soundstages, holding cups of coffee. “How you ladies doing?” he said, and they waved, called out “Hey, baby,” as Ebbers turned back to Ruben: “Anyway, I like to come hang out when we got this kinda, uh, personality on set, make sure him or his goons don’t get too worked up. And yeah, he’s got goons. They all travel with goons.”
Ruben nodded and nodded, swept up by Ebbers’s cheerful volubility. The man had a big, toothy smile that flashed out between sentences. Ruben toyed with the lanyard around his neck, as if to prove to himself he was really OK to be here. He felt dwarfed by the soundstage behind him, dwarfed by Ebbers’s sturdy body and wide grin and big personality.
“I won’t keep you long, Mr. Ebbers,” he said finally. “I appreciate your willingness to help.”
“Sure, sure. Of course. God, yeah, Richard Keener, you know? I saw Beth, you know, Mrs. Keener, over at the jail,” Ebbers said. “She was with that lawyer, and she asked me to help any way I could, and of course I said OK. The lawyer’s name is Shenk too, right?”
“Yeah. Yup. He’s
my dad.”
“That right?”
Ruben didn’t look like his father’s son, and there were some people who dwelled on that fact and some who didn’t. Ebbers just smiled his bright confident smile and stood waiting, ready to get to business. Ruben took out the fat little Moleskine notebook he’d bought at a CVS on Reseda on the way over here and realized that he had neglected to unwrap it. Or bring a pen. He put the notebook back in his pocket. Over Ebbers’s shoulder, a red light buzzed to life, indicating that they had started shooting the scene again.
“OK, so—you and Richard have been friends a long time, I understand?”
“Well,” said Ebbers, and tilted his head at the sun.
“Wait—you haven’t?”
“Friends?” Ebbers spread his hands out, shrugged. Who could define such a thing as friendship? “Rich is not like a—a friends guy, you know what I mean?”
Ruben nodded. He thought he did know.
“But me and Rich, you know, we’ve known each other on and off over a lot of years. I used to bump into him, in different work contexts. And we’d talk, talk about basketball, that kind of thing. But the main way I know Rich Keener is when it all started with his son, me and a guy I was partners with, guy named Jordan—partners then, not anymore, though—ex-cop like me—anyway, we helped them figure out how to keep the family safe.”
The door opened and there was a burst of noise from inside, which muted again as the door swung closed. Ebbers glanced over his shoulder, then kept right on talking.
“For a time there, it was pretty scary. Not only the kid’s condition…” He stopped a moment, pursed his lips. “But also, you know, strangers tryna get to him. All kinds of strangers.”
“Yeah, no, I remember. I was, um—I knew the family at that time, also.”
Ebbers jutted out a lip and furrowed his brow, like that didn’t add up, somehow, but then he just said, “OK, so you remember.”
The Quiet Boy Page 17