Last Dance

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “No, Carver. Way I see it, no way. Too fast. He knew what was coming; you didn’t.”

  Ortiz walks down the hall. He stops at the nurses’ station, leaves his card. He’s gone. I go to Lily’s room and stand at the foot of her bed. She lies in white linen, an IV tube in her arm, a bandage on her neck, sleeping. I go around the bed and put my ear to her mouth, listen to her rhythm, soft and warm. I kiss her forehead. I stand over her like a strange angel flown in on the wind. I am not. I pull a chair to the window. The city is serene. It’s 3:00 a.m. Lights and dark. Reimagined and mingling with the sky—it has changed much since I moved here. New architecture, taller buildings, glass reflecting glass as if the city were a maze folded into a mirage. Not in the night though. In the night the skyline is crystalline and sharp, and the eye is drawn toward the miraculous. Looking down, I can see the dead. They flicker and roam. I’ve thought this since I was a boy. I didn’t want to accept that my father was gone, so I put him back into the world, among the buildings and along the coast of Newport. In churches, gyms, and bars. I’ll do it to for my mother, too, when she is gone. She’ll find my father, and they will go their way, appearing every now and then, slivers of light in an alley, flashes in a doorway, remembrances of each of them tucked in my inlaid box of souvenirs with Katrina’s locket and Levon’s scrap of sheet music.

  I wonder about boyhood—the things it won’t relinquish, the phantoms we carry into age. I sit by the window. I cannot sleep. Zhanna Smirnov, you have not told me all. Where are you? Mickey Orlov. So close and so far from it all. Azadeh. Stefan. Ortiz, just getting home, sliding into bed beside your wife, thinking maybe of your barista and the maps folded in your drawers. Jimmy Krause, stripped and cold in the morgue. Please, don’t disappear. I reach into my pocket and pull out his reading glasses. One lens shattered from his fall, a speck of blood on the other. I put them on. The world goes away and comes back. I return them to my pocket. They will go into my box. A nurse comes in, checks a monitor, holds Lily’s wrist, runs a finger through her hair. I have done that, too, on our late nights on her porch, when the breezes come through Boyle Heights, and she can run no more. It’s 5:00 a.m. I reach for my phone.

  “Maggie.”

  “Sam. You’re up early.”

  “How are you and Mom?”

  “She’s still sleeping, if you can believe it. Rarely sleeps through the night anymore. She’s the same though.”

  “You’re in the kitchen with a coffee.”

  “Yes. You know that. The sun is in the sink.”

  “I like it, then.”

  “Is anything wrong, Sam?”

  “No. I just wanted to call.”

  “You sound different. You’re whispering.”

  “I feel like quiet.”

  “I guess that’s it. The sacred is in the quiet. Father Quinn used to say that. Remember him? You were just a boy then. He was a handsome fellow. Deep voice. He was the only priest your father ever liked. When you were young, your mom and father and you came for a visit, and your father went to confession with Father Quinn. He never went to confession. But he did that day. I asked him why, and he said, ‘I like the sound of that priest’s voice.’ I told your father, ‘That won’t get you redemption.’ He laughed and said, ‘Maggie, I’m not looking for that.’”

  “I remember Father Quinn,” I say. “You still holding up okay?”

  “I am, Sam. You know that nurse I told you about? The one who works up at the hospital? She lives a few streets over. She’s been a godsend. She checks on your mother, helps me bathe her. Your mother puts up a fit about a bath. But Sara—that’s her name, the nurse—is so patient. We sit and talk in the kitchen after we put your mom to bed. Sara even had a few beers with me. She’s pretty too. You would like her.”

  “The hospital send her?”

  “A few hours a couple of times a week. She stops by before or after her shift. Sweet girl. Hang on, Sam.”

  A minute or so passes. Dawn is edging toward the San Gabriels.

  “Okay, Sam, I’m back. You’re mother’s stirring. I better go. You sure you’re okay? You don’t usually call this early.”

  “I happened to be up.”

  “I’m glad you called. It’s a good way to start the day. I’ll tell your mother. Bye, Sam.”

  “Bye, Maggie.”

  I am losing my mother. Maggie is older too. There is no one left after me. It will all fall to obscurity—my family, my name, the words and stories I carry—like a cold case in a forgotten file. This transitory moment is all we have. A few breaths hushed by eons. But it is something, I suppose—a faint trace of splendor and sorrow, like the spirit of my restless father, or a fossil etched in a rock.

  I turn my head toward the window and close my eyes. Things are stirring here too. Footsteps, voices in the hall. Lily’s room is coming to light. I feel myself fall toward sleep, slow, almost warm, sounds floating farther away. And then I feel a soft weight, an impression. I open my eyes. Lily is sitting in my lap, curled against me, her hair in my stubble, an amber stain of antiseptic on her bandage. Her eyes are closed. She is sleeping. I stroke her hair and wish that the day, which has already begun, would not come so quickly and we could be here, alone, suspended above the city. She wakes.

  “Carver.”

  “Yes.”

  “Krause?”

  “Dead.”

  “I got shot.”

  “A graze. You’ll be fine. You hit your head on the bar. You were out for a bit.”

  “It hurts.”

  “You want the nurse?”

  “I feel fuzzy and sore.”

  “I’ll get the nurse.”

  “No. Catch the shooter?”

  “Got away.”

  “A lot of people are outrunning you these days, Carver. You gotta get faster.”

  She tilts her head up, tries to smile.

  “You would have caught him,” I say.

  “No question.”

  She pulls herself closer and sleeps.

  Chapter 25

  I take a right into the Solaris Studio lot. Orlov conceived it well: long driveway, palms, magnolias, bougainvillea, gardeners, golf carts, and whitewashed bungalows in the 1920s style—a re-created past rising two miles from the ocean in Santa Monica. It doesn’t have that gentrified Hollywood artifice. It feels as if built in the time it conjures. Orlov must have been a good spy. Deception so fine, you don’t notice the trick of it. I half expect Fitzgerald or Faulkner to come wandering around the corner with a script and bottle. Or maybe Valentino. Lillian Gish. Buster Keaton. The old crew. When it was all new, and they were bits of gray, magical light. I pull to the guardhouse, show my shield. The guard runs a finger down a clipboard.

  “You’re not on the list,” he says.

  “I’m here to see Armando Torres.”

  “But . . .”

  “You don’t want to get in the way of a police investigation, do you? Could be bad for you. Conspiracy, who knows what else. You don’t let me in, I get suspicious. I get suspicious and, well . . . Call him and tell him I’m coming.”

  He says nothing, staring at me through tinted wraparounds. He did time in Iraq or Afghanistan. You can tell. The distant stone gaze. Looking into you and past you as if he were still manning a checkpoint in Ramadi or Kandahar. But now he’s holding a clipboard, wearing a pressed gray-blue suit with badges on the sleeves—another uniform, but one without lethal power, and far from Babylon. He steps into the guardhouse, lifts a phone.

  “Okay,” he says, bending to my window with a look meant to harm. “Go down to lot C and park. Someone will meet you.”

  I find a space. A costume rack rolls past. Carpenters are resting beneath a palm, watching a girl in jeans and a tank top navigate tangled leashes and a parade of dogs. A helicopter lifts and skims away. George Clooney walks by with Emma Stone. No, but close. You n
ever know. They disappear down an alley. A young man in a black suit hurries toward me and points to a billboard of Ryan Gosling suspended in a galaxy, the scion of a doomed planet in Star Battle: A Love Story.

  “Just finished postproduction,” says a young man, his red hair shining. “Coming soon. Do you like Ryan? Everybody likes Ryan. He tests so well. Good numbers. But you never know, right? A bad film here and there and, well, you know, no more upgrades or top-shelf swag.”

  “Never thought about it.”

  “It’s a preoccupation. I’m Tyler. You’re here for Armando, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I gather people. It’s a confusing place. These little alleys and avenues. I mean, they’re all marked. Mr. Orlov is very precise. But, you know, it’s big.”

  “Looks like it’s from another time.”

  “It is quaint, isn’t it? Our little make-believe land.” He laughs, rushes on. “Watch out for anything that might be moving. Things have a tendency to dart out of nowhere.”

  He races me down Casablanca Way. We make a few lefts and rights and arrive at a courtyard. A fountain bubbles beneath a sycamore. The buildings are low with clear, open windows. Voices. A clarinet. The scratchy sound of a TV. Tyler leads me to a man sitting in the shade, smoking a vape, binders and coffees spread before him on a wrought iron table. Small, muscular, and compact, he rises with the speed of a fist—another former soldier with war still in him.

  “Thank you, Tyler.”

  “Yes, Mr. Torres. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Pleasure,” says Tyler, nodding to me and vanishing into a building.

  “Sit, Detective.” He pours coffee, slides it to me. “I hate being inside,” he says. “The whole point of LA is the weather, so why is everyone inside? I come out here in the mornings with these.” He lifts a binder. “Security. Not just on this lot, but all over. Location shoots, press junkets, anywhere there’s a star. Stars love security. Everyone wants a bodyguard. They’re like accessories.” He laughs. “Men in black suits and—”

  “Tinted wraparounds.”

  “Imposing, don’t you think? That’s the point. Control without force. Always control without force, if you can. We wore them in Iraq. The hajis thought they had special powers. Thought they were X-ray, and we could see through clothes to the naked bodies of their women. Drove them nuts. We were omniscient behind them. For a little while. Christ. What a clusterfuck it all was.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “Three tours. Got out as a captain. Took a year off and traveled around Europe. Lived lean, but it was good. Then I found my way here.”

  “Not bad. Did you know Orlov before?”

  “No.” He laughs. “Friend of a friend got me the job. Security’s an incestuous business. Like the army and cops. You know that.” He sucks on the vape, blows smoke. He reaches for his coffee, motions for me to drink. He is latticed by the shadow of a sycamore branch. He’s early forties, black hair, shaved tight on the sides. Military, yes, but his face has a boyish delicateness. His dark eyes find mine and stay there. Like a sniper. He doesn’t mind silence, drawing me in, leaving me to float on the passing seconds, which I am comfortable doing.

  “What can you tell me about Jimmy Krause?” I say.

  “It’s a shame. I saw it on the news this morning. Poor Jimmy. He’d been troubled for a long time. He was in my unit in Iraq. A gunner. Never got over it. A lot of guys didn’t.” He looks into his coffee, back to me. “He contacted me a few years ago. We met and talked about the Odyssey. That was his thing. He was a big reader. He loved the Odyssey. War is one thing, but the journey home is hell. He told me about his arrests and jail time. I tried to help, but with his record, I couldn’t bring him on here. Pretty strict about that. I got him a temp thing over on lot D for a long weekend, but that was it. I made some calls, but he’d disappear. I wouldn’t hear from him for a while. Then he’d resurface.”

  “He said he worked for you not long ago. Driving two Russian men around LA.”

  “Jimmy never worked for me.”

  “He said you hired him.”

  “He was mistaken.”

  “He was up at Orlov’s mansion less than a week ago.”

  Torres pours cream in his coffee, hits his vape. Looks at me, unruffled.

  “I invited him up. Mr. Orlov has a couple of bungalows near a pool on the north end of his property. He lets me use them for get-togethers with army buddies. We drink and swim, glorify the past. Typical shit. I invited Jimmy up. Thought it might do him good. I sent a car to pick him up in Burbank. Jimmy had a tendency to drink.” He pauses, watches women in sequined gowns and men in tuxes pass. “They’re shooting a remake of something.” He thumbs his binder pages. “Jimmy was getting delusional, you know—PTSD, whatever they call it now. I heard one shrink on TV describe it as an ‘injury to the soul.’ Jimmy never really made it back from the desert. He couldn’t make it work stateside. All that ‘thank you for your service’ bullshit. No one cared. Jimmy kept saying he was worried. He had enemies. People following him. That kind of shit.”

  Torres stands.

  “C’mon, Detective, let’s do a couple of laps. I’ve got a little shrapnel in my knee. I need to loosen it.”

  We walk on a brick path around the courtyard.

  “How?” I say.

  “IED. Side of the road. Boom. Killed three of my guys. The power of those things is amazing. Fire and smoke. Everybody down, knocked off kilter. Fuzzy. Then the world starts coming back to you, like it’s approaching from a distance and filling itself back in. Not everyone comes back. That day, three never got up when the smoke cleared. My leg was pretty torn up, but they fixed it except for these little pieces.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Now? No. They move around, and then I need to move around to get them back where they should be.”

  “The Things They Carried.”

  “Jimmy gave that book to me on our second tour. You know, though, and I’m no writer, but I think writing about war must be easy. It’s there in front of you. Real-time drama spinning around you. You know? Boom. Boom, boom. You just have to take it in, right? The colors, sounds, blood. Take it in and put it down like you saw it.”

  “Sounds like a man contemplating a memoir.”

  “I don’t know about that, but all that shit stays with you.”

  “Jimmy read a lot. Did he write?”

  “Not that I know of. He could quote long passages from books. Come up with all kinds of shit. He never came across as smart, you know. Always seemed to be the dumb one. But he could surprise you. One time, our unit camped west of Baghdad. We sat in starlight like an ancient herd.” Torres smiles but not long. “Jimmy starts quoting from Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it made me feel that the soldiers in the Civil War were just like us, hoping not to die and be buried in someplace not home.” He catches himself and looks at me. “I’m going on too long about shit that doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s cut to it, Detective.”

  “Jimmy was certain you hired him. We have security-camera pictures of him with the two guys he said were Russians. He told us he took them twice to a café at Fourth and Spring, next door to Katrina Ivanovna’s loft. You know her, right? The ballerina who died. She had two big Russian guys visit her that same week. Then Krause told us he drops those same guys off at a Cubano place in Echo Park, and, get this, they talk to Katrina’s cellist, who also ends up dead. Then Jimmy goes to Orlov’s place, and a few days later, last night, Jimmy catches it. Very professional hit.”

  Torres stops in the shade near the fountain. He looks at me for a long time.

  “I have nothing for you, Detective. Jimmy was troubled. He owed people money. Ripped off a lot of people. He had enemies. I don’t know
who killed him. I did try to get him work. But I know I didn’t hire him. I certainly know he didn’t cart Russians around for me. I don’t know about any cellist. But I did read about the ballerina. Wasn’t it an overdose?”

  “We think she had help.”

  “You get her body back?”

  “No. What about Orlov?”

  “Mr. Orlov? What’s your point?”

  “Did he know Katrina Ivanovna?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  A pause, a draw on the vape.

  “He’s in Italy. He likes to be on location when a shoot starts.”

  “When is he back?”

  “I don’t know his schedule.”

  “It’s not in those binders?”

  “Okay, Detective, I think we’re done. I’ll inform Mr. Orlov that you want to speak with him. If he agrees, I’ll arrange it with his lawyers.”

  “It’s not about agreeing,” I say.

  He shakes my hand. Tyler appears. Torres leaves the brick path and sunlight. He slips back into the shade of the sycamore and sits at the wrought iron table, pouring coffee and opening a binder. He glances at me, his face betraying nothing—a boy sniper with a long desert gaze. I breathe in the morning cool. Tyler hurries me down Casablanca Way, and I think I’d like to have been an actor—not these days, but back when you could disappear into a studio and never venture beyond its walls. You could live mysteries written for you and know the endings before you started. It would have been a good life, getting rich on pretending, receiving invitations from homes in the hills and canyons, and up the coast in Malibu.

  “As I was saying,” says Tyler, “the new Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain film—well, we’re just all excited.”

  We stop at my car.

  “Have a nice day, Detective.”

  He turns and is gone.

  Chapter 26

  Lily is quiet on the drive home from the hospital. I help her inside. Bill Evans is playing on the porch radio. I make coffee and change her bandage—five stitches—and hold a cold compress over the bump on her forehead. She looks at me. I know what she wants. I hand her the crime scene photographs. Krause on his back, blood around his head like a dark halo. Broken glass, spilled beer, scattered coins. Everything illuminated. She points to the right side of Krause, imagining herself unconscious on the floor.