“Yeah.”
Hexter nodded, relieved.
Waldo said, “You’re blaming the victim.”
* * *
• • •
At the North Hollywood Greyhound station, he called Lorena before paying for his ticket, but it went right to voicemail and he hung up without leaving a message. He hated leaving town with their relationship suddenly precarious and decided to stick around another day. He biked down the street to the Red Line and took it back over the hill.
It was a beautiful late spring day—not Idyllwild beautiful, but as good as it got in L.A.—so he thought he’d hit one of the parks, Echo or maybe Pan Pacific, and spend a couple of hours reading. But somewhere after Universal City, lack of sleep, the narcotizing prospect of more undirected hours in the city and the motion of the train rocked him into a doze. When the train slowed for the Hollywood/Highland station he woke with a start, panicked and checked to make sure his bike was still leaning beside him on the wall of the car; it was, and the loop of his backpack was still safely wrapped around one of his arms. Nonetheless, the thought of falling asleep on a park bench and finding himself mugged or arrested for vagrancy made him change his plans: he’d make for Shauna’s instead and let a cup of her overpriced Santa Barbara jolt him awake.
Carrying his bike out of the subway, though, he was hit by another warm wave of fatigue and knew that he needed more sleep, and soon. These jagged Los Angeles days were wrecking him. Maybe if Willem was in the house, he’d let Waldo in. The thought of Lorena’s bed magnetized him and he started down Western. He told himself that missing her had nothing to do with it.
* * *
• • •
Breathing the scent of her shampoo on her pillow, he dialed her cell, got her voicemail and hung up again. He decided to message her instead, saying that he was still in L.A. and asking if she wanted to meet at six thirty at a new place downtown Shauna had told him about, figuring it would be freeway-convenient after Lorena drove back up from Orange County, and sending her a link to the restaurant’s website. He didn’t mention where he was, thinking it might sound creepy in a text.
The first time he’d spent a night in this bed, it had been in Lorena’s studio apartment near Echo Park, after their first date. All through dinner Waldo had found Lorena intimidating, not only in her profound allure but in her confidence, and worried that he wasn’t measuring up. His remarkable career at the LAPD, his prodigious climb to detective III—it was like none of that ever happened; it was like he was back in high school, picking up his date for his junior prom and trying to pin the boutonniere on her chiffon dress, fumbling for sweaty, agonizing minutes before the girl’s mother mercifully stepped in and showed him that it belonged on his own lapel. He was asking Lorena all the wrong questions, giving all the wrong answers, slipping into all the wrong silences. But when he asked if she’d like dessert, her answer was “Where do you live?” and when he told her the Valley, she said, “I’m closer,” and that was that.
Their sexual alchemy, even that first night, was so staggering that in the morning he did something completely out of character, calling in to division and arranging to trade a shift. That, plus a scheduled weekend off and a slow patch in Lorena’s own work, let them stretch their first date across the better part of a week. They’d break for a walk or a meal and tell each other stories about their lives until one would find something about the other a fresh aphrodisiac and in no time they’d be back in one of their beds and at it again.
One afternoon when he was on top of her, she suddenly put her palms under both his shoulders and pushed up hard. (The strength in her arms and small hands continually surprised him, even now.) He didn’t know what was wrong but then he understood that she wanted to be looking into his eyes, and for him to be looking into hers. Whatever it was that happened then, and in the long minutes afterward, soundless but for their breathing, scared him. He almost lied and said he had to get home, but he told himself to let go and let himself fall, that maybe this was what the real thing felt like, the thing the songs were about.
The next day, Lorena’s boss called—she was an op in those days for a small agency on the Eastside—and put her on a case. Waldo had to go back to work anyway, so they said a slow good-bye and set a date for the following Friday afternoon. They texted a bit in the interim but, their jobs being what they were, answered each other irregularly.
Come the day, Waldo took her to one of his favorite spots in town, the Petersen Auto Museum, a three-story celebration of L.A.’s car culture, which Lorena had never seen. Then he took her to an Italian place that took pride in importing every last ingredient and element of the meal—pasta, cheese, olive oil and, of course, wine—shipping it all from Tuscany, six thousand miles away. At the time, all of that seemed pretty cool.
Later that night, after they’d made love, Lorena said, “Just so I know the ground rules—we’re not boyfriend and girlfriend, right?”
The question surprised him. “Meaning . . . ?”
“Exclusive.”
It had all been so overwhelming that he’d made assumptions. But none of it had been articulated, and he realized there was no reason to expect that she’d have done the same. He said, “We can be.”
“Oh,” she said, “okay. I didn’t think we were jumping to that.” She was quiet, then said, “It doesn’t usually work. That’s been my experience. People say they’re going to be exclusive, but somebody ends up cheating, almost always the guy, and then you’re sorry you didn’t do it first.”
“I guess so,” he said. He hadn’t been in many committed relationships, certainly not enough to support or refute her take, and he was starting to feel at sea. He did have a glimmer, though, the first of his life, that being with this person and only this person from here on might be okay. Might be more than okay. He knew that was something one oughtn’t say at this point, but he wasn’t sure what one did say, and he started feeling boutonniere-ish all over again. Maybe he should suggest they try being exclusive, “boyfriend and girlfriend,” to use her middle schooly language, and see where it went. Anyway, he knew he needed to step carefully with his next sentence.
But she spoke first. She said, “Because I slept with somebody.”
He said, “When?,” feeling stupid even as the syllable came out.
“Last night. A guy I’ve been sort of seeing. Not even seeing. More like a fuck buddy.”
Reeling, he found himself quickly seconding her assessment that monogamy is problematic, especially with such a new thing as theirs, and that they should “keep taking it slow,” even though, for Waldo, it felt slow like a plane plowing into a mountain at six hundred miles an hour.
He never got past it. He sought sex with others, much as she had, as a form of self-protection, and told himself that that was a good thing, that it helped him keep his feelings for Lorena in perspective and was thus in fact a boon to the health of their fledgling relationship.
Which, of course, it wasn’t.
Because while he took care not to flaunt his other dalliances, Lorena was, after all, Lorena, and when they began to quarrel he learned just how closely she was tracking his non-Lorena life. He couldn’t get it right: he’d try to treat their affair as casually as she claimed to want, but then he’d draw fire from her over anything, from a white lie he’d told so as not to stoke her jealousy to the utter moral failing of his longest-running distraction, a series of afternoon trysts at the Sheraton Universal with a married casting director.
And dazzling as Lorena was, she’d always have a potential paramour ready and willing to help her reaffirm her independence with a fling of her own.
The whole thing torqued Waldo so completely that it took him half a year to understand the obvious, that Lorena was every bit as obsessive about him as he was about her. When he finally got it, he suggested they try to overcome suspicion and habit and take a stab at fidelity.
; Thus they entered their next cycle: they’d succeed for a while; someone would get insecure and backslide; they’d fight; they’d try again. Slowly they found their way, becoming a couple, damaged by their past but not shattered by it, and just beginning to feel safe in each other’s faith.
Then Waldo’s life exploded, and he committed the ultimate betrayal, disappearing from her life—and everyone’s—without a word.
* * *
• • •
His midday sleep was fathomless. When the first threads of consciousness drifted past, if felt like he was crawling out of a coma. He slowly pieced the day back together, then the week. He reached for his phone. Lorena had texted back but one letter:
K
It was already five. He’d have enough time to bike to the restaurant, but not by much.
Shauna’s recommendation was called the Greene, one more eatery gussying up its eco-theme with an extra letter. Set atop one of the tallest buildings on Fifth, this one was more extravagant than he’d expected, lavish to the point of dissonance with its original noble mission, the restaurant equivalent of a Tesla. Stunning cityscapes out its high windows were complemented by the illumination of hundreds and hundreds of soy candles. He felt hopelessly out of place with his jeans and windbreaker and backpack. At least there was a chance Lorena would like the food better here.
The hostess seated him in a booth and an auburn-haired waitress around Waldo’s age brought him a water and asked if he was waiting for someone. He said yes, then commented on the ice in his glass. The waitress said, “Did you not want ice?”
“I’m a little surprised, that’s all, place like this. You know, with all the halocarbons, when you dispose of a refrigerator it’s like driving a car ten thousand miles.” She studied him for a second, then chortled; he’d inadvertently won her over.
Waldo waited. And waited. At six forty-five he texted Lorena to make sure she was on her way, but she didn’t answer. He started to think maybe she wasn’t going to show, that her “K” was a misunderstanding or perhaps some kind of poorly executed brush-off. He wondered if he should order dinner for himself or simply leave. Then again, where would he go? He’d locked Lorena’s house behind him, Willem apparently having gone out himself while Waldo was sleeping. The Greyhounds to Banning had stopped running hours ago. This visit to L.A., which had begun with such hope, had somehow set him tumbling into a strange helplessness.
She was almost an hour late when she slid into the booth opposite him, looking flushed and flustered and barely apologizing. Something was off.
He asked how her work went.
“My work? A breeze. Wrapped up really quickly. Very successful case. I sat with the wife and her lawyer—she’s going to clean up in this divorce. I’m sure it’s going to lead to more business. I’m definitely buying tonight.”
She was talking too much and too quickly.
The waitress took their orders. When she left, Waldo said, “You were out of touch all day.”
“Was I? Sorry. My phone died. And I got really tired for some reason, so I went home and took a nap.”
“In your bed.”
Lorena forced a laugh. “Well, I wasn’t going to drive to where you live and take a nap in your bed.”
The worst part of knowing that she was lying to him was that he understood. Old ghosts were haunting them. Stevie Rose had stirred her insecurities and she was inoculating herself against the very notion of Waldo’s infidelity by acting out first. It was like that first wallop when she’d told him about her fuck buddy. Only worse, because this time she wasn’t even being straight about it.
She said, “And what did you do all day?”
He wouldn’t tell her the truth and expose her lie, not yet. But he didn’t have a lie of his own at the ready and found himself tongue-tied, stuck for an answer. He saw suspicion flicker behind her eyes and he knew exactly how she was filling in the blanks.
It felt like the beginning of the end.
As he tortured his imagination for a passable story, a massive figure in a dirt-brown suit dropped onto the bench beside Lorena, his big rump squeezing her into the corner of the booth. “So this is where the liberal fuckfaces get their thirty-dollar kale.”
It was Waldo’s nemesis, Big Jim Cuppy, LAPD.
SIX
What—surprised I found you?” Cuppy was an extortionate cop; the aftermath of Waldo’s seismic blowout when he left the LAPD had somehow left Cuppy untouched but taken down his even dirtier partner, and he’d been carrying beef since. When Waldo didn’t answer, Cuppy said, “Everybody on the force knows your face, asshole. Put out an APB, Revenant’s in town? Had you in ten minutes.”
“Why do you have an APB on me?”
Instead of answering, Cuppy turned to Lorena. “How’s business, sugar?”
“I had an excellent day, matter of fact.”
“Yeah, what’s that look like? Somebody leave the shades up?” Back to Waldo: “Tell me about Victor Ouelette.”
“Don’t know the name.”
“No? Then who was it dropped by his apartment on a bike—Lance Armstrong? You’re not a cop anymore, scum breath. Not permitted to interrogate the citizenry.”
“He’s a private investigator,” said Lorena. “Operating under my license.”
He turned to her. “Start piling up harassment complaints, someone’s gonna pull that ticket.”
“That’s what you’re here for?” Waldo said. “That piece of shit filed a complaint—about me?”
“No, I’m here because someone decided to wait in the garage under his building with a hammer and X out that—what’d you just call him?—‘piece of shit’?” Waldo and Lorena exchanged a glance. They knew enough to let Cuppy do the next bit of talking. “And it wasn’t a robbery—wallet, keys, phone, all right on the ground next to him. Neighbor upstairs said she saw a guy looked just like Charlie Waldo hassling him on the street. Anything you want to tell me?”
Waldo squinted at him. “That haircut isn’t working for you.”
Cuppy clucked. “So where were you last night, about eight?” Resentment ran deep at LAPD and a month earlier Waldo had been locked up for a murder the investigators probably knew he didn’t commit. Cuppy had come by the jailhouse to gloat and then some; no doubt he’d drag Waldo through all that again and worse if he could. But now he turned back to Lorena. “Let me guess. You’re each other’s alibis.”
Lorena was even more vulnerable to harassment: her livelihood was at stake. Waldo said, “What does she need an alibi for?”
Cuppy said, “Let’s talk Stevie Rose.”
Waldo shrugged. Don’t know her.
“Going to play that again? Rack your brain: poor little rich girl, dresses like a hooker? Probably throws up after every meal, even when she isn’t eating garden waste or whatever the fuck they serve in this joint.” Waldo and Lorena held stone faces. “Nothing? How about Ouelette’s boss at her school—Principal Fancypants, remember him? He says you had a bug up your ass about Ouelette.” Lorena threw Waldo a glance at the news of his Stoddard drop-in. “Not just a bug, either,” Cuppy continued. “Sounded more like a great big mutant cockroach.” He took a pad from inside his jacket and read, for effect: “According to the principal, you said, ‘Somebody needs to do something about him.’”
Now Lorena looked straight at Waldo, her eyes widening. Waldo checked her with a quick look.
Cuppy said to Lorena, “Might want to keep your boyfriend on a leash and out of the news. Bodies have a way of piling up around him. Can’t be healthy for that little business you’re trying to build.”
Lorena didn’t flinch but Waldo knew Cuppy had landed a shot to the solar plexus.
Cuppy grabbed a menu from a stand behind Lorena and put it in front of Waldo with a pen. “Cell numbers. Both of you.”
Waldo wrote his down and slid the menu to Lorena. He said to
Cuppy, “So you’ve talked to the girl?”
“What girl, the one you don’t know? Not yet, only seen pictures. She’s next.”
“I want to be there when you do.” That pissed Cuppy off and pissed Lorena off even more. Waldo felt the heat rising from her corner of the table but stayed focused on the detective, who waved a dismissive paw. “Come on,” Waldo said, “at least let me bring her in.”
Cuppy said sharply, “Fuck. That.” Other diners turned to watch.
“Come on. The kid’s home by herself. Parents out of town.”
Cuppy thought about it.
Waldo said, “She’s fifteen years old. Can’t even drive yet.”
“Give you till noon,” said Cuppy, sliding out of the booth. He looked down at an older couple studying their menus. He leaned over the wife’s shoulder, said, “Try the mulch,” and sauntered out.
When Waldo turned back to Lorena she was all daggers, chewing on her tongue. Whatever she was thinking, he didn’t want to hear it, not with her furtive afternoon still hanging out there.
Lorena said, “Go ahead. Call her.”
“I don’t have her number.”
“Right,” she said, in a tone just on the edge of suggesting she didn’t believe him. She took her phone from her purse, found Stevie’s info and hit the call button. After a few moments she said, “Stevie, it’s Lorena Nascimento. Call me as soon as you can.”
The waitress arrived with their food. They ate in a silence that gave him room to ruminate on all of it. Well, Lorena had what she wanted now, to a point. No client or income, maybe, but nonetheless a case they’d be working together, and one he cared about, even if it was just to clear himself.
He thought about the final months with her in the old days, the best of times, before the catastrophe of realizing that in his ambition and hubris he’d robbed a man of his entire adult life.
Waldo had left L.A. and found peace in his woods. Lorena would scoff at the notion that it had been peace, but it was.
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