Below the Line
Page 19
Or had she not, hoping he’d cross the divide?
There could be no better test.
Naked, tremulous, he queried the knob, this brass oracle from Restoration Hardware that knew his future.
It surrendered to his turn.
Behind the pebbled glass, Lorena stopped lathering. He pulled open the shower door. “Hi.”
“What are you doing?” The doorknob had lied. “No. Jesus.”
Mortified, he closed the bathroom door behind him and pulled on his jeans. He’d gotten it all wrong again.
He lay down on the bed and waited, staring at the ceiling and reviling himself. Think where her mind had been. Mariana. LATREAN. What was he thinking? Trying to repair their relationship through sex, on a night like this? Jackass.
When she emerged, again encased in the grannyesque flannel, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“You’re a fucking asshole. To go from all that tonight to sex?”
“I said, I’m sorry.”
“What, did that turn you on?”
“For God’s sake. I didn’t know, okay? The door was unlocked . . .”
“Fine, I’ll start locking the fucking door!” She stormed back into the bathroom and slammed it so hard he could hear the frame crack. He hadn’t seen her in the red zone like this, not since they’d been back together. He’d been lulled into thinking it was something she’d left in her twenties.
“I don’t think you’re being fair,” he said through the door, hoping to settle her down with reasonable words and a gentle tone. “You shouldn’t be angry at me over what’s happened to that girl. I didn’t do anything to hurt her.”
The door flew open. “That’s not why I’m angry at you.”
“Why, then?”
“She told me.”
“Who told you what?”
“That you came on to her.”
“Mariana—you mean on the street, when I was trying to—?”
“Stevie.”
“What? When?”
“In the pool house.”
“That did not happen. Not even close.”
“Well, something happened. When I walked in there, you could cut the vibe with a knife.”
“It’s in your head.”
“Uh-huh. She’s got you hypnotized, Waldo. Don’t even try to deny it.”
His jaw moved, but that was pretty much all he had.
“She makes me sick, that girl. Look at her next to Mariana—did you see her hand? That scar?” Waldo nodded. “Did she tell you what that shitstick did to her? He cut her and poured ink into it, to mark her. The rest of her life she’s going to have to look at that. Every single day.” The revulsion made his throat tighten. “Maybe—maybe—she can stay off the street, but that girl is never, ever going to be ‘normal.’ The world has totally fucked her over. And then you’ve got your precious little Stevie Rose, who’s been given everything, and what does she do with it? She fucks the world over. And you”—her disenchantment with him, her disgust, was bringing her almost to tears—“you don’t even see it.”
She disappeared again into the bathroom. He realized there was nothing he could do to get past her fury tonight. He took off his jeans again and slipped under the comforter in his boxers. He’d leave the nightly laundry for the morning. The safest thing now was to be as still as he could. He didn’t have any energy left anyway.
A few minutes later, Lorena came out and got into bed herself. After the long night of crossed signals, suddenly she could read his mind: “I don’t know where this is going either, Waldo. Let’s just get through this goddamn toxic case and then see what everything looks like.”
She turned her back to him and switched off her light, to wait for sleep, alone together, inches and a million miles apart.
TWENTY-THREE
Lorena sat on the bed and Waldo stirred. His head was jumbled; the pain had woken him up around three and he’d taken another pill. “How’s your arm?” Her tone was gentle and she took the fingers of his damaged arm in her own. She was dressed already, more casually than yesterday, in a navy blouse and loose slacks. “I got that gig I met on.” The one he doubted was real. “I’m going to work it today. Think you can keep anything else from burning down while you’re on Rose?”
Rose. It was a carefully neutral label. He said, “What’s the new case?”
“Peep-show classic.” If she was lying about it, she was doing it easily, but that didn’t surprise him. “Investment banker, thinks his trophy wife’s jumped the pedestal. Stakeout in Brentwood—going to use it to break in my young guy.” Waldo felt a glimmer of jealousy, then wondered, through his thick Percocet haze, if that had been her intention.
Hours later, when he woke up for good, he didn’t even remember Lorena leaving the room.
He tended to his wound and reconsidered his day, or what was left after sleeping half of it away. He’d been planning to focus on Ouelette, but Lorena’s critique of his Stevie blind spot nagged at him and he decided instead to reconstruct a ticktock of the girl’s five days off the radar. Daron’s role in hiding her was suspicious, his father’s in finding her even more so. Waldo wanted another shot at Roy and Brenda together, which meant another trip to Newport Beach. With the late start, he’d get there, conveniently, around dinnertime.
Traveling to O.C. without a partner in stilettos let him cut a couple of bus rides off the front of the trip. In fact, if it weren’t for his arm he’d be tempted to take most of the forty-five miles by bike. In the event, though, by the time he reached downtown it was throbbing so badly that he was grateful to be able to rest it on the MetroLink.
He extended his stop in Long Beach, searching on his phone for a farmers market and finding one set up for the day in a parking lot near the Denny’s where they’d taken Mariana. He feasted on a late lunch of unpackaged foods: homemade garlic jack cheese, strawberries and a scrumptious bagel—pumpernickel—baked, the vendor swore, by reformed members of the Latin Kings.
After that, he returned to Wardlow Station to catch the bus that would take him back over the county line. Before all this he’d thought of O.C., when he bothered to think about it at all, the way most Angelenos do, as a bland, bloated suburb, a negligible stepbrother, so irrelevant to the real city that even their Major League team couldn’t inspire a decent rivalry. Now, though, he was starting to see Orange County more like a junior version of L.A. itself: glamour, grime and divertissement in separate and incongruous but proximate stretches, the golden coastline of Roy and Brenda hard by the grubby boulevards of Amador and Mariana, hard by the fresh-scrubbed Main Street of Mickey and Minnie.
Waldo transferred to the OCTA bus down PCH, traversing the Beach cities—Seal, then Huntington, then Newport—where, shadows growing long, he got off an easy pedal from the Waxes’ house. The conspiracy theorist security guard he’d left hanging was on duty again.
Waldo said to him, “Hey, sorry about last time, but I had to get in there.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Besides, I can’t go on the radio and talk about the Pinch murder. You understand that, right?”
“Depends what you’re hiding.”
“There’s nothing to hide. The story is the story.”
“Good story,” said the guard. “Before this? I was Seal Beach PD,” he said, significantly. “Three years.”
Waldo looked the guard in the eye and spoke as earnestly as he could. “What the cops say happened, happened. I shot the guy.” In fact, Waldo hadn’t shot the man, but it was so much closer to the truth than the fables they were peddling on the radio, he was almost convincing himself. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So,” said Waldo, hopeful that he’d put the crazy talk to rest, “could you tell the Waxes that I’m here?”
“They’re not home.”
“You sure? Could you call and check?”
“Separately or together?”
The guard, pleased with himself, said, “The story is the story.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Not in the driveway.” He closed his window.
The other side of the street was a line of low-slung luxury apartments. Waldo breathed in the salt air and contemplated another minor O.C. mystery: who would be filling these, at probably seven figures a pop for a two-bedroom? Hollywood weekenders? Rich locals like Daron Wax, parents parking them until the inheritance kicked in? Could there be that many of those kids?
He found a shady spot close enough to the guard gate to get a read on a driver, and a brick planter where he could sit until someone chased him away. There were few cars on this out-of-the-way street and no pedestrians. Waldo bored quickly and found his Kindle. He broke off from World War I at the occasional sound of tires and looked up to see if they were turning into the Waxes’ community. Two luxury cars did get waved through in the first hour without being stopped, but neither was driven by a Wax.
A little past seven, Roy wheeled into the drive in an electric blue Porsche Targa convertible. The gate rose immediately but Wax paused anyway to trade a few words with the guard before continuing in. Waldo gave Wax five minutes to get to his house and settle in, then biked back to the kiosk. He said, “Call him for me now?”
“Call who?”
“Roy Wax.”
“Told you, he’s not here.”
“I just saw him. In the Targa.”
“That wasn’t Mr. Wax. That was another resident with the same car.” Waldo didn’t know if the guard was running interference at Wax’s direction or just screwing with him freelance. Probably the former.
Eight-foot stone walls extended from the guard gate in each direction. Waldo went south and cruised to the next corner. The wall turned there and ran downhill with the side street to the water. There wasn’t a good spot for scaling, but the least bad was a crumbling stretch where he might be able to wedge a toe. A couple of nearby oaks would obscure him from the main road, another benefit.
He’d done this before, and all too recently, successfully circumventing more fearsome guards up in Beverly Park in pretty much the same way. The déjà vu renewed his misgivings about this new career. He could hear Lorena telling him to throw a better shine on it: he was turning into a pro, getting his reps in.
He looked around to make sure no one was watching, then braced the Brompton against the stones and stepped up onto the seat. He tested a crack with his boot. No luck: the wall just crumbled a little more. The Brompton shifted beneath him and he had to grab the top to steady himself. A shaky toe toppled the bike and he barely managed to catch the wall with his other hand too and hang on, nose pressed to the wall. He chinned himself to where he could grip the far side with both hands. He could almost see over the top now, but not quite. The strain tore at his wounded forearm. He hung there for a moment in limbo: should he try to pull himself the rest of the way over, or let himself fall and start the whole process again?
Two quick woots from a police siren made the decision for him. He dropped to the ground. A pair of uniforms were getting out of a Newport Beach Police SUV.
“Turn and face the wall, please, sir?” Very polite.
“Afternoon, Officers,” he said without obeying. “Good thing you came along when you did.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“You were able to stop me right before I accidentally trespassed. Could have gotten myself in trouble.”
“Hands on the wall, please?”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Hands on the wall.”
Waldo did as he was told. One frisked him while the other whipped open his expandable baton. Waldo said, “I’m former LAPD,” not knowing whether that was even currency down here. The frisking cop took his wallet and his phone. He told Waldo to put his hands down, then slipped Waldo’s backpack off his shoulders and took that too. He slapped a cuff on Waldo’s bad arm. “You’re kidding, right? Hey, in front, at least? Professional courtesy?” The cop pulled Waldo’s other arm backward and cuffed him behind. The baton cop guided Waldo into the caged back seat. They tossed the backpack in after him and slammed the door.
The windows were all up and the air-conditioning had already worn off. He could see both uniforms walking past the rear of the vehicle, in no rush. He wished they’d talk to the gate guard and put together who he was. Not that the truth would win him any fans, but it would all work out more quickly and smoothly than if the NBPD treated him as what he knew he looked like, one more homeless guy hanging around a beach town until he got into trouble.
One of the cops made a brief phone call, but mostly the pair chatted idly and left him roasting in the car. The vehicle had a funk that rose with the temperature, dried vomit apparently unliberated from the upholstery.
The smell of sick had always been suggestive to him. It had been that way since the first grade with Mrs. Rothbell, when he was left in the hallway with five other kids whose parents, along with Waldo’s mom, went inside for a group parent-teacher conference. The children were instructed to sit quietly against the wall and stay there until the parents emerged. Waldo’s classmate Wanda Martinez, sitting beside him, suddenly vomited on the floor without warning or explanation, the way small kids do. A hushed, inside-voice debate ensued among the children as to whether Wanda should go in and tell the grown-ups now or should wait as instructed until her mom emerged. The little girl chose stoic patience. The fetid spew on the marble floor beside him filled little Waldo’s nostrils; he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. Suddenly he threw up, too.
Shawana Council was next, then Joey Parlapiano, followed by, pretty much in unison, the last two kids, whose names Waldo couldn’t remember. But he vividly remembered the parents and Mrs. Rothbell emerging to find the six classmates sitting there with vomit all over the floor and their school clothes, and Mr. Parlapiano saying, “What the fuck have you shitbirds been doing out here?,” making it an unforgettable day on the vocabulary front, too.
The stench of the SUV brought that afternoon rushing back and threatened to bring the Latin Kings’ half-digested pumpernickel rushing back too.
The cops opened the back of the vehicle and tossed in Waldo’s bike, then climbed back into their seats in front. “Goddamn,” said one. “Smell’s just getting worse.”
Waldo said, “What is that?”
“We picked up a drunk last night. Didn’t make it.”
They started the car and rolled down their windows. Waldo said, “Mine too, huh?” But they left the rear ones up. The motion of the car further roiled his stomach. “Hey,” he said, trying to be heard over the rushing air up front, “what do you have on me? Seriously—it’s not trespassing if I never made it to the other side of the wall!” Shouting heightened the nausea, so he stopped.
They drove him through the unfamiliar beach town. He wanted to resolve this before they got to the station and started putting him through the system, chewing up what was left of the day. “I really was a cop!” he yelled, queasiness be damned. “I’m a PI—I’m working a homicide!” Neither of them even turned around. “There’s an LAPD detective, you can check me out with him! Jim Cuppy!” Either they didn’t believe him or they just didn’t care.
They crossed a bridge, giving Waldo a good view of the pleasure boats bobbing on the shimmering bay. “I guess I see why the money comes here,” he said, this time softer and to no one in particular.
To that one of the cops responded, the one in the passenger seat. “Yeah, it’s beautiful. Idyllwild’s nice, too. I were you, I’d go back.”
They knew exactly who he was. Which, Waldo realized, wasn’t better at all.
* * *
• • •
He sat in the back seat, parked behind the police station,
aching in the cuffs. The front windows had been mercifully left down, at least, and with stillness his nausea receded. But they left him there for hours, not returning until long past nightfall. By then the point had been made: Waldo wasn’t getting in to see Roy Wax again, not at home, not in his office, not without an invitation.
The baton cop opened the door and unfastened the cuffs. The blood flowed back into Waldo’s arms, which relieved the discomfort everywhere except the spot the Presa Canario had crunched, which felt worse. He started to climb out of the SUV but the cop said, “Stay there. We’re taking you to Long Beach. Train station.”
“That’s awfully decent of you.”
His partner said, “Buses aren’t reliable this time of night. We want to make sure you get on that Blue Line to L.A., nice and safe.” The day was wasted, but things could be a lot worse. “Next time we’re not going to be that friendly about it, understand?” Finally able to sit normally, Waldo settled back and even buckled his seat belt. He put the backpack on his lap, closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders to work the kinks out of his neck. What to do tomorrow? He could come back down here and try to work the Daron angle: the son would be easier to get to than the father. Or maybe give O.C. a rest for a day and work Ouelette and the school.
They reached the Long Beach train station quicker than Waldo expected them to, and when they opened the door and let him out, he saw why: they weren’t in Long Beach at all, nor at a train station.
They were in Santa Ana.
North Harbor Boulevard, to be specific, across from the Wonderland Motel.
The cop said, “You have a nice night,” handed Waldo his wallet and phone, and got back in the car. Orange County wasn’t made of separate, incongruous pieces at all. It was more like the moon, with a bright side and a dark side, but all one. The cops knew the Waxes, who knew Amador, who knew Tesoro. And now they all knew Waldo.
“Hey!” he shouted as the cops pulled from the curb. “My bike!” He lunged at the SUV and managed to slap the back hatch twice. But that didn’t stop them from driving off with it.