Below the Line

by Howard Michael Gould

  And just like that, Waldo found himself untethered from L.A.

  Unriddling another case, doing what he did best, was deeply satisfying, but the solitude of his life in the woods was calling to him in a way it hadn’t in weeks. He crossed the campus toward his bike already dreaming of its heavenly, ataractic features: his chickens, his vegetable garden, his long walks and his pond and his floating lounge chair. Dreaming of the quiet. The beautiful, never-ending quiet.

  This wasn’t like the end of the Pinch case, which had left him feeling larger, open, full of promise. This one had the opposite effect: it closed him down, reminded him how dark and dysfunctional society was, family by family, county by county. Better to escape it again, and the sooner the better.

  There was only one remaining obligation before he was fully free of the world: he needed to let Lorena know how everything had shaken out. He’d do that carefully, without engaging. He didn’t have the stomach for any more tension. He’d wait until tonight, when he was safely back in Idyllwild, and even then he’d do it in writing.

  But there was so much to tell. The things he’d figured out about Brenda and Daron Wax alone would be heavy freight for an email, to say nothing of the actual confrontation with Brenda and the fireplace poker and the pillow. Plus she’d want to know about Cuppy’s inventively expletive-laden reaction upon learning that he’d managed to arrest the only Wax who hadn’t murdered anyone. She’d want to know about Brenda’s spectacularly nervy request that Waldo make an introduction to Fontella Davis, the “horrible woman,” as Brenda put it, “who’s always on television getting some even more horrible person acquitted”—a request Waldo granted in exchange for Brenda’s voluntary surrender, along with Daron, to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. And she’d definitely want to know about Waldo’s priceless phone conversation with Fontella Davis on the Waxes’ behalf, in which Davis twisted herself in knots trying to rationalize the highly lucrative representation of the murderer of one of her other clients.

  Hell, he decided as he reached his bike, he’d just do it on the phone and do it now, get the conversation out of the way and put Los Angeles completely behind him before he even boarded the Greyhound to Banning.

  But as soon as he heard Lorena’s voice, he found himself saying, “You free for lunch?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Her trip was much shorter—not to mention, by car—yet she still managed to arrive twenty minutes late. It was going to put time pressure on their lunch; he only had two hours before the last bus. Even then he spied her taking a leisurely stroll in the opposite direction, studying a display case full of English toffee, or pretending to. When she finally looked over her shoulder, she knew exactly where Waldo was standing, but now the playfulness and flirtation didn’t delight or beguile him. Now he was looking at a woman who’d killed a man in cold blood, thinking about her sweet tooth.

  She sauntered over. They didn’t touch. She said, “Did you eat?”

  “I was waiting for you.”

  “Go get your rabbit food. I’ll meet you near the oyster bar.”

  Waldo had suggested the Farmers Market because he’d been having such success here finding fresh ingredients to bring home to her place, not only first-rate produce but fish and poultry that met even his exacting standards of low-footprint transportation. Now he shopped for his dessert first, perusing the many fruit selections at two different stands before settling on a magnificent Fuji apple. Then he headed for the fine-looking salad bar, which he had often eyed but never had call to patronize, as he and Lorena had never stayed on premises for a meal.

  The kiosk, though, hit him with an unanticipated challenge: the only way to assemble a salad, it turned out, was in a hard foam container. What were these people thinking? He asked why they didn’t provide the option of reusable plates, but neither the employees nor the customers waiting behind him had patience for that discussion, let alone one about biodegradability or the sins of the Dow Chemical Company. Worse, he’d taken so much time choosing his apple that Lorena would have already found a table where she’d be waiting for him with her own lunch, and he still had a bus to make. Waldo gave up on the salad. The Fuji that started as dessert had become his entire meal.

  He found her where she said she’d be, sitting behind a loaded chili cheeseburger the size of her head, doing her best to drown a huge plate of fries in ketchup. “Where’s your lunch?”

  “Wasn’t hungry.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, in a way that made clear she knew better. She edged her fries toward him rhetorically.

  You’d think she’d want to talk about what she’d done—share misgivings, ask how he felt about it, something—but there was none of that. She started in on her burger, wholly untroubled. More at this moment than ever, she was a mystery to him.

  The big question came floating back, the question of whether one could live a damage-free life while trying to sustain a relationship. He still had no answer. It was harder with a partner, for sure, but it might be that with a different woman it wouldn’t be this much harder. Maybe, though, if the two of them had it all to do over again, if they hadn’t gotten pulled under by Stevie and everything else, if Tesoro had never happened, maybe he could have found a way to let go, at least a little—not of his principles, but of his perpetual disappointment with Lorena for not even valuing them. Maybe he could have tried harder to make peace with her eating what she ate, wearing what she wore, driving what she drove. Maybe he could have convinced himself that no one can know what anyone else really needs, just like no one can really know anyone else’s pain.

  Waldo walked her through the denouement of the case and the aftermath with Big Jim Cuppy and Fontella Davis. Lorena devoured the burger while she listened, following each heedless chomp with a careful napkin across her mouth, rapacious with one hand and dainty with the other in fetching combination. Even the way she ate was Lorena and only Lorena. For all of their frustration with each other, for all of the madness of these weeks and the darkness of what she’d done in the end, he’d miss her.

  She put down her burger and looked at him. “Are we going to talk about it, or are we just going to go on with our lives and pretend it didn’t happen?”

  He sighed and bobbed his head, relieved that she’d finally brought it up.

  She said, “I believe a thank-you is in order.”

  He was surprised she’d frame it like that, but in a twisted way he could see where that would be what she was expecting. “Yeah,” he said, “I guess it is.”

  Lorena held his eye while she wiped her fingers one by one, studying him for something—what? Sufficient gratitude? Finally she said, “So, thank you.”

  “For what?” He was befuddled; he assumed she’d been talking about killing Tesoro.

  She lowered her voice and said, “For killing Tesoro.”

  He leaned back, even more befuddled, and said, “Wait—I thought you did it.”

  She cackled. “Me? Why me?”

  “Because of that thing you said about us being square, after Santa Ana. I figured you meant this,” meaning his bandaged hand. “I fixed your problem with Don Q, and you did Tesoro because he did this to me, and we were square.”

  “That’s crazy. He cut you; he didn’t kill you.”

  He said, “So . . . why were you thanking me? You thought I did it?” She nodded. “How would that make us square?”

  “Because I saved you from the dog. So you saved me from Tesoro. Square.”

  “Oh. Oh.” The notion was so unnerving that he ate one of her greasy fries without realizing it until it landed in his stomach like an unexploded grenade.

  She said, “Have as many as you want.”

  He gently pushed the plate away.

  “So, what,” she said, “it wasn’t you?”

  But it was a hell of a coincidence and Waldo didn’t believe in those.
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br />   Then, in a flash, he understood the thing Don Q had told him over cupcakes.

  What was it Q had said in Laguna when he first told him about Tesoro? That somebody should one-eight-seven him, if they had half a reason. The chance Tesoro might make Waldo miss Dulci’s show-and-tell—could something that small qualify? Then again, it could be that when your life is all about a little girl, you see everything about a Tesoro differently. Could be you only need a quarter of a reason, or even less.

  He’d spell all that out for Lorena later. Right now she was saying, “I do have to give you props for Stevie. It sucks about her mom, but she’d have been up shit creek if you hadn’t been in her corner.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  She offered her fries again. He demurred and bit into his apple.

  They ate together without talking. He thought about all the fucked-up relationships they’d been around for the last two weeks, and the fucked-up women. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be with anyone like any of them, under any circumstance—a Paula, a Brenda, even a grown-up Stevie—and tried to imagine how it would be for them, trying to be with him. Every variant was unthinkable, really. Maybe he wasn’t made to be with anyone, not anymore. Well, at least he had the right cabin for it.

  Lorena polished off the last of the burger. She took a fistful of fresh napkins—Lord Almighty, the woman wasted a shitload of them—and gave every inch of her face a good wipe. When she took the napkins away, she was chuckling.

  Waldo said, “What?”

  “I thought you killed a man for me, and you thought I killed him for you.”

  He chuckled, too. “Yeah.”

  She rested her chin on a palm. “Kinda romantic, Waldo, if you think about it.”

  They held each other’s gaze for a long, sweet time.

  She twinkled and said, “Too bad the sex wasn’t any good.”

  Even when she was looking at the damn toffees she’d known exactly where this was going to end up. Fucking Lorena.

  His woods could wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks once again to Glenn Gers, Susan Dickes and Tony Quinn for the friendship, encouragement and incisive reads.

  And to Jay Mandel, Jared Levine, Ailleen Gorospe and David McIlvain for minding the store.

  Thanks always to Andrew Lazar, Christina Lurie and Steve Shainberg for their initial contributions and support.

  When I was writing the Last Looks acknowledgments, I’d met almost no one at Dutton or Penguin Random House, but in the year since, I’ve been perpetually delighted by a team whose talent, dedication and thoughtfulness is unsurpassed in my working life. So thank you, Maria Whelan, Kayleigh George, Marya Pasciuto, John Parsley, Karen Dziekonski, Nicole Morano, Tony Hudz and Kaitlin Kall.

  And especially Jess Renheim, who deserves her own paragraph.

  I want to thank Harlan Coben, William Kent Krueger, Meg Gardiner, Gregg Hurwitz and Nick Petrie for standing up for my first novel; it won’t be forgotten. Also the readers who’ve taken the time to share their enthusiasm for Last Looks on social media.

  A special thank-you to my great friend John Michael Higgins, who’s blessed my work with his own so many times over so many years, for this latest and most unexpected collaboration.

  Another shout-out to everybody at Peet’s.

  If you’re still reading this and haven’t already checked out the Story of Stuff Project, please do.

  The Waldo books would not exist without everything I’ve learned and keep learning from Amanda, Milo and Gary Gould.

  My deepest gratitude, always, is for Terri Gould, for her patience and her kindness and her faith, and for, as a bonus, being the toughest and finest reader any writer could want.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Howard Michael Gould began his career on Madison Avenue before moving to Los Angeles, where he has worked as a screenwriter and playwright as well as an executive producer and head writer of a number of network television series. Below the Line is his second novel, following the introduction of detective Charlie Waldo in Last Looks.

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