Текст книги "The Eternal Summer"
Автор книги: Paul MacDonald
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
“Do you accept my offer?” I asked.
Hector finished off the coffee in one long, satisfying gulp and handed me the empty cup.
“Okay,” he said.
THE TOURIST TRADE
We met at an organic, single-sourced coffee shop in Silver Lake where they individually brewed you a cup after an interminable discourse on the genealogy of the family that grew the beans we were about to consume. I wasn’t in the mood and cut the barista off mid-speech and ordered the house blend. The guy then went into shock as he watched Hector stir enough sugar into his cup to achieve the viscosity of strawberry preserves.
“You should really try it first,” lamented the young man behind the counter. “It’s not at all as bitter as the coffee you make at home.”
Hector acknowledged the comment by topping his cup up to the brim with half-and-half. We then joined Sami at a small table on the patio.
“Greetings,” the perpetually-happy man said as he beckoned us to sit down. “I cherish the opportunity to spend time with both of you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” I told him.
The invitation to meet wasn’t entirely on the level so I needed to play along for a while. I told Sami that I was interested in sitting down and talking over some “heavy issues” but what I really wanted to learn was any inside information he had on Meredith and Jeanette.
Sami eagerly took the bait and suggested we meet at the coffee shop. He sat Indian-style on an already uncomfortable aluminum chair. That, paired with a gingham shirt and flip-flops, presented a very worldly image. True to form, Sami spent most of the time talking about himself rather than trying to understand whatever “issue” was ailing me. He explained his personal “journey” through a rhetorical framework where he was both the interviewer and interviewee. Each question he posed to himself was asked in such a manner that it could only elicit an affirmative response.
“Was I finally ready to greet each day with a sense of purpose?” replayed the internal dialogue he had some years ago. “Yes, I was. Did I want the happiness that had so far eluded me? Yes, I did.” The third time he asked one of these types of questions, this one about it being the time to discover the secret to achieving a fulfilled life, I burst in and answered for him:
“Yes, it was!” I shouted.
Sami smiled knowingly at my enlightenment on his enlightenment. “And so that was how I found my higher purpose,” he announced proudly.
“And what exactly is that purpose?” I asked.
“I uncover one’s artistic potential,” he explained.
“Interesting,” I said because I could think of nothing else to say. In the corporate world, that word was code for “your work has absolutely no merit.”
Sami described with enthusiasm how within every being there is a pool of artistic potential. And that just like the earth’s own springs there are some rare instances where the water naturally bubbles up to the surface. But for the vast majority of us, that pool lies untapped, often deep down inside us. We spend a lifetime never realizing the artist inside all of us.
It was the familiar patter of the self-help guru – the concept that potential is always there, it’s just our own unintended actions that are keeping it from being released. That kind of clap-trap nonsense soothes many an unsatisfied mind. Better it was to be told that you had the talent but that you were holding it back from its true potential rather than accept the cold reality that we are all marginally talented in some fashion and that few have the will to actually do something about it.
None of it resonated with me but it most certainly would have with someone else.
“Was Jeanette one of your clients?” I asked.
“She is,” he corrected in the present tense.
“Have you heard from her?” I probed. “Her mom said something about her running off?”
Sami uncrossed his legs and shifted in his seat.
“I really shouldn’t discuss a family matter,” he told me but then made a very subtle glance in Hector’s direction.
I gave it a moment before reminding Hector that the parking meter needed filling outside.
“We got time,” he said.
“I think you should fill it,” I repeated.
He knew what I was asking for but that didn’t mean he liked it.
“Remember our deal,” I reminded him.
Hector shot Sami a cold look before reluctantly getting up and leaving us so we could talk privately.
“There’s a lot of negative energy in the house,” Sami started without any prodding. “It’s not good.”
“Over what exactly?”
“An article that came out last night.”
“What kind of article?”
“It was in one of the online gossip magazines,” he explained. I gave Sami space to elaborate. “Those things are just filled with hate.”
“Yeah, I don’t much care for them either,” I commiserated. “What was the article about?”
He gave it time for the drama to ramp up: “Jeanette,” he stated and then his voice drifted into a whisper, “…and the baby.”
“Baby?” I repeated as my mind processed the new development. I recalled the text Meredith got at my house the previous evening and assumed it was somehow connected to the article being released. Her response last night was even more curious now that I knew the contents of the text. She seemed almost happy that it was published.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
Sami looked to the table and his silence told me he had known.
“Everyone knew,” he explained. There was shame in his voice.
***
I sat in the back of Hector’s sedan and read the gossip blog entry on my phone. It was a short blurb about one “naughty little girl” of a “gazillionaire” getting herself knocked up. There was a reference to the museum fight in case anyone didn’t pick up which gazillionaire they were referring to. It had the typical snarky sign-off that must have sent Valenti over the edge with rage.
I glanced at the back of Hector’s head. If, as Sami had said, everyone knew about Jeanette’s pregnancy, then that meant Hector knew but withheld it from me despite our recent agreement. I preferred to confront him immediately except I needed him at that moment. The latest development had given me an idea that the once-random Victorian home in Alhambra wasn’t so random anymore.
As we approached the house, I handed Hector a security badge from a former associate who was terminated for stealing milk from the communal fridge. Policy for a termination was to escort the fired associate to the elevator and to take their badge so they couldn’t get back onto the floor. The associate was a middle-aged white woman from Burbank, but I made Hector put it on anyway, even though he didn’t look anything like her.
“If you act like you know what you’re doing, people will believe it,” I instructed him as I pounded on the metal gate. “People fall for badges all the time.”
The same impassive face answered the door. This time I simply grabbed ahold of my badge attached to my belt and zip-lined it in front of her face close enough that she couldn’t read the words. She leaned back to get a better look but by that time I muscled past her and stepped into the foyer. Behind me, I heard the zip-line of Hector’s badge being presented, and he cleverly added “Health Inspectors” to the ruse and followed me into the old home.
The once-grand parlor was grand no more. It had been carved up into three or four units separated by makeshift walls and, in some cases, just a simple curtain suspended from the ceiling. The room smelled of sour milk and disinfectant. Murmuring and laughter and the faint cries of hungry babies reverberated through the old walls.
My white skin, navy sports coat, and blue plastic badge convinced the occupants, at least for the moment, that I was some official from the city of Alhambra. Hector in his black ensemble was better suited as a representative from the coroner’s office but for now it was enough to cause confusion and some doubt. We took that opportunity to search the premises for Jeanette.
As we cruised through the rooms, I pointed to random things like exposed wiring and dirty medical devices and sometimes to just blank spots on the floor.
“Insufficient firewall,” I called out. “Improper wiring. Occupancy clustering.” With each mention, Hector scribbled them down on the blank forms we used to screen new job candidates. A black portfolio holding the sheets of paper helped sell it.
“PL5501?” Hector called back.
“5502,” I corrected.
We worked our way through the endless maze of “hospital” beds but didn’t see Jeanette. All of the occupants were of Asian descent and no one seemed to speak any English. Most of the beds were surrounded by family and flowers and foil balloons and had that infectious joy of being around a new life. In the final room on the ground floor we found a family surrounding a young woman, a girl really, but in this cubbyhole there was no joy, just hushed tones and the specter of the empty crib nearby.
Hector and I worked our way up to the second floor. At the top of the landing glared the woman from the entrance and two orderlies behind her. I tried the badge one more time but it had lost its effect and the ensemble didn’t budge. So I budged by them. As hands grabbed at me and my coat, I gave up the pretense of the city official and just started shouting for Jeanette. I heard the struggling voice of Hector doing the same. I caught a glimpse as he took one of the orderlies and launched the bulky frame down the hall. The old man still had some get-up in him.
All it took was one person to doubt us and suddenly everyone came to their rescue. People in hospital scrubs poured out of rooms and I felt like I was going to be ripped to shreds by all the hands grabbing at my coat and face.
“Jeanette!” I shouted, pulling at the arms that tried to hold me back from moving towards the last set of rooms.
“Jeanette!” I heard Hector yelling at the other end of the hall.
I fought my way forward as they ripped the coat off my back. That bought me a couple of extra feet as they stumbled and had to get hold of me again. I took a swing at someone and that bought me a few feet more. But it was short-lived as the circle closed around me. I put my head down and bullied forward, and as I passed each room, I angled my body to see the occupants inside. It was more of the same, but I had to make sure. At last I came to the final room. By then it felt like the entire complex was riding on my back. My knees gave out and I crumbled to the floor and everyone else crumpled on top of me. Through the melee of arms and legs, I peeked into the last room and saw a familiar face – the rotund Filipina who worked as an aid at the convalescent home where Valenti’s ex-wife lived.
We locked eyes for a brief moment, but it was long enough for the surprise to register in her dull eyes. I held her gaze as long as I could, conveying whatever kind of warning I could before I was dragged away.
Hector and I were summarily deposited onto the concrete front yard. My coat and badge were lost. Hector’s suit was intact but his Brylcreem hair was in a chaotic state and indicated he’d had a tough go of it as hurricane gales couldn’t disturb that quaff. We scrambled to our feet and back to the black sedan down the street. We leaned against the hood and took in each other’s condition and let out a belly-emptying laugh. Not because there was anything particularly funny about what we just went through but because for the first time it just felt like we were getting closer to bringing the girl home.
Hector’s pleasure faded quickly. He took on a sullen expression and looked like he wanted to tell me something.
“You all right?” I prodded.
“I didn’t tell you this before,” he started, “but maybe I should have. It’s about Jeanette.”
Hector recalled the day that Jeanette went missing. She had taken a taxi to the Valenti compound and was inside with the man himself for quite a while. Hector was replacing a taillight when she appeared at his side and asked if he could drive her home.
“She was crying,” he told me.
“Did she say why?”
“I didn’t ask. I just drove her back to her mom’s house.”
When they pulled up, she didn’t immediately get out of the car. She lingered in the back seat like she wanted to say something and after some time asked him if he had kids.
“I told her I did – one girl and one boy. Three grandchildren, too. She then asked me if I was a good father. I said I didn’t know. That maybe she should ask my kids.”
Hector apologized for not telling me this earlier, but in his act of contrition, while sincere, it wasn’t exactly clear to me what he was apologizing for.
“I never told you she was pregnant,” he said.
“You knew she was pregnant just from that one exchange in the car?” I asked incredulously.
“You don’t have kids, do you?” he threw back.
“No.”
Hector said nothing more, as if that was enough proof. Behind it was the implication that I shouldn’t question someone in a club of which I wasn’t a member. And this member of the club was coming to an unsatisfactory conclusion about Jeanette’s first foray into motherhood.
“You don’t think she had her baby in there?” he asked, hoping I would tell him that she didn’t.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
We hung around for a little while to see if we could spy the Filipina nurse coming out of the building but she never showed her face. There were too many orderlies who knew our faces and we decided not to risk it any further and left the area. I made a move to get into the back seat.
“Sit in front,” he instructed.
A WOMAN’S SCREAM
We continued east to Arcadia where the owner of the Victorian property had its office. My old real estate agent was growing tired of tracking down information for me on houses that I never intended to buy but she couldn’t risk telling me so on the off chance I was legitimately interested in playing the market.
Hector and I found the building, which was more a storefront than an actual office. On its left was a brilliantly-lit dumpling house doing a brisk business before lunch had even started. From the looks of the clientele and cars in the lot, it catered to scores of young Asians capping off a night of cruising and clubs with steaming baskets of pork shao mai. On its right was an old lady’s brassiere shop that hadn’t changed the display window in thirty years and was the heroic stalwart from an era and community that wasn’t coming back.
We pulled into an open slot and studied the storefront. The door and windows were heavily tinted and obscured whatever “business” lay beyond it. We went up to the front entrance but the door was locked and our knocks went unanswered. I cupped my hands over the glass to try to see beyond the tint but got nothing but black. I stepped back and noticed faces in the reflection of the glass. I turned to see a group of young Asian men surrounding us. At the middle of the circle was Gao Li.
Gao’s initial reaction surprised me. He was more afraid than angry and he glanced around the parking lot like he expected there to be more people coming.
“Where’s the cavalry?” he asked, but I didn’t understand the reference. When he realized there were none, he got his legs under him and returned to his old self. “You’re blocking my door, asshole.”
Gao brushed by me and unlocked the front entrance.
“We wanted to talk to you about an old building in Alhambra. It’s filled with a bunch of Chinese women and babies. But I don’t remember seeing any sign about it being a hospital.”
My words spooked a few of his cronies to peel off, and even Gao looked a little unsure but he masked it well.
“What does that have to do with me?”
“The owner of the building is a corporation that lists this address,” I said and pointed to the building behind him.
“Thanks for letting me know,” he said and took a step inside.
“How much do you charge?” I called after him. “I’m sure it’s not cheap.” One aspect of Gao’s New China narrative, one he conveniently left out, was that despite the economic boom vaulting many Chinese into the upper levels of wealth, it didn’t mean they actually wanted to raise their families there.
“What do they come over on, tourist visas?” I pressed. “Spend a few weeks in that dump, deliver their babies and leave with U.S. citizenship. Not a bad deal, depending on the price.”
“Take off before you regret it,” Gao responded coldly.
Hector didn’t like his tone and took a step forward. I reached out and grabbed hold of his arm.
“Hold up, Hector. It’s not worth it.”
Gao cocked his head.
“What’d you say?” he asked but he directed it at Hector, not me. Gao seemed to be doing a calculation in his head and when he finally came to his answer he took a bold step forward. “Hector Hermosillo?” he asked. “Hector Hermosillo?” he repeated again.
I didn’t like the feeling at that moment and instinctively pulled Hector towards me. Gao and his cronies started to form a circle around us. I used a car pulling into the lot as a way to put some distance between us and kept pushing Hector in the back, guiding him towards the car. My phone buzzed in my pocket.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jeanette’s father shouted before I could even get off a hello.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you harassing Mr. Li?”
I looked around the parking lot expecting to see Jeff watching us watching Gao. I didn’t find him.
“I’m not following. We’re here in Arcadia outside his office.”
“What?!” he screamed. “You’re where?”
“In Arcadia.”
“Get out of there before you ruin it entirely!”
“Ruin what?” I asked.
“Just get out.”
Not that I needed any encouragement to leave the area, but his tone grated on me. And I didn’t appreciate how he felt the need to boss me around.
“Calm down,” I told him. “We’ll come to your office.”
***
The foundation’s main entry was unlocked. We found Jeff in his office as he pored over a sheath of papers. There was a new installation behind him. It was the extreme close-up of a woman’s face projected onto a ten-by-ten screen. Although she remained very still there were slight movements, a twitch here and there to clue you in that it wasn’t a still photograph but an actual video. After about a minute I caught her first blink. She looked Nordic, had cold, dull eyes and stared impassively at the void before her. After the last installation this work must have been a welcomed respite.
“Nice piece,” I commented, but Jeff was in no mood to talk art.
“Are you fucking with me?” he shouted.
“Take it easy.”
“What did I ever do to you?” It wasn’t necessarily a rhetorical question but it was still one of those you didn’t need to, or want to, answer. “Seriously,” he persisted, “what did I ever do to you?”
“Mr. Schwartzman—”
“Don’t ‘mister’ me, all right? Pretending to be all business-like after you’ve fucked me over. I welcomed you into this office. I told you things and was very forthright about everything. And you sat there and listened and then went and stabbed me in the back. I thought we were cut from the same cloth. And now you’re pulling out the formalities.”
“We’re all cut from the same cloth,” I told him.
“This isn’t a joke.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a joke.”
“Why is he here?” he questioned with an outstretched finger pointed in Hector’s direction. He might as well have been pointing to a three-day old carcass rotting in the sun, the way he refused to turn his head fully in Hector’s direction, as if wary of being overcome by the foul stench of rotting flesh. Before he would allow me to explain, Jeff commanded that Hector leave the room.
“Let’s just relax and talk like adults,” I said.
“You ruined the museum for me,” he started on another tangent.
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I countered.
Jeff was a one-punch fighter. He took his shot and if it didn’t land, he either ran or moved on to find a heavier weapon. His armory was running thin because he was already reverting to the pity club.
“Gao doesn’t want anything to do with me,” he moaned. “He called me and said we’re through. That he won’t support the ballot initiative. He thinks it’s a trick. He thinks I am in on it with the old man.” I thought about how the direction of this great city could so easily be altered by a cryptically-worded ballot initiative started by one unstable man and promoted by an equally-yet-differently-unstable man. “How crazy is this world?” he asked as if he could hear my thoughts, but he was referencing something else altogether. “The guy I’d rather see dead as my partner in crime,” he laughed. I couldn’t tell if he had forgotten Hector was in the room or he made that comment on purpose. “What the hell did you say to Gao to get him to think that?”
I recapped my first uncomfortable meeting when Gao thought I was coming to see him with a peace offer from Valenti. “I don’t know how he got that idea,” I said, watching for Jeff’s reaction. There wasn’t much, but I was still certain he had helped foment the idea in one of their many discussions. “Today’s meeting was a little unexpected. There was a building in Alhambra, an old Victorian with several Chinese occupants.”
“They aren’t all related, you know,” he said.
“I tracked down the corporation on the deed,” I continued, “and that led me out to Arcadia to a development company linked to Mr. Li. We happened to be at the office, I questioned him on it and he flew off the handle.”
“Well, why wouldn’t he? You’re harassing him about some stupid building. No wonder he thinks you are trying to undermine him.”
“It’s not a stupid building, Mr. Schwartzman.”
“Knock the mister crap off.”
“It’s not a stupid building,” I repeated. He already had his next snarky comeback ready and was just waiting for me to finish so he could lob it my way. “Its address is linked to your daughter.”
He got as far as the first word when my comment hit him and its meaning finally registered. That wiped the smirk off his face.
“Jeanette,” he whispered. It was the look of legitimate remorse. “What do you mean by linked?”
I explained what Hector and I discovered inside the Victorian house. Jeff listened to the details with a look of both shock and confusion. When I finished, he asked:
“But what does that have to do with Jeanette?”
“You knew your daughter was pregnant, right?”
“Pregnant?” he said in a way that made you feel the nausea he was experiencing in his stomach. The man grabbed at the thinning hair on the sides of his head and let his hands drag down and tug onto both ears. He muttered something to himself, even using the second person tense to add to the severity of the personal indictment. I couldn’t exactly make it out but it sounded like, “You’re such an asshole.”
Hector and I diverted our eyes. It was difficult to witness a man’s humiliation on something so fundamental as raising a child. I turned to Hector to suggest that we leave him alone with his thoughts.
Then, the room erupted with a woman’s blood-curdling scream. I had never heard something so primal. I instinctively ducked and covered my head with my arms. Hector leapt to his feet and pulled the knife from his pocket. Jeff didn’t move an inch. He sat at the desk and kept his face buried in his hands.
After a moment I realized the source of the scream came from the art installation on the wall. The woman’s face in the video was back to that cold stare but you could see her chest heaving as she recovered from having just wrenched her guts out. She was composing herself for the next scream.
“I can’t figure out how to shut it off,” Jeff mumbled. The broken man was getting closer to the moment when he would accept defeat and all the ignominy that came with it. He had an expression of serene surrender. But my read on Jeff was slightly off as he apparently had one more fight left in him.
“What do you need from me?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet mine. “I have to do something to help bring Jeanette home.”
“If you ask her to do something do you think she will do it?”
“Probably not,” he admitted, “but I can try.”
“That’s all we want,” I told him. “We need your help, Jeff.”
That seemed to warm his spirits some.
“This nonsense has gone on long enough,” he stated, rising from his chair. “It’s time to bring her home.”
I took his offer for a handshake. He was feeling magnanimous enough to even extend the offer to Hector. The old bastard took a moment but eventually accepted it.
I glanced up at the video behind him. I didn’t know how long the intervals were between screams, but just knowing it was coming cast an unnerving pall over the room. I wanted to be long gone before it happened.
Jeff walked us to his office door but no further.
“I have a few calls to make to my daughter,” he announced. It was good to have him back from the edge. He was a noticeably different person. “And who knows,” he added cheerfully. “We get this thing cleared up perhaps the museum deal can still be salvaged. That’s not the priority, obviously,” he amended, “but it could be one outcome of all this craziness.”
Hector and I left him with his calls and his illusions and made our way out of the foundation’s office. We got as far as the elevator before the woman’s scream came barreling down the empty hall after us. It was still going as the doors closed to whisk us downstairs.
