by Ace Atkins
“I’m not exactly sure,” he said. He paused to stare at me and then cocked his head and jacked his thumb over his shoulder. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
I turned to where I’d last spotted Nancy Sharp. She was speaking with another woman, and as Sharp said something to her, the woman turned around and looked in my direction. She was tall, blond, and rail-thin, with large eyes. She wore an oversized black jacket on top of a short cocktail dress. The woman smiled in my direction and offered a short, friendly wave. Her hair was much shorter and seemed much darker and the face scrubbed clean of all the makeup and false eyelashes.
There was no doubt it was Gabby Leggett.
28
You made a real mess,” Gabby said.
“I’ll pay for dry cleaning on the guard’s T-shirt,” I said. “Can’t do anything about a broken ego.”
“I mean all of this,” she said. “This is a private event. An incredibly special night.”
“Your mother is more than worried,” I said.
“My mother worries too much,” she said. “So dramatic.”
“She thought you might be dead.”
We were sitting on the steps behind the mansion, facing a long rectangular reflecting pool. Blue and red flowers, miniature trees, and climbing plants filled several concrete pots. People walked past us, down the steps, and around the pool. They chatted and laughed. None of them even gave us a sideways glance as we spoke. Jem Yoon stood nearby, speaking with an older woman with white hair. The older woman had on a floor-length white satin dress. Lotus blossoms floated in the pool alongside lit candles.
“So you’re okay?” I said.
“Of course I’m okay,” she said. “My mom sent you all the way out here from Boston? That’s so much like her. So hysterical and wanting to be involved in my every move. Did she tell you that she never wanted me to leave? She wanted me to come work in her little dress store in Harvard Square. That silly little boutique. She can’t stand that I’m doing so well.”
“But are you?”
Gabby Leggett took in a long breath and touched her temples. Up close, her eyes seemed an even brighter green against the pale skin. Her hands shook as she held a bottle of water in her hands. “God. This is all so crazy. So embarrassing. Did you say the police were looking for me, too?”
“Yes,” I said. “And they suspect your ex-boyfriend might’ve had something to do with your disappearance.”
“Who?” she said.
“Eric.”
“God,” she said. “Oh, God. Eric. Why Eric? We haven’t been together for more than a year. He’s my goddamn agent. How in the hell will that look to everyone? I’m still out there trying to get jobs.”
I noticed her black jacket still had the maker’s tag stitched on one of the sleeves. She held the coat over her, shivering and cold. It was nearly eighty degrees. Her white skin looked a little pink, not a trace of makeup, and the blond hair showed dark roots.
“I think this goes without saying,” I said, “but perhaps you should call your mother.”
She shivered again and drank some more water. “Of course I will,” she said. “I have a lot to tell her. She can’t keep on trying to control my goddamn life.”
“The police will want to speak with you, too,” I said. “To make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “Why don’t you just tell them? Don’t I look fucking all right? I went on a retreat. Can’t someone go on one goddamn retreat without notifying the world? Leave the world behind. Isn’t that the whole damn point? This is so embarrassing.”
“To you?” I said. “Or to Joseph Haldorn?”
“Dr. Haldorn is a very important man,” she said. “He doesn’t need this mess. God. You just flipped out at his birthday party.”
“This is Haldorn’s birthday party?”
She nodded.
“Damn,” I said. “I should’ve popped out of the cake.”
Something in the light caught my eye, the faintest purple bruise against her long neck. I reached out and turned her chin away from me. She jumped to her feet as if she’d been stabbed with a dull stick and pointed down at me. “Don’t you touch me,” she said. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
Jem Yoon looked in my direction. She had a confused, do-you-need-help expression. I shook my head. Across the pool, Nancy Sharp looked my way before lifting a flute of champagne to her lips.
“Where did you go on this retreat?” I said.
“That’s none of your concern.”
“What did you do on this retreat?”
“Go to hell.”
“I’m sensing a pattern,” I said.
“You’re getting involved in my personal life,” she said. “And I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
“I told you,” I said. “Spenser. With an S.”
“I’m sorry you went to all this trouble, Spenser with an S.”
“No trouble,” I said. “And I found you.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll be paid for your time. My mom can afford it. She can afford to make as much trouble as she likes. Are we done here?”
“Almost,” I said. “How about you sit back down for this one?”
“Don’t touch me again.”
“Nasty bruise on your neck.”
She didn’t answer, but sat. She hugged her knees to her chest and gathered up the long coat sleeves in her hands in an effort to pull herself farther inside it.
“Did you send Jimmy Yamashiro a video clip and demand payment?”
“What?” she said. “Are you fucking kidding me? Did Jimmy say that? What a piece of shit. That’s a lie. A video clip? What are you even talking about?”
“A little clip of you guys playing house.”
“What?”
“It’s a euphemism,” I said. “From my generation. It means having sex.”
“Oh.”
“Ring any bells?”
“Of course not.”
“So you never had sex with Jimmy Yamashiro?”
“What does that have to do with you or my mother?” she said. “I’m an adult.”
“You never taped you and Mr. Yamashiro having sex?”
“God, no,” she said. “That was a mistake. A big mistake. Please don’t mention it. Please don’t tell my mother. God, no. Don’t tell Eric, either.”
“Eric knows,” I said. “When you went missing, he tried to wipe your laptop of any correspondence with Mr. Yamashiro. Including the art film of you and Yamashiro.”
“You know this is an invasion of privacy?” she said. “My computer? Where is it? Who has it?”
“I have it.”
“I want it back.”
I nodded. She stood up for a second time, the black coat hitting her at the knees. Susan would be the first to tell me that I wasn’t an expert on women’s fashion, but Gabby Leggett looked very hastily dressed. No makeup, hair that looked as if it had been chopped by dull scissors, and someone else’s coat thrown over her dress. Even her shoes looked off: dirty suede ballerina slippers at a formal cocktail party.
“Do you know anyone who might want to extort Mr. Yamashiro?”
“No.”
“Was your relationship with him consensual?”
She shook her head, swallowing. Gabby Leggett started to cry, but then just as quickly stopped herself, wiping her eyes. She looked hard at me and shook her head as she ground her teeth. “I was used up and humiliated by that man,” she said. “I was promised things that didn’t and never will happen. There’s too much to that story that I don’t have time to answer. And never want to answer. But no, it was not consensual. And without HELIOS, I wouldn’t have made it out alive.”
I nodded. The guests around the pool began a slow trodding walk back inside the brightly lit mansion. Insi
de, I heard the strings of the violins break into a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday.” There was a lot of clapping and the murmured voice of Joe Haldorn starting to speak.
“He’s a very great man.”
“So you’ve said.”
“So everyone says.”
“And Jimmy Yamashiro?”
“Isn’t even human,” she said. “He tried to destroy me.”
“And again, you are okay?” I said. “Just for the record.”
Jem Yoon walked up to us. She looked from me to Gabby Leggett and Gabby didn’t seem to even notice. We stood there all together by the dim light of the reflecting pool. A brisk wind crossed the garden and sent more flower petals into the water.
“I am more than okay,” Gabby said. “I am whole.”
She sauntered up the steps and handed her coat to Nancy Sharp, who stood by the door, waiting. Gabby’s bare back in a black cocktail dress looked as if it had been constructed of toothpicks. Her neck as thin as a bird’s.
“I guess that’s it,” Jem Yoon said.
“Did they ask you for money?”
“Funny enough,” she said. “They did.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said I’d like to know a lot more about HELIOS.”
“Me and you both.”
We walked up the steps together and into the great and very old room. Brushy-bearded Joe Haldorn stood at the marble staircase, talking about the power of forgiveness and the need to accept trauma as our own personal doing. Gabby Leggett beamed as he spoke, clapping hard, tears streaming down her gaunt face.
29
As any therapist would ask, can you please tell me what the fuck is going on?” Susan Silverman said.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“Does my direct language offend you?”
“I’m clutching my pearls as you speak.”
It was the next morning and I’d ordered room service for breakfast. I hadn’t even lifted the silver plate cover from my omelet when my phone started to buzz. Outside my tenth-story window, the sun rose high over the Hollywood hills without a cloud in sight.
“I was about to have breakfast,” I said. “After that, tie up some loose ends. Maybe check out the La Brea Tar Pits.”
“I just got off the phone with Amanda Leggett,” she said. “Gabby finally called her this morning.”
“Wonderful.”
“Not so wonderful,” Susan said. “Amanda is more scared than ever. She told me she couldn’t believe this was her daughter saying these crazy things. Gabby said her relationship with her family has been toxic and stifling. Even abusive, which I don’t believe to be true. Gabby was furious that her mother had hired you and said you’d made a big scene and embarrassed some very prominent people.”
“Pissing off so-called prominent people is my specialty.”
“Who the hell are these HELIOS people?” Susan said. “I looked them up but couldn’t get past all the feel-good doublespeak and general bullshit. Tapping deep into unexplored parts of the brain? Every page written with all the emotional depth of a greeting card.”
“HELIOS is a multinational executive success program,” I said, remembering what I’d read in the pamphlets. “They offer a proven system to maximize your full potential through time-tested psychological techniques.”
“Okay,” Susan said. “And what the fuck does that exactly mean?”
“I have no idea.”
“Neither do I,” she said. “And I’m a goddamn shrink.”
“I read they know how to hack into the human brain to unbridle the mind and offer untapped resources.”
“I’ll alert my professors at Harvard,” Susan said. “I’m sure they’ll be thrilled with the breakthroughs.”
Holding the cell between my shoulder and ear, I poured some coffee, added a sugar, and took a seat in a little grouping by the window. I could look down onto Highland at Z’s office and beyond into downtown Los Angeles coated in fine morning haze.
“From the little I understand, Gabby was recruited into HELIOS by a woman named Nancy Sharp,” I said.
“The woman with the dogs.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought you could always trust a dog person. Not to mention she came on to me. At least we know she has excellent taste.”
“In dogs?” she said. “Or men?”
“Is there a difference?”
“So Nancy recruited her into this HELIOS thingy—”
“She said Gabby had quit working for her but came back after a bad time of it with Jimmy Yamashiro,” I said. “Gabby confirmed all this last night when we spoke. She all but said Yamashiro used her for a while and tossed her aside. After she joined the group, Gabby said it transformed her life. And now it seems she has become enamored with a man named Joseph Haldorn.”
“I know who he is,” Susan said. “The golden boy with the bushy beard and the crazy pale blue eyes. And I also saw he has zero training or experience in psychology. Did he happen to mention to you how he’s mastered the understanding of the human brain?”
“My time with the master was brief.”
“Is that what they call him?” she said. “The master?”
“No,” I said. “I made that part up. Thought it seemed to go with the program.”
“And your time with Gabby?”
“Also brief,” I said. “To the point, she said her life was in the dumpster before being rescued by the HELIOS method.”
“Did she say where she’d been?”
“At a retreat,” I said. “But she wouldn’t say where.”
“With Haldorn?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why the hell would she not let anyone know?” she said. “And why would some local thugs try to get you to quit looking?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why would someone trash her apartment?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why would some sleazy Hollywood mogul say Gabby was blackmailing him if she said she never did?”
“These are all very good questions, Suze,” I said. I stood up and walked over to my breakfast, lifting the silver plate cover. A Western omelet with home fries was still warm. “Does Amanda Leggett wish to keep me on the pad until I find the answers?”
“You bet your ass,” Susan said. “Amanda told Gabby that she wanted to fly out and see her, but Gabby refuses to see her or talk with her. I think Amanda is coming out anyway.”
“Can you talk her out of it?” I said. “At this point, it would only complicate matters.”
“I can try,” she said. “Where will you go next?”
“We know Gabby is alive, but we don’t know she’s safe,” I said. “Last night, she looked like a nervous wreck. She was also very thin. Not L.A. thin, but thin to the point of looking malnourished.”
“Do you think she might have been held against her will?”
“I do.”
“Do you think they produced her to get you to leave them alone and shoo you back to Boston?”
“Absolutely.”
“To hell with these people,” Susan said. “I can make some inquiries on my end with some professors and therapists I know in Southern California.”
“And for me, starts the long and very unsexy part of my profession.”
“There is an unsexy part of your profession?”
“Shh,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone.”
“The records trail.”
“Yep.”
“Good luck,” Susan said. “Is there anything else I can do?”
I gave her several ideas of what I’d like when I return home. She listened very thoughtfully and patiently and paused after I finished. I was very detailed in the description. “That’s a tall order,” she said. “Glad I’m both in shape and an experienc
ed yogi.”
“I wouldn’t have suggested it otherwise.”
“And what do I get in return?”
“Answers,” I said. “I hope.”
“For what you just asked for?” she said. “You better bring Gabby home safe.”
30
I’d stepped out of the Loews lobby to the roundabout when a large black sedan wheeled beside me, a side window sliding down ever so slowly. It was an extra-large Cadillac with very shiny silver wheels that showed my elongated reflection in the rims. I liked it. It made me look svelte.
“Get in,” a man said.
I peered in. It was Jimmy Yamashiro’s right-hand man. The guy with the leathery skin and the crew cut. He kept his eyes straight ahead on the driveway.
“Sorry,” I said. “My mother warned me against getting into cars with strangers.”
“Christ,” he said. “Would you quit yanking my goddamn chain, Spenser?”
The passenger window slid down and Yamashiro himself appeared. He waved me over and also requested that I get in the extra-large car. He had on a dark suit with a white shirt. Dark sunglasses covered his black eyes.
“I don’t see any puppies or candy,” I said. “Gee, guys. I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”
“Money,” Yamashiro said. “We need to talk money.”
Yamashiro had my attention. I walked around back of the black Cadillac and opened the passenger door. The grizzled driver/bodyguard took off, jostling me back into the plush seats as I turned to Yamashiro. The inside of the car was all black leather and shiny chrome. A small flat-screen television hung from the ceiling, showing the local TV news. Smiling L.A. TV types chattered on about the wonderful weather they’d been having. More expected.
“You found Miss Leggett alive?” Yamashiro said.
I nodded. The car headed up Highland and turned on Franklin, driving fast and running parallel to the 101.
“And no harm had been done to her,” he said.
“That’s debatable.”
“I heard from her as well,” he said. “And you need to know any concerns I had earlier have been rectified.”
