Edge of the Knife

by A. D. Miller

  Standing in front of Nyman, her tattooed arms crossed over her chest, was the intake counselor he’d met on his first visit. She was looking at the bruises on his face.

  “Jesus. What happened to you?”

  He said that it wasn’t important. “I need to talk to Marissa. Trujillo’s girlfriend. She told me she was staying with her aunt, but I don’t know the address.”

  “One step at a time, Tom. Why do you want to talk to Marissa?”

  Nyman told her about Alana Bell and her opposition to Merchant South. “Apparently Trujillo decided to follow in her footsteps after she was killed. I need to find out exactly what he did and who he talked to.”

  “And you think Marissa can tell you?”

  “She’s the only person I know to ask. Unless you can tell me.”

  The counselor shook her head. “We haven’t seen Eric around here for months. And I never heard him mention Merchant South. He wasn’t exactly a political kind of kid.”

  “That’s what I thought when I met him, but now I’m not so sure. I’m hoping Marissa can give me a clearer picture.”

  The boy with the laundry bag and backpack was following the older man to the vestibule. The boy gave the counselor a faint, sheepish smile; she told him to sleep well and come back in the morning.

  “We’re getting ready for the art show, so there’ll be lots of people around.”

  The boy murmured something noncommittal and followed the older man out into the street.

  The counselor turned back to Nyman. “How are you proposing to talk to her? By phone?”

  “Face to face would be preferable. And tonight, if it can be arranged.”

  “It’s almost eleven.”

  “The sooner the better. If she knows anything about what Trujillo was doing, she could be in danger herself.”

  The counselor gave him a long, skeptical look. Taking the phone from her pocket, she told him to stay where he was and walked back to the nook that had once served as the desk of the hotel’s porter. She talked to someone on the phone for four or five minutes, then came back with a look of disappointment on her face.

  “Marissa’s at her aunt’s place in Pico Union. She says she’d be happy to talk to you.”

  Nyman thanked her and took out his notebook. “What’s the address?”

  “Don’t worry about the address. I’ll get my car and you can follow me down.”

  “Follow you?”

  She gave him a grim smile. “You really think I’d let you talk to her alone?”

  * * *

  Marissa and her aunt lived in a large pink house on Alvarado Terrace. It had been built a century ago in the Queen Anne style; now iron bars covered the windows and the paint hung in strips from the pedimented gable. In the belvedere of the tower were two rusted satellite dishes.

  The counselor led Nyman up the front steps. “One thing I want to get straight, Tom. Marissa’s made a lot of progress since she first came to us, but she’s still working through some stuff. I don’t want you upsetting her with a lot of questions.”

  “If she knows Eric was killed, chances are she’s already upset.”

  “That’s my point. Someone who’s already vulnerable doesn’t need to get pushed over the edge.”

  Ahead of them, on the front porch, the door creaked open and Marissa stepped out. She’d aged visibly in the last few days. Her round girlish body was leaner; her face was patchy and red from crying.

  “Come in,” she said in a numbed voice. “I was just about to feed Kelsey.”

  Particle-board walls divided the house into separate apartments. They followed her upstairs to a door marked 3E.

  On the other side of the door Nyman found himself in a studio apartment about the size of Timmons’ office, with a sink and hot-plate in one corner, a mattress and a sleeping bag on the floor, and a loveseat pressed up against the only window.

  The room was filled with people. Marissa’s aunt—skeletally thin, with a look of sullen anger on her face—stood leaning against the sink, holding a baby in her arms. Two older kids lay on the mattress, watching Nyman with wide, curious eyes. A middle-aged man was asleep on the loveseat.

  Turning her pink, misshapen head, the baby saw Marissa and stretched out her arms, the tiny fingers wriggling.

  Marissa took the baby from her aunt, sat down in a chair, and reached for a blanket. As she arranged the baby and blanket at her breast, she said to Nyman in the same numbed voice:

  “It’s okay, you know. I don’t blame you.”

  “Blame me?”

  “For what happened to Eric. You might’ve put the ideas in his head, but he’s the one who did something about them.”

  The aunt gave a brittle laugh. “The ideas were already in his head, Marissa. He was a stupid boy and we’re better off without him.”

  “Shut up,” Marissa said calmly, not bothering to look at her. To Nyman she said: “Don’t listen to her. She has no respect for the dead.”

  “No, I have respect for my family. And for my niece. Unlike some people.”

  Nyman asked Marissa which ideas she thought he’d given to Trujillo.

  “Whatever it was you talked about that day under the bridge. He was like a different person after that. Obsessed, almost.”

  “Obsessed with what?”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d found out some things, but he couldn’t tell me about them. He said he was the only one who could do what had to be done.”

  “And what had to be done?”

  She brushed away a strand of hair and shrugged. “He was too excited to make any sense. He came by here yesterday morning to get some clothes and was talking so fast I couldn’t keep up. Mostly about Meridian.”

  “Meridian?”

  The aunt said: “Another fantasy. The boy lived in a fantasy world.”

  As if her aunt hadn’t spoken, Marissa said: “He wouldn’t tell me what it was, but it was all he talked about. He said Meridian was the reason Alana had been killed. I thought it was a place or something, but it doesn’t seem like that from the note.”

  “Note?”

  “Well—the message, or whatever it is. I found it with some of his stuff this morning. You want to see it?”

  “Yes,” Nyman said. “Very much.”

  Chapter 32

  Marissa turned to her aunt and said something in a low voice. Her aunt, lifting her skeletal shoulders, said:

  “You look for it. How do I know where you keep his garbage?”

  Marissa cursed and climbed out of the chair. The blanket fell away from her shoulder; the baby sat curled in her arm, intent on her breast. Marissa moved awkwardly around the little room, searching for the note.

  The counselor told her not to worry about it. “You’ve already gone to enough trouble as it is. Hasn’t she, Tom?”

  Nyman said nothing. Marissa leaned over the sleeping man on the loveseat and picked up a piece of paper that lay folded on the windowsill. With a smile she handed it to Nyman and said:

  “There.”

  He unfolded it. Typed on the page were several questions, each of which was followed by blank lines on which someone had written answers in pencil. Under the first question—Where were you born?—the person had scrawled Pacoima.

  Printed at the top of the page were the words Life History Survey—Zamora Park Population. Nyman glanced at the rest of the questions and answers, then turned the paper over. On the back, in ink rather than pencil, the same person had written:

  Meridian:

  1. Freed

  2. Salas

  3. City counsel...?

  He looked up at Marissa. “You’re sure this is Trujillo’s writing?”

  “Positive.”

  “Why would he write it on the back of the survey?”

  She shrugged. “Alana gave him lots of stuff to fill out, back when he was living in Zamora. She acted like he was her lab rat or something.”

  Nyman asked her if she knew when Trujillo had written the note.

&n
bsp; “Not exactly. It’s been here a while, though. He stayed here the night they closed down the park, and he brought some stuff with him. The note was probably mixed in with that.”

  The aunt turned her sullen gaze on Nyman. “He would stay for days and days and never do a thing to help us. No money, no food—just the fantasies in his head.”

  Ignoring her, Nyman took out his notebook and consulted the pages. After a time he said:

  “If Trujillo wrote it when he was living in the park, then he wrote it while Alana was still alive. She was killed the day after the park was closed.”

  “Is that important?”

  “It means that whatever Meridian is, he might’ve learned about it from her. She might’ve even asked him for his help.”

  “She wouldn’t have had to ask for it. Eric would’ve done anything for her.”

  The counselor, checking the time on her phone, said that it was getting late. “I think we’ve done enough interrogating for one night, Tom.”

  Nyman ignored her and said to Marissa: “What about Grace Salas and Michael Freed? Did he ever talk about them?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Or a company called Savannah Group?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  The counselor put a hand on Nyman’s arm. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

  “No, wait,” Marissa said. “There’s something I want to talk to you about. In private.”

  Rising from the chair, she carried the baby to her aunt and said that she’d be back in a minute. Her aunt muttered something indistinct and took the baby from her, cradling the little body in her skeletal arms.

  Marissa led Nyman and the counselor out into the hall and shut the door. She turned to Nyman and brushed the hair from her eyes. Her voice, in the narrow space of the hall, was shy and self-conscious.

  “Eric didn’t say anything to you, did he? That day under the bridge?”

  “About what?”

  Through the door, they could hear the baby start to cry.

  “About me,” Marissa said. “I know he probably didn’t, but I just wondered. He wasn’t very good about telling me how he felt.”

  Nyman looked from her bloodshot eyes to the eyes of the counselor, who was watching him intently.

  “I don’t remember the exact words,” Nyman said, “but he mentioned something about how much you meant to him.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  Nyman said: “I could tell he cared about you very much.”

  Tears pooled in her eyes. Before she could ask another question, he thanked her for her help and left the house.

  * * *

  It was past midnight when he parked in front of the Monte Carlo Arms. Taking the valise from the trunk, he crossed the dry brown yard and climbed the steps to his apartment. Taped to the door was an index card on which a message had been written. He read the message, cursed, and unlocked the door.

  Nothing had changed in the apartment. The empty packing boxes still sat on the floor, thick with dust. He dropped the valise by the door, looked again at the card, and walked outside to the apartment at the end of the landing. The flickering light of a T.V. played behind the curtained window.

  The man who answered his knock was dressed in baggy shorts and an Aloha shirt. His black hair hung down to his shoulders.

  Nyman said: “Sorry you had to take care of that.”

  The man shrugged. “Wasn’t much to take care of. You go out of town or something?”

  “To Vegas.”

  “Yeah? You win anything?”

  “Just these bruises.”

  “I was wondering about that, but I didn’t want to pry.”

  “Never get on the wrong end of a wrench. That’s my advice.”

  “That sounds like some good advice.”

  Nyman waved the index card. “And thanks for talking to them for me.”

  The man nodded to the card. “They were a little upset you weren’t here. Said they’d been by to pick up the donations twice now, but you never answer the door.”

  “I keep forgetting.”

  “That’s what I figured. They said they’d come back in the morning, but that’s your last chance.”

  “I’ll get the boxes ready. Thanks.”

  The man grinned. “What I told them was, I can’t believe he’s got so many clothes to donate. Every time I see him, he’s wearing the same thing.”

  Nyman, not returning the grin, said: “They’re not my clothes. They’re Claire’s.”

  The flush of redness began at the collar of the Aloha shirt and spread to the man’s face.

  Keeping his eyes averted, Nyman thanked him again and turned to leave, but the man put a hand on his arm.

  “Listen, Tom, I know you don’t like to talk about it, but there’s something I’ve been wanting to say about that.” His face turned redder still. “I know it’s none of my business, but I just hope you don’t blame yourself. For what happened, I mean.”

  For a long time neither man spoke. Then Nyman nodded, said that unfortunately there was no one else to blame, and walked back to his apartment.

  He went into the kitchen and took down a glass. Filling it with an inch of scotch, he drank it, sniffed, and poured more scotch into the glass. Then he got a box from the living room and walked to the door that had remained closed throughout the past few days.

  The door opened into a master bedroom. A queen bed was covered in sheets and neatly turned down. Photos stood in frames on the dresser and side-tables; above the bed was a mirror that reflected the prints on the opposite wall and, standing in the doorway, Nyman himself.

  An interior door opened into a closet filled with the clothes of a tall, slender woman. On the floor were dozens of pairs of shoes. Gold and silver boxes on a middle shelf were filled with jewelry.

  Nyman raked a hand through his hair. Dropping the box on the floor, he sat down with his drink and started to pack up shoes.

  He worked slowly and methodically. He arranged the shoes in neat rows in the box, handling each one with care. After twenty minutes he went into the kitchen to refill his glass.

  When the shoes were packed he moved on to shirts and dresses. From the fabric came a smell of detergent and perfume and the unique bodily smell that can belong to only one person.

  Another hour passed. Gradually, as he drank more scotch, his movements got clumsier and less coordinated. Tears gathered occasionally in his eyes but he didn’t bother to brush them away.

  An hour before dawn he went into the kitchen to pour the last of the scotch into his glass. When the bottle was empty, making a noise in his throat, he threw it against the wall beside the refrigerator.

  The bottle shattered on the plaster. He took a swaying step backward, then stared drunkenly at the shards of glass that lay around him.

  It was a minute or two before he noticed, reaching for his scotch, that one of the shards had sliced his left hand, leaving a thin trickle of blood.

  Chapter 33

  He woke to the sound of knocking. He was lying fully dressed on the couch in the living room. On the floor beside him was an empty, sticky glass.

  Coughing into a fist and walking to the door, he opened it for two men who said that they’d come for the clothes. Nyman found his wallet, gave them money, and accepted a receipt. His face was a sickly gray and his left hand was streaked with blood, but he watched intently as they carried each box out the door and down to a van below.

  When they were finished he thanked them in a hoarse voice and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

  * * *

  An hour later, shaved and showered, he passed into the lobby of City Hall and took the elevator to the twenty-fourth floor. The receptionist in the office of the Ethics Commission was the same man who’d waited on him three days earlier.

  “Back for more?”
r />   “I can’t help myself.”

  “Well, you know the routine.”

  Nyman sat down at the workstation. Forty-five minutes later, having copied names and figures into his notebook, he took the elevator down to the third floor. In the antechamber of Grace Salas’ office he asked an efficient-looking woman if he could talk to the councilmember.

  “You have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  The efficient face became disapproving. “I’m sorry, but she’s booked solid for days. This is a very busy time for her.”

  “Can you tell her I’m here? She might make time for me.”

  “I can’t tell her anything at the moment. She’s at an event in her district.”

  The woman nodded to a flyer on the desk, which advertised a tree-planting ceremony in El Sereno. According to the flyer, it had started twenty minutes ago.

  Nyman copied down the address and went out to the street.

  * * *

  A crowd stood in front a meatpacking plant on Alhambra Avenue. Behind the plant, withered gold by drought and heat, the Monterey Hills rose above powerlines and billboards.

  Freshly planted Indian laurels stood in a row along the sidewalk, surrounded by rectangles of day-old concrete. In the shade of the trees Grace Salas had brought the ceremony to a close and was talking to some local businessmen.

  Nyman waited for her to finish, then asked if he could speak to her.

  The smile on her face hung suspended as she squinted at Nyman, then dropped into a thin flat line. Blood rose among the folds of her neck and anger made her voice a guttural whisper.

  “You. You know what I’m going to do to you? I’m going to report you to the state licensing board.”

  Nyman said that she could report him to anyone she liked, but in the meantime he needed to ask her some questions.

  “I don’t care what you need,” Salas said. “And I’m not answering any questions. I’ve dealt with enough of your harassment as it is.”

  “I never sent Eric Trujillo to harass you,” Nyman said.

  She gave a sharp, bitter laugh. The businessmen, already moving toward their cars, glanced back in surprise.