by Bill Moody
“I can’t wait to see you,” she says. “Where did you stay last night?”
“At the house, on the couch. Very chaste and proper.”
“You had better be. I think your little tenant has a thing for you.”
I hesitate only a second, but Andie catches it. “Something go wrong.”
“Nothing really. Just kind of a misunderstanding. I’ll tell you about that too. We’ll have plenty of time to talk on the ride down to Monte Rio.”
The door opens as Dana and Milton come in.
“I want every detail,” Andie says.
“Yes, ma’am. See you this afternoon.”
“Bye, baby.”
I end the call as Dana unsnaps Milton’s leash. He flops on the floor, resting his head on his oversized paws.
“You’re leaving today?”
“Yes. Couple of things I need to be in Monte Rio for.”
Dana nods, looks down. “I was hoping maybe we could…”
“Have lunch? We can do that.”
She breaks into a big smile that makes me wonder just how much I am like Cal.
Dana follows me to the car rental, then we go over the hill to a Mexican restaurant in North Hollywood. I try to keep things light but Dana keeps edging back to the embarrassment of me catching her with Brent Sergent.
“Look, Dana, it’s okay. Long as you’re being straight with me, I don’t have a problem. Sergent is a hard sell guy and I can see how you got caught up in it, especially since you knew him before.”
“Are you really sure?” She looks so serious. “Everything was going so well and I messed it up. God, I can’t believe myself.”
I smile and touch her arm. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You didn’t mess anything up.”
She looks away, then back at me. “Do you know how many times I’ve gone over that night we went to the record store, the coffee shop. I think that was when it happened.”
I sit up straighter. “When what happened?”
“You.”
I start to speak but she cuts me off.
“No, don’t, let me finish. I know it’s silly and you’re already very involved with Andie. For all I know, you might be getting married.”
For some reason that makes me laugh. “No, we’re not getting married.”
“Well anyway, I know you’re taken at least for now, so I’m trying to be brave about this and just let you know how I feel.” She puts her hands over her face. “There. I’ve made a fool of myself.”
“Dana, listen to me. Yes I am very involved with Andie, although neither of us knows where it’s going, but that’s where I am now. I’m flattered with what you’re telling me and if I was not with Andie, well, who knows.”
“Thank you for that,” she says.
I glance at my watch. “Hey, time to go.”
We’re both quiet on the short drive to Burbank Airport. Dana drops me off at departures. She gets out of the car and gives me a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. “Take care,” she says.
“You too.” I walk toward the entrance, then turn back to wave, but she’s already gone.
An hour later, I’m still waiting for my flight. It’s been delayed twice so far. I go back outside and sit down with the other smokers, about to call Andie when my phone rings.
“Where are you?” Coop asks. His voice is tight, rushed.
“Burbank, the airport. I’m headed back. Just waiting for my flight. It’s been—” I
“It’s Dana.” I hear him make a big sigh. “I’m sorry, Evan. It’s not good.”
“What do you mean? We just had lunch. She dropped me at the airport an hour ago.”
“That guy Sergent was waiting for her at the house. They got into a scuffle and she went down those steps. Evan? You there?”
“Yeah, I…is she okay?”
“Look, the locals need to talk to you since she was staying at your house. I’ll radio a black and white to pick you up. Go outside and wait. Evan? You hear me?”
“Yeah, I’m already outside, at departures. Coop, is she okay?” But he’s already gone.
I pace around, scanning the rush of cars pulling up, people unloading bags, saying their goodbyes. Ten minutes later I catch sight of police cruiser, red light flashing, cutting off two cars and pulling to the curb. A tall young uniformed cop in a crew cut and aviator sunglasses opens the door and looks over the roof, sees me coming toward him.
“Evan Horne?”
“Yeah.” I get in front with him and he roars off. No siren but he keeps the red light flashing and we make it to Hollywood in record time. There’s a fire truck, a paramedic unit and three other black and whites blocking the street in front of the house. But it’s the black coroner van I focus on. A small crowd of onlookers stands across the street, pointing, talking. Two cops are talking to a woman off to the side, writing in their notebooks.
Brent Sergent is sitting on the curb, his head in his hands, two plain clothes cops looming over him.
Coop spots me and comes over as I start for the coroner van and two men in jumpsuits loading a gurney with a zipped up body bag. Coop blocks me, leads me away. I try to pull away, wanting to get at Sergent, but Coop pushes me back against one of the police cruisers. “Okay, settle down. There’s nothing you can do.”
The van’s doors slam shut and it drives off. I look again at Sergent. His face is smudged. He looks up and his eyes meet mine for a moment, then he turns away. Coop still has his hand on my arm. “Get him out of here,” he yells to the two cops hovering over Sergent.
They nod and put him in a car and drive off. Coop turns back to me. “Got a cigarette?” I dig for my pack and offer one to Coop. “I don’t smoke,” he says. I get mine going, take a deep drag, and he lets go of my arm. I feel numb.
“What happened?”
“See the woman talking to those two cops? She was apparently a witness. Just walking by and saw the whole thing.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be here, Coop.”
Coop sighs. “Well, he was and evidently it was, and from what she says, it was an accident. They were arguing. Dana pushed him away, he pushed back and…”
I look up the steep flight of steps, imagining Dana tumbling down, Cal’s built-in stair master. There’s blood on the bottom step and the curb. “I just can’t believe it. Is he going to be charged?”
Coop shrugs. “Involuntary manslaughter. Who knows. The woman who saw it was pretty definite. Says Sergent even grabbed for Dana as she started to fall, kept saying, ‘No, no, no.’”
I can’t get the picture out of my mind. “She was a good girl, Coop.”
“Sure she was.” He puts both hands on my shoulders. “Look at me. There was nothing you could have done about this, nothing for you to feel responsible for. You only knew her a few days. She just got mixed up with the wrong guy.”
I know Coop is right. I just can’t let go to the idea that if I’d sold the house to Sergent, Dana would still be alive.
“Has anybody contacted her aunt? She lives around here someplace.”
Coop sighs and looks away. “There was no aunt, at least not according to the witness. Dana was renting a room down the street. Her family is in Iowa somewhere. They’re running it down now.”
“She’s, was, a student at UCLA.” I shrug. “At least I think she was.”
Coop nods. “I’ll let them know. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
In the car, I call Andie and tell her I’ll be on a later flight without much of an explanation.
“What’s wrong?”
“Not now, Andie. I can’t. I’ll call you when I know a flight time.” I end the call before she can press more.
Coop drives me to the Hollywood police station. There’s not much for me to tell them other than I had rented the house to Dana and met Brent Sergent twice. I do make sure the detective knows she and Sergent had known each other before, and he had been told not to come around again. I leave my ad
dress and phone and he tells me I may be contacted later if there are charges against Sergent.
At Burbank again, it’s nearly seven when Coop drops me off, I suddenly remember Milton. “Oh shit, the dog. Can you—”
“Sure,” Coop says.
I give him the keys. “Just till I figure out what to do next. Lock up the house for me.”
***
At San Francisco Airport, Andie is waiting in the loading zone, standing by her car, scanning the faces of arriving passengers. She catches sight of me, waves, and jogs over with only a slight limp, I notice. She throws her arms around me, then leans back.
“If you don’t kiss me, I’m going to be pissed.” I feel her melt into me for a long deep kiss.
“Excuse me, miss. Is that your car?”
A security guard is tapping her on the shoulder. We break off and Andie looks at the guard. “Relax, we’re going.” The guard shakes her head and walks away as we go to the car. “You want to drive,” Andie says.
“Yeah.” I throw my bag in the back seat and get in and pull away.
“Life is good,” Andie says, looking at me as we exit the airport and head up I-380. She curls up against the door, half facing me. I feel her looking.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just looking. It’s been a long week.” She has that smile on her face that I know means so much more. We’re mired in slow crawling traffic along 19th Avenue.
I pull over to the curb and turn off the engine. I look at Andie, see the alarm on her face. “What is it?”
“Dana is dead.”
She puts her hand to her mouth. “No. What happened?”
We sit there for fifteen minutes while I tell her everything. She takes my hand and holds it in both of hers, listening quietly. When I finish, she leans over, puts her arms around me and whispers in my ear.
“Cooper is right, baby. There was nothing you could have done. You’re not responsible.” She leans back, looks in my eyes. “You have to believe that, Evan.”
I nod and look away. “I know, I just—”
“Come on, let’s go home. Let me drive.”
Neither of us says anything until we reach the Golden Gate Bridge. “So what’s going to be waiting in Monte Rio?”
“A FedEx package I hope, of some tapes and CD copies.” I tell her about Al Beckwood, the rehearsal tapes that Cal made. “They’ve been sitting around since 1949,” I say. “Nobody knows about them.”
“And Cal is on them.”
“Yeah, he subbed with the band and apparently recorded some of the sessions.”
“Wouldn’t they be valuable?”
“Well yeah, but not commercially. I heard one and the quality is not so good, but they mean a lot to me, to hear Cal I mean. I might turn them over to some jazz archives somewhere.”
Andie nods. “God, that must have been such a shock to hear all that history from your mother, finding out she’d been married a second time.” She puts her hand on my arm. “I just can’t imagine what that must feel to find out something like that. And you never suspected?”
“Not really.” But even as I answer her more shards of memory fall into place. Nothing that made me suspect Richard Horne wasn’t my father, but that something just wasn’t right about our relationship. Processing the news seems to have opened some small doors and windows in my mind. I’d looked in but hadn’t really seen.
As we near the north side of the bridge, I say, “Pull off here. I always wanted to see the city from here.”
We get out of the car and start to walk along the narrow wall. “I’ll be right back.”
I head for the men’s room and go inside. I splash cold water on the face, lean on the sink and look in the mirror, taking some deep breaths, trying to shake the numbness.
I find Andie, looking at the Bay, the city in the distance, just past Alcatraz Island. I light a cigarette and sit down on the wall next to Andie. She holds onto my arm with both hands. “You okay?”
I feel the gushing wind come off the bay and buffet us as the sun sets.
“I have an entire history now I didn’t have a week ago. It’s like it happened to somebody else.”
Andie is quiet, leaning on my shoulder for a moment. “You’re not going to go Oprah on me are you?”
“No.” I laugh. “It’s just hard to come to terms with it. It’s like a part of me that was missing has been returned, but I never knew it had been lost.”
We sit for a few more minutes then get up and go back to the car. I drive this time and pull back on 101 heading north to Santa Rosa. We have dinner at one of those family style restaurants just past Santa Rosa. Back on the road, Andie dozes and I’m alone with my thoughts trying to push the image of Dana tumbling down those steps from my mind.
Reluctant as I am to let go, from what Maybeline told me my doubts have increased that Cal composed “Boplicity” or any of the other tunes on Birth of the Cool. Having thought about it more, it sounds like Cal had been so obsessed, he’d convinced himself. Maybe he’d kept the lead sheet I’d found in his house simply as a souvenir of the rehearsals, a lost opportunity. Maybe I would never know for sure.
I have decided to have Cameron Brody do some more checking with his contacts. It was pretty well known that Miles had a rather cavalier attitude about giving credit. The best evidence for that was the feud between him and Bill Evans on “Blue and Green” from the Kind of Blue recording ten years after Birth of the Cool. But I don’t know how far I can pursue it or where it will go.
Andie wakes up when I exit on River Road. “Sorry, babe,” she says, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “What are you going to do about the house now?”
I shrug. “I honestly don’t know. Turn it over to a management company, sell it. With Dana gone, I…”
“Please, Evan, don’t be mad,” Andie says. “I know I acted like a jealous bitch, but something about that whole thing was not right. I just had a feeling about it.”
I shrug. “I believed her. She seemed genuinely remorseful about the whole thing.”
Andie shakes her head. “Sometimes you’re just too trusting, Evan.” She leans her head back on the seat and stares out the window.
She dozes off and I’m alone with my thoughts again as I roll down River Road to Guerneville. As I pass Main Street Station, I glance in the window and see a solo guitarist on stage. It’s dark as I cross over the bridge and turn onto Bohemian Avenue and park. It feels good to be home.
I reach over and shake Andie. “Hey you, we’re here.”
She looks up, blinks and rubs her eyes and slides across to kiss me. “C’mon, baby its been a long time.”
There’s a delivery slip stuck to the front door from FedEx, saying they will try again tomorrow.
“Your tapes?” Andie asks.
“I hope so.”
But by noon the next day, there’s nothing. I decide to check my mail box and tell Andie to sign for the package if it shows up while I’m gone. I drive down to the post office just off Northwood Golf Course. A few bills, some junk mail, and a yellow slip for something bigger I present to the clerk. She hands me a flat priority mail envelope.
“Thanks,” I say, and take everything out to the car. I don’t recognize the return address on the packet. Ripping it open, I pull out a file folder and stare for a moment. Inside is Cal’s FBI file. No note, nor explanation. There are five pages of info, signatures, and dates. Wendell Cook, who had been the agent in charge, Ted Rollins, and Andie had all signed off. But on one page, several lines are blacked out with a marker pen.
I scan it quickly, see nothing I don’t already know. No mention of Jean Lane. Simply “subject married, subsequent divorce two years later.” I close the file and put it back in the envelope and light a cigarette, gazing at the huge redwood trees that ring the nine hole golf course.
Where did this come from? Who sent it? It’s a photo copy so the original is still somewhere in the FBI files. Who besides Andi
e knew about the file? Anyone who worked on the case of course, but after? More recently? The only name I can come up with is Ted Rollins.
I drive back to the house and find Andie on the deck, her legs stretched out, her skirt up around her legs, getting some sun.
“Nothing from FedEx?”
“No, not a word,” she says. “Any good mail?”
“Yeah, couple of things.” I drop everything on the dining table and grab the phone. “I’m going to call them.”
I read off the number on the delivery slip to whoever answers the phone.
“Oh, yeah,” a woman says. “Driver couldn’t find your house.”
“Really. I’m using the delivery slip he left yesterday to call you.”
“Different driver today, hon. He got lost I guess.”
“So what about my package? How could he not find it. I’ve seen your TV ads of you delivering to tree houses in the jungle.”
“Settle down,” she says. “We’ll get your package. Give me the names of major cross streets nearest to you.”
I sigh. “This is Monte Rio. There are no major cross streets.” I give her directions from the 116 highway and the movie theater. “Tell him to turn left, cross over the bridge, and take the second left. That’s Bohemian Avenue.”
“Got it,” she says.
“How long do you think it will take?”
“Not sure. I’ll try to get him on the radio. We’re just a sub contractor for FedEx.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
I hang up and go out to join Andie on the deck. I drop the priority envelope on her lap, and lean against the railing. “Take a look at that.”
She sits up, glances at me and pulls the file folder out. I watch her face as she opens the folder. She flips through the pages and stops on the one with the blacked out lines. “Oh shit,” she says. She flips back to the front, then looks at the envelope, checking the return address.
“Who sent this?”
“I thought maybe you’d know,” I say.
She shakes her head then slaps her hand on the envelope. “That sonofabitch.”
“Who?”
“Rollins, who else?”
“What’s it mean, Andie? Those blacked out lines, and why would he send it to me?”
