“Her dead niece, sitting at a desk in a blue pinstripe suit, writing her a letter.”
“Something.”
“You know, you’re really getting on my nerves.”
“I’m sorry,” Healy said, “but I’m just saying—”
“Which one of us is the detective?” March said. “Which one? Okay. Okay. Because I was starting to wonder.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Well, stop saying it.”
“Because you don’t want to hear it,” Healy said.
“Because it’s fucking crazy.” March swerved around a hairpin curve, the sort he’d been navigating all night long, only brushing the guardrail a little, and fuck it, that’s what it was there for, right? He screeched to a stop in front of Shattuck’s house.
House, hell. Mansion didn’t begin to do it justice. The place was huge, levels upon levels, not one but two pools in front, hot tub on the balcony, glass everywhere, lights everywhere. On a normal night it was probably just twice as big and garish as any of its neighbors, but with a party in full swing it was…beyond words.
There were people milling around on all those levels, and more inside, no doubt—at least a hundred, maybe more, and easily enough clothing to cover twenty or thirty of them. An R&B group was laying down a smooth groove on a stage by the trees, some Earth, Wind & Fire tribute, and then March realized it was Earth, Wind & Fire.
As he got out of the car and handed the keys to the valet standing by the entry gate, a man walked by, leading a horse that had been dressed up to look like a unicorn, pointy horn bobbing on its forehead.
“Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” March said.
19.
Unlike March, Healy wasn’t a California native. He wasn’t even a New York native, technically, since he’d been born aboard a U.S. military transport ship halfway across the Atlantic Ocean. Long story. But he’d settled with his mother and brother in the Riverdale section of the Bronx before his first birthday, and he stayed there until his eighteenth, and if you’d asked him then whether he’d ever move to the West Coast, he wouldn’t even have said no, he’d just have laughed, and then maybe decked you for good measure.
But the judge had offered him a choice: probation or jail. And probation meant The Program, and The Program meant California. If his father had been around, maybe that would’ve changed things, or maybe it wouldn’t, but anyway the old man was still stationed in Germany then, batting cleanup a dozen years after the fact.
So—it was California or bust.
He’d done two stints on a fruit orchard in Heritage Valley, picking lemons and oranges and avocados in the summer sun, back-breaking work that had built up his muscles and stamina, taught him enough Spanish to get into a fight but not out of one, and more than once made him wish he’d chosen jail instead.
That was college for Jackson Healy. That was how he spent years nineteen through twenty-one, and when he was finally finished, he swore (among other things) that he’d never eat a fucking avocado again. And he never had.
Why hadn’t he moved back east afterwards, when he had the chance? He’d learned the word for that from his Word-a-Day calendar too: inertia. It meant the tendency of an object at rest to remain at rest or an object in motion to remain in motion, which had confused him at first—how could the same word mean both that you can’t move and that you can’t stop moving? It was like a Thermos bottle, keeps hot food hot also but keeps cold food cold. What if you put an ice cube in one and boiling hot coffee in another? Why does that work? But the point became clearer when he thought about it this way: you keep doing what you’re already doing. You stay where you are and what you are. You wear the clothes that you’ve already got in your closet.
So what clothes were in his closet? California tough-guy clothes. Jackson Healy learned the art of persuasion from guys his size who’d been doing it all their lives, and he started doing it too, first as the backup guy on a two-man team, then on his own. He’d put on a few pounds since then, but you know what, that actually worked to his advantage. He wasn’t a fucking schlub, he still had muscle under there, but people tended to run away less when the guy knocking at the door looked a little softer around the edges.
And that was Jackson Healy’s story. He’d become a heavy, in both senses, and maybe that’s all he was ever meant to become. His big brother had become an Air Force engineer, chip off the old block, and speaking of the old block, his father had come back stateside and gotten himself stationed in San Diego, where in theory Healy could’ve seen more of him, maybe brushed off that old relationship and started over, but then there was the whole thing with June and his dad, and, well, that had been the end of that. Inertia. You keep doing what you’re doing, and the sun goes up and the sun goes down, just like March said. Nothing changes.
But then one day? You get out of a car and a man walks a fucking unicorn across your path.
A unicorn.
And the guy by your side is a private detective, a bit of an asshole, it’s true, and a bit of an idiot, but, you know, also kind of a nice guy, and he gets to work in this world while you’re beating up deadbeats and cradle-robbers. In the city you’ve lived in almost your entire life now, just over the hill and down the highway, there are unicorns. And you think to yourself, well, Jack, maybe once in a very long while there’s something new under the sun after all.
20.
“All I told him,” the girl in the red dress was saying, “was if you want me to do that, then don’t eat the asparagus!”
The blonde next to her, in a green shift that hugged the curves of her breasts, seemed puzzled. Asparagus? What?
Healy seemed to be fascinated by them, poor guy probably hadn’t seen girls this hot ever, outside of a movie, but March, frankly, was just trying to get his car parked. He’d handed his keys to the valet, was waiting for the goddamn chit in return, but the guy was staring at the trunk of his car for some reason.
Wait. Okay. That was the reason, something was banging around in it.
He walked over to the car, stared at it. Bang, bang. Bang. There was someone in the trunk. Hammering to be let out.
He unlocked it, and saw Holly staring up at him, looking sheepish.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she began, and damn right she did, “but since I’m already here, you might as well take me in with you, right?”
She peered up at him hopefully.
March slammed the trunk shut again.
He walked over to the valet, keys extended.
“Um, I can’t take your car like that,” the guy said.
March pivoted on his heel and returned to his car.
* * *
Holly struggled as he led her by one arm toward a rank of taxis standing near the entrance. “Stop it,” she muttered, and dragged her arm free. People were looking. “Stop it, dad!”
He grabbed her arm again, dragged her onward.
She couldn’t believe she’d gotten so close and was about to be sent home, missing not just a chance to stay near her dad and maybe protect him a little, but also the biggest party of her entire life. Jessica would be so jealous. And Janet—Janet’s head would just explode.
She stared at the women swarming around the bar, the ones clutching silver purses under one arm while sipping from martini glasses, the ones laughing by the side of the pool. Some looked like movie stars. Some looked like what they were.
“Dad! There’s like whores here and stuff.”
“Sweetheart,” March said, “how many times have I told you, don’t say ‘and stuff.’ Just say, ‘Dad, there are whores here.’ ”
“Well, there’s, like, a ton,” Holly said. Her dad swung open the door of a waiting taxi and shoved her into the back seat. “Wait! No! I can help you! Seriously? I came all this way—”
“I love you,” March said and slammed the door shut. He patted the taxi on the rear, like patting a horse on its flank, and off it went, Holly glaring at him through the window.
Well, t
hat was a good start to the evening.
He collected Healy and they walked in together.
* * *
Earth, Wind & Fire was singing “Do you remember…” which was kind of ironic, ’cause March didn’t figure half the people here would remember a thing about tonight when they woke up in the morning. Everyone was trashed, high, on something or other. On one bench they passed, a group of girls was laughing uproariously as one jammed her hand up another’s skirt, emerging a few seconds later from the girl’s cleavage clutching a coke spoon. Hilarious. On the other side, a skinny little runt with strings tied to his arms and legs and rouge on his cheeks was sporting an Alpine hat and Pornookio schnozz. “It’s not my nose that grows!” he crowed at anyone who would listen.
March recoiled, shuddering, and almost collided with a stilt walker covered in leaves and branches. “What are you supposed to be?” he found himself asking.
“A tree.”
They walked on. Shattuck had to be here somewhere—it was his house. But finding him, that would be a challenge. Not least of all because they didn’t know what he looked like. Talk about a needle in a haystack. This was like a needle in a stack of needles.
Speaking of which, yep—the mermaid sitting with her tail in the pool was shooting up.
“Hoo,” Healy said, waving one hand in front of his face, “well, we know Mary Jane turned up.”
“What was that?” March said.
“Mary Jane. Marijuana. Pot.”
“Yeah, probably,” March said.
“Place reeks of it,” Healy said.
“Oh, yeah,” March said. “I can’t smell.”
“You what?”
“I can’t smell,” March said. “I got hit in the head a while back, I lost my sense of smell.”
“You…can’t smell.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a detective who can’t smell?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.”
“Wow,” March said. “That’s really insensitive.” But Healy had already walked away. He jogged to catch up.
They passed through an open sliding door and into the house itself. The crowd in here was dense, wall-to-wall sideburns and shellacked hair. You couldn’t walk two feet without brushing up against some girl by accident. It was like a bouncy castle for grown-ups.
“Look,” March said, “if Amelia doesn’t show, we’ve still got Shattuck. But if we start asking questions and things get rough…” He raised his cast. “I’m injured. So you’re gonna have to handle it.”
“I think,” Healy said, “this is going to work better and faster if we split up.”
“What?”
“If you see a guy with a blue face,” Healy said, “you come and find me.” And he backed away into the crowd.
March was on his own.
He turned and pushed his way to the bar. There was a cocktail waitress there wearing a headpiece made of cigarettes. He snagged one, jammed it between his lips. Fine. Leave me here with one fucking arm to face off against who knew what. He raised two fingers, caught the bartender’s attention. Courage might not come in a bottle, but what did was the next best thing.
* * *
Healy, meanwhile, was making his way down a corridor that led past a billiard room on one side and a projection room on the other. A man wearing a furry White Rabbit head from Alice in Wonderland came by in the opposite direction, a couple of tarts in French maid outfits on his arms. A girl balancing a tray on one hand extended a bright yellow cocktail in Healy’s direction and wouldn’t take no for an answer when he tried to refuse it. So he ended up with a drink in his hand for the first time in… how long? A long time. He sniffed at it, was relieved to find it smelled repulsive, and set the glass down on the nearest empty surface he could find.
“Hey!” The voice sounded more amused than upset, and looking down Healy saw it belonged to a woman covered from head to toe in gold body paint who was bent double, hands and feet on the floor. Healy’s glass was sitting on her lower back, where a skimpy G-string disappeared into the crack of her gold-painted ass.
“Sorry,” he said, picking up the glass.
“That’s okay,” the woman said, smiling at him, upside-down.
He set the glass down again, on a wooden cornerpiece this time. It was wonderland, all right, and everything was topsy-turvy, and somewhere in the middle of all this craziness was a frightened girl who’d paid for his help. That’s what he had to remember. None of the rest of this mattered. It was just a distraction.
Healy made his way to a padded door, quilted fabric cushioning the surface. There was no knob. Healy pushed it in, was greeted by the sight of the fanciest bathroom he’d ever seen, marble floor and Jacuzzi tub and gold fixtures and a girl with both palms braced against the edge of the sink, taking it from a man who looked like Don Rickles. Healy backed out quietly, not that either of them had noticed him.
Onward. A second door hid a broom closet. But then the third—
Healy stepped inside and slid the door shut behind him. He was in a dim, narrow passage with posters from various Sid Shattuck productions on the walls. After a bit the room widened and Healy could see racks of clothing, stacks of empty film cans, piles of props. It was a storage room, full of the detritus of moviemaking, and Healy couldn’t help wondering if this is what Dean’s place had looked like before the fire.
Healy lifted the cans one by one, looking at the titles. Pornookio was there, and Alice in Nookieland—Healy was beginning to detect a theme—and The Opening of Misty Mountains and Pretty Passion and The Contempt. One can was labeled Misty, Test Footage, Reel 1 and contained a couple of slides, a few strips of film, and a little slip of paper Healy recognized, not because of what was written on it—
28-10 Burbank Apt
West, Flt D, 10:30pm
—but because the slip of paper was pink and shaped like a cow.
Amelia had been here. He pocketed the note.
None of the cans said anything about cars or big boys. But the costume racks were a different story. The metal bars were hung with plastic-bagged suits and dresses and lingerie labeled in Magic Marker with the name of the performer and the production, and on the second rack he checked, Healy struck gold. How Do You Like My Car, Big Boy? asked one card after another, and below that Juliet or Blair or Sean.
Or Misty.
Healy pulled down one particular Misty bag, gave it a closer inspection. A costume like any other. Tacky, not very well made, nothing about it that would make you give it a second glance if you saw it in a secondhand store. But Healy gave it a second glance and a third before hanging it back where he’d found it. It was a royal blue suit with white pinstripes.
21.
At the bar, March drained his third glass and was feeling pretty courageous. He wagged a finger at the bartender for another.
“…it’s the killer bees,” he said, as the man poured. His voice didn’t sound slurred to him. “That’s what you’ve got to worry about.”
The bartender took this advice in stride, as he’d been taking the advice of drunks in stride for the better part of thirty years.
March tossed back the drink, then turned to a platform beside the bar where a painted go-go dancer was shaking her perfect breasts and absolutely no one was paying attention. He almost felt bad for her. “Excuse me…?” She bent down. God, those really were perfect.
“Hello, handsome,” she said.
“You uh, you seem to have a very good vantage point up there,” March said. “I lost my, uh, sister. She’s got dark hair, your height…she’s wearing clothes, but… Answers to Amelia?”
“Hey,” the bartender said. “Why dontcha leave the girl alone?” He filled March’s glass again. “Have another drink.”
And so it went, the better part of the evening fading into a blur as March alternated drinks and questions, questions and drinks. There were several bars in the place, and March found them all. He sampled concoc
tions he’d never tried before, didn’t even ask their names. Girly drinks with twists of lemon peel, bright red drinks and aquamarine ones stinking of Curaçao, drinks in rocks tumblers and drinks in flutes—if someone handed it to him, he drank it. Well, why not? It was part of the job. Blending in.
“Hi everyone,” he said to a group of women at one bar, the least crowded of them, one that fronted on a thick glass window into a swimming pool, behind which two bare-chested girls in mermaid tails were swimming around, occasionally nuzzling each other. How did they stay down there, he wondered. Maybe they’re actual mermaids? He tried to collect his thoughts. “I’m Amelia…she’s about…” He raised his hand to clavicle height. “…dark hair…and answers to…” One of the mermaids was waving at him through the glass. He smiled. “…the call of the wild? Just kidding, I forgot her name. But, you know, if you see you, just, if you see, let me know. And, um, tell me my name.”
The women stared at him, puzzled, before turning back to their conversation.
“All right, then,” he said. He wondered what Healy was doing at this moment. The poor guy. He meant well, March knew that, but he couldn’t possibly be making as much progress as March was.
22.
What Healy was doing at that moment was passing the window of the projection room, on his way back to the main area of the party to find March. But what he saw through the window stopped him. Not the Sid Shattuck porno film currently being projected on the wall of the room, he was a big boy, he’d seen his share, but the audience sitting there in the room watching the film: a fat bearded guy in a blue T-shirt and some sort of elaborate headband, a woman with long, straight blonde hair and a deep scoop-neck shirt showing off her two scoops, and a thirteen-year-old girl sitting beside them, taking it all in avidly.
Holly.
Healy went in, placed himself between the projector and the wall, tried to ignore the sex act playing out on his stomach. “Holly, hey…I don’t think you should be watching this.”
The fat man butted in. “What’s it to you, idiot? Move. You’re in the way.”
The Nice Guys Page 7
