Shining City

by Seth Greenland

  “Maybe you should talk to someone.”

  “What, a therapist? All they do is confirm every bad thing you already know about yourself. That’s not what I need right now.”

  Jan waited to see if Plum would continue down this road, but it appeared that she had run out of gas.

  “There’s something else we kind of need to deal with,” Jan said. “I want to get out of the business.” Plum opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. She looked like a fish being gutted while it was still alive. Jan continued: “I didn’t want to do this for a living, run a store.”

  “I went to art school!” Plum interjected, as if implying that her life was meant to be a round of gallery openings and museum retrospectives.

  “Yeah, I did, too, okay? Remember? With you? I hadn’t planned on sitting in a little boutique on Van Nuys Boulevard praying for customers to walk in.” Jan noticed that Plum was clearly taken aback by her tone, which was more assertive than usual. “We have to stop pretending it’s working, because it’s just not. I have to be honest with you. Ripcord is over.” She paused a moment and said “I’m sorry you’re spotting,” even though she wasn’t sorry at all.

  Plum daubed her nose with a fresh tissue, sniffled, and said “Isn’t that Marcus?”

  Jan turned her head looking for her husband, greatly relieved. She knew Plum was not likely to continue in a weepy vein as long as Marcus was around. But the feeling of reprieve soon turned to something queasier when she gazed across the room and saw him sitting at a table for two opposite an attractive woman in a tight blouse, short skirt, and ankle-high, spike-heeled leather boots.

  “Who’s he having lunch with?” Plum asked.

  Fighting a rising nervousness, Jan threaded her way between the other diners to arrive at her husband’s table. Marcus appeared so engrossed with the woman to whom he was speaking that it was a moment before he realized someone was standing next to them, and still another moment before he registered that it was Jan. She watched him glance quickly at his companion, then back to her, a squirrel trying to determine the best path across a treacherous road.

  “Hi, honey. Who’s your friend?” Jan said. Grateful that she was able to control the timbre of her voice, she turned and presented a steel smile to the woman who greeted her in an accent that struck Jan as Eastern European. Where could Marcus possibly have met a woman like this?

  “Amstel, this is Jan,” Marcus said.

  “His wife,” Jan responded, cogitating on the name Amstel. Had he made it up? What was Marcus doing with an attractive European woman named Amstel? “We’re married.”

  “We sure are,” Marcus said, in a neutral tone.

  Amstel nodded in approval. “Congratulations.”

  Marcus and Jan stood nearly nose to nose in the corner of the Sportsman’s Lodge lobby, their backs to whoever might be looking at them. Today it was a blonde family from Utah and three Japanese businessmen. No one was paying attention to the drama in the corner. Jan asked who the woman was and what was the nature of her relationship with Marcus?

  “She’s a business associate.” The notion that someone who looked like Amstel had anything to do with dry cleaning was so implausible, Jan didn’t quite know how to respond.

  “A dry cleaner?”

  “Yes,” he said, his confidence wilting like a camellia in a microwave.

  “So if I march back in there she’s going to tell me, what, she presses pants for a living? Marcus, if you’re having an affair, I want you to admit it. It’ll be easier.”

  “Listen, sweetheart…”

  “Don’t call me sweetheart!”

  “Fine. Jan. I can’t get into it right now, but I swear to you on our son, I have never cheated on you!”

  “Then tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m an agent.”

  “An agent? Is that woman an actress?”

  “Not exactly. But I represent her.”

  “Marcus, this isn’t making sense.”

  “I swear I’ll tell you everything tonight.”

  Marcus waited as Jan decided whether this was an acceptable offer. It was hard for her to believe that this was the man with whom she had so recently spent several erotic hours at the Mondrian Hotel. She thought they had broken through to a new level of their marriage, and now everything was suddenly at risk.

  “I’ll wait up,” Jan said, and returned to the dining room.

  Chapter 14

  The Mercedes was parked outside the Beverly Hills Hotel in the cool evening. Marcus sat in the front seat, saying good night to Nathan on his cell phone. It was just after nine thirty. He’d been so upset by his surprise encounter with Jan, he had spent the afternoon trying to track down an arcade game called Soul Stealer, which he intended to give to Nathan as a surprise. Several hours of investigation had led him to a warehouse east of downtown, where he located one being sold for two thousand dollars. The bulky machine was now wedged in the trunk. Showing his love for their son was a way of deflecting the opprobrium he expected was headed his way. He wondered if he should have bought a diamond bracelet instead. There was no way to tell how Jan was going to react when she discovered what was going on.

  “Can you come to my baseball game next week?”

  “I’ll be there,” Marcus said, relieved for the opportunity to do something familial. He couldn’t hear Nathan’s response and had to cover his other ear with his palm to drown out the chatter from the women seated behind him. When Jan got on the phone, he told her he was taking care of some business and would talk to her later tonight. She hung up without saying good-bye. Feeling deeply unappreciated, Marcus sighed and looked toward the hotel, where a new girl was working. Xiomara/Jenna was in the car with Cindy, a transplant from Dallas where until recently she had been studying anthropology in graduate school. Cindy was telling Xiomara/Jenna about the mating habits of the Hmong people of Laos when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID: Amstel.

  “Breeze, we have predicament.”

  “What kind of predicament?”

  “Big one.”

  Marcus felt the muscles in his lower back contract.

  For someone looking at a dead body on a bed, Amstel was relatively calm. It was half an hour later, and Marcus was standing in the Beverly Hills-adjacent apartment, his back hurtling toward a full-throttle spasm. He’d put the women in cabs and arrived as fast as he was able. Now, feet planted on the imitation Persian rug in the center of the room, eyes fixed on the rumpled sheets, he tried to formulate a plan. The dead man was slightly overweight, swarthy, and naked. Probably in his middle fifties.

  And he was handcuffed to the bed frame.

  Amstel had gotten dressed after calling Marcus. Sitting in a chair holding a clove cigarette, she appeared outwardly composed, but the manner in which she was smoking—a sharp inhale followed by a long exhalation, during which a river of smoke coursed from her, then repeated immediately—gave the lie to her cool. “I am riding his face, you know, for maybe two minutes he is eating me out. He makes weird noise and his eyes bug. So I climb off, get glass of water. I am at sink, I look over, face is red, eyes are wide open—he is dead. I call you.”

  “You think he had a heart attack?”

  “Breeze, do I look like doctor?”

  “You did the right thing, calling me.”

  “I go now.”

  “What do you mean you go now?”

  “Is what I mean. I. Go. Now. Good-bye. I quit this life. You are nice guy, Breeze. You quit, too.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Amstel, first of all, you can’t just leave. This guy is handcuffed to the bed. Where’s the key?”

  “I don’t know where is key.”

  A brief tour of the dead man’s clothes did not reveal the answer to this mystery, although it did yield a wallet with several credit cards, nearly seven hundred dollars in cash, and a California driver’s license that identified him as Mahmoud Ghorbanifar of 1563 Summit Drive, Beverly Hills. He was local. That wasn’t good. If anyone was expect
ing him home, they’d be looking by the next day.

  “I can’t move the body myself, Amstel. My back … it’s like some-one’s chewing on the nerve.”

  “Listen to me, please,” she said, her tone beseeching him to understand her compromised position. “I am not citizen. I get caught with dead body, after jail I am back in Latvia.”

  He was a lot less charmed by her accent now. “If you leave, you’re not working for the service any more.”

  “I already tell you I quit! Are you fucking idiot?”

  “You can’t go!”

  “Bad idea to threaten, Breeze.” Threaten? He didn’t think he had threatened her. “One phone call, I put you out of business. Anon… anon … Shit! How do you say?”

  “Anonymous.” When he fed her the word, it felt like he was wrapping a rope around his own neck.

  “Anonymous phone call, okay? To police, and you are cooked like sausage. Don’t drag me into mess of yours.” It was his mess, ultimately. He couldn’t deny that. But Amstel’s total abdication of responsibility was even more of a rough surprise than the black cats her eyes were throwing him. “Do we understand?”

  Marcus nodded. He thought they had bonded, but obviously he’d been mistaken. She closed the door silently as she left, discreet to the last. His first thought was to call Kostya and let him deal with the situation. But when Kostya had agreed to work with him, he had made it abundantly clear that Marcus was to assume all risk in the running of the business, so that plan was immediately scotched. The maid was due to arrive the next morning and she had a key to the apartment. She was always hard to reach, and Marcus didn’t want to have to remain here only to tell her she couldn’t come in and clean the place. He wished he’d had the foresight to hide a bottle of whiskey in the apartment. A drink might calm him down; allow him to focus his thoughts. He needed to get rid of the body tonight, but his back was in so much pain he couldn’t stand up straight.

  Julian would have known what to do in these circumstances. He wouldn’t panic. Years earlier, Marcus could have called him in a situation like this. Or Roon. Those two knew how to get away with things. He thought about calling Atlas, but he was not scheduled to get out of rehab for another several days.

  The muscles running across his lower back suddenly jerked angrily inward, yanking his left hip out of alignment and causing his upper torso to tip in that direction. He grunted in pain. His body was beginning to assume the contour of a question mark. He tried to recall if he had any painkillers at home.

  “Jan, it’s me.”

  “Marcus?” He voice was groggy, far away. “I waited up for you. I thought we were going to talk, but I fell asleep. What’s going on?”

  Seated on the sofa across from the dead man with a pillow propped against his lower back to relieve the discomfort, cell phone pressed to his ear, he was temporarily pain-free. But he knew that if he moved a centimeter in any direction, his nerve endings would detonate. “We are going to talk. Just not this second. There’s an emergency.”

  Now she was awake. “Oh, god, Marcus, are you all right? Is everything okay?”

  “No. It’s not. It’s really not. I’m in kind of a bad situation.” He told her where he was and asked how soon she could be there. His tone let her know that staying home was not an option.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t tell you on the phone.”

  “You have to, or I’m not coming.”

  “I can’t, please believe me.” He couldn’t take the risk of telling her, then have her freak out to the degree she might not be willing to help. “I really need you right now. Please. There’s an all-night Home Depot on Ventura. Go there and buy a hacksaw and some duct tape.”

  “What?”

  “Would you just do it? And then go to a drugstore and get me some painkillers.”

  Marcus sat completely still. No sound drifted up from the street. He was conscious of his pounding heart, the pulse in his neck, the dryness of his mouth. What is marriage supposed to be about?

  “Give me forty-five minutes.”

  A dead body any other place than a funeral home is the worst kind of surprise. Strolling back to their car in Chinatown one evening, Marcus and Jan had found themselves taking a shortcut through an alley. In the shadow of a building, next to a mound of packing crates had been a corpse. It was that of a young man lying on his back, legs splayed, his neck at an unnatural angle. Jan nearly jumped out of her skin. Marcus said they needed to report it and wanted to notify the police. Jan told him he could just as easily call from the car, which is what he ended up doing. Remembering her reaction that evening, he pulled a sheet over the body so she wouldn’t have a meltdown immediately upon walking into the apartment.

  It was after midnight. Marcus was attempting to alleviate the pain by lying on his back in the middle of the room with his knees pulled up to his chest when he heard Jan knock.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said. Then he rolled over to his side, placed both hands on the floor and pushed himself into a position from which he could get his legs under him without causing undue stress on his lower back. It was a move he’d had to perform many times. Marcus thanked her for coming as soon as he opened the door, and asked if she’d brought the painkillers.

  She handed him a small bottle of Advil and walked quickly past, looking around. He was relieved to see the Home Depot bag. When she noticed the large lump under the sheets from which a cuffed hand was protruding, she shot Marcus a surprised look. “Is someone here?” she asked, whispering, unnerved. It was a rhetorical question.

  “That’s Mr. Ghorbi-something.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know exactly, but he’s dead.”

  Her audible gasp involved most of the oxygen in the room. “Oh, god … he’s … who …?”

  “He’s some guy. It’s not important who he is. He’s dead, is the point.”

  “What’s the hacksaw for, Marcus?” Jan seemed to lose her balance for a moment. Marcus gently touched her arm as shock coursed through her, momentarily impeding brain function. “He’s dead? Oh god, he’s dead, oh god, god … no! Marcus, ohhh! How did you … no, no, no!”

  “You have to stay cool.”

  Marcus’s neck felt stiff. He filled a glass with water and swallowed four Advils.

  Jan collapsed into an upholstered chair and stared at him. The shock was giving way to vulnerability, and tenderness. Truly, this was far worse than she’d imagined.

  “I think you better come clean right now.”

  Marcus completed a lightning-quick cost-benefit analysis, then told her everything: Julian’s real occupation, Dominic Festa, the cell phone, the Shining City reality, Kostya, the women, the signing of the releases, the arranging of the assignations. It all ran together in a torrent of revelation that Marcus hoped would, in its clean-breasted completeness, both expiate his sins and cause her to understand why he had committed them in the first place. He pleaded with her to understand that this was a strictly a business venture, not a salacious fantasy that had attacked him in early middle age, leaving him bereft of his standards and senses. Marcus wished she would interrupt, ask a question. But she just sat there, flabbergasted. He sensed she would not be much help right now. Marcus concluded by swearing he had never touched any of the women.

  Jan waited a long moment before she said “So this explains the vibrating egg.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It does.”

  Prying the Home Depot bag from Jan’s nervous grip, he removed the hacksaw. Then he pulled the sheet back, crouched next to the corpse, and began to slash at the chain holding the wrist to the bed. The dissonant grinding of metal on metal further set his nerves on edge. The lifeless hand cuffed to the bed jiggled in mad pantomime as Marcus sawed away, trying not to come into contact with the cool flesh. Light from the bedside lamp caught a blue stone in a pinky ring on the dead man’s pale finger.

  Jan sank deeper into the chair and watched in despair, having still not entire
ly digested what Marcus had revealed to her about his working life.

  “Shouldn’t you call the police?”

  “I can’t call the police,” he said, not looking at her as he continued to saw the chain. “What am I going to tell them?”

  She thought a moment and realized he had a point. “Where are we?” she asked. “Whose apartment is this?”

  “It’s mine, and the women who work for me use it to entertain.”

  “Entertain?”

  “For chrissakes, could you please not bust my balls right now?” Shifting his legs, Marcus tried to find a position that would lessen the pressure on his inflamed lower back. He wondered if he’d slipped a disc this time. Howling messages of pain pulsed through his nervous system and into his perfervid brain. He continued to manipulate the hacksaw, adjusting the angle slightly in hopes of increasing his efficiency. “I’m sorry I had to call you. Someone was here who could have helped me, but they left. My back is killing me. I can’t move the body myself.” His breath quickened as a result of his exertions.

  “Why do we have to move the body? Why can’t you just tell the police he had a … what? What happened? Heart attack, stroke?” She said this as if diagnosing the physiological goings-on would somehow allow her to better comprehend the underlying meaning of the event.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Marcus said. He had found a position where the pain was bearable if he didn’t move his hips. “I don’t know who he is, beyond his name which I can’t even pronounce. And I can’t risk having to answer all the questions they’re going to ask when they find a dead guy.”