Burning Garbo

by Robert Eversz

  The ridge abruptly steepened. I hurtled down the hill too fast for my legs to keep pace and kicked out hard to avoid going down face first. I tucked my arms around the camera bag and tobogganed down the slope on my back, lashed by chaparral and coastal sage. The ridge ahead dropped sharply away. I braked my heels into the dirt too late and launched off the side of the cliff. The air whooshed beneath my back, and I thought I’d die where I hit, fire or rock. The ground rose quickly. I struck it a glancing blow, bounced into the air, and came down again in a blistering slide. My boots struck a thick clump of sage and the impact catapulted me into the sky like a hapless cartoon character, Wile E. Coyote or Sylvester the cat, a befuddled look on my face the moment before I swan dived into waist-high grass at the base of the hill.

  I pushed myself to one knee, amazed that nothing had broken except the seat of my pants. Smoke billowed from the base of the ravine and rolled over me like a wave. I pulled the neck of my T-shirt over my nose and stumbled forward. The cotton proved as effective at clearing the smoke as the filter of a cigarette. My eyes burned and I suppressed the terrible urge to cough. A black-and-white sheriff cruiser pulled to the shoulder of the highway a hundred yards ahead of me. I dropped to the ground where the smoke thinned enough to draw breath and staggered forward again. A squadron of fire engines sped past, sirens in full howl. The head of a female deputy popped above the cruiser roof to mark my progress. The fire trucks and sheriff cruiser were the only vehicles in sight, the highway closed to through traffic. The air cleared near the shoulder. I let the collar fall from my mouth, took a tentative sip of air, and coughed my lungs out.

  “You mind telling me what you were doing up the hill?” The sheriff uniform didn’t do much for her figure. The big gun belt flattens the hip curve and makes most female officers look as blocky as the front of a freight truck. This one was a strapping California blonde a good six inches above the minimum height requirement, and like all law she scared the hell out of me. I unbuckled the flap of my camera bag, and when I noticed gun wariness flicker in her eyes, I croaked, “ID.”

  She took her time examining the press credential from Scandal Times and parsed the information on my California driver license with the caution of a remedial-reading student. When I thought she was ready to hear it, I described the man on the hill and showed her the damage his bullet had done to my camera. She poked at the lens with the blunt end of her pen, went to the trunk of her patrol car, and returned with an evidence bag and fingerprint kit. She bagged the camera as evidence and took my prints for comparison against the prints that might be found on the lens or body.

  “Everybody’s needed for fire control right now but somebody from LASD arson will want to talk to you.” LASD was the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department abbreviated, the law in Malibu and in more than half of Los Angeles County. “Paramedics’ll be here in a minute, so you stick around, get them to check you out, and after that someone will come talk to you.”

  She stepped into her cruiser, flashed the lights, and jetted down the highway. I sat on the ocean side of the road for a while, happy that I could breathe again. The paramedics didn’t show, not immediately, and neither did anyone from arson. It was good to breathe again but I’m a restless person by nature. I walked away. My head and back hurt and my lungs ached but unless I did something else really stupid the odds were good I’d live out the day. On the beach below, sunbathers and stranded motorists stood and cheered the fire. Out past the wave break, figures black as seals bobbed in the water. The weather report had predicted a six-foot swell. A wave rippled across the surface of the sea like the tail of an immense beast. A half dozen surfers paddled frantically to catch it, and as the wave rose up, one figure leapt to his feet and raced the curl beneath an ashen sky, surfing the apocalypse.

  I walked on.

  A black dog the size of a baby bull emerged from a thicket of coastal sage as I approached El Matador State Beach, where I’d parked my car. The dog sniffed at my hand and fell in beside me. When I was young my dad would try to keep a dog around the house. He liked to beat them, and like my brothers and sisters they cowered until they ran away. I wasn’t afraid of dogs, not even a big Rottweiler like this one.

  “Pretty big fire, you think?”

  He looked up at me when I spoke, his tongue rolling out of his mouth from thirst. I pulled the water bottle from my bag, knelt by the side of the highway, and let him drink from my cupped hand. I was thirsty too, dehydrated by the heat and smoke. Together we finished off the bottle. I patted his head, told him he was a good boy but it was time to go.

  I jogged the final hundred yards to my car, a 1976 Cadillac convertible with 130,000 miles under it. The dog trotted at my heels. I told him to go home. He sat. I didn’t know if he was dumb, confusing the command for “home” with “sit,” or just patient. I got behind the wheel, thinking he’d figure it out when I drove away, but before the door closed he leapt over the frame and into the backseat.

  I said, “No, uh-uh, I’m not taking you with me.”

  I give him credit, he didn’t try the sad-eye treatment, just a lolling tongue and a level gaze that announced he didn’t plan to move.

  I stepped out of the car and pitched my voice to a tone of high excitement. “C’mon boy! Let’s go! Here we go now! Out of the car!”

  He lay out flat.

  I reached for his collar and pulled. He was eighty pounds of stubborn muscle and didn’t want to go. I tugged, he dug in, and all I succeeded in getting out of the car was his collar. I looked at the tag. It said his name was Dog, didn’t list an address. I slipped the collar back over his ears, wondering who would name their dog Dog, and it was then that I noticed the Rott had no teeth.

  I lived then in a third-floor walk-up a block from the boardwalk in Venice Beach, paying an inflated rent for the glamour of living in a high-crime neighborhood where half my neighbors were homeless. Free and legal parking spots near the beach were rare in any season, and I considered myself lucky to find a space at the corner, where the Caddy’s rear fender extended less than a foot into the red zone. I knew I couldn’t count on a blind eye from the parking patrols. Applicants for jobs with the city of Los Angeles are screened for compassion and pity, and those found most completely lacking are employed as meter maids. But the alternative, parking a mile inland, meant walking a strange dog through heavy traffic, and I didn’t think he’d appreciate escaping the fire just long enough to get hit by a car. I shut off the engine. The Rott jumped from the backseat as though he’d known all along where we were going and followed me up the stairs. I believe in being honest with all creatures. I didn’t want to give him false hopes. “You can stay tonight,” I said. “But this is only temporary, understand me? Tomorrow I’m taking you to the dog pound.”

  The Rott looked up, worried by my tone of voice.

  “Yes, I know what happens to dogs at the dog pound and I’m sorry that you run the risk of getting gassed a month down the line but you’re not my dog and the world is a cruel place.”

  When the door keyed open he nudged me aside and trotted into the living room. The living room is also the family room, master bedroom, guest quarters, and library. Not counting the bathroom and closet, it’s the only room in the apartment.

  “You can see for yourself the place is barely big enough for one, no way you’d be happy here.”

  The Rott’s truncated tail wagged so hard he spun in circles.

  The answering machine’s message light blinked red on the upended fruit crate that served as my bed table. I pressed the play button. I didn’t expect my mother to call, birthday or not. We hadn’t talked much since I got into trouble with the law. The voice on the machine belonged to the editor at Scandal Times who’d commissioned me to photograph Angela Doubleday. He wanted to know when he could expect photographs of the fire. His was the only message. I switched on my mobile phone just long enough to tap out a succinct SMS: no pics.

  The sound of lapping water echoed from the bathroom. The Rott stood
with his head in the toilet bowl, drinking his fill. “Good,” I said, “I don’t have to worry about getting you a water bowl.” I opened the refrigerator door, intending to cook a hamburger. The Rott poked his head around my leg and sniffed the shelves. I was accustomed to shopping for one. The package of hamburger meat weighed less than a pound. I broke the meat onto a plate. He wolfed it with a toss of his head, then backed away from the plate, eyes quick with expectation. I knew what he was thinking. If he stared at the plate hard enough, maybe barked once or twice, more food would appear. I cracked a half dozen eggs into a bowl. When he finished the eggs, I washed down four tablets of ibuprofen and took a bath. I took the bath fully clothed. When the water soaked loose the grip of dried blood, I cut the jeans free with kitchen scissors. The water stung but three fingers of whiskey took care of that. I stood and tossed the jeans into the corner. A glance at my backside in the bathroom mirror suggested I shouldn’t try wearing a bikini for the next few weeks. Not that I ever did. I should also avoid having sex in situations where I had to remove my clothes. Not that I ever did that either. I dried off, dressed, and took the Rott for a walk on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

  Picket sat a seventh row bench in the bleachers above the outdoor basketball courts, identifiable at a distance by his Air Jordans and thigh-length black leather jacket. Ten players streaked from basket to basket below us, five of them shirtless. I asked, “Who’s up?”

  “Skins by five.” Picket was a broken-down gym rat with a bum knee and connections to every housebreaker and sneak thief west of the San Diego Freeway. “That your dog?”

  “Just for the night.”

  “Don’t like dogs. Thirty-five Nikon, right? Any lenses?”

  A camera was only good for a couple of months in my profession. Surly actors and bodyguards took their toll. “Just the fifty.”

  “Enjoy the sunset,” he said. “Looks like a good one today.”

  That was my exit line. He didn’t like customers hanging around watching the way he conducted his business. I glanced back once, when the Chicano point guard playing shirts, the shortest guy on the court by six inches, skied at the end of a fast break and dunked the ball. Picket nodded once at the play, talking to somebody on his mobile phone.

  I bought a couple of sausages at a beachside stand and took them to the last ridge of dry sand before the beach sloped into the sea. The Rott watched me eat, the expression of sorrow in his eyes deepening with each bite, as though I intentionally starved him. “You’re just a big baby, you know that?” I cut the second sausage into coins with the blade of my Swiss Army knife and fed it to him. The sun plunged through a hellish sky, crimson from the smoke in Malibu. When I returned to the basketball courts, Picket had the Nikon waiting for me in a plastic bag.

  The Rott woke me before dawn. His bark resonated, deep and ferocious, like the bite of a power saw on hardwood. I woke reluctantly, angry at the dog for disturbing me, until I heard the tramp of feet up the stairs. I knew the law stood at the door from the knock, an aggressive pounding meant to scare me senseless. I counted three officers by the sound of their steps, more than a courtesy call but short of a full raid. A booming voice announced the presence of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and ordered me to open the door.

  Nothing in the parole release agreement demanded that I answer the door naked. I opened the closet and pulled a baggy pair of black jeans and a matching T-shirt from the stack. The fist pounded at the door again. The Rott continued to bark as though his jaws were ripping through the floorboards. I dragged him by his collar into the bathroom and shut the door. Maybe he didn’t have any teeth but I didn’t need a strange dog gumming a cop in my living room.

  The three faces on the other side of the door were among the least friendly I’d seen since leaving California Institute for Women. The detective who pushed to the front stuck me with a glare meant to make women weep and small children tremble. His hairstyle scared me more than the scowl. Combed straight up and greased back, it looked like a boomerang stuck to his head. His partner stood respectfully behind, a freckled young woman more beige than black, with a gap between her two front teeth. She looked new at this kind of thing. My parole officer hung at the rear of the landing, examining the polish on her short-heeled black pumps.

  The guy with the bad hair said, “You’re Nina Zero?”

  “My parole officer is standing right behind you. Why don’t you ask her?”

  “Because I’m asking you.”

  “You weren’t smart enough to ask her first?”

  The detective thrust his jaw forward. I thought he was going to bite me. “You want to have this conversation in the back of a patrol car?”

  “If it means keeping you out of my apartment, sure.”

  My parole officer glanced up from the inspection of her shoes with a look that brooked no argument. “You know the rule, Ms. Zero. Please stand away from the door. We need to talk to you.”

  “Anything you say, Ms. Graves.”

  I retreated behind the kitchenette counter and kept my hands in clear view. The rule: a parole officer has the right to enter the parolee’s home or place of work unannounced and at any hour of her choosing. I may have been released from prison, but I wasn’t free. Parole Officer Terry Graves was a 140-pound ball at the end of a very long chain. The detective ordered her to search the apartment. That was another rule: a parole officer is empowered to search the premises of a parolee on demand. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department needed probable cause. Graves opened the closet door without much enthusiasm. She was a midthirties morality junkie who always played me tough but fair. I knew by her deference to the cop in my apartment that he carried the juice to make trouble. I asked to see his ID. He flipped open his badge wallet. His name was Ted Claymore. He was a detective on the LASD arson squad.

  I asked, “How can I help you, sir?”

  He snapped the badge wallet shut and wandered about the room, looking at everything and touching nothing. “What were you doing in the hills above Matador State Beach yesterday?”

  “Trying to get a photograph of Angela Doubleday.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “It’s my job. I’m a paparazza.”

  “What would that pay you, a photo of Doubleday?”

  I walked right into it.

  “Scandal Times paid me two-fifty up front, plus I get reprint rights on the back end. My agent handles reprint rights. A good photo of Doubleday, one clear enough to make out it’s her, might gross more than twenty grand.”

  “Twenty grand.” Claymore unwrapped a stick of peppermint gum, one tinfoil leaf at a time, until the stick lay exposed on the white inner wrapper, then folded the stick in half and popped it into his mouth. The moment he had the gum between his teeth he chewed furiously, as though killing it. “Enough to set a match, isn’t it?” He walked toward me, the sound of his chewing like cracking glass, and when he didn’t slow at a distance of half an arm’s length I backed into the kitchen cabinet. Still, he didn’t stop, not until his face came within three inches of mine. His eyes were shot with blood. When he spoke his breath reeked of mint and venom. “You set the fire and waited for Miss Doubleday. You planned to ambush her with your camera when she ran out of the house. Reclusive film star flees fire. Front-page photo. Twenty grand. Bingo.”

  “Not twenty grand,” I corrected. “Scandal Times gets a cut, then my agent takes half of what remains.”

  He stepped back, glanced down at the fruit-crate end table and the futon beside it, then up to my brick-and-board bookcase. “Doesn’t look like you’ve spent a lot on home decor,” he said. “Having money problems?”

  “I pay my rent on time,” I said.

  “Sure you do. But you like a little spending money too, don’t you? I’ve seen people kill for a nickel. No reason you wouldn’t torch a dozen acres in Malibu for ten, twenty grand.”

  “I volunteered a statement to the deputy yesterday. I have nothing to add to it.”

  “Vol
unteered? A deputy challenged you. You were told to wait. You fled the scene of a crime.”

  “I waited. You didn’t show. I left.”

  “Fleeing the scene of a crime, isn’t that a parole violation?”

  My parole officer glanced over her shoulder, shut the closet doors, and moved to the bookshelf. No comment.

  I said, “You doubt my word, look at the camera your deputy bagged. No way I could take pictures with it.”

  He picked the new Nikon from the breakfast table and pointed the lens at my face. “You carry this as your backup yesterday?”

  I was stuck. I couldn’t admit that I’d bought it after the fire. The camera was hot. Buying a hot camera was a parole violation.

  “Bingo again. You hammered a dent in an old camera, gave yourself a little cut above the eye, claimed you were shot by a mysterious gunman, then planned to take your photos with the backup.”

  “Didn’t happen that way.”

  “I have your word as a murderer on that?”

  “Manslaughterer.” I put the emphasis on the first syllable. The court didn’t convict me of murder. Just manslaughter. The so-called victim ran an organization that shot a friend of mine in the head. They shot him because they were looking for me. Two of the men who hunted me were shot to death—no reliable witnesses—and the third drove his car 60 miles an hour into a gas pump. He lost control of the car because I was chasing him with a Harley and a .38-caliber handgun. The jury decided that was manslaughter. “Tell you what, if the tabloids publish photos of Angela Doubleday fleeing the fire and you see my name on the photo credit, you can come back and arrest me. But that won’t happen.”