“Why did you assume Jeannette was in trouble?” I asked.
“Because she’s a troubled girl.” I gave her time to elaborate. “She doesn’t seem like a normal child. There’s something very sad about her.” I thought of all the self-help books in her room and the photo with Valenti. “I never could figure out why.”
“When’s the last time you saw her?”
“A few weeks ago,” she said, then added, “maybe. My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
I pressed her for details but the only contact information she offered I already had. I found myself asking her more questions even though there was little to gain from them. With rush hour traffic looming, I should have left long before but I had this overwhelming feeling of guilt and found myself lingering. Our conversation wound its way to bits of her life and eventually to her time with Valenti. She spoke of a different man than the one I knew. He came from very humble beginnings in San Pedro, the son of a pig farmer. “He was shy but eager,” she recalled. “And the hardest worker I ever met. My father fell for him just as hard as I did, after he got over the fact that he had no money. Carl became the son he never had. My poor dad, he fed us for most of those years.” Sheila’s father supported them in all facets and even bankrolled many of Valenti’s early business ventures, all of which flopped. She spoke of their financial struggles and each recollection tasted a little sourer than the last. She stopped before she got to the part about the divorce.
“Is that hoodlum still following him around?”
“Who’s that, Mrs. Lansing?”
“That Chicano character,” she replied.
I looked over the edge of the balcony at Hector who stood by the car in the parking lot below. The late day sun reflected brilliantly on whatever prodigious amount of product he was using in his hair.
“Did Hector work with Mr. Valenti when you knew him?”
“Inseparable,” she scoffed. “Neither of them is any good. Carl’s dirty to the core and Hector’s the towel he uses to keep his hands clean.” Her anger was palpable but it only lasted in that momentary flash. “I apologize. I don’t mean to come across as the scorned woman. Carl and I were together briefly but it didn’t work out, to neither fault of our own. I eventually married a wonderful man who was very good to me,” she told me a little too emphatically, as if trying to convince herself of that fact more than anything. I got the sense that poor Mr. Lansing spent thirty years of marriage feeling like number two. I let her drift back into a place where happier memories outnumbered the sad ones and then thanked her for her time.
“Will you do me a favor?” she asked as I got up to leave.
“If I can.”
“Don’t mention me to Carl. And if you have to, don’t mention all this to him,” she gestured to the shabby surroundings. “I don’t hold any resentment but I do still have my pride.”
I walked out of the lobby into the late day sun and thought about what the woman had told me. It felt like something was being left unsaid, either deliberately or not.
As I crossed the parking lot towards Hector and the town car, I heard the high-pitched whine of a Japanese compact. I turned to my left where a junky two-door with a cracked windshield was bearing down on me. It was no more than twenty feet from me and had no intention of stopping. I heard the car being shifted into a higher gear and I froze. It felt like I was running but my body wasn’t moving. The car then hiccupped as its operator ground the gears like a driver’s education student on his first attempt with a stick shift. The compact hippity-hopped towards me.
The split-second decision was more a five-second deliberation, but I eventually reacted. I unnecessarily dove back towards the lobby even though I could have casually walked over and still made it safely out of the way of the oncoming car. I crumpled onto the asphalt as the car swooshed by, missing me by a wide margin. Pulling myself together, I looked over at Hector. He hadn’t moved. He stood there with his arms crossed and a blank stare. I detected a smile.
The shame for how I reacted hurt more than the scrapes on my hands. I was angry at Hector and I was angry at myself. But I was also angry at the person who tried to run me over.
There was no mistaking him. It was the face in the photograph I got from Jeanette’s room — Nelson Portillo.
ENVIRONMENTALISTS AND TEACHERS
The standstill traffic across the Valley granted me sufficient time to process the events of the last few days. One of the few benefits of the relentless traffic in Los Angeles was it allotted you the quiet and mental lawn to just think.
I had little hope that a call from Jeanette’s father was going to bring her home. The more I learned, the more I felt there was something else driving this saga beyond a mere teenage spat with her parents. A troubled girl sought out a relationship with her grandfather’s ex-wife. It was important enough that her boyfriend felt the need to protect it by trying to run me over. And then there was the curious man driving me all over Los Angeles. I concentrated on the black mass that was the back of his head where even the hairs low on the nape of his neck were dyed. I stared into this void hoping to penetrate the impenetrable but got nothing more than I already knew. He was too comfortable with a knife for my liking and he had a reputation that went back decades. Neither sat well with me.
I pulled my gaze from Hector’s head and realized we had pulled off onto Van Nuys and were heading towards the hill. This was nowhere near where my car was parked in my office downtown.
“Where are we going?” I asked but didn’t receive a reply. As we turned onto Mullholland Drive and began the winding path towards Benedict Canyon, the answer became clear. But I wanted Hector to say it. I wanted him to know that I knew where we were going and wasn’t happy about being summoned like a bellhop. “Where are we going?” I repeated multiple times like a petulant child until I got the answer I wanted.
“Mr. Valenti wants to see you,” he answered dully.
As we passed through the electric gate, I watched groundskeepers take down dozens of “Vote Yes on 57” placards. Someone apparently wanted to take the message on the museum fight straight to Valenti’s door.
The house was as I remembered it. The structure loomed out on the hill’s edge. At night, as when I first saw it, the house resembled an architectural monstrosity. During the day it was just ugly.
Hector parked the sedan on the right edge of the gravel drive and got out. By the way he walked purposefully around the front of the car and into a shaded arbor, it was clear that I was intended to follow him. But I didn’t like being led around like a flunky. Even if I was at Valenti’s beck and call and slavishly followed the money lurking behind those calls, it didn’t mean I had to willfully participate.
I remained in the back seat with my arms crossed defiantly like a child. Like other people with no power, I clung to some vague demand for “respect.” If only I had chosen a better spot to make my stand. The car’s interior grew increasingly hotter with no air conditioning and with the black paint absorbing every last ray of the sun’s light. Beads of sweat dotted my forehead and two separate streams trickled down my back and pooled at my beltline. I began breathing with my mouth open and the air was hot going in and hotter coming out. Dignity came at the cost of heat exhaustion and a dress shirt stained dark with sweat.
Hector mercifully returned before I required a trip to the emergency room.
“Please follow me,” he grumbled reluctantly.
“Thank you,” I said hoarsely, emerging from the sweltering car. Before I could get my second foot out, Hector flicked the door like he was about to slam it closed on me. He was hoping for a flinch and got a gross over-reaction instead. I threw out both arms to stop the door from crushing me and nearly fell out when it never came.
“Where is he?” I snapped but didn’t wait for his answer and stormed off into the arbor.
Valenti sat at small, wrought iron table with an ice bucket chilling a bottle of white wine. He flicked through the LA Times and only put it dow
n a good minute after I had settled into the chair opposite him.
“Why are you wasting time meeting with my ex-wife?” he began. “I’m not paying you to dig into my past.”
“You haven’t paid me anything yet.”
He let that one go.
“What led you to seek her out in the first place?”
I told him about the article I found in Jeanette’s bedroom and how she and Sheila had been meeting regularly for a year and a half. I also explained that it looked like Jeanette had initiated the contact, but for what reason I wasn’t sure. Suddenly feeling pressure to explain my lack of progress in locating his granddaughter, I rambled through all the work I had done so far, but Valenti already knew the details.
“If you want more regular reports,” I told him, “I am glad to provide them. All you have to do is ask.”
“Don’t be hurt,” he said, picking up on the irritation in my voice. “I demand information on everything I do and get it from any source I can. Do not be annoyed by Hector. He’s only doing what I ask of him. He’s there to help you.”
“Help? Or watch my every move?”
“Maybe both.”
“Do you trust this guy?” I asked.
“With my life,” he stated firmly.
It was clear Hector was giving a blow-by-blow account of the work, or lack thereof, to Valenti. I was curious how detailed those reports were.
“Did he tell you about the encounter with the brother of Jeanette’s boyfriend, the one who collected the money?”
“He told me you didn’t get your hands dirty,” he countered.
“Your ‘driver’ looks pretty comfortable with a switchblade in his hands. It’s a curious trait for someone who just needs to wait outside buildings while you have meetings.”
“Yes, he has some rather unique and valuable skills.” Valenti folded the newspaper and placed it on the empty seat next to him. The action signified he was finished with the topic of his driver and wanted to move onto something else, the real reason he summoned me to his canyon-top retreat. “What else did my ex-wife have to say?” he asked casually.
“She didn’t tell me too much,” I replied. I didn’t want Valenti to know what she told me about his past but I also didn’t want him to think that she told me nothing. He got the message.
“But she told you something.”
For one of the few times in the relationship, I felt like I held the trump card. This card featured a young Valenti in overalls picking up table scraps to feed a swine business. I imagined him in the pens with the beasts, stomping through the mud and pig refuse, and having that odor which somehow gets into your skin and can’t be washed off with soap no matter how hard you scrub. With his manicured nails and silk ties and perfectly chilled bottles of Sancerre I was sure it was an image he’d prefer was relegated to the deep recesses of memories euphemistically known as the “early years.”
“Of course she told you about the pigs,” he smiled.
And the trump card was summarily plucked from my fingers.
“What pigs?” I played dumb, but he saw through it.
“Yes, I see she did. She never understood it. She and that milquetoast Orange County crew never had to taste a struggle.” I recalled the dusty balcony at the convalescent home and thought she may finally be tasting that struggle after all, though this one was against the onslaught of old age where there was no happy ending no matter how long you held out.
“I built this off people’s trash,” he said, admiring the sweeping views of the canyon and beyond. He was leaving out the three failed business ventures funded by his former father-in-law. Success stories were often written long after the fact. With time, the brain got the distance it needed to self-select the events that led to those grand accomplishments. Distance also allowed one to conveniently forget the numerous failures that somehow didn’t quite fit into the narrative.
“Who is the beneficiary of your estate?” I asked brazenly. I wasn’t in the mood for an acceptance speech and the details of his estate might play a role in his granddaughter’s disappearance.
“That’s not any of your concern,” he shot back.
“It’s okay, I know enough to get the big picture. I know The Barnacle is out and that there will be a foundation for the art. And by the way your daughter spoke, it sounds like she’s none too pleased about future finances. Is it all going to your granddaughter?”
Valenti stared at me with a mixture of contempt and admiration; he was impressed that I knew the details about his affairs but he was angry that I knew so much.
“For a beaten man you have quite a chip on your shoulder.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“And I’m not going to,” he replied.
“Fair enough,” I said. “But it might play a role in your granddaughter’s disappearance.”
He studied the bottle and even spoke directly to it.
“Why do you say that?” he asked softly.
“Doesn’t money always play a role?”
He chewed on that. We were finally singing off the same hymnal.
“Jeanette and the museum, of course, are the sole beneficiaries.”
“I imagine that at some point your daughter and perhaps others were to receive a share?”
“You are correct in that assumption.”
“When did that change?” I asked.
“Recently.”
“How recent?”
“Last month,” he answered.
That seemed to coincide with the time that Jeanette disappeared.
“Who knew that you changed your will?”
“My former son-in-law,” he smiled.
“But he’s known he’s been out for a while now.”
“Correct.”
“What about your daughter?”
A long pause.
“Yes.”
“And Jeanette?”
He shook his head. It was information that he didn’t have to share but felt compelled to.
“May I ask if there was a reason that precipitated the change in beneficiaries?”
“Because I’m trying to break the cycle,” he answered mysteriously.
“Which cycle is that?” I probed.
“The cycle of wealth.”
“You’re going to have to help me out, Mr. Valenti. I am not familiar with that one, for obvious reasons.”
“Everything is cyclical,” he began, “including wealth. The American fortune undergoes a lifespan very similar to that of the four seasons.” The passion in which he elaborated on his theory told me he had spent a good deal of time thinking about it. Spring was apparently the season of accumulation. There, the entrepreneur rose up out of anonymity and amassed a fortune from nothing. He was the risk-taker of a unique sort for he truly had nothing to lose — monetarily, that is. He risked more fundamental things — ethics, pride, values — in a bid to grow the money at all costs. For a brief moment, I began to sympathize with the old man for no other reason than the fact that he was being honest with all its uncompromising details. “I broke many men,” he said with neither pleasure nor regret. There was no pretense in the way he described his rise. That’s just what one did.
“Summer is why you do this nasty work,” he went on. “Your children have been elevated to a social status that you were never able to get. Sure, towards the end I can buy my way into the neighborhoods and country clubs but to the people there, I’m always the outsider. My children, however, were born into that class,” he said with pride. Summer was the full embracement of wealth and all it afforded you. The second generation was catapulted into a world of professionalism and prominence. They became the doctors and lawyers and politicians of our times, influencing society through both work and charity, and still enjoying all the comforts that massive wealth afforded them. “It should go on forever,” he dreamed.
“Why doesn’t it?”
“Because the third generation, my children’s children, get flabby with the wealth
,” Valenti scoffed. “They take it for granted. They are too far removed from the actual creation of wealth to see what it took to amass it. And they have that aloofness that comes with entitlement. Environmentalists and social workers and teachers,” he rattled off with the disdain reserved for terminal diseases. “They feel the need to pay for the past sins that got them to this spot. But they don’t realize that I committed all those sins so they wouldn’t have to!”
I could guess wealth’s final stage, winter. The fortune has not been tended to for some time. The erosion of capital worsens exponentially and is now hurtling down a certain course where the only end is some dark and cold day in late February when it’s all over. The money is gone and the only thing that remains is the once-glorious name attached to it.
“And they never see it coming,” Valenti explained. This self-absorbed generation put half-hearted attempts into careers at screenwriting and poetry. “They’re too dumb to see the drama unfolding before their very eyes,” said Valenti. “And that’s why I changed my will. Because my daughter is doing her damnedest to speed the whole process up. She’s already leapfrogged one season and the way she is going, she’ll leapfrog two. She always was old for her age,” he reflected after a moment’s pause, “though she’s fighting it every step of the way. Do you know she has two trainers? One for each arm.”
He wanted a laugh out of me but got none. Then he seemed to realize the excessive cruelty in his words and took a moment to gather himself. He stared at the sun inching down towards the ocean’s horizon. “Jeanette is my last hope.”
MORNING LECTURE
I made an appearance at work the following day and popped into a few meetings in the morning just to be seen. On conference calls I was sure to be vocal in order to let everyone know I was there. And even though being vocal meant parroting what five other people had already said, it was necessary that I do it in order to keep my visibility at a level appropriate for someone about to interview for the role as head of the department.
Echoing other people’s thoughts was a tried and true strategy in the corporate world. To challenge someone publicly, even if you thought you were right, was always a mistake in this passive-aggressive environment. But to agree with someone even if you fundamentally disagreed with them, made one many allies.
The Eternal Summer (Chuck Restic Private Investigator Series Book 2) Page 6
