So Valenti’s driver was now tailing me around the city. Part of me wanted to confront him and end this dance once and for all. And then part of me wanted to leave Hector in that car as I pretended to paw around the neighborhood shops. It was nearing ninety-five degrees and with no shade, it felt even hotter. I wanted to sweat him out. I decided instead to lose him for good.
My home was to the north, but I didn’t want to lead Hector to it. So I went east on the 10 Freeway. I got off at a random exit and as I rolled down the off-ramp, I glanced in my mirror and saw the black sedan settling in a few cars behind me. I turned right onto the boulevard and went a few blocks before turning off onto one of the smaller streets. I led Hector on a series of alternating turns but I couldn’t seem to lose him. I pulled into a mini shopping mall and tried to shake him in an underground parking lot but there were too many cars. We ended up in an awkward moment of being bumper-to-bumper while a shopper took forever to back out of her parking space. I stared at Hector in the rearview mirror. His sunglassed face stared back. I gave him a quick wave.
Back on the boulevard, I decided I had had enough and with the light already yellow and my car a good fifteen feet from the intersection, I floored it and lurched out just as the light turned red. I looked back and saw Hector stopping behind the car that separated us, and a big smile crossed my lips at the pure satisfaction of having slipped his tail. This big, beautiful smile was later framed up nicely by the traffic camera that caught me running the red and mailed to me along with a three hundred dollar ticket.
I had dinner at a random taco stand and leisurely made my way using surface streets back to Eagle Rock. By the time I arrived in my neighborhood, the sun had slipped down below the horizon and ended yet another mercilessly hot day. I pulled onto my street off Colorado and as I approached my house I noticed the black sedan parked in front of it. The driver’s window was down. Hector had the seat titled back and dozed casually in the cooling evening air.
I leaned on the horn three seconds longer than necessary as I pulled into my garage and huffily made my way into the house. The place was stuffy and had a faint trace of grapefruit.
“You need central air,” a voice called out from the darkness.
NEW HIRE
Meredith Valenti sat on the leather sofa. Her overly-tanned legs showed little contrast to the chocolate-colored couch but the electric green dress certainly did. It was a halter top, single piece and represented the only splash of color in the room.
“I’m sticking,” she complained and stood up to a tearing sound as her skin pulled away from the leather. The dress, whose hemline was high on her thigh when seated, didn’t come down much now that she was standing. She looked about the sparsely-furnished room with casual interest.
“Do you have anything to drink?” she asked, more like she was addressing the maid than someone whose house she had broken into. I ignored her request and asked why she was there. She in turn ignored my question and asked me a new one.
“Do you know why I dress like this?”
“I have no idea,” I told her.
“Because I can.”
“Seems like a good enough reason for me.”
“How old do you think I am?”
“Fifty-nine,” I said, purposely overshooting the year.
“You wish,” she laughed. “But you’re not that far off. I used to be fat, after I had Jeanette. But one day I got serious about my body and I never looked back. I have 1.5% body fat.”
“I’d challenge you but I left my calipers at the office.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” she teased. “I can tell you are just trying to play it cool.”
“Fine,” I said, “take that dress off so I can see what 1.5% body fat body actually looks like.”
She seemed to know that request was coming because before I could finish the request, the dress was crumpled on the floor in an electric green ball. She wore matching bra and panties of sheer, black fabric. There were no discernible tan lines on any part of her body. Every scrap of skin was shaded a warm chestnut, like an antique sideboard. In the irregular light of the room, shadows got hung up in the curves of muscle on her arms and stomach and accentuated them beyond their already overly-pronounced state. In the half-light, she resembled an Olympic swimmer on the men’s 4x100 relay.
“Put your dress back on before Hector sees you.”
“Is he here?” she shrieked.
“He’s sitting out front in his car,” I told her and motioned to the picture window.
Meredith scurried over to the side of the window and peered around the frame. She tugged at the curtain with both hands as she studied the black sedan.
“You better go easy,” I said, “the other drapes are getting jealous.” She didn’t seem to hear me and wrung the fabric tightly into a coiled up piece of rope. “Is this an act or does this guy actually make you nervous?”
“How much do you know about him?” she asked.
“I know about the murder in 1963,” I answered and successfully spoiled whatever surprise she had in store for me.
“You heard about that?”
“Yes,” I replied, “and will you please put your clothes back on. It doesn’t seem like you have any intention of sleeping with me and if that’s the case I’d rather not have to study the goods I know I can’t afford.”
I had no intention of trying to get this transaction transferred to the bedroom, but Meredith seemed like the kind of woman who needed to know she was wanted. She let out a good, honest laugh and gathered her dress up.
“I thought about staying the night,” she said as she zipped up the dress, “but I didn’t think you’d have the stamina.” In a strange way it didn’t sound like she was trying to be hurtful.
“Sit down and tell me why you are here,” I instructed.
“Is he going to come in?” she asked and stared out the window once more.
“Not unless he breaks in, which, after what’s happened today, I don’t see as all that remote a possibility. Now will you answer the question?”
“What was it?” she pretended to forget. I let silence help jog her memory. “It really is hot in here,” she said.
“Come on, lady—”
“I want you to help find my daughter,” she blurted out.
“That’s it? You came all the way here to ask me that?”
“Yes,” she said, “will you help?”
“Of course I’ll help. I’m already working on it.”
“But I need you to work for me.”
“Does it matter whom I work for as long as Jeanette gets home safely?”
“Yes, it does.”
Meredith rambled incoherently as she explained the difference. None of it made any sense but there was something beneath the surface that was being left unsaid and her words walked delicately around it.
“Forgive me if this is too forward,” I interrupted, “but when I first spoke to you regarding your daughter, you didn’t seem to give a damn. What’s changed?”
“She needs our help.”
“Of course she needs our help. She’s been away from home for over a week.”
“No, I think she’s in trouble.”
“Lady—”
“She texted me.”
That got my attention.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“What did she say?”
Meredith pulled it up on her phone and handed it to me. It read, Tell papa to leave me alone.
“Who’s papa?”
“My father. Your employer,” she added.
I went into the contacts folder and pulled up the phone number attached to the text. Then I checked it against the one given me by Valenti.
“What are you doing?” Meredith asked.
“Nothing,” I said as I riffled through the folder of documents.
“It’s her number,” she said icily.
She was right. The numbers matched.
“You didn’t have to ch
eck,” she said looking hurt as she took her phone back and shoved it in her bag.
“I just wanted to be sure.” I gave her a moment to get over it. “What do you think she means by the text?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are there any problems between your father and Jeanette?”
“She was the golden child,” she said with a tinge of animosity.
“I know about the will,” I told her. “Jeanette is the sole beneficiary. Jeanette and that museum, of course.” She seemed impressed at the level of information I had gathered in such a short time. “Did they have a falling out?”
“I think so.”
“What does that mean?”
Meredith explained how, on the day Jeanette disappeared, she first went to her grandfather’s home. She was gone for a short time but when she got back she appeared very upset but didn’t want to talk about it. She locked herself in her room. When Meredith went to check on her several hours later, the room was empty.
“Why didn’t you tell me this when we first spoke?”
“I don’t know.”
“What aren’t you telling me now?”
“Nothing,” she cried. “I just need you to help me get her home.”
“Fine, let’s go to the police and tell them what’s going on. We can use the local news to get the word out.” I grabbed the photo of Valenti and Jeanette. “We take this photo and plaster it on the ten o’clock news. Someone is bound to call in a tip.”
“No, that wouldn’t be appropriate. Dad wouldn’t allow it.”
“She’s your daughter, Mrs. Schwartzman.”
“You won’t understand. And please don’t refer to me by that name. I went back to my maiden name after the divorce.”
“Where does your ex-husband stand in all this?”
“Wherever he needs to stand to hold onto that silly job,” she replied.
“Funny, but I can’t see you two together.”
“Dad hated him,” she responded to the question implied by my comment. “That alone was a good enough reason to marry him.”
“What about this fellow with the goatee?”
“Sami?” she blushed. “Did you guys meet?”
“We had a long conversation. About what, I can’t be sure.”
“That’s Sami. He’s actually very brilliant.”
“Did Jeanette experience any of this brilliance?”
“He’s there for anyone who needs it. I’m helping him open a spiritual center out in Reseda where clients can come and practice in a nurturing environment while seeking artistic self-fulfillment.”
I began to understand and sympathize with the old man’s wariness that his daughter was blowing through his fortune. Sami was probably one of many parasites latching onto the socialite and riding on her currency coattails to carve out their lucrative life endeavors.
Money, as it often is, was starting to feel like the root of the whole thing. Cut off from the main pipeline, Meredith now saw an opportunity to get tapped in again. Her warming up and interest in her daughter coincided with the text she received asking Valenti to ease off. Where there was friction there was opportunity.
“Were you and your father ever close?” I asked bluntly. She seemed like the kind of person who needed blunt questions. She answered this one honestly.
“Once. It was a long time ago. And it was very short-lived.”
I left it at that. There was a deep sadness in the way she said it despite her attempt to matter-of-factly brush it off.
“What about enemies?”
“Me?”
“Or your dad.”
“It’d be quicker to count his friends,” she smiled. “Good old dad never realized that making so many enemies would eventually come back to haunt him.”
Before I could explore what exactly she meant by that comment, Meredith’s phone buzzed and she instinctively picked it up. I saw her read through a text and a wry smile crossed her lips.
“Jeanette?” I asked.
She shook her head and stared at whatever message came in. Her eyes brightened in the glow cast off by the phone.
“Dad is going to flip when he sees this,” she laughed and rose and headed for the front door. Whatever it said, the text was important enough that she didn’t need to talk with me anymore about working for her.
“You’re going out the front door?” I reminded her. In her haste, she had forgotten about Hector sitting in the car outside.
“Of course I am,” she said while standing in the foyer. “He doesn’t control what I do,” she stated and then stridently turned around and slipped out the back slider just like she had when she originally came in.
***
I slept in on Saturday, which for a corporate guy meant seven-thirty. I brewed up a strong pot of coffee and enjoyed the cool morning air coming through the kitchen window. One thing about Los Angeles was that despite some excruciatingly hot days, the nights and mornings were always pleasant. It was overcast, a staple of Southern California summers, and the grey sky hung heavy above. I took my first cup of coffee to the living room and gazed out the front window.
The car was still there. The black roof and hood glistened with morning dew. I could see the outline of Hector’s frame through the passenger window. Sometime in the night he had rolled up the driver’s window, probably from the cold. He shifted in the seat in a futile attempt to discover that one position that didn’t cause his body to ache. It had to have been a very uncomfortable night’s sleep.
I grabbed the carafe and settled in a chair by the window and with my slippered feet propped up on the sill, I watched the car from the comfort of my house over three very hot, very satisfying cups of coffee.
After a leisurely shower, a little bit of time online to pay some bills, one load of whites, and a quick clean-up of the house, I went outside and sat in the back seat of the sedan.
“Okay, let’s talk,” I said and offered him a cup of coffee.
Hector stretched his stiff body awake and rubbed both his eyes with fat knuckles. He took my coffee but didn’t turn around to face me. After a night in the car he looked ten years older than his already-pronounced age.
“We both have jobs to do,” I stated. “We can continue to do this silly little dance that isn’t going to accomplish much of anything, or we can find a way to work together and save each of us a whole lot of grief. You need to keep tabs on me and report back to your boss. I get it. And I need to do my thing and not feel like a goddamn five-year-old with a helicopter parent. So here’s what I propose. You come with me on every meeting. If you want to drive me, so be it. But when I ask you to do something — whatever it is — you do it. If I want you to wait outside, you wait outside. If I need to see someone on my own, you respect that. In return, I promise to keep no secrets from you. And I am going to start this morning. I know about the incident you were involved in back in 1963. I know it was a relative of Gao Li’s and that Valenti might have saved you from doing time. Right now I don’t see any connection to what is going on today so I’m fine leaving that alone.”
There was no reaction. Hector stared into the cup held tightly in his hands. It looked like he was trying to extract every last bit of comfort he could from the warm coffee.
“Do you accept my offer?” I asked.
Hector finished off the coffee in one long, satisfying gulp and handed me the empty cup.
“Okay,” he said.
THE TOURIST TRADE
We met at an organic, single-sourced coffee shop in Silver Lake where they individually brewed you a cup after an interminable discourse on the genealogy of the family that grew the beans we were about to consume. I wasn’t in the mood and cut the barista off mid-speech and ordered the house blend. The guy then went into shock as he watched Hector stir enough sugar into his cup to achieve the viscosity of strawberry preserves.
“You should really try it first,” lamented the young man behind the counter. “It’s not at all as bitter as the coffee you make at
home.”
Hector acknowledged the comment by topping his cup up to the brim with half-and-half. We then joined Sami at a small table on the patio.
“Greetings,” the perpetually-happy man said as he beckoned us to sit down. “I cherish the opportunity to spend time with both of you.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” I told him.
The invitation to meet wasn’t entirely on the level so I needed to play along for a while. I told Sami that I was interested in sitting down and talking over some “heavy issues” but what I really wanted to learn was any inside information he had on Meredith and Jeanette.
Sami eagerly took the bait and suggested we meet at the coffee shop. He sat Indian-style on an already uncomfortable aluminum chair. That, paired with a gingham shirt and flip-flops, presented a very worldly image. True to form, Sami spent most of the time talking about himself rather than trying to understand whatever “issue” was ailing me. He explained his personal “journey” through a rhetorical framework where he was both the interviewer and interviewee. Each question he posed to himself was asked in such a manner that it could only elicit an affirmative response.
“Was I finally ready to greet each day with a sense of purpose?” replayed the internal dialogue he had some years ago. “Yes, I was. Did I want the happiness that had so far eluded me? Yes, I did.” The third time he asked one of these types of questions, this one about it being the time to discover the secret to achieving a fulfilled life, I burst in and answered for him:
“Yes, it was!” I shouted.
Sami smiled knowingly at my enlightenment on his enlightenment. “And so that was how I found my higher purpose,” he announced proudly.
“And what exactly is that purpose?” I asked.
“I uncover one’s artistic potential,” he explained.
“Interesting,” I said because I could think of nothing else to say. In the corporate world, that word was code for “your work has absolutely no merit.”
Sami described with enthusiasm how within every being there is a pool of artistic potential. And that just like the earth’s own springs there are some rare instances where the water naturally bubbles up to the surface. But for the vast majority of us, that pool lies untapped, often deep down inside us. We spend a lifetime never realizing the artist inside all of us.
The Eternal Summer (Chuck Restic Private Investigator Series Book 2) Page 9
