A Hard Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  Minh Tam had moved from the patio seat where we left him. I was relieved that he was gone, because at that moment I really didn’t want to talk with him. Later, maybe, but not right then.

  All the way back down the bike path, Guido and I talked about the quality of digitized film, and how easy that process made mixing 35mm footage with VHS footage when it came time to edit. The subtext of the conversation was how far the two of us had come together. As close as the two of us were, though, Guido could never get inside that indefinable thing that exists between me and Mike Flint. No one could.

  We were nearly abreast of the sewer outflow when I saw the Budweiser poster that had been Minh Tam’s door, floating down the river. Tied to it still was the collection of rags and cardboard and the broad green leaves of the two castor bean trees that had been his walls and foundation. All of it tumbling toward the open sea.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Minh Tam pulled off a good disappearing act. The only trace that he had ever called the riverbank his home was a small ring of blackened rocks where he, or someone, had once built a fire. I kicked around the area for a while looking for something he might have left behind in lieu of a forwarding address. But there was nothing to see other than the general weather-beaten detritus that was strewn all along the river.

  “Good-bye, Mr. Myth; hello, plan A.” Guido had a cocky sort of attitude, as if he had won a round. “Killer Babies, a film by Maggie MacGowen.”

  I threw up my hands to signal that I was conceding the round, though I was not, and made my way back up to the top of the bank where Guido waited. As far as I was concerned, Bao Ngo had become plan A. With Minh Tam or without him.

  There were a few missing parts to the story Minh Tam told us, essential parts, that I already knew. Parts I had neglected to share with Guido and would withhold from my executive producer, Lana Howard, until the time was right.

  No filmmaker pretends to be objective about the material in a project. There is, however, a line that should not be crossed between a personal story and blatant self-interest. By searching for Bao Ngo, I already had one toe over the forbidden line, and was casting about for some way to go all the way over without losing face or professional credibility. I needed to find out what Bao Ngo was up to.

  I brushed my hands on my jeans. “We have a meeting with Lana. Better head back to the studio.”

  Guido drove, pushing early rush hour traffic all the way up the 405—the dreaded San Diego Freeway—and over the Sepulveda Pass into the Valley. Endless snaky lines of cars in both directions, everyone getting just about nowhere, trapped into the same commuter ordeal morning and night. A terrible price to pay just to live with good weather, I thought.

  After twenty-five years with LAPD, Mike Flint was desperate to leave the city, any city. I was merely desperate to leave L.A. and its freeways.

  When we arrived at the studio in Burbank, we were late for the meeting I had set up to introduce Lana to Arlo Delgado, a licensed private detective who specializes in finding lost people and ferreting out protected information.

  On our way upstairs, we stopped by my office cubicle to pick up a tape the film library had put together for us, a collection of clips culled from prime-time news broadcasts over the last year. I had ordered the clips as background for several of the segments we were developing and wanted Guido and Lana to see it as soon as possible.

  “You’ll hate this stuff,” I told Guido, passing the tape to him. He only grunted.

  I also collected a handful of messages from Fergie, my red-haired assistant. Most of the calls were work related and nonurgent. I left them to deal with later. Five memos, however, I held on to: My daughter needed money for new dance shoes; Mike Flint was working late; my mother, the human dynamo, had gone to the county arboretum with an old school friend and the two of them were going out to dinner; my ex-husband, Scotty, left a pager number. The last of the calls was from my father.

  Dad never phoned me at work just to say hello, and, anyway, he had called during breakfast only that morning, saving me from the bowl of iron-rich hot oatmeal Mom had set in front of me. I dialed his number in northern California to find out what could be, using his phrase, so all-fired important.

  In May we would celebrate Dad’s seventy-fifth birthday. Mother was a few years younger, both of them still living in the big old house in Berkeley where I grew up. They were healthy and strong, all things considered. Just the same, calls out of the blue made my palms sweat. Besides, I missed them. I missed living in San Francisco where I was only a quick subway ride away in case of emergency.

  Dad’s answering machine kicked on after the third ring. Still feeling uneasy, not knowing why he had called, I left a message and hung up. If there were an emergency, Dad would have called my mother first. If he couldn’t find her, he would have his baby brother, my Uncle Max, track me down. Knowing all of that was small comfort.

  On my way out, I asked Fergie to keep trying my dad and, if she reached him, to forward the call to Lana’s office.

  By the time Guido and I made it upstairs for Lana’s meeting, Arlo Delgado already had his laptop set up on her massive granite conference table, his modem connected to a phone jack, and Lana completely enthralled. We wanted his help finding the missing parents and other family members of some of the kids we were interviewing. We also wanted a peek at their sealed juvenile histories. Abandonment, a family history of drugs, and alcohol were the common links among the baby criminals. The scoop on their histories was essential, but the system froze us out. The need to know was only half of the reason Arlo was there.

  Arlo, paunchy, balding, on the downside of fifty, has charisma. Lana was working her way through divorce number three and feeling unlovable. They were a good pairing. I knew from our producer’s girly-girl posture as she draped around Arlo that I had sent in the right take-over salesman for the deal I wanted to pitch.

  I learned long ago that in the fickle world of network television, the execs need to be constantly sold on projects even after they have signed off on them. The execs are less likely to capriciously cancel a project or interfere in obnoxious ways if they believe they have made creative contributions. The meeting with Arlo was totally fluff, a hand job for Lana to keep her attention from straying.

  I knew that Arlo hoped to charm his way inside as a centerpiece in our film, when Guido and I wanted him for only one purpose, and that was information access. If Arlo appeared in the final cut, he would be seen sitting at his computer for a very few moments, nothing but video wallpaper to front narration about information gathering. No talk from Arlo, just an image. That was the deal we made. He would be paid, and his name would be in the credits. Period.

  The usual one-day pass onto the studio parking lot and lunch in the employee dining room among network stars great and small were not going to satisfy Arlo’s celebrity urge. He told me this fantasy he had about everyone recognizing him, about walking down the street and people saying, “Weren’t you on TV, Mr.?” Wanting a talking part too much left Arlo vulnerable. I was not above taking advantage.

  “We tried to call you from the van,” I said, accepting Arlo’s big hand. “You’d already left your office.”

  “One thing I learned working street patrol with Philly PD.” He smooched the back of my hand. “Never be the last one to a party. Anything special you wanted to tell me?”

  “Just wanted to tell you not to hurry. We were stuck in traffic. I know your time is valuable. Sorry you had to wait.”

  He winked at Lana. “Don’t be sorry on my account.”

  Guido didn’t bother with greetings. He headed straight for the TV system built into the far wall and slipped the tape we had picked up into a VCR. He turned the volume low and ran the tape. Background sound: “Girls, eleven and fourteen, arrested in slaying of elderly neighbor, their longtime friend.” “Six-year-old held in savage beating of infant in crib.” “Family defends accused rapist, age eleven, as outcry grows.” The clips showed, in sequence,
a snapshot of two smiling girls with similarly bad teeth, a sheriff’s deputy carrying a tiny wrapped figure out of a worn-out-looking apartment building, and a skanky woman with uncombed hair, an unfiltered cigarette burning between her fingers as she cursed the system that let her boy down and the neighbors who wanted him locked up.

  At the conference table, Arlo scooted back his chair to make room so Guido and I could watch over his shoulder as he demonstrated his stuff. He smelled of coffee and day-old whiskey, and fresh manly sweat. Lana stood close enough to just breathe him in.

  “Got the social security number? You type it in and, bam.” Arlo smacked the table next to his computer as screen after screen of files scrolled past. “The Life and Times of Mr. Ronald Coffey. It’s so easy, Maggie honey, I can do it anywhere. All I need is an electric outlet and a phone jack. I don’t need an office anymore.

  “See here?” Arlo’s thick thumb tapped the screen. “Mr. Ronald Coffey holds a mortgage on a house at three-zero-uno Spruce Street, Beaverton, Oregon, where his subscriptions to Car and Driver and Playboy are delivered. Same address is listed on the lease for a two-year-old Jeep Cherokee registered with the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  “This is so fascinating.” Lana’s slender hand crept from the back of Arlo’s chair onto his shoulder.

  “Fascinating?” Guido said. “It’s scary as hell.”

  Ronald Coffey’s personal life, including his spotty credit history, poured through the modem connection. As he read, Guido clutched the neck of his shirt as if someone might come along and snatch him naked. I had a similar impulse.

  You’ve had that dream where you’re walking down the street nude, or you find yourself standing in front of all the people at work and you’re wearing nothing but flimsy night-clothes? It seemed to me, watching Mr. Coffey’s life displayed on the computer terminal, that maybe that particular nightmare had come true. We all just might as well walk around naked because none of us has any secrets anymore.

  Right then, I promised to say six Hail Marys for every microphone and camera I had thrust into the face of some poor soul who didn’t want to share his private tragedy or felonious gaffe with a national TV audience. How many times had I held up the press shield, claiming the public’s right to know, when the truth was my story was nothing more than good and juicy dish?

  I said I would ask for atonement. I didn’t say I would stop doing it.

  I crossed my arms protectively across my chest as Coffey’s military history followed his list of unpaid parking fines, a wage garnishment for child support, and the results from a pathology lab: His enlarged prostate showed negative for malignancy. If I were to do a film about privacy in the computer age, the title would be Snatched Naked.

  Moving the cursor to the beginning of the medical records, I said, “This can’t be legal.”

  “Legal, schmegal. That’s for the boys on the city payroll to worry about, not me. I’m private.” Arlo sneered. He never would talk about the circumstances under which he left the Philadelphia Police Department, but I had a feeling they had something to do with not following other people’s rules.

  He said, “To me, whether it’s legit or not hinges on how I use the stuff. It’s not like I’m going to blackmail some guy. Most of the time, all I want to do is find the address of someone who doesn’t want to be found, for someone with a good reason and enough money to buy my services. How I do the job is my business. And I sure as hell don’t give my client more than he needs to know. I don’t want some hothead coming back on me with a lawsuit or a loaded revolver.”

  “A credit report is one thing, but medical records?” Spicy taco grease rose in my throat. “You must need credentials of some sort to get access to this sort of information. It’s protected.”

  “Oh, I got credentials up the butt. I’m licensed here and registered there. You’d be surprised how easy it is. Medical I get because I do collection work; I get the original, itemized bill. But most of the time, I don’t even need a service. See this?” Arlo held up a CD ROM disk. “Contains the numbers from every phone book in the country. You can buy one of these in any computer store.”

  Arlo slipped the CD into the drive, and came up with Ronald Coffey’s Beaverton phone number and address. “I’d say that’s dead bang. You want him, Maggie, go get him. You can even call him and tell him you’re coming.”

  “The daughter he walked out on needs some help. She’s being tried for murdering her mother,” I said. “I doubt Coffey meant to hide from her. But suppose he did. How easy would it be for him to disappear?”

  “Depends.” Arlo absently moved Lana’s hand from his shoulder and pressed it against the side of his neck. “If Coffey lived under an assumed name, never made contact with friends or family, used only cash, didn’t own anything, pay rent, work, have a phone, get sick, use the mails, or file a tax return, then it would be a little tougher. But if that’s what he’s doing, then the law is probably after him, too. In that case, it’s best to give the authorities any data you have and let them do the work.”

  “Cooperation with the law, that’s refreshing advice.” Guido nudged his way past Arlo’s wide shoulders so that he could type in Bao Ngo and several variations, city unknown, and got a screen full of possible phone numbers and addresses. He said, “I don’t have any problem accessing the phone book because that’s already public information. But the rest of it, I don’t know. The police can’t even use the DMV files without authorization. This other stuff, like financial records, they’d need a subpoena. Medical they couldn’t have at all.”

  “That’s why folks hire me.” Arlo stretched. “I got no one to beef me but deadbeat dads and skip artists.”

  I said, “What if all you have to go on is a fairly common name and a twenty-year-old alien identification number?”

  “No social security?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s a tough one, honey.”

  Guido tapped the print icon, and a hard copy page of Bao Ngo addresses and phone numbers emerged from Arlo’s printer.

  Arlo took the page from him. “You want this guy?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Let’s give him a try.”

  There were plenty of Bao Ngos living in America. But none of them had the right age or date of entry.

  I asked, “Can you access alien ID numbers?”

  Arlo shook his head. “Only if there’s a cross-reference with Social Security or IRS files. And we aren’t finding one here. The Immigration people aren’t real helpful, and I can’t get into their database. Best thing, go into the community and ask around. Put an ad in the Vietnamese language papers. You need more than a name to get a good hit.”

  “What’s in a name?” Lana spoke up for the first time. “A rose by any other name …”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s still a rose,” Arlo chuckled. “Your only hope may be if someone recognizes this Bao Ngo’s smell. A whole lot of people change their names when they cross the border. He could be calling himself Becky Thatcher by now.”

  “The hunt is the thing,” I said.

  Guido glanced at the video playing on the far side of the room. A young honor student was denied admission to Harvard when it was revealed that she had been convicted of murdering her abusive alcoholic mother. The story was sadder than hell—she did her time, she got no break—but it was a story already worn out by daytime talk shows. All of the clips on the tape were well-worn territory. Child crime gets a lot of attention.

  When Guido turned to me, I asked, “Was I right?”

  “Yes. I hate it.” He folded the Bao Ngo list and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  “Maggie.” Lana reached for me, oblivious to what Guido had said. Oblivious to everything except her immediate program, namely, Arlo. “How will Arlo’s demonstration scan?”

  “On film? It won’t,” I said. “All we can do is show him sitting at the computer. We can’t hit the information on his screen. There are privacy issues the legal department is wor
ried about.”

  It was time right then to say that I did not intend to film Arlo at all. Clearly, Lana’s interest was in Arlo live, and not in the film’s form or structure. The need to keep Lana’s interest piqued, however, overrode good judgment and any sense of fair play on my part.

  Lana was all mushy over Arlo. She took a few steps back, framed him with her hands, the way a director might, and made a show of imagining Arlo on screen. Behind her back, Guido rolled his eyes when she said, “I see Arlo shot full-face. We’ll pan in over the top of the computer and come in close on that wonderful face.”

  “Get the logo on the back of the computer while you’re going in, Lana,” Guido said, nudging me. “We’ll snag us some product-placement money.”

  “I don’t know.” Arlo suddenly had qualms. “Maybe you should put one of those blue dots over my face like the gal that Kennedy kid raped.”

  “Allegedly raped,” Guido corrected.

  “Whatever.” Arlo winked at me. “I don’t want some allegedly irate deadbeat recognizing my handsome mug and coming after me.”

  “Don’t worry, Arlo,” Lana cooed. “I’m sure you know how to take care of yourself.”

  “You bet I do.” He knew he was being handled. I think he wanted to be handled.

  Lana threw an arm around his shoulders. “Then we have a deal?”

  “A deal.”

  We already had a deal, and Lana knew it. Pointedly, she turned to me. “Where does Mr. Delgado fit into your shooting schedule?”

  “We’ll work something out,” I said. “Arlo, my people will call your people.”

  I make the decisions about who and what I shoot and when I do it. Until Lana decided she liked the scent of Arlo, I had never known her to interfere as long as I was on deadline and close to budget. She certainly never stooped to schedule interviews. I thought her input was a cheap move to make a thirty-second TV star out of some poor guy just so she could ease him out of his trousers. I had a sick feeling, as if I were procuring for her.