They're Watching (2010)

by Gregg Hurwitz

  "Try Star Maps."

  "It still shows his Outpost address," I said. "He's in the bird streets now, above Sunset Plaza."

  He flipped halfheartedly through the script. It seemed he'd zoned out.

  "What do you say?" I pressed. "You think you could dig up an address for me? And nose around on him a little?"

  "Police work?" He raised the script, let it fall back into his lap. "If I was any good, you think I'd be doing this shit?"

  "C'mon. You always know the right moves, who to talk to to get something done. All that LAPD-brotherhood stuff."

  "Going official routes never got anything done, my friend. You do it all unofficially. Call in a favor here, return another there. Especially when you're shooting a movie. You need a street permit, some asshole needs to rent the SWAT chopper, whatever. You're on a deadline." He smirked. "Not like, say, when you're trying to catch a serial rapist."

  I could read his tone, so I said, "And?"

  "A tired dog like me, I only got so many favors. I gotta spend 'em for rent."

  I stood, drained the beer, dropped it on the lawn beside the others. "Okay, thanks anyway, Punch."

  I went back to my car. When I closed the door, he was at the window. "When did you start givin' up easy?" He jerked his head toward the house.

  I got back out and followed him across the front yard and into the kitchen. Dirty dishes, a dripping faucet, and a trash can overstuffed with bent pizza boxes. A strip-club magnet pinned a child's drawing to the fridge. A crayon depiction, nearly desperate in its cheer, portrayed a family of three, all stick figures, big heads, and oversize smiles. The requisite sun in the corner seemed the single spot of color in the dingy room. I couldn't blame Punch for having retreated to the front lawn.

  I looked for somewhere to sit, but the sole chair was piled with old newspapers. Punch poked around for a while before producing a pen. He tugged the drawing off the fridge, the magnet popping off and rolling beneath the table. "You said he's on the bird streets?" he asked.

  "Blue Jay or Oriole, maybe."

  "An asshole like Conner probably put title of his new house in the name of a living trust or whatever to make him harder to track down. But someone always fucks up. DirecTV or DMV registration or something goes in his name. Wait for me outside."

  I went out and sat in his lawn chair, wondering what he thought about when he contemplated the same view. Finally he emerged.

  With great ceremony he handed me the crayon drawing, an address now scrawled on the reverse. He snickered. "Nice part of town your boy took up in." He waved me out of his chair. "I'll ask around a bit about Conner, see if anything comes back."

  Something about actually having the address made me uneasy. As a movie star, Keith Conner seemed like fair game, but of course that was bullshit. Digging into his life was invasive. And the past two days had retaught me the meaning of the word. My actions--and my motives--gave me sudden pause. But I folded the paper into my pocket anyway. "Thanks, Punch."

  He waved me off.

  I took a few steps to the car, then turned. "Why'd you help me out? I mean, with everything you were saying about calling in favors?"

  He rubbed his eyes, hard, digging with his thumb and forefinger. When he looked up, they were more bloodshot than before. "When I had the kid in the minute and a half before I fucked it all up and Judy lowered the boom on custody, that time he got jammed up in school? You helped him. That book report."

  "It was nothing."

  "Not to him it wasn't." He trudged back to his lawn chair.

  When I pulled out, he was just sitting there motionless, watching the facade of his house.

  My apprehension grew on my way home, rising with the altitude as I crawled up Roscomare in evening traffic. All the lights were off at the Millers'. I pulled in to the garage next to Ari's white pickup, then went back and checked the mailbox--lots of bills, but no DVD.

  I let go a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. Don and Martinique were minding their own business, our mailbox was clear, and all was momentarily right with the world.

  When I opened the front door, an alarm screeched through the house. I started, dropping my briefcase, papers sliding out across the floor. A door shoved open upstairs, and a moment later Ariana thumped down the stairs, wielding a badminton racket. Taking note of me, she exhaled, then jabbed at the keypad by the banister. The alarm silenced.

  I said, "Lawn party?"

  "It was the first thing I could grab in the closet."

  "There's a baseball bat in the corner. A tennis racket. But badminton? What were you gonna do, pelt the intruder with birdies?"

  "Yeah, and then he'd slip on your papers."

  We took a moment to smirk at our feeble reactions.

  "The new code is 27093," she said. "The new keys are in the drawer."

  Tonight, if I wanted to check the property, I'd have to remember to turn off the alarm before going outside. We stood there looking at each other, me with papers across my shoes, her with a badminton racket at her side. Suddenly awkward.

  "Okay," I said cautiously. Her implicit ultimatum from last night hung between us, clogging the air. I knew I had to say something, but I just couldn't land on it. "Well, good night," I offered lamely.

  "Good night."

  We regarded each other some more, not sure what to do. In a way the strained politeness was even worse than the standoff atmosphere that we'd been inhabiting these past months.

  Defeated, Ari forced a smile. It trembled at the edges. "Want me to leave you the racket?"

  "Given the size of his hands, I think it would just aggravate him."

  She paused by the banister and punched in the alarm code to rearm the system. A moment later, through the open bedroom door, I could hear rerun-reliable Bob Newhart.

  Even after the door closed, I stood at the bottom of the dark stairs, looking up.

  Chapter 14

  I slept fitfully on the couch again, rising for good when the morning light once more accented the futility of semi-sheer curtains. Swiftly, I got up and raced to the front of the house, anxious to see if another DVD had been folded into our morning paper. I yanked the door open, forgetting about the alarm until I heard the blare of it in my skull. Racing back to the pad, I turned it off. Ariana was at the top of the stairs, hand pressed to her chest, breathing hard.

  "Sorry. Just me. I was checking outside for . . ."

  "Is there one?"

  "I don't know. Hang on." The front door was still open. I jogged across to retrieve the newspaper and searched it, dropping rumpled sections all over the foyer. "No."

  "Okay," she said. "Okay. Maybe this whole thing'll just blow over." She reached out, knocked drywall superstitiously.

  I had my doubts, but so did she. No need to say it.

  We moved through the morning routine on autopilot, tamping down panic, doing our best not to pause and acknowledge the threat hanging over us. Shower, coffee, brief polite exchanges, mariposa from the greenhouse. Orange again. I wondered what to make of that.

  After checking my pseudo-security footage of the porch and walk, then repositioning the camcorder in the lady palm, I hurried out, eager to keep moving. Once again I stood in the garage, the slanted sheet of sunlight through the open door capturing the trunk of my car, the wedding dress peering out at me through the clear side of the plastic bin. For the first morning in recent memory, I didn't want to sneak around to watch my wife. It took me a moment to figure out I was afraid. Afraid that she'd be crying, and maybe more afraid that she wouldn't.

  I climbed into the Camry, reversed out into the driveway. Cars whizzed behind me, the morning commute well under way. On bad days it could take me five minutes to back out onto Roscomare. I tapped the wheel impatiently; I had a full schedule of classes in front of me. And the piece of paper on the passenger seat had Keith Conner's address scrawled on it in Punch's hand.

  Movement next door caught my attention. Don strolling to his driveway-parked Range Rover, talking into a
Bluetooth earpiece. He was focused on his conversation, gesturing, as if that would help drive home his point. A moment later Martinique came running after him with his forgotten laptop carrier. She wore workout clothes, spandex to show off the new body. It was practically her uniform; the woman worked out four hours a day. Don paused to take the laptop. She leaned forward to kiss him good-bye, but he'd already turned to climb into his truck. He pulled out, taking advantage of a break in traffic I'd been too distracted to notice. Martinique stood perfectly still in the driveway, not looking after him, not heading back to the house. Her face was surgery smooth, expressionless. Her eyes moved, just slightly, focusing on me, and I could tell that she knew I'd watched what had just transpired. She lowered her head and walked briskly inside.

  I sat for a long time, the beat-up dashboard looking back at me. My eyes pulled again to the paper in the passenger seat with the address. I flipped it over so Punch's kid's crayon drawing was faceup. A big, sloppy sun, stick figures holding hands. A heartbreaking picture, primitive and wistful.

  I put the car in park, climbed out. When I came in, Ariana was sitting where she always sat when I left, on the arm of the couch. She looked surprised.

  I said, "I have spent six weeks trying to find any way not to be in love with you."

  Her mouth came slightly ajar. She lifted a shaking hand, set her mug down on the coffee table. "Any luck?"

  "None. I'm fucked."

  We faced each other across the length of the room. I felt something budge in my chest, emotion shifting, the logjam starting to break up.

  She swallowed hard, looked away. Her mouth was quivering like it wanted to smile and cry at the same time. "So where's that leave us?" she asked.

  "Together."

  She smiled, then her mouth bent down, and then she wiped her cheeks and looked away again. We nodded at each other, almost shyly, and I withdrew back through the door to the garage.

  Chapter 15

  I brought Julianne a Starbucks from across the street, which I held before me like a sacrificial offering as I entered the faculty lounge. She and Marcello sat facing each other, but at different tables to maintain the pretense that they were working.

  She regarded me warily. "What do you want?"

  "Cover my afternoon classes."

  "I can't. I don't know how to write a screenplay."

  "Right. You're the only person in Greater Los Angeles who actually knows she doesn't know how to write a screenplay. You're already overqualified."

  "Why can't you teach?" Julianne said.

  "I have to look into some things."

  "You're gonna have to do better than that."

  "I'm going to talk to Keith."

  "Conner? At home? You have his address?" She clasped her hands with excitement, a girlish gesture that looked about as natural as a Band-Aid on Clint Eastwood.

  "Not you, too," I said.

  "He is sort of dishy," Marcello offered.

  "Perfidy everywhere."

  "Why don't you just go see him after work?" Julianne said.

  "I have to get right home."

  "Home?" she said. "Home? To your beautiful wife?"

  "To my beautiful wife."

  Marcello, in monotone: "Halle-fuckin'-lujah."

  "That's all I get?"

  "ON FEBRUARY"--Marcello checked his watch--"ELEVENTH, PATRICK DAVIS DISCOVERS THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT JOURNEY . . . IS THE ONE THAT TAKES YOU HOME."

  "That's more like it." I waved the Starbucks cup in Julianne's direction, letting her attack-dog nose pick up the scent.

  She eyed the cup. "Gingerbread latte?"

  I said, "Peppermint"--she sagged a little with desire--"mocha." Her head drooped wantonly. I walked over and extended the cup. She took it.

  I heard her slurping contentedly as I walked out. Classes were in session, the halls empty. My footsteps seemed unnaturally loud without bodies there to absorb the echoes. As I went by each classroom, the voice of the teacher inside rose and fell like the whine of a passing car. Despite the full classrooms all around, or perhaps because of them, the preposterously long hall felt desolate.

  There was a clap like a gunshot, and I jumped, my files spilling all over the floor. Wheeling around in a panic, I saw that the noise had been nothing more than a kid dropping his binder, which had struck the tile flat on its side. I mock-grabbed my chest and said, too loudly, "You scared me."

  I'd intended it lightly, but it had come out angry.

  The student, crouched over his binder, glanced up lethargically. "Relax, dude."

  His tone got under my skin. I said, "Hold on to your stuff better, dude."

  Two girls paused in the intersecting hall, rubbernecking, then scurried away when I glanced at them. A few students had collected at the far end also, by the stairwell. I was breathing hard from the scare, still, and from my reaction now. I knew I was handling this poorly, but my blood was up and I couldn't find my composure.

  The kid nodded at my spilled papers. "You, too"--he turned to walk away, coughing into a fist to mask his last word--"asshole."

  "What the hell did you just say to me?" My words rang down the corridor.

  A teacher I vaguely recognized stuck her head through the doorway of the nearest classroom. Lines of disapproval notched her forehead between her eyebrows. I stared her back into her classroom, and when I refocused, the offending student had vanished into the stairwell. The others milled and gestured.

  Embarrassed, I gathered my papers swiftly and left.

  Chapter 16

  Vast iron gates greeted me a mere two steps from the curb. A ten-foot stone wall ran the length of the property line. The only point of access was a call box with a button, mounted on a pillar beside the gate.

  Though it was three o'clock--and February--the cold had given way to a hot snap, the sun harsh off the concrete. I was supposed to be in class discussing dialogue, not chasing down movie-star litigants.

  Before I could push the call button, a screech jerked me around--a door rolling back on a beat-up white van at the opposite curb. The clicking of a high-speed lens issued from the dark interior. I froze, nailed to the pavement. Leading with a giant camera, a man emerged and walked deliberately toward me, snapping pictures as he came. He wore a black zipped hoodie pulled up so the camera blocked out his face; there was just a lens protruding from the hood like a wolf snout. I could see the dark amoeba of my reflection in the curved glass. My thoughts revved as he neared, but I was caught off guard, my reaction lagging.

  Just when I'd balled my hand into a fist, the giant zoom lens lowered to reveal a sallow face. "Oh," he said, disappointed. "You're not anybody."

  He'd mistaken my immobilization for apathy. "How'd you know?"

  "Because you don't give a shit if I take your picture."

  I took in his scraggly appearance, the multipocketed khaki shorts weighed down with gear, and finally put it together. "National Enquirer?" I asked.

  "Freelance. Paparazzi market's gotten tough. Have to sell where you can."

  "Conner's a big catch now, is he?"

  "His price has gone up. Hype over the upcoming movie, you know, and the paternity suit."

  "I hadn't heard."

  "Some club skank. She threw up on Nicky Hilton, made her stock rise."

  "Ah. Got herself a media profile."

  "They're paying twenty grand for a clear shot of Conner doing something embarrassing. Nothing like a sleaze-success cocktail to stoke a bidding war."

  "Cocktails that stoke. I could use one."

  He looked at me conspiratorially. "You a friend a' his?"

  "Can't stand him, actually."

  "Yeah, he's a dickhead. Kneed me in the nuts outside Dan Tana's. Lawsuit pending."

  "Good luck with that."

  "Gotta get them to hit you, not the other way around." He eyed me knowingly. "He'll settle."

  I hit the button. Asian chimes. The crackle of static told me the line had gone live, though no one said anything. I leaned toward the
speaker. "It's Patrick Davis. Please tell Keith I need to talk to him."

  The guy said, "That's your game plan for getting inside?"

  The gates buzzed. I slipped through. He tried to follow, but I stood in the gap. "Sorry. You need your own game plan."

  He shrugged. Then he flicked an ivory card from his wallet: Joe Vente. Below, a phone number. That was it.

  I tilted it back at him. "Spartan."

  "Call me if you want to sell out Conner sometime."

  "Will do." I pulled the gate shut, making sure the lock clicked.

  The Spanish Colonial Revival was spread out with no regard for the price of L.A. real estate. To my left, the row of garage doors was raised, presumably to vent the heat. Revealed inside were two electric coupes, plugged in, three hybrids, and various makes of alternative-fuel cars. A private fleet for conservation; the more you spend, the more you save. The front door, sized for a T-Rex, wobbled open. A waif, made waifier by the giant doorway, waited for me, holding a clipboard. She had impossibly pale skin, a neck that looked like she'd stretched with tribal rings, and a model's expression of perennial boredom.

  "Mr. Conner is out back. Follow me, please."

  She led me across a house-size foyer and through a sitting room and a set of double doors open to the expansive backyard. Stopping at the threshold, she waved me on. Maybe she'd ignite in direct sunlight.

  Keith bobbed on a yellow inner tube in the middle of the pool, a black-bottomed monstrosity interrupted by a confusion of waterfalls, fountains, and palm trees sprouting from island planters. He said, "Hi, asshat," and started paddling in. Then he shouted past me, "Bree, the pool bar's out of flaxseed chips. Think you can get them restocked?"

  The waif jotted a note on her clipboard and disappeared.

  Two rottweilers frolicked on the far lawn, all fangs and cords of saliva. Knotted ropes--of course--abounded. To my right, a woman reclined on a teak deck chair, filling out a yellow one-piece and reading a magazine. Her blond hair, turned almost white by the sun, tumbled down around her face in a Veronica Lake peekaboo. She looked far too refined for the company, and too old--she was at least thirty.