by Robert Ellis
A shiny red Hummer …
Cava cringed as he played back the night in his head. He didn’t eat sugared foods, and had no idea how he acquired the cereal or drove to the airport. All he knew was that the experience, detailed on the label of his prescription as a possible side effect, had fucking become true. And nothing about it did much for his confidence. Not even the toy he won in the box of cereal.
He felt his body shiver with anxiety and tried to focus on the traffic. The here and now.
He could see Fontaine’s Mercedes rolling down the ramp beneath his building into the parking garage—the men in the SUV passing their client and continuing east toward Hollywood. Cava followed the Explorer for two more blocks, guessing that the bodyguards wouldn’t be back until lunch or even late this afternoon. When he spotted the pharmacy up ahead, he watched the Explorer disappear in traffic and found a place to park.
Before his meltdown last night, Cava had written two new prescriptions for himself and called them in. He had seen the ads on TV five or six times during the news broadcast. As a result, he felt certain that he was suffering from restless leg syndrome and an untimely bout with chronic dry eyes. The more he thought it over, the more aware he became of his symptoms. If he hadn’t been lucky enough to see the ads, he probably wouldn’t have even noticed the discomfort. He could have easily been plagued with both conditions for months or years, perhaps the rest of his life. Thank God for TV.
He walked to the back of the store and was pleased when the pharmacist told him that his two new prescriptions were ready, along with his seventeen refills. Even better, his one-month supply of meds came in at less than a grand. He took the news as a good sign, then returned to the SRX Crossover and dug out his daily planner.
In the back of the book he kept a master list of the medications he used and their possible side effects. As he added the new drugs to his list, the eye drops didn’t even appear noteworthy. He could handle burning sensations, redness, discharge, eye pain, itching, and stinging. Although he wasn’t too crazy about foreign body sensations or blurred vision, these were only listed as possible side effects and he hoped that he would do better than last night and beat the odds. But when he read the list for restless-leg syndrome, things became more tricky and he paged through his primary medications looking for a conflict. According to the pharmaceutical company, there was a chance the drug could make him feel faint, or dizzy, or even sweaty if he stood up. He could become nauseous and possibly vomit, or fall asleep in unlikely places. If he began to experience new or increased gambling, sexual, or other intense urges, it was recommended that he call his healthcare professional immediately.
Cava stared at that last one for a long time, wondering what they meant by other intense urges. Whether or not the intense urges he already experienced on a daily basis could be considered other. And if not, whether they were listed in the fine print or posted on the pharmaceutical company’s Web site.
After careful consideration and review he decided that the risk was worth the benefit just like they said on TV.
Ripping open the kit, he skimmed through the dosing instructions, tossed a pill into his mouth and knocked it down with a sip of green tea. Then he opened the dry eye medication, tilted his head back, administered a single drop in each eye, and blinked.
He let out a deep sigh, filling his lungs with air and waiting for the grim reaper to knock on his door. After five long minutes of nothing, he made a mental inventory of his body, wiggled his toes and noticed that those funny sensations in his legs were gone. He sat up and leaned into the rearview mirror. His eyes felt cool and clean, almost as if he’d just received a new set. Even more important, his mind had cleared. When he examined his hands, they weren’t rock steady or even kill steady. But the tremors appeared nearly imperceptible.
He might not be the road warrior anymore, or even the skilled surgeon who showed so much promise at med school. But he was in the zone again. On the diet and feeling good again. Locked and loaded and walking away from the wreckage like an action figure with no back door and bullet proof skin.
Cava gazed through the wrought iron gate at Fontaine’s house, calculating the risks before making his move. It was still only 7:30 a.m. Because the breakin would be performed in broad daylight, entering the property from the golf course around back wasn’t a viable option. The only way in was to drive up to the house in his SRX like he belonged there. Get out in his suit and tie, and walk to the back door without hesitation. That meant climbing the six-foot wall and opening the gate manually. About thirty seconds of exposing himself to actual danger.
He looked through the gate and spotted the control box tucked away in the garden. Then he turned and scoped out the neighborhood. Directly across the street was the empty lot with the wall and that pile of high-end dirt no one had stolen yet. To the left and right, the mansions were barricaded by fences, dense shrubs, and trees with no real view from the street unless you were sitting on the upper-deck of that shitty tour bus.
The risk was minimal.
Cava climbed out of the car. Lifting himself onto the wall, he dropped down on the other side and found the control box. While most security gates had a lever on the outside for easy access, this one was on the inside of the unit and painted a bright orange. Cava flipped the switch and watched the gate open, then pushed it back. Returning to the SRX, he glided up the drive and pulled in front of the guest house.
He waited a moment, letting that imaginary target between his shoulder blades fade into oblivion. The one that he had worn on his back while overseas. The gate was closing behind him and he could feel a certain rush. When he got out of the car, he scanned the property and realized his good fortune. Fontaine’s neighbors couldn’t see him through the shrubbery. Their view was limited to the lower terrace and the tables where he had seen the bodyguards smoking cigarettes Saturday afternoon. It didn’t seem to include the pool or hot tub or the terrace and gardens running against the back of the house.
Cava was invisible. He owned the place now.
He climbed the steps, moving swiftly across the flagstone and peering through the glass door into the kitchen. His good luck held as he spotted the alarm on the inside wall, eyed the control panel, and noticed that the system hadn’t been armed. Even better, the doorknob looked as if it was as old as the house. An ornamental brass number that rattled when Cava shook it.
Raising his foot, he gave the door a decent kick and watched it pop open. It had been easy. Almost too easy. As he stepped inside, he examined the doorjamb and wondered why Fontaine hadn’t thrown the deadbolt. From where Cava stood it looked like the man had a lot to protect. Still, it was another good omen. There was no visible damage. No sign of forced entry. And no sirens approaching in the distance. If anyone stopped by, he could talk his way out of it.
But that didn’t mean his heart wasn’t pounding.
He closed the door and spent five minutes perusing the kitchen. The appliances appeared new and expensive, the room extraordinarily well equipped. He noted the eight-burner stove with the built-in grill. The crystal glassware in the cabinets and the fine china. But when he got to the knife drawer, he stopped and stared at the contents for a long time. The blades were dull and this surprised him. No matter what he might think of Fontaine, no matter what he might have been told by others, the man had a reputation as an experienced surgeon. Yet, his knives were old and didn’t look as if they were well maintained. He even kept an electric knife in the drawer—what amounted to a wood saw with a safety switch—as if he had no idea or training and couldn’t carve a piece of meat without electricity.
Cava shrugged it off, exiting the room and cruising through the first floor with little interest. Except for that drawer, everything in the house was rich and luxurious. And it was more than obvious that the Beverly Hills doctor enjoyed living large and showing off to his friends. He looked at the art on the walls. A collection of Fabergé eggs in a display case. A small but well-laid-out gym with its own entr
ance to the hot tub on the rear terrace. When he reached the den, he glanced at the Christmas tree beside the TV but didn’t see a desk.
Disappointed, he hurried up the circular staircase, legged it down the hall, and found the doctor’s desk in a study overlooking the pool and a view of the golf course. It was a long narrow room with a gas-burning fireplace and built-in bookshelves lining the walls. A comfortable room, if it hadn’t been so chilly, with a couch, two reading chairs, and a row of casement windows providing plenty of natural light.
But the key word was privacy. The room had the look and feel of a place reserved for Fontaine, and only Fontaine, and this was what Cava had been hoping for.
He suddenly became aware of his heart pounding again. The need to not tempt the Fates and get out of the house as quickly as he could. After checking his watch, he sat down at the desk and rifled through the doctor’s papers. He found a handful of patient files, along with a three-ring binder that contained the results from a research project on asthmatic children conducted over the past few years.
He set the binder down, his eyes sweeping across the bookshelves. What he needed to find was a reason worth killing for. Some verification that Fontaine deserved the title as the world’s next dead man. He could feel it. Every instinct told him that Fontaine deserved his fate. But this time he needed to see it with his own eyes and not rely on the tainted words of others. He needed to find it. A tried and true reason good enough to stand the test of time, not something that would fall apart in a few days and become a guilt engine, following him to that beach in Coronaville where he knew Jennifer McBride’s ghost was already waiting for him on the next chaise longue. Batting her pretty brown eyes and haunting him for the rest of his days.
He slid open the top desk drawer, spotting Fontaine’s checkbook beside a stack of unpaid bills, and another, thicker pile that looked like receipts. He thumbed through the bills first. When he flipped to an invoice from Hollywood Shadows, Inc., he pulled the slip of paper out and grinned. It was an estimate from the security firm Fontaine had hired to protect his life. And just as Cava had guessed, Hollywood Shadows hadn’t been smart enough to ask for their money up front. According to the estimate, all they wanted was a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar deposit. A down payment made in good faith that occurred last Saturday—the notation written by hand and initialed by one of the losers following Fontaine around.
But even better, it looked like Fontaine had signed up for the economy plan on the nowhere network. The two guys in the Explorer were part-timers. Fontaine feared for his life, yet was too cheap to buy the whole day.
The thought lingered. It all felt good. Reaching for the checkbook, he paged through the register, found a pad and pen, and started to write things down. The only deposits came from Fontaine’s practice and were made every other week. By all appearances he was doing better than well with an annual salary just over a million dollars. After taxes the doctor probably cleared six or seven hundred thousand. More than enough money to pay for his toys and impress his friends, or even buy a decent set of knives, upgrade the windows in the house, and hire a pair of real bodyguards.
But as Cava began to focus on the money going out, he sensed that maybe a million in gross pay wasn’t enough to cover the man’s heavy duty lifestyle. It looked like Fontaine was taking a lot of vacation time. That he was spending everything he made with little or no margin for error. Even worse, it looked like Fontaine was spending everything he made on himself.
The revelation smelled like pay dirt. His first impression of the man had been the right one.
He pulled out the stack of receipts as if they were a set of X-rays and tilted them into the window light. He was seeing it now. Everything was beginning to jell. Fontaine was paying for too many things with cash. That eight-burner stove with the built-in grill in the kitchen. A new treadmill for his gym. Two paintings from a gallery in West Hollywood. When Cava checked the dates on the receipts against the check register, there was no record of any withdrawals from his account.
Pay dirt.
If the purchases had been legit, Fontaine would have used a credit card or written a check. Instead, every single invoice in the stack was marked
PAID IN CASH.
Fontaine was supplementing his bullshit world with free money. He wasn’t a nickel and dimer. It was all about greed and living in the material world. And all of a sudden part two of Cava’s three-part Hollywood deal was righteous.
He looked at his hands. The tremors had vanished. He looked at them for a long time, turning them in the window light. Everything rock steady, everything kill steady—in spite of the cold air.
He turned back to the room, chewing it over. The doctor was living a secret life and obviously on the take. It occurred to him that he might just be stupid enough to keep his cash in the house rather than a safety deposit box at a bank. Everything that Cava had seen so far pointed to him being a certifiable idiot. An amateur. Based on the man’s spending habits, the pile of cash had to be substantial.
But where would he hide it?
Cava began searching the room, certain that if the money was in the house it could only be in two places. The two most private places. Here in the study or down the hall in the master bedroom. He found a pair of filing cabinets in the closet. After locating the keys in the desk drawer, he opened them up and had a look. He checked behind the paintings for a wall safe. Unzipped the cushions in the couch and chairs. Looked behind every book.
And then his eyes came to rest on the fireplace.
There was something wrong with it. Something odd about the way the firebox was cut into the wall. It almost looked as if the house had settled into the ground at an angle and thrown the level of the room off.
Cava felt a tinge in that space between his shoulder blades. He found the switch on the wall below the mantel and pressed it, then looked down at the fake logs. When nothing happened, he hit the switch a second time and watched the ignition spark. In spite of the season, in spite of the draft from the casement windows, Fontaine hadn’t bothered to turn the gas on.
Why? Particularly when it was so obvious that he spent a lot of time in the room.
He took a step back, eyeing the firebox and following the gas line into the floor. The level was definitely off, but he suddenly realized that it had nothing to do with the fireplace. Instead, it was the small sheet of marble laid to the side of the hearth. The stone wasn’t seated into the floor properly.
He checked his watch again. It was only eight-thirty Less than an hour had passed and the Fates had left him alone.
Sinking his fingers into the seams, he pried the stone up and lifted it away. As he peered into the darkness, he felt that rush again. That anxious feeling in his chest. The gas pipes were here and so was the shutoff valve. But nestled between the floor joists was Fontaine’s secret. Counted and wrapped in one-inch packets of hundred-dollar bills.
Cava dug the money out of the floor and counted it, wondering what the doctor had done to earn one point three million dollars in cash. He shook his head, staring at the pile. Knew it would go a long way in Coronaville, and wished that he could see the doctor’s face when he realized that his stash was gone.
He took a deep breath and exhaled, the scent of all that money filling his lungs. Then he pinched himself hoping that he wouldn’t wake up in his car at the airport with an empty box of Lucky Charms. When the cash was still there, when his world didn’t turn to shit, he felt his heart slow down. The muse dancing with his soul.
He still had a seat on the guilt train. All this money wouldn’t change that. But dealing with Jennifer McBride’s ghost would be easier now.
He spotted a gym bag slung over a chair and got to his feet. Ripping it open, he dumped Fontaine’s workout clothes on the couch and scooped up the money. Then he reset the piece of marble, double-checked the floor, and hurried out.
He could smell the cash riding his wake. He could feel the dollar signs buzzing around his head even though he thou
ght that he was immune. But as he reached the landing, he stopped. There was something else in the air. Another fragrance just as fresh and strong.
Perfume …
Cava spun around. He could hear something.
Tightening his grip on his bounty, he eased down the hall to the next set of double doors. As his view cleared, he took a step back and realized why the alarm hadn’t been armed.
Fontaine’s girlfriend from the office was still in the house. She was standing before him in her underwear. A black bra and panties. The kind Cava liked to look at because he could see through them. He heard the TV going in the room. Some guy from one of those early morning news shows was doing the weather and laughing like a fool at his own joke. She seemed to like it, though, and kept turning back to watch as she made the bed.
But Cava kept his eyes on her body. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Her breasts looked soft and round and jiggled every time she turned. Her hips were wide and curvy. When she bent over to fluff the pillows, he felt his dick get hard and push against his pants. He had seen her before, but only from a distance. Only wearing a business suit or jacket to protect her smooth tan skin from the cold. From what he could tell, she didn’t appear too thin. All things being equal, the blonde in the black underwear smoothing out the silk sheets was just about perfect.
For some reason a memory from his youth surfaced. A good one.
Cava had grown up on the East Coast, just a few blocks from the prep school Holden Caulfield was rumored to have attended in one of his favorite books, The Catcher in the Rye. Beneath the railroad bridge in the center of town, a barber kept his shop in a small space he rented over the movie theater. Cava could remember his mother dropping him off with his best friend every six weeks or so. How the strange old man took two hours off in the middle of the day and laid on the floor to rest. How he showed everyone the weird box doctors had placed inside his chest to keep his heart beating. How he liked to talk about women when no one’s parents were around.
