Andrés shrugged wearily. He climbed out of the van with a groan, and a moment later, Mike followed, his muscles feeling tight and arthritic.
They faced each other in the middle of the street, blinking against the sudden brightness like newborns, the canyon laid out before them, beautiful and steep and crusted with sagebrush. The air, crisp and sharp, tasted of eucalyptus. The green of the roofs matched the green of the hillside sumac, and when Mike squinted, it all blended together and became one.
‘No one will know,’ Andrés said. He nodded once, as if confirming something, then started for his car.
Mike said, ‘I will.’
Chapter 4
Mike sat on the hearth of their small bedroom fireplace, his back to the wall, staring at the cordless phone in his lap. Debating with himself. Finally he dialed the familiar number.
A strong voice, husky with age. ‘Hank Danville, Private Investigations.’
‘It’s Mike,’ he said. ‘Wingate.’
‘Mike, I don’t know what else to tell you. I said I’d call if I found anything, but I’ve got nowhere else to look.’
‘No, not that. Something new. I have a guy I need you to track down.’
‘I hope it’s something I can actually make headway with this time.’
‘He’s a contractor who screwed me.’ Mike gave him a brief rundown. He could hear the faint whistle of Hank’s breathing as he took notes. ‘I need to know where he is. To say it’s urgent is an understatement.’
‘How much you in for?’ Hank asked.
Mike told him.
Hank whistled. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, and hung up.
Mike was used to searching for information he probably didn’t want to know, but that didn’t make the waiting any easier. He got into the shower and leaned against the tile, blasting himself with steaming water, trying to pressure-wash away the stress. As he was drying off, the phone rang. Towel wrapped around his waist, he picked it up, sat on the bed, and braced for bad news.
‘Vic Manhan’s last-known puts him in St. Croix,’ Hank said. ‘A bounced check at a bar two months ago. God knows where he is now. His wife left him, he was staring at an expensive divorce, all that. Probably figured pulling a last job and splitting with his cash would be a better way to go. I’m not sure how he dummied the insurance papers and the databases, but there were no real policies backing him when he did your job.’
Mike closed his eyes. Breathed. ‘You can’t find where he is now?’
‘The guy’s on the run from the cops and his wife’s lawyers. He probably hightailed it to Haiti by now. He’s not findable.’
Bitterness rode the back of Mike’s tongue. ‘Come on. The guy’s hardly Jason Bourne.’
‘You’re welcome to have someone else try. I thought I did pretty good for fifteen minutes.’
‘It’s just another dead end, Hank. We seem to keep hitting them.’
Hank’s voice sharpened with indignation. ‘Oh, we’re back to that now? I told you when you first came in that what you were asking for would be next to impossible. I never promised you results.’
‘No, you sure didn’t.’
‘You can be displeased with the facts, but I’m too old to have my character questioned. Come by the office and pick up your file. We’re done.’
Mike held the phone to his face until the dial tone bleated, regret washing through him. He’d acted like an asshole, looking for someone to blame, and he owed Hank an apology. Before he could hit ‘redial,’ he heard the door to the garage open and then Annabel breezing through the kitchen. He tossed the phone onto the bed just before she swept in, his suit slung over her shoulder.
‘Sorry I’m late. He pressed the pants wrong, made them look like Dockers. Come here. Grab a shirt. Put this on.’ She jangled her watch around her wrist until the face came visible. ‘We can still get you there on time.’
The photo shoot. Right.
He obliged, moving on stunned autopilot. He couldn’t figure out how to stop getting dressed and start telling her.
Annabel moved around him, tugging at the lapels, straightening the sleeves. ‘No, not that tie. Something darker.’
‘It used to be I could pick out my own tie,’ Mike murmured. ‘When did I become so useless?’
‘You were always useless, babe. You just didn’t have me around to point it out.’ She went on tiptoes, kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘You look amazing. The governor will be impressed. Might hit on you, even. Could be a scandal.’ She stepped back, appraised him. ‘Certainly beats that plaid jacket.’
‘Windowpane,’ Mike said weakly. ‘Listen . . .’
‘Lord.’ She’d spotted his work clothes, kicked off on the bathroom floor. ‘What’d you do, crawl through a sewer?’
She went over and scooped up the grimy clothes. A small brown box fell from the pocket of the jeans, bounced on the linoleum, and spit out a ring – the two-carat diamond he’d chosen at the jewelry store after dropping Kat off at school. He’d forgotten about it.
Annabel’s hand went to her mouth. She crouched reverently over the ring, plucked it up. Her eyes glimmered with tears. ‘The deal closed!’ She laughed and ran over, embracing him. ‘I told you it would all work out. And this ring. I mean, Mike, are you kidding?’ She slid it onto her right hand, splayed her fingers to admire the stone. The joy on her face was so absolute that the notion of breaking the spell tightened his throat, made it hard to breathe.
He set his hands gently on her shoulders. Her bones, delicate and fragile beneath the skin.
She looked up at him. Her gaze sharpened. ‘What’s wrong?’
There he was, in their tiny walk-in closet, wearing a jacket and shirt with no pants. ‘The pipes. Remember the pipes?’
‘Vitrified clay. Arm and a leg. Of course.’
‘The subcontractor screwed us and took off. I just found out. Everything stubbed up through the slabs is vitrified clay. That’s how we passed environmental inspection.’ He moistened his lips. ‘But everything buried beneath the surface is PVC.’
A flicker of understanding crossed Annabel’s face. ‘How much? To fix it?’
‘More than we’ll make.’
She took a step back and sat on the bed. Her hands were clasped and her eyes on that big diamond sticking out, gleaming even in the faint light of the bedroom. She and Mike breathed awhile in the silence.
‘I love my old ring anyway,’ she finally said. ‘You married me with it.’
Something in his chest unraveled a bit, and he felt suddenly much older than his thirty-five years.
‘It’s you and me,’ she said. ‘And Kat. We don’t need more money. I can put school on hold, get a job for a while. Just until, you know. We’ll find room in the budget. We can pull Kat from that after-school enrichment program. We’ll live in a condo. I don’t care.’
He pulled on his pants, slowly, his legs heavy and numb, like they didn’t belong to him. He couldn’t meet Annabel’s eyes because he was scared of what that would make him feel.
‘You are always true,’ she said. She took off the two-carat ring, set it on the duvet beside her, and managed a smile. ‘Make this right however you have to.’
The suite in the Beverly Hills Hotel was the largest Mike had ever seen. Bill Garner sat behind an antique letter desk, cocked back thoughtfully in a leather chair that seemed designed for musing. He studied the photo, a computer printout that showed PVC pipe protruding into the ditch.
Through the open door to the sitting room wafted laughter, tidbits of conversation, and the occasional camera flash. The recipients of the community-leadership award were to mingle now and take some PR photos to lay the media foundation for the formal ceremony Sunday evening. Aside from the governor, who – judging by the chorus of salutations – had just swept in, Mike had been the last to arrive.
Garner rose, strode across, and poked his head through the doorway. ‘Are the setups ready? Okay, give us a minute here.’ He closed the door and resumed his spot
behind the desk. His face, teenage smooth, registered nothing but pleasant optimism, as it had the entire time Mike had explained the problem.
Garner templed his fingers. ‘You’re going to pay for the fix?’
Mike said, ‘I am prepared to do that.’
‘Those PVC pipes. Where do you think they’ll go once you dig them up?’
‘I hadn’t given that much thought,’ Mike said.
‘Into a landfill, I’d guess. So you want to move pipes from the ground back into the ground in another location? And use a lot of gas-guzzling machinery to do it?’ He smiled affably. ‘Sounds a bit silly, doesn’t it?’
Mike became suddenly aware of his new suit. ‘Yes. But honest, at least.’
‘These houses you’ve built, they’re ninety-nine-percent green. There’s a lot to be proud of.’
Mike studied him a moment, trying to read his face. ‘I don’t see it that way.’ He shifted on the plush armchair, uncomfortable in the dress clothes. ‘I’m not sure I’m following the direction this conversation is taking.’
‘The governor’s hung his hat on this project, Mike. You know how strong he is on the environment. And your housing community, with our pilot subsidy program, shows that a green model can work not just for rich assholes – that it can make sense for working folks. Green Valley is the governor’s baby. He’s been talking it up in the press for months.’
‘I understand that this is an embarrassment,’ Mike said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘The subsidies are a pilot program, tenuous at best. The governor is under fire from both sides of the aisle. If we don’t parade out a community model to show the energy benefits – soon – those subsidies will be off the table. You’re aware of the election in a month’s time? The governor’s got a host of ballot initiatives he’s put his neck on the line for. That’s why we timed the press, the photo shoot, the award ceremony this Sunday.’ He pursed his lips. ‘How long will it take you to switch out these pipes?’
Discomfort glowed to life in Mike’s stomach, crept up his throat. ‘Months.’
‘And your award for outstanding community—’
‘Obviously, you’ll have to withdraw that.’
‘See,’ Garner said, ‘that’s the thing. No award ceremony means no press. No press means no public support. No public support means no state subsidies for those home buyers.’
Mike’s mouth went dry.
‘How much are the subsidies?’ Garner asked. ‘Three hundred thousand per family?’
‘Two seventy-five,’ Mike said faintly.
‘And these are middle-class families you have moving in there. I mean, that was the point, really. And now you’re gonna tell these folks that not only can they not move into their new houses for months but that the subsidies upon which they’ve based their financial planning will no longer be there for them?’ He grinned ruefully. ‘That they will have to come up with nearly three hundred grand more apiece? Or were you planning on covering that as well?’
Mike swallowed to wet his throat. ‘I don’t have anywhere near that kind of money.’
‘Then are you sure you want to pass on this problem to those families?’
For the first time, Mike had no ready answer.
Garner placed a manicured fingertip on the photograph and slid it slowly back across the antique desk.
Mike stared down at it.
An impatient knock on the door. A young aide leaned into the room and said, ‘We need him now. The photographer’s restless, and I have to get the governor on a plane back to Sacramento.’ From behind him Mike could make out the governor telling a joke, the firehose-pressure vowels of the Austrian intonation. Garner held up a finger. The aide sighed, said, ‘You got thirty seconds,’ and withdrew.
Mike and Garner regarded each other, the silence cut only by the ticking of a carriage clock and muffled conversation from the sitting room.
‘So what do you say?’ Garner leaned forward on the desk, a flash of skin peeping through the slit in his shirtsleeve. ‘For the benefit of forty families, think you can smile for a few cameras?’
He gestured toward the sitting room, his gold cuff link glittering.
On his knees, Mike peered into the flickering fire. It threw an orange glow across his face, the carpet, the white duvet of their bed. In his hand he clutched the photo showing that telltale elbow of PVC. Ridiculously, it struck him that his posture was that of a shamed samurai.
Annabel stood behind him, still absorbing the scene. Kat, thankfully, was in her room with the door closed, engrossed in homework.
Annabel hadn’t spoken. Not since he’d trudged in, tugged off his suit jacket, and taken his spot on the floor. She didn’t have to. She already knew and was just waiting for him to tell her.
‘They don’t want a delay,’ he said. ‘They need the PR from the award ceremony. They threatened that the families will lose the subsidies.’
‘Then we should absorb the cost for them,’ Annabel said. ‘How much is it? On top of the pipe replacement costs?’
‘Eleven million dollars.’
He heard the breath leave her.
‘So what . . . what are we going to do?’ she asked.
He held out his hand, dropped the photograph into the flames. The picture curled and blackened.
‘Okay.’ Her voice was faint, crestfallen. ‘I guess I’ll buy a new dress.’
The bathroom door clicked shut behind her. He stared into the fire, wondering what the hell else a lie like this could open up.
Chapter 5
A baby’s sputtering cry split the night air, rising from the basket placed on the front porch. Folds of fluffy blue blanket poked up from the woven straw. All was still, save the flecks of circling gnats in the yellow smudge of the porch light. Night-blooming jasmine, trellised up the porch, perfumed the air. SUV bumpers gleamed up and down the street. Every third house was being remodeled, the lowboy Dumpsters as much a mark of the neighborhood’s affluence as the Boxsters slumbering beneath car covers.
The intermittent cries strengthened into a wail. Finally footsteps came audible within the house, then the beep of an alarm being turned off. The front door cracked so far as the security chain allowed, and a woman’s sleep-heavy face peered down. A gasp, then the door closed, the chain unclasped, and she stepped out onto the porch. A well-kept woman in her fifties, she clasped a blue bathrobe shut at her throat. Stunned. Her knees cracked as she crouched to grab the basket with trembling hands.
The blanket was twisted over itself, and she tugged at the folds frantically but gently, the cries growing louder, until finally she pulled back the last edge of fabric and stared down, dumbfounded.
A microcassette recorder.
The red ‘play’ light beamed up at her, the baby’s squawks issuing from the tiny speakers.
The crunch of a dead leaf floated over from the darkness of the front lawn, and then a man’s massive form melted into the cone of porch light. A gloved fist the size of a dumbbell flew at her, shattering her eye socket and knocking her back into the front door, rocketing it inward so hard the handle stuck in the drywall.
A moment of tranquillity. Even the crickets were awed into silence.
The large man stood at the edge of the porch, breath misting, shoulders slumped, his very presence an affront to the quiet suburban street. His plain, handsome face was oddly smooth, almost generic, as if his features were pressed through latex. He held a black duffel bag.
Another set of footsteps padded across the moist lawn, a second man finally entering the light. He was lean and of normal height, but he looked tiny next to his counterpart. He shuffled as he walked, one foot curled slightly inward, matching the awkward angle of his right wrist. As he finished tugging on his black gloves, his arms jerked ever so slightly, a symptom of the illness.
Ellen Rogers grunted on the foyer floor where she’d landed, one eye screwed off center, the skin dipping in the indentation where her cheekbone used to be. Her nose was split along the bridge,
a glittering black seam. One leg was raised off the tile, paddling as if she were swimming. Her breaths were low, animal.
The men stepped inside, closed the door behind them, stared down at her. The lean one, William, said gently, ‘I know, honey, I know. Dodge can put some muscle behind a punch. I’m sorry for your face. Don’t think we wanted this any more than you.’
She whimpered and drooled blood onto the tile.
When Dodge dropped the duffel, it gave a metallic clank. He placed two cigarettes in his mouth, cocked his head, got them going with a cheap plastic lighter plucked from his shirt pocket, and passed one to his colleague. William sucked an inhale past yellowed teeth, closed his eyes, let a ghostly sheet of smoke rise from his parted lips.
‘Mr Rogers,’ he called down the hall. ‘Can we please have a word?’
The muted light thrown from the Tiffany lamp seemed the only thing holding darkness at bay. The office’s mallard-green walls dissolved into black; they might as well have not been there at all. Beyond the lip of the desk, a stock-ticker screen saver glowed out of nowhere. An artful photograph framed on the sofa’s console table showed the family a few years earlier posed cute-casual on the rear deck: proud parents leaning over beaming teenage son and daughter, matching smiles and pastel polo shirts. A nautical motif suffused the room – burnished brass compass, gold-plated telescope, antique loupe pinning down the parchment pages of a leather-bound atlas. It was the office of a man who fancied himself the captain of his own destiny. But William and Dodge hadn’t chosen the room for the design.
They’d chosen it because it was soundproof.
Ted Rogers propped up his wife on the distressed-leather couch, which Dodge had covered entirely with a plastic tarp. Ted had a softness befitting a man his age and circumstances. A fine, well-fed belly, spectacles accenting a round face, a close-trimmed white-gray beard – all jiggling now with grief and terror. When William had asked him into the study, he’d taken one look at Dodge and complied with all instructions.
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