by Neil Mcmahon
I poured a mug of black coffee and sank into a chair. It felt like the first time I’d stopped moving since this whole thing had started.
“I’ve left three messages for Paul—nothing back yet,” Audrey said to me, putting down her phone with an acerbic look that I was relieved to see. Annoyance meant that her strength was coming to the fore.
Then I set my coffee mug down hard, abruptly remembering that I did have an appointment to cancel. I’d spaced it out, but the mention of Paul jarred it loose.
“He’s probably at the Lodge,” I said.
“He could still return a call from his mother about his brother falling off a cliff and almost dying.”
She was right, and it rankled with me, too, but it was just what I’d have expected from Paul. Like Erica, he was on the outs with Nick—the more I thought about it, the more I was realizing that almost everybody was. Like Erica, Paul didn’t look far beyond his own pale, and he also had other issues that figured in. He was deeply insecure; it seemed to be in his nature, and it was compounded by a feverish yearning to be a player in the world of L.A. finance and glitz. He was the only one of us kids who’d gravitated toward business. He’d gotten an MBA from Cal Irvine, and since our father’s death he’d started managing the family finances. But he didn’t quite have whatever it took for the big time, and he never got past the second string. To cover for that, he’d developed a blustery, can’t-be-bothered air, always trying to act like he knew exactly what he was doing. But in reality, even small crises threw him and his facade crumbled, which he feared almost pathologically. This situation was a threat in all ways, so he was avoiding it.
I’d long since decided that, what with my three siblings’ and my own unadmirable traits—the self-righteous judgments I made about them, for openers—we qualified as a dysfunctional family. But then, I wasn’t convinced that there was really any other kind.
“If you get hold of him, tell him to call me, will you?” I said. “I was supposed to go up there and meet him this afternoon, but I’ll have to bail.”
“Is this about those movie people?”
I nodded.
The family property we called the Lodge—a pristine chunk of near wilderness in the mountains northwest of L.A.—was special to me, the only one of our holdings that I took a strong personal interest in. As a kid I’d spent as much time there as I could maneuver. After Dad’s death there’d been some reshuffling of assets, with Paul wanting the Malibu place to build a glossy new house there. I’d much rather have put the land or the proceeds from its sale to some kind of public use. But he was hell-bent, and eventually we’d come up with a compromise I could live with. I would claim the Lodge as a trade-off, then donate that property to a federal or state agency. Paul wasn’t any happier about that than I was about his Malibu plans, but I could be stubborn, too. From the time I was young, I’d realized that a surprising number of people had surprisingly firm ideas about who I should be and what I should do—family, teachers, coaches, girlfriends. I’d become quite adept at disappointing them.
Around that same time, Paul had gotten an offer from a film company—an outfit called Parallax Productions—to lease the Lodge as a set. I’d agreed reluctantly, partly to pacify him and boost his ego with a rare business coup, partly because I’d been swamped by our father’s passing, the new worries that brought about for Mom, and a few stresses of my own, including breaking up with my girlfriend, moving out of our apartment as a result, and trying to meet the demands of a comparatively new job—in other words, life. It was also true that the Lodge was essentially lying fallow these days, with nobody living there, me being able to visit for only an occasional weekend, and the rest of the family not interested.
A couple of weeks ago, Paul had informed me the set construction was mostly complete and filming about to start; that would take another couple of months. But there was a new wrinkle—Parallax wanted to extend the lease beyond that. Of course Paul had urged me to agree, but I was torn. I didn’t want to kick him in the teeth, but I half regretted signing on to the deal in the first place, and I was anxious to get the whole thing out of my hair. I’d come up with another compromise. I hadn’t had a chance to get up there since they’d moved in; I’d go look the place over, see how they were treating it and get a general sense of their operation, and make my decision based on that. Paul then invited me to a party there—taking place today.
My mother freshened her coffee and came to sit with me.
“Why don’t you just go on up there?” she said. “I’ll check in on Nick. There’s no need for both of us. I know you—you won’t be able to sleep. You’ll just prowl around, fretting. Take a nice drive and relax.”
She was right again—like most mothers with their children, she usually was. My being gone for a few hours wouldn’t make any difference with Nick, my worries about her had backed off, and it would be a relief to get the thing taken care of instead of having it hang over me.
It would also give me a chance to chew Paul’s ass about not returning Mom’s calls.
“Let me think it over,” I said. “I’ll check in with you around noon, and if Nick’s still doing okay, maybe I will.”
“Fine.” Then she put her hand on my wrist. “Tom, can you explain what’s going on with him?”
I’d been thinking about how to handle this. When I’d first called her earlier, I’d given her an edited version of the story, trying to tone down the immediate shock factor. But she knew the kind of life Nick was living—the problems he’d caused me were nothing compared to her years of heartache—and with Drabyak’s hint that there might be deeper trouble in the background, she needed to be on the alert.
“It’s pretty much like I told you, Mom, but there are a couple more things you should know,” I said.
She sighed. “I was sure there would be. It’s such a lose-lose.”
I glanced around for Hap; he was off the phone by now, and I wanted him in on this. Hap was clearheaded, shrewd, and essentially one of the family—a lifelong friend of my parents’, like an uncle to us kids, and now becoming a sort of surrogate husband to Audrey.
But it wasn’t going to blossom into actual romance, since Hap was gay. He kept that part of his life entirely private, and not many people even knew it; on the contrary, women had always drooled over him because of his leonine good looks and broad-shouldered physique. He’d been a terrific swimmer at USC, with a handful of NCAA medals and an Olympic silver for the butterfly leg of the 400-meter medley relay. It was Hap who’d gotten Nick and me into competitive swimming; he’d started coaching us practically as soon as we could walk.
“Hap, why don’t you come on over?” I said. “You should hear this, too.”
For a second, I was struck by an odd sense of furtiveness in him, almost like he’d been eavesdropping. He was standing at the sideboard with his back turned, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything there, and his body jerked slightly when I spoke his name. But that notion was flat-out silly, a product of how wired I was—he’d just been caught up in his own thoughts, and I’d startled him.
“Be right there. I’m looking for my cup,” he said. “Ah, what the hell, I’ll grab a new one.”
But his behavior still seemed odd. When he came to join us, he paced restlessly instead of sitting, and he seemed to avoid eye contact. Of course he was concerned about the situation, but this didn’t fit Hap. He usually kept up a calm, genial front that was close to unshakable, and he was guarded about showing deeper emotions, maybe because of his closet life.
Then an explanation occurred to me—he was feeling the guilt that many people get when harm comes to someone they dislike, a sort of reverse schadenfreude. He and Nick were alienated, with a particularly bitter edge that dated back to when Nick and I were in our late teens and Hap was coaching us. Nick had real talent—he’d already far outstripped me—and even Olympic potential. Hap had thrown himself into nurturing it, hoping to relive his own glory days through his protégé.
; But Nick pissed all that away, and he’d been a prick about it—the first serious sign that his taking out his anger on safe targets wasn’t just childish petulance, but a calculated way of validating himself in his own mind that would become a pattern. Instead of just quitting, which would have been a letdown but acceptable, he’d strung Hap along, pulling stunts like entering important meets, then not showing up, until it became clear that Nick was treating the whole thing—and Hap—as a joke.
The wound went deep.
Seven
It didn’t take long to give my mother and Hap a more detailed rundown of the events. She handled it calmly; if anything, her take-charge spirit seemed sharpened. Hap remained evasive and didn’t say much. Then I left; Audrey wanted to get to the hospital, and I wanted a breather.
With all that had happened, it was still only ten in the morning. If I did go up to the Lodge, I wouldn’t leave until early afternoon, so I had a couple of hours. I decided to stop by Nick’s place for a look around. Before long I was back on the coast, heading toward Topanga Canyon.
Nick had been simmering with resentment about a number of things, including that our father had cut him off from his trust fund and consigned him to a monthly allowance. The latest sore spot was that the family had evicted him from the Malibu place, which he considered to be his. In fact, he’d been allowed to squat there because the house itself was a worthless albatross, originally built as a beach hangout before the area went so upscale; additions tacked on over time just made it look worse. These days, it fit with the surrounding glitz like the proverbial fish on a bicycle, and it failed to meet modern building codes in just about every way. Our father had resisted mounting pressure from both the city and neighbors to rebuild; he enjoyed those kinds of spats and held out largely just to needle them.
But with our father’s death and Paul’s takeover of the property, Nick had been forced out, and he was furious about it, especially at Paul. Trying to keep the peace, my mother and I had bought Nick a little 1940s-era bungalow up Topanga Canyon—a compensation that would have made most people weep for joy—with the faint hope that the relative isolation would help keep him out of trouble, or at least make it less noticeable. But he never missed a chance to make it clear that he hated the place, and obviously, our Pollyanna notion fell flat.
I turned off Highway 1 at Topanga and drove the few miles to the bungalow. The area was quiet and private; most of the houses were set back from the road and screened by trees, and the yards and gardens were well tended—except for Nick’s. I should have known he’d let things go, but I hadn’t been here for a while and hadn’t realized how shabby it had gotten. I’d have to arrange for a lawn service. I pulled into the driveway, set the emergency brake, and stepped out to empty his jammed-full mailbox.
Abruptly, the stillness was jarred by the sharp, noisy growl of an engine starting up. It had the distinctive sound of a motorcycle—and it seemed to be coming from behind Nick’s bungalow.
I stared in that direction, thinking, What the fuck? The driveway ended in front, with just a pavestone walkway to the rear, and there was nothing back there but a dead end, a small yard that died into a hillside.
Then my gaze was caught by the front door. It was slightly hard to see behind its dark screen—but it looked like it was open.
The motorcycle’s noise rose sharply as the rider revved the engine and popped the clutch, and I realized what was going on—the son of a bitch had broken in, heard my car coming, and was now hauling ass out of here.
I dropped Nick’s mail and took off running to catch him.
I’d gone maybe only three steps when the bike came into sight, skidding around the rear corner of the house and then springing forward across the weedy front yard. I kept running for a few more steps but didn’t even get close; it was already hitting at least thirty miles per hour and cutting away on a diagonal. When it jumped onto the road, the rider opened up into screaming full throttle and blew through the gears.
I spun around toward my car, but then gave it up. He’d be halfway to Highway 1 by the time I could get started. Calling the cops was pointless. I hadn’t managed to glimpse the license plate—if it even had one—the rider was wearing a helmet, and all I could tell about the bike was that it was midsize and black.
Not to mention that bringing in the cops was exactly what I wanted to avoid.
I strode on into the house. It had been ransacked, with a window at the back forced open. First guess was that one of Nick’s doper buddies had heard about his accident, realized he wouldn’t be home for a while, and come to rip off his stash.
There were scumbags, and then there were scumbags.
The house was always a mess anyway, but this was flat-out violent—drawers yanked out and dumped, clothes torn from the closets, the kitchen littered with broken glasses and dishes, the toilet tank lid thrown on the floor. It filled me with helpless anger and deepened the sheer sordidness of the situation.
The intruder probably had gone away empty-handed, since he’d still been looking when I showed up. Nick must have been unusually organized when it came to hiding dope.
Then something occurred to me that I hadn’t even thought about until now. As kids, the two of us had been goofing around in our basement, where quite a bit of antique furniture was stored. We’d discovered that one of the pieces, a Queen Anne secretary desk, had secret compartments hidden inside the back panel—a very cool asset for boyish games and contraband. As time went on, and I developed new interests, like girls, I’d pretty much forgotten about it. But not Nick. It was the one item of furniture he laid claim to—no one objected; it was marred and not especially valuable—and he’d moved it first to the Malibu house and then here.
The “why” of that was a no-brainer.
I crouched behind the desk, which had been torn open and rifled like everything else, and slid the panel down a quarter inch to release it. It lifted out to reveal four side-by-side cubbyholes, each a little bigger than a box of checks.
Sure enough, there was his stash—a plastic bag of white powder like the stuff in his car, a few dozen painkillers, and an assortment of other pills I couldn’t identify.
Besides the dope, there were two standard plain white envelopes. Neither was sealed, and I could see right off that one was bulging with cash. I pulled the money out, expecting a few hundred bucks in small bills.
Then I rocked back on my heels, with a queasy twisting in my gut. The bills were all hundreds. I made a quick rough count. They totaled close to fifteen thousand dollars.
Nick had never saved a dime in his life; he invariably burned right through his monthly allowance and spent the rest of the month trying to drum up more, cadging from me and probably others. The only immediate explanation I could see was that this was drug money. If so, he was dealing on a much bigger scale than I’d realized. Maybe there was another source, but that didn’t make me feel any better—I was sure it wasn’t legal.
And maybe this was what the intruder had come looking for. If so—especially if Nick owed him the money—he probably wasn’t just going to let it go.
The other envelope was thinner; inside were three sheets of letter-size paper that looked like computer printouts. I stood up and walked to a window for better light to read them by.
This time I was bewildered in an entirely new way.
The top page bore the business logo of a company called GenTell, and started with a heading that read: “Final Certificate of Analysis.” After that came boxes labeled “Child” and “Alleged Father,” both identified by numbers; a chart of more numbers in columns; and a few paragraphs of explanation. The final line stood out in bold print.
Combined Paternity Index: 99.999%.
It looked like GenTell was a private genetics lab, and this was a paternity test—a DNA analysis confirming the identity of a child’s father.
Was that what was going on—a woman threatening Nick with a paternity suit? But how would that account for him having so much cash? S
he’d be demanding money, not giving it to him. Had he amped up his dealing so he could buy her off, and maybe ripped somebody off in the process?
The next two pages made that premise still more confusing. They weren’t a continuation of the report, as I’d expected—they were completely separate analyses, almost identical to the first one but with different ID numbers for the children.
I wasn’t looking at one paternity test, I was looking at three of them. The kids didn’t all seem to have the same father, either—the first two of those ID numbers were the same, but the third was different.
I looked the reports over for another minute or two, but I couldn’t glean anything more offhand, let alone guess what Nick was doing with them. Maybe they’d start to make sense when my head was clearer. I pocketed them along with the cash and drugs, replaced the desk panel, then spent a few more minutes walking through the wreckage. I didn’t really expect to find anything helpful; Nick didn’t have a computer or landline phone, and needless to say, he didn’t keep any kinds of records. There was some mail scattered around, but it was all junk.
The only item that got my attention was an empty Victoria’s Secret shopping bag lying on a closet floor, an almost charming touch amid the gloom. With all of Nick’s problems, attracting female company had never been one of them. He liked to drop hints about his studliness; he probably exaggerated, but it was clear that he cultivated a sort of harem, with constant new arrivals, dropouts, and returns. I’d never met most of his girlfriends or even known who they were, but it also seemed clear that they weren’t Suzy Creamcheese types.
A paternity claim or some unsavory spinoff sure wasn’t out of the question—and something else to worry about.
I locked up the house and left, figuring I’d come back tomorrow to straighten up and clean out the refrigerator. Outside, I stopped to pick up the mail I’d dropped. Most of it was more junk, flyers, and catalogs—but there was also a statement from Wells Fargo for the debit card he used to draw his allowance.
