L.A. Mental

by Neil Mcmahon

  I’d had my cell phone turned off since I got here, not wanting any interruptions while she and I talked; as I walked to my car, I checked the voice mail.

  There was only one message, and it stopped me cold.

  “Dr. Crandall, this is Marilyn at UCLA Medical Center,” a woman’s voice said, with a tone of controlled urgency. “Please contact us as soon as you can.”

  I remembered Marilyn from yesterday—one of the nurses in the ICU, a fiftyish woman with the generous face of a professional caregiver. I punched the callback number she left and got her on the phone.

  “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this,” she said. “There’s been a change in your brother’s condition.”

  I listened numbly to her brief explanation. Nick had suffered a cerebral aneurysm and had been rushed into emergency surgery. It seemed that his blood pressure had risen suddenly and sharply. There was no apparent reason for the spike, but it had burst a blood vessel possibly already weakened by his concussion.

  I drove straight to the hospital, and events took another strange twist. Right away, I found Marilyn to get an update on Nick; she told me his condition was basically unchanged, and he was still in surgery.

  Then she said, “This isn’t directly related, Dr. Crandall, but I thought you might like to know. A detective came by this morning to talk to your brother—a man named Drabyak. Nick was resting, so we asked him to come back later. He said he would, but he hasn’t yet.”

  At the moment, I was too worried about Nick to be more than vaguely surprised. But after I settled down some, with nothing to do but wait around, I decided to give Drabyak a call and find out what had sparked his renewed interest in Nick. I got his voice mail, left a message, and went back to waiting.

  Within another two hours, Nick was physically stable again, but he was still in a coma. This time, nobody was offering assurances that he’d ever come out of it.

  I didn’t hear from Drabyak for the rest of that day. When I tried him again the next morning, I just got his voice mail again.

  But early in the afternoon, I got a call from a woman named Susan Brownlee, an assistant to Mayor Sandoval. She was very polite, but I had the feeling she knew how not to be. She started off with the usual formalities—the mayor sent his sympathy about Nick, and so on.

  Then the conversation took an unsettling twist.

  “Dr. Crandall, I should tell you that the detective you spoke with, Sergeant Drabyak, won’t be available for a while,” she said. “He had a family emergency, and he had to take an unexpected leave of absence. If you have any questions for him, please call me directly, and I’ll see to it that you get the help you need.”

  Family emergency? That was a hell of a coincidence, and so was the timing. I couldn’t help wondering if Drabyak had been shoved out of the picture by someone who had a lot of juice—maybe connected to those prominent people he was investigating—and this was a way of letting me know it.

  If I needed help, I wasn’t going to be turning to my erstwhile pal Joaquin Sandoval or anyone else in those circles, that was for sure.

  Twenty-Nine

  The next Friday morning, I headed north on Highway 1 to Malibu again, getting ready for what was going to be a really unpleasant encounter with Paul. I’d had to call him several times before I finally got hold of him last night and told him I had news that I had to deliver in person. He didn’t like the sound of that and tried to put me off, saying that he was going to spend today at the Malibu house; he was starting to move forward with his plans to build his new house. I said I’d drive on up and meet him there midmorning.

  I’d spent most of the past week dealing with Nick’s medical situation and trying to get a fix on the future in general. His looked bleak, with no signs of recovering consciousness, and I had to keep myself on a tight leash. To have him almost die, start making a miraculous recovery, and then suddenly plunge back was crushing. The ugly cloud around him made it close to unbearable. And the grim decision of how long to keep him on life support was starting to appear on the horizon.

  So I concentrated on practicalities in order to stave off my emotions—with Paul being the other major issue.

  My mother and I had talked the situation over, then brought in our longtime chief legal counsel, Lou Monroe—the man I’d intended to talk to anyway about Paul’s affair with Cynthia Trask.

  Lou’s grasp of the situation was quick and steely. He was very smart and the essence of professional integrity—we could trust him absolutely with the paternity secret. He was also very tough, and he’d gun down anybody who threatened the family interests, even a member. The three of us had come to a decision.

  Paul’s involvement in the family business was over.

  He didn’t yet know anything about this, or even that we’d uncovered the blackmail scheme. I’d volunteered to tell him. Although he was going to be furious, I was actually looking forward to it—partly just to get it over with, but partly because the more I’d thought about it, the angrier at him I’d gotten. He knew damned well that he was putting the family at risk to cover his own greedy ass, and his callousness was underscored by his worrying about his goddamned glossy house project only days after Nick fell into the coma.

  I still felt sorry for him in a way, but I’d hardened my heart about that, too.

  The morning was sunny and the town of Malibu was getting into summery mode as I drove through, with plenty of tourists and the beaches getting crowded. I crawled along with the traffic to Point Dume, then turned off toward the headlands. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Paul had stood me up, but when I got to our boarded-up old house, his BMW was parked in the driveway. I walked around to the back and found him on the patio, standing over a thick sheaf of blueprints and talking on his cell phone.

  As he looked up at me, I got an eerie little hit. With his sandy brown hair and wide, square-jawed face, I could see hints of resemblance between him and Hap.

  “Okay, baby, I’ve got to go—Tom’s here,” Paul said into the phone. “I’ll call you again in a little while.” He clicked it off and gave me his executive smile. “Cynthia says hi.”

  “I’m sure.” I was feeling a little easier about her by now because I’d gotten another piece of information that pretty much nailed her as the woman who’d delivered the cocaine to Nick and then broke into his house. Lou Monroe knew a lot of people, and he’d had no problem discreetly tapping into California DMV registration records. Cynthia owned a black 2006 MV F4CC—a very rare Italian racing motorcycle that retailed for a modest $120,000. I didn’t see any reason to tip my hand about it, but if I got one, I was going to let her know that I could put a serious kink in her glossy life.

  Paul was nervous, and that led him into his usual evasive bluster.

  “Hey, have you seen these plans yet?” he said. “Take a look.”

  I feigned polite interest as he showed me the architectural renderings of the new house, then flipped through the blueprints pointing out features and luxuries. The place was eleven thousand square feet and probably close to that many million dollars, with a high-ceilinged ocean exposure that was mostly glass and every other bell and whistle you could dream of—in other words, a monument to arrogance and poor taste. Most rankling of all was my certainty that he wasn’t even building it for his wife and child, but for himself and Cynthia.

  “Very impressive,” I said. “You ready to talk?”

  He gave me an irritated shrug. “Sure.” Then he rolled up the prints and tucked them under his arm officiously—an unsubtle hint that he was busy, and the sooner I got out of here, the better.

  “Paul, you’re my brother and I love you,” I said. “I’m sorry about this, but I’ve got to do it. I know what happened with you and Nick—the blackmail, the whole deal. I found those paternity tests at his place. I told Mom about them, she told me about Hap, and the rest came together.”

  I’d never before seen the blood literally drain from somebody’s face. For a few seconds I thought he was act
ually going to pass out, and I tensed myself to jump forward and grab him. But he stayed on his feet, turning his back and slowly walking away a few steps.

  “Don’t even think about trying to bullshit me,” I said. “I’ll cut to the chase. I’m here to tell you you’re fired.”

  He swung back around to stare at me. “You can’t do that,” he stammered.

  “You left us no choice, Paul. If you’d been up-front with us as soon as Nick hit on you, we’d have stuck with you—tried to work through the legal issues, all that. But hiding it destroyed our faith in your judgment. We also suspect that you intended to commit fraud with the finances—maybe already did, and maybe other crimes, too. And above all, you betrayed our trust. If you want to take it to court, go ahead. You’ll get skinned alive, and you know it.”

  I was expecting his shock to erupt into rage any second. But instead, incredibly, a slow smile spread across his face—the kind of patronizing look that goes along with the line, “You brought a knife to a gunfight.” It was as startling as when he’d turned pale, and much more unsettling.

  “Tom, you think you’re so fucking smart. But you have no idea what you’re saying.”

  “I don’t think I’m smart, Paul—I’ve been around too many people who are smart, and I know the difference. I know real well what I’m saying, too, so let me finish. You’re going to come out of this just fine.” A hell of a lot better than you deserve, I was sorely tempted to add. “Nobody else knows about it except Mom and Lou, and we’ll do our best to keep it that way. You’ll stay a full family member same as ever, and so will your kids. You’ll keep your own inheritance, including this property. But no more access to family funds or business.”

  He went on as if he hadn’t even heard me.

  “No, you don’t know what you’re saying. Cynthia and I tried to help you—to open a door. But you ignored us.”

  “Open a door? What the fuck are you saying?”

  “That you’re making a really serious mistake.”

  I bristled. “If you’re getting into threat turf, Paul, you’re the one making the serious mistake. Yet another one.”

  “It’s not a threat—it’s for your own good,” he said. “See, there’s somebody behind that door. Except it’s not a door like that”—he pointed at the slider that led from the patio into the house—“and they’re not people. And this is really going to piss them off.”

  I was struck by the thought that with all the worrying I’d done about Nick’s mental condition, I’d failed to realize that Paul was doing a space walk of his own—no doubt thanks to the influence of his new squeeze and Parallax.

  “In that case, thanks for the warning,” I said. “By the way, I made up my mind about that lease extension at the Lodge. I’ll give Parallax time to finish the movie—call it four months. After that, I want them out.”

  He shook his head almost pityingly. “You better back off all this, Tom.”

  “Believe me, I wish none of it had happened. Give me a call if you want to talk.” I turned and walked to my car.

  For outright strange, that was tough to beat.

  The riff about him and Cynthia trying to open a door must have meant the pep talk they’d given me at the Lodge last week, obviously aimed at getting me interested in Parallax; at a guess, the nonpeople behind the door alluded to the otherworldly Gatekeepers that Lisa had mentioned. But them being angry at me about this? Even a hint that they intended to punish me somehow?

  I put it down to bluster, psychobabble—the Parallax equivalent of any religious fanatic threatening divine retribution against unbelievers. Paul would rant and sulk for a while, but then reality would settle in—including that he was still a rich man about to build a glitzy new house in Malibu, for Christ’s sake. He’d probably find other ways to squander his inheritance, but maybe hard-nosed Cynthia would keep him in check. Then again, maybe she would help him burn right through it. But that was no longer my problem; I just hoped they stayed off my radar.

  With that unhappy encounter taken care of and the overall situation seeming more under control, I let my thoughts relax in a much happier direction—Lisa. We’d seen each other twice more since that first dinner, and we had a date this evening. I felt a touch guilty about embarking on a romance under these circumstances, especially because of Nick. But what good would it do him or anyone else if I held back? Besides, she was the one oasis in all this; when I was with her, I could almost literally feel myself coming more to life, and leaving her brought that same chilly anxiety I’d felt the first time.

  Thirty

  It was time to start drifting back toward a normal routine. I had plenty to catch up on, that was for sure; I’d been letting everything else slide, including work. Above all, I wanted to shake off that miserable, near-panicky feeling that there was always something more important I should be doing.

  I’d never had migraines, thank God, but for the first time in my life I’d been getting headaches that seemed in that ballpark—not terribly severe but still damned unpleasant, impairing my concentration and amping up that hollow anxiety. They were like a stealthy enemy that attacked when I was alone, invading my dreams and tearing up my sleep. I put it down to stress, figuring I’d racked up a fair amount of that.

  So I deliberately took things slow as the day moved on—drove home by a circuitous route, dawdled over grocery shopping on the way, spent some quality time shredding a bushel of accumulated junk mail, and so on. My place was looking pretty shabby, too, but since I was going to Lisa’s later instead of her coming here, cleaning could wait for tomorrow.

  Toward midafternoon I headed out again, this time for Waterton College, where I’d been making a slender living as a faculty adjunct. I needed to check in at my office there; summer session would be starting in early June. I also needed exercise. I usually worked out three or four times a week on the campus—a half hour in the weight room and a couple-mile run in the surrounding foothills—but I’d been letting that go like everything else, and I was starting to feel slack.

  I had another reason for going there, too—dependents. There was a clan of feral cats that hung out in a grove of trees and shrubs near my office. They’d correctly figured me for a soft touch as soon as I moved in, and they started putting the paw on me. Before long we were doing lunch together—mine—and by now I’d gotten in the habit of bringing them a sack of food when I started my run, sort of like paying a toll. I knew it wasn’t politically correct, it would encourage more breeding, and all that. But the sight of the scrawny little beasts with their matted fur, mewing hungrily, was too much for me. They still wouldn’t let me touch them, but they were always there waiting when I came walking by, darting between my feet and yelling at me to surrender the goods. Just now I was behind on the vig, and I had no doubt that they were keeping careful score.

  Waterton was toward the west end of the Valley; the afternoon was sunny, the temperature just right, and the drive pleasant, if not very interesting.

  Which was probably why, even though I didn’t want to think about Paul anymore, my mind kept going back to him just like had happened with Nick when all this first blew up.

  I hadn’t had time to give much thought to the potential cultlike aspects of Parallax, but with Paul’s strange pronouncement, that was back on my radar and I had to start sorting things out. Lisa’s involvement, for instance, seemed benign; she was interested and inclined to accept the thinking—and I had to admit, no way could I explain her psychic glimpse of a woman on a motorcycle—but that was as far as it went. She maintained a healthy awareness that it was in the nature of an experiment, something she was trying out that might fall through. There was no psychological dependence on it.

  But Paul had the fervor of the convert, which suggested to me that he was a prime candidate for the trap of cognitive dissonance, a sort of convoluted form of denial. Strictly speaking, this wasn’t my field, but I encountered it a lot, and to me it was one of the strangest and most intriguing threads that wove thr
ough the human psyche. There was much speculation and much disagreement as to the why of it, but vastly oversimplified, it went something like this.

  It is no secret that emotions often, even most often, overpower reason. If people come to believe in or care for something strongly—a religion, a political stance, a prejudice, a family member or close friend—there is a tendency to cling to that belief even if it is proved to them beyond doubt that they are getting ripped off, emotionally and often enough, financially. Just about everyone has experienced it with a loved one at one time or another; I certainly had with Nick.

  With most people, reason will prevail sooner or later and they’ll back off. But a surprising number of others are especially susceptible—particular personality types figure in, although they might be as intelligent, competent, and “normal” as anyone else—and here is where it gets both fascinating and frightening. In these cases, nothing can convince them to give up the belief; on the contrary, the more blatantly false and damaging it gets, the more doggedly they’ll hang on. They will buy into increasingly absurd rationales to justify it—rather than admit they’ve been chumps, they become bigger ones. There are well-documented examples of perpetrators essentially laughing in their victims’ faces without that changing a thing.

  In other words, a great many people will fight ferociously against their own best interests, and for interests that are out to use them and even ruin them, if the right strings are pulled.

  Needless to say, demagogues, power brokers, and con artists have understood this from time immemorial and figured out a lot of ways to pull those strings; by and large, old tried-and-true techniques still work just fine. The baseline premise, driven home to the subjects over and over, is that they are superior. The reasons might include their race, their beliefs, or just their good taste in buying a particular product; often, they advance through stages of gaining more insider knowledge and privilege. All troubles are blamed on enemies, who are belittled, even dehumanized and persecuted; if there are no real enemies, they are created, with scapegoats common and dirty tactics blamed on them which actually are used by the blamers themselves. Disagreement and even questioning are not tolerated, education is disparaged or forbidden, accurate information suppressed or distorted, and so on.