by Todd Grimson
“Sometimes I just know I can do something, and I don’t think about it, and it works. If I think of something I want to do, usually thinking about it means I won’t be able to do it … and if I try, if I concentrate, I get a terrible headache … so I don’t ever push it.”
Tavinho asked her, in an analytical manner, to tell him everything she had done that she could recall, every separate instance. She understood that he was looking for common factors, some kind of a law.
At the Burger King she had given the guy a nosebleed. She had caused the electric window to go up, trapping the head of the barking
dog. She had clawed the face of the guy asking her for a dollar in New York. The plainclothes policeman tailing her, she had caused him to vomit uncontrollably in the front seat of his car. What else? Ripping Moyer’s throat open.
“Can you unlock your car?”
Lisa tried. Yes, she could. This was satisfying. On the way back inside, she picked up a thicker-than-usual rubber band, and a minute later, not knowing what to do with it, she put it on her right wrist. You never know what might be good luck.
Tavinho seemed to be thinking about all of these new phenomena; she liked the way his face looked when it had problems to solve. It was peaceful, sort of concerned, but basically cheerful, even if he did not smile.
When he spoke to her as she was eating an orange, it was not what she expected to hear.
“Do you remember the first Alien movie?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, when Ripley activates the launch sequence in the escape shuttle, the message that appears on the screen is the same one that appears in the hovercraft police car near the beginning of Blade Runner. It’s ‘ENVIRON CTR PURGE 24556 DR 5.”‘ Tavinho smiled. “That just stuck in my head.”
Lisa sort of tackled him, and they play-wrestled onto the couch. Her laughter infected him, and Tavinho laughed like she’d never heard him laugh before.
“Ripley,” Lisa repeated, the name cracking her up. It was a joke to her—the idea that she should model herself on Ripley, that that was who she’d have to be like.
THIRTY-SIX
Early that afternoon she returned to Popcorn’s, alone. Tavinho was going to seek some necessary equipment, stuff he thought he could easily score in East L.A. They planned on getting together later tonight. Lisa didn’t know what would be going on. It made her faintly sick to think of facing Popcorn right now. She was nervous.
She proceeded very cautiously, but he was not home. Nicole, Popcorn’s assistant, and Raelyn were there, out by the pool, Nicole in
a one-piece red swimsuit, Raelyn in cutoffs and a tank top, fine gold-to-light-brown hair on her legs. It appeared that Nicole had been reading something to Raelyn out of a book. The way they gazed at Lisa, she had to smile. It was plain they knew she had been gone all night, and further, they—Nicole certainly—knew something about how Selwyn had taken it, what had gone on after Lisa had left.
Lisa changed into her dark blue swimsuit. She would sit with them, talk for a few minutes, and then swim. Nicole didn’t really like her, she knew. However, she certainly trusted Raelyn.
“Where’s Selwyn?”
Nicole laughed. “You’re amazing,” she said, shaking her head.
“What’s your problem?” Lisa rejoined after a glance at Raelyn, who offered no help with her eyes.
“I’m not being critical,” Nicole said, still laughing a little. “I think it’s great. You’re reckless as shit, and maybe that’ll catch up with you, but just in the short term, I enjoy seeing you do your number on him.”
Lisa was actually a little shocked by Nicole’s disloyalty to Popcorn. Her general semblance of shyness and lack of color hid her true emotions well. Still, her implied judgment of Lisa wasn’t one Lisa liked.
“I shouldn’t tell you this,” said Nicole, “but he has this notebook he writes in all the time, a lot of the time he just doodles, but what he does is go back through it and circle in red the notes he wants to save, and I enter them into the computer every couple of weeks. He likes to write in longhand. Anyway, I saw this page where he’d written down all his former wives’ names, making a list, and, like he was fooling around, he tried out your name: Lisa Popcorn, Lisa Nova Popcorn … I shouldn’t tell you, but if you want it, if that’s in your plans, there it is.”
Lisa felt bad. “Jesus.” Her elbows resting on her drawn-up knees, she ran her fingers through her hair, then put one hand over her mouth.
“He’s introduced you to a lot of fucking people,” Nicole said, sounding oddly wistful, even forlorn.
Lisa reached over to Raelyn’s bottle of strawberry pop and took a sip. It was warm and awfully sweet. Nicole was wicked to tell her what Selwyn privately wrote down. And just because he wrote it, that didn’t mean that was what he wanted in the light of day. She felt sorry for him nonetheless.
She liked him, after all.
Maybe if she tried to be absolutely honest with him about their relationship, maybe … no, he’d still hate her. She would try, though, maybe.
Standing, stretching, she yawned, wondering what Tavinho was doing, missing him, he had a sureness about him she was lacking, she sensed he knew how to get things done. She dove into the glistening pool.
There were a lot of things she hadn’t told Tavinho about. Raelyn was one of them. Another was the uncomfortable, corrupting sense she had of being somehow complicit with Boro, of cooperating with him overmuch. Wanting to. The whole thing of Manoa, City of Gold … she had very mixed feelings there, a bad conscience. It was like she had cheated on an exam. And Boro, obviously, was the one who had passed her the answer sheet. It was his film as much as it was hers.
She’d left out details all over the map. Like how much she did like meeting people in the company of Popcorn, the snob appeal… she liked that a lot. And there had been no reason to mention Chuck Suede or Roy Hardway’s shrunken head.
The story of Miguel Casablanca had come out, though, and she had admitted her attraction to him. It remained a mystery how, exactly, he had obtained the stolen gun.
“He shot himself in the head to avoid being made into a zombie,” Lisa had said. It made perfect sense. Any other manner of suicide, or most of them, would have left his dead body at risk.
As she finished her swim, staying in the water while her breathing slowed, it occurred to her that the ideal solution, in a parallel universe, if she were more demonic, would be to marry Selwyn and hardly ever fuck him, enjoying the social functions as his trophy, his trinket, while having Tavinho as her lover on the side. The audacity of the concept made her smile at herself. Was it rotten of her just to consider this, to think it over for a while?
No, if she married anyone it would be Tavinho. The idea actually excited her, to think of their individualities blending deep in her belly, becoming pregnant, having their child. That had never sounded remotely attractive before. It had been frightening, almost monstrous. Your body swelling, changing, only to ultrapainfully let loose this wailing creature, with all its immediate demands.
That part still didn’t sound too great.
Tavinho, holding her this morning, had talked to her about outer space, how he had become interested in astronomy at the age of nine, when he had been given a telescope for his birthday, something to keep him occupied because his mother had died. Becoming an astrophysicist, however, was hard to do, on a world-class level, down in Brazil. He had come up now for this seminar at USC; next week he had an interview for a position at the Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. The concepts were just appealing to him. He liked the idea of liquid nitrogen oceans on one of Saturn’s moons, or of doing computer modeling of galaxy interactions, exotic particles that compose the two varieties of dark matter: hot dark matter and cold dark matter.
Lisa followed hardly anything of what he said, even though her father was a scientist … she let the poetry of it, and the interest in Tavinho’s voice, wash over her. Some of the wonder came through, and it made her feel senti
mental about what she regarded as his innocence, his admirable (here) naivete.
Uniformed LAPD came to pick her up and take her down to be questioned. They didn’t tell her anything, and she thought she should just keep her mouth shut. They had waited while she got dressed; she had put makeup on, keeping them at bay until she’d fixed her eyes, lipstick, put on her faux Russian Orthodox necklace …
Now she waited. It was 4:45 P.M. They had left her waiting in a fucked-up interrogation room that had probably been reasonably new and modern in, like, 1975; since then it had seen hard use. She waited and wondered whether she should give that lawyer a call right away, she’d retained him on Popcorn’s advice a week ago through Larry Planet’s brother. She’d talked to him once. His name was Watson Random. She hadn’t seen him yet, but her impression was that he was an extremely smart black man. He’d been a little impatient with her on the phone, trying to get a straight answer out of her, but she believed Larry Planet’s brother’s claim that he was good.
It was intimidating, being here at the station; all kinds of people walked by and glanced at you through the open door, sizing you up. Wondering what sort of a criminal you were. Bland, extraordinarily cynical looks from policemen and policewomen, it rattled her a little, waiting, surely the intent. No matter how nice you looked, there lurked in the air the implied threat—the power—to at any time take you and strip you, make you put on a rough-cut blue gown and confine you in a tiny cell on a row of cells full of vicious women unable to exist in peace out on the street.
Detective Bluestone came in, his jacket off, shirtsleeves half rolled up. She could smell the cinnamon gum in his mouth.
“Duane Moyer’s Toyota Corolla was parked down the street from your apartment for nearly a week before the explosion. He ate in the car, even peed in a bottle in the car. He had a pair of binoculars. So the implication is that he was watching you … this even after Nehi Laughton fired him. Did you see him, were you aware of this?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“He took three rolls of photographs. We’ve had them developed. Almost all are of you, coming and going, a few apparently of your guests. Miguel Casablanca, for instance.”
“So?”
“A lot of shots of you with your sunglasses on, getting into your car.”
Lisa had no comment on this.
Looking down at a folder he’d opened, Bluestone said, “You know, some pretty dramatic cellular changes take place when someone dies … in a way, you’re not really dead till about twenty-four hours have passed.” He closed the folder and looked Lisa in the face. “The forensic pathologist says that Moyer was already dead when the apartment blew up. That he’d been dead for something around three days.”
Lisa frowned, not liking this at all.
“There’s something else. The pathologist thinks there’s something strange about how all the flesh was gone from the bones. More tissue should have been attached, however fried.”
“I don’t know anything about any of this,” Lisa said. “I want my lawyer, now.”
“You can have an attorney join you at any time,” he said, but she knew he didn’t want it, because Watson Random would advise her not to say a word.
“Are you going to charge me with anything?” Lisa asked.
“Did you kill Moyer?”
“No.”
“You didn’t answer that very well,” he said, with a fast, hard smile, and it was true, her response had been too direct, she had unaccountably “blinked,” there’d been an infinitesimal but unmistakable hesitation before she’d been able to get it out. She’d blown it, and they both knew it. It was funny too, because although she had in fact killed him, she didn’t feel guilty. He’d attacked her, and she’d won. But this shit was hard. The thing with the bones was irrational, it confused her, probably Bluestone could see this. He knew that she had some guilty knowledge, but he didn’t know how much. The fact that she had lost the tail the other night probably annoyed them; if she lost it again, as she would have to, well … but she would need to, in order to visit Boro and try to end all this, and rescue Christine.
Knowing that Tavinho was on her side consoled her—she smiled to herself and let her mind work more concisely, like the daughter of Dr. Nova … trying to be sound.
It hit her where the big danger was: that they would search for blood inside her car. Given the thorough methods they had now, it seemed unlikely to her that Moyer hadn’t bled through the rug wrapped around him, at least some.
But at this point, why would they imagine that his body had ever left her apartment? That was weirder, inexplicable in ordinary terms. The most direct, simple line was probably almost always the best.
She saw that she had to stay with Popcorn for a while, as camouflage. They wouldn’t want to involve him in a scandal unnecessarily, and she had moved in with him only a day or so before their projected murder date. Everything indicated, then, from their point of view, that Popcorn was involved. This was a company town; if Bluestone and his superiors fucked up over the death of a sleazeball like Moyer in what might be an unprovable case, their careers would be ruined.
Bluestone and Brown came back in and gave her mean looks, but Lisa was confident now, and when Bluestone said she could go, she said she wanted a ride home in an unmarked car.
“If it’s possible,” she then amended, feeling embarrassed by her demand. It wasn’t in her nature to be arrogant like that.
“Wait fifteen minutes, and I’ll drive you,” Bluestone said, after exchanging glances with Brown. Lisa wondered if there was a fatal flaw in her logic. She was scared.
All the way to Popcorn’s they conversed pleasantly, desultorily, never touching on anything to do with the investigation. Good cop, bad cop. Bluestone, sensing early on that, even if he was tough, she liked him, thought he was the good one. More or less. At least in comparison to Brown, who hated her guts.
Before she got out of the car, Lisa said, addressing the subtext of the ride, “I only met him once, and I didn’t like him, he gave me a creepy feeling … I wasn’t sorry to hear he was dead. Especially now that you tell me he was spying on me when he wasn’t even working for Laughton anymore. Isn’t that what you said? I don’t know how he got killed, I don’t know who blew up my apartment, I don’t know what he was doing in there, you say that he was already dead … it’s weird stuff, but I don’t feel like it has anything to do with me.”
By now she was out of his car, leaning back in, holding the door open. Bluestone said, “Maybe you’re right. We’ll let you know when we find out anything new.”
She thanked him for the ride. It was seven o’clock. He zoomed away, and she walked into the big house, saying hi to Maria Luisa, one of the maids.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Did it matter that Popcorn had expressed to her, before dinner and afterward, the hope that she would continue to stay there, that he wasn’t interested in being possessive, he had been through all that before? Lisa had recognized what Selwyn was doing, no problem. Did it matter what they’d had for dinner? If she died tonight, the coroner doing the autopsy would identify the various elements of the half-digested meal and write them on his form. Lisa wouldn’t care, she’d be gone—absent, missing, someplace else, nowhere. Did it matter how she and Tavinho had eluded any possible tail?
The electronic eye opened the gate for them at a wave of her hand. Boro’s estate was dark, and Lisa was so scared now she felt like she might get sick. Tavinho, sensing this, touched her tense shoulder, giving her a reassuring look she could feel more than see. It was close to midnight, and Lisa was tired, frazzled—it had taken a long time, and many inconclusive phone calls, for them to connect. Paulo had grown weary of her questioning voice. No, Tavinho had not come home. Nor had he called. Finally, at eleven-thirty, Tavinho had called Lisa and said he had everything; purchasing the gun had turned out to be hard.
He had seen no reason to wait. “Let’s get it over with, do it tonight. We’ll get more nervous if we wait, we’ll l
ose our resolve. Let’s go.”
“OK, OK,” Lisa had said, and here they were. She parked her car on the grass, away from the path of the Jaguar sedan. She wondered again if it was Roy’s. She somehow assumed it was which gave her the
creeps. Tavinho wore a dark blue T-shirt, blue jeans; Lisa wore black, a disposable outfit of black cotton tights and leotard, her mirror earrings, flexible black ankle-high lace-ups that she could run in, and a black minidress that was ancient, she wouldn’t miss it if it got ruined.
There was no light on outside, but Lisa knew where the door was. Inside, it was not pitch black, thank God. Down around the corner, there was some kind of red nightlight. Eerie, but at least they could find their way. Actually, if it came to it, Lisa had every confidence she could see in the dark, but in here, with the possibilities—all bad—it was better if there was some light.
She held the machete, which had black electrical tape wrapped around the handle, concealed in a drawstring canvas bag. She was serious. Tavinho had the gun, a policeman’s .38. He didn’t have as many bullets for it as he would have liked, he had said. So they’d have to be fast on their feet.
Their first task was to rescue Christine. The house was so quiet it made them reluctant to let themselves make a sound.
“Up here,” Lisa whispered, and Tavinho nodded. Because she knew the layout, he had to allow her to lead the way. His eyes were shining, dark—never had he seemed so foreign to her, and yet he was familiar, she trusted him, she loved him. She would not have been able to try this on her own, she now believed. She wouldn’t have been able to stand the fear. It would have seemed suicidal to come in here like this.
Perhaps it still was, but she had someone to share the folly with, and this made it bearable. They exchanged glances, and Lisa opened Christine’s door.
