Trust Me

by Javorsky, Earl

  Tony’s car was parked in her spot. It was a decrepit Volvo station wagon, parked askew with its tail end sticking out into the traffic lane. All of his gear was visible in the back—amplifiers and instrument cases—and the driver’s side window was open.

  She parked in visitor parking and hurried up to her flat. Music was blaring from her stereo—it had that noisy, messy quality she had come to know as belonging to a live recording of one of Tony’s club gigs. She started to let herself in when the doorknob flew out of her grasp.

  “Hey, Miss nighty-night-early-tonight made it home. I know. You tried to sleep and couldn’t so you made the bed and got dressed and went for a FUCKING DRIVE. AM I RIGHT?” He’s shouting at me, she thought, inside my own home. He stood holding her door open but blocking the doorway. In one hand he gripped a bottle of Wild Turkey. The words “Get it while it’s hot . . .” came in a distorted roar from the stereo behind him—it was the chorus to a rock song he had co-written.

  She brushed past Tony, surprised at her own audacity. He let her through and followed her into the living room. She hit the off button on the stereo and turned back to him. “I want you to leave here right now.”

  “Whoah, baby. Aren’t you glad to see me?” he taunted as he stepped toward her. “I called and I called and then I thought to myself, well why don’t I just go over and sneak in real quiet-like and snuggle up with her in bed. Wouldn’t that be nice? But nooo. Check it out. The bitch flew the coop!”

  “Get out of here, Tony. You’re drunk. I hate it when you’re drunk. Go home.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I went to a meeting.”

  “Bullshit. Fucking meetings are over at nine. BULLSHIT.” Now he was yelling again

  “Look, I went out with the people from the meeting afterward. We went to a restaurant.”

  “Bullshit.” Tony lunged forward and grabbed her purse. He reached in and pulled out her compact. “Nice,” he said, and threw it over his shoulder. He followed with her wallet, hairbrush, and address book, throwing them aside, until he got to the envelope.

  “Hey now. What have we got here?” He opened the envelope and pulled out a business card. “Dr. Art Bradley, Psychologist, Licensed Family Counselor, Co-dependency and Substance Abuse Specialist, hey, in Bevahlee Hills, dahling. Oh, and look here!” He pulled out the ticket. “The Bevahlee Hills fuckin’ Playhouse. Well, isn’t that nice. Tomorrow night.” He stepped up to her and lowered his face to her, then moved around to whisper, “I thought we

  had”—his tongue flickered warmly in her ear—“a date tomorrow night.”

  “Tony, goddamnit, cut it out.” She turned her head and tried to pull away, but Tony’s hand shot out and caught her hair. She felt a shock of pain as he wrenched her around and flung her, by the hair, back into the stereo console.

  “Tony, please, you’ve got it all mixed up. Stop.” She was pleading with him, but somewhere in the back of her mind she was furious, ready to push a brick in his face if only she could get her hands on one.

  “All mixed up. You’ve got it all mixed up,” he mimicked. “All mixed up? Mix this up, you little cunt,” and his hand shot out and caught her right above the eye in a backhanded slap that she heard before she felt.

  At that moment a voice came from the door. “Holly! Holly, is everything okay?” The voice had a lisp; it was Arnie, her next door neighbor, very sweet, very gay, and not her first choice for the moment, but Tony simply said, “Oh Christ,” and turned around and left. As he passed Arnie at the door he said, “What a fuckin’ joke,” and then he was gone.

  CHAPTER 5

  ⍫

  Jeff was startled out of oblivion by a bump against his mouth. It had started out lips on lips, but caress turned into collision; teeth had gnashed against his teeth. He looked up and groaned. Lilah was standing over him, swaying, a goofy look on her face, teeth bared in a crazed grin. He knew that look. It meant that she had taken one, probably several, of his Xanax bars. He also realized that she had gotten into his bank bag.

  “So, man, you’re busted,” she managed, with effort, to enunciate. “You’re doing heroin.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” he yelled, wide awake now. He jumped up and marched off into the spare room, Lilah following. His briefcase was open on the bed, its contents scattered everywhere. On the floor were a magazine and a long clear glass vial. The vial’s contents were arranged into little piles and lines—more than half was in the carpet. It was the LSD. The humidity was beading on it; the part in the rug was gone forever. The substance, in its pure form, had represented over ten thousand doses. Lilah put her finger into one of the little piles and leered at him, triumphant.

  “You’re a fuckin’ junkie, man. That’s why you got sick.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “What the FUCK is the matter with you?” he yelled. Lilah stared at him as if he had a poisonous spider on his nose. “What the fuck are you doing?” She put her finger in her mouth. That amount alone could have sent thirty people to Mars for twenty-four hours; God knew what she had already ingested.

  He grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her up and out of the room. He slammed the door while she yelled something about how the color of the powder had clued her in that there was heroin in the vial.

  He locked the door and started trying to salvage what was left. The LSD was almost half gone. Rich’s investment was in the toilet. He took stock of the rest of the room. The large bag was still in its spot on the shelf. That was good. He counted the Xanax; there were three missing. With the coke it was hard to tell; he didn’t keep close tabs on his personal stash. He snapped one of the bars in half and ate it, along with a Valium, put everything back in the briefcase, and cleared off the bed.

  He lay down, his heart thumping like a basketball on a gym floor.

  ⍫

  The next thing he heard was shouting from outside. He looked at his watch; he must have slept for an hour. There was a brief silence, then a crash and the sound of breaking glass, and then he heard Lilah shout, “CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART. THE DEVIL IS IN YOUR HEART.” This was followed by a voice from the neighboring apartment building—“Give it a rest, Lilah!”—and laughter. A different voice yelled, “Party time at Lilah’s again!” followed by, “Shut the fuck up, all of you.”

  Another crash. BOOM. Something heavy this time. He could picture her throwing things out of the living room window.

  “CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART.” There was a muffled thump, as though a large piece of furniture had just been pushed over. Jeff dozed.

  He woke to a scream. “AAAH! GET AWAY FROM ME! FUCK YOU, DEVIL.” This was way past out of hand. He reached over to his briefcase and fished out another Valium. He needed, and intended to get, at least ten more hours of sleep.

  ⍫

  This time he was awakened by a new sound. It came from the direction of the front door and had a crisp authority, a staccato rhythm of great purpose. After a silence, it resumed. He sat up on the edge of the bed. There was another silence, followed by, “POLICE! OPEN THE DOOR!”

  “Shit.” He froze. He heard the unmistakable sound of the front door frame giving way, followed by heavy footsteps and the squawking of a police radio.

  “YOU,” he heard Lilah shriek, “CAST THE DEVIL FROM YOUR HEART.” She was really out of her tree. More footsteps. A female voice said something he couldn’t hear. A male voice laughed, the walkie-talkie blared, and the footsteps fanned out throughout the apartment.

  He got up and shut the closet door. Then he put his ear to the wall, trying to hear what was going on in the living room. He considered the window, but throwing out the bag and briefcase would surely attract attention. Climbing out was out of the question.

  He couldn’t hear much, but things seemed to be settling down. The female voice asked questions, Lilah’s voice responding in a singsong fashion. He reach
ed in the pocket of his trunks. The amber vial was there. He whisked it out, unscrewed the cap, and inhaled what was left inside, savoring the medicinal smell as he put the vial under the mattress. He licked his thumb and index finger, then used them to clean his nostrils in a pinching motion. A hard object rapped against the door to his room.

  He opened the door and saw a cop holding a big nightstick. The cop was huge. Jeff was six feet tall and he had to look up at the guy.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jeffrey Fenner, sir.”

  “What’s been going on around here?”

  “Well sir, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? What the hell have you been doing?” The cop was incredulous.

  “Sleeping. Well, trying to, anyway.”

  “You slept through this?” The cop gestured for him to step out and look down the hall into the living room.

  He looked out and saw four other cops standing by the door—one was the woman he had heard—and Lilah bound onto a stretcher on wheels. The living room was a mess, with stuff all over the floor and the couch and chairs tumbled over. He stepped back into his room. “It’s probably better if she doesn’t notice me,” he said.

  “Why is that? What’s going on here, anyway?”

  “Well, sir, ah . . .” His nose was about to drip. He started to reach for it, then let his hand drop. “I’m in grad school over at UCLA. Uh, biology, sir.” He saw an opening. “Anyway, I saw an ad for a roommate in the campus newspaper. I’ve only been here for ten days and I’m already looking for a new place. This girl,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the living room, “just parties too much.” He was on a roll now. The cop looked bored but was clearly waiting for more. “So this weekend I was in San Francisco, visiting my folks. I had to take the midnight shuttle home and I think I ate some bad food at the airport ’cause I was sick as a dog by the time we landed in LA.” All this time he was standing in the doorway, eyes locked with the cop in the hall.

  “So I get home and she had just gotten back herself. She was fighting with her date and seemed pretty loaded at the time. I needed to sleep so I just stayed in here and locked the door.” He had no idea where the story came from—it just flowed. He remembered the disappointment of not qualifying for college.

  The cop looked at him in silence, softly tapping the nightstick into his palm. He thought of the scale—it was right next to the gun in the closet, along with the coke and the money. A voice from the front door said, “You ready?” and the cop replied, “Yeah, let’s clear out.” He looked at Jeff and said, “Get some sleep,” then turned around and left.

  He heard the front door pull shut, then creak open on its broken hinge. In the outside hallway, footsteps receded until finally it was quiet. He waited for ten minutes, then got dressed, gathered his bag and briefcase, and walked to his car. As he rolled out of the driveway, he shook his head, thinking about what he had just pulled off. He had skated on some thin ice before, but this morning was a capper.

  Driving through Brentwood toward the beach, he grimaced at the brightness of the day. It was hot, but he didn’t care. His apartment was four miles away. If he made it there, he could sleep until dinnertime, or maybe all the way through to the next morning, and things would be different. He would be rested, he would eat, and then he would figure out what to do.

  CHAPTER 6

  ⍫

  He found it buried in the third page of the Metro section of the LA Times:

  SUICIDE IN WESTWOOD

  Twenty-eight-year-old Marilyn Fenner, a research assistant at UCLA, was found dead Monday morning, apparently after jumping from her twelfth-floor balcony.

  Joe Greiner put the paper on his desk and wondered who made the decisions about whose death made which page and how much of a story it would get. Didn’t this girl have a life, a family, a history? He sipped at his coffee. It was sweet, loaded with sugar and powdered creamer. Like a liquid candy bar, he thought.

  The phone rang. “Homicide, Greiner.” He didn’t really feel like talking.

  “Joe? Ron Pool. I catch you in the middle of something?”

  Pool, from the Times. Decent guy. Wrote the piece on the girl. “Always, Ron. In the middle of a sea of shit. What’s up?”

  “I got curious about the girl, is all. You call it a suicide, we print it’s a suicide. But it bugged me so I did a little checking.”

  “Yeah?” Pool was a thorough guy, a professional. “What kind of checking?”

  “Well, I haven’t come up with much. Except that the suicide rate for women in her age group on the Westside took a big jump in the last couple of years.”

  “Yeah, so it’s a fuckin’ epidemic. What of it?” Pool usually came up with better.

  “I don’t know,” Ron said, “but it’s got me like an itch. I pulled files on a few others but don’t really have much. Fax me what you’ve got and I’ll keep you up to date if anything shows up.”

  “Hey, maybe it’s a suicide conspiracy.” Joe wasn’t big on hunches. You show up, look around, ask questions, weed out the bullshit; what starts out as a puzzle always gets dumb and simple. Except here there wasn’t any puzzle. “Hey, what the hell, I’ll pull suicide files, last two years, Westside, female, twenty to thirty.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get back to you.” Pool hung up.

  Joe started to put the phone down, then changed his mind and punched a number instead. He was relieved to hear his ex-wife’s answering machine pick up.

  “Janey, I’m at the office. Be here ’til four. I’ll come by to pick up Robbie at six. See ya.” It was so much simpler leaving a message.

  He had two hours worth of paperwork to do. A few calls, then gathering the files for Pool, would take him right up to four. Then, he thought with relish, he would get some time at the gym. His hand went automatically to his gut; he grabbed it and hated the way it filled his hand, pushed over his belt. He had powerful arms and legs but couldn’t get rid of the flab in his middle.

  A few hours later, Joe finished the paperwork and accessed the database. He entered the password “RAIDERS” and then the keyword “suicide.” A few more parameters narrowed the range to what Pool had asked for. The cursor blinked and then a message came up: “Search indicates 8 records.” He punched in the print command and walked over to the printer. Eight very lonely young women, eight desperate acts. He took the list down the hall to where the files were and started pulling the folders, getting more depressed as the stack grew.

  CHAPTER 7

  ⍫

  Holly blasted up Roxbury drive. It was only a short hop to the Beverly Hills Playhouse; the evening was warm, she had the top down, the music turned up, and everything seemed just right: mysterious and full of promise.

  She had gone to bed the night before with a bag of ice clutched to her eye, angry with herself, hating Tony, and even angrier at Art, as if he had been responsible for what had happened. And that awful meeting—what in the world did they have to offer?

  In the morning, she had awakened thinking about the meeting again, only this time it seemed as though something had happened there that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. It was vague, tenuous, and she couldn’t find it in any particular thing that she had seen or heard. It was just a sense she had of a promise of relief.

  The ticket to the lecture was in her purse on the passenger seat. She had found it on the floor in the living room—Tony had dropped it when he grabbed her hair. After he left, Arnie had come in and comforted her, telling her that Tony was a wanna-be, a has-been that never was, and that even though he was sexy he was too much of a loser for someone like her. Arnie had smoothed out her hair, talked to her in the bathroom as she undressed, and patted her blanket when she was in bed, turning out the light and whispering good night.

  She turned up Canon Drive and found herself in a long line of cars all waiting to get into the same parkin
g lot. She drove around them, noticed the line at the Playhouse, and circled the block. A parking spot materialized for her on the next street over; she locked the BMW and walked back to Canon Drive, glancing at the expensive displays in the storefronts as she passed.

  The line on the sidewalk was long and she didn’t see a soul that she knew. Taking a place at the end, she picked fragments of conversation out of the general buzz:

  “. . . absolutely haven’t had a shouting match since we read her book”;

  “. . . It became clear as daylight I was in the wrong marriage”; and “. . . wonder what her own personal life is like.”

  Yes, she wondered, what can life be like when your ship comes in, your book is selling, people line up to see you at $45 each, and you have all this knowledge that helps others? Is it quiet at the center?

  “Holly!” She turned and saw Art, dressed in a dark blue suit this time, looking even tanner than before as he smiled at her. He took her by the hand and led her toward the theater door, saying, “I’m delighted you came. Let’s get you to a decent seat before I have to go running off to play stage manager again.” He whisked her past the line of waiting people, professional people, she noticed, well dressed and attractive, interesting looking. Many were hugging each other. Over and over, people nodded and smiled as they passed. Some seemed to clamor for Art’s attention. He walked her past the ticket taker, through the crowded lobby, and, once in the theater itself, down the aisle to the front row. The front section was generally full, except for two seats by the center aisle. Next to these were several people Holly recognized—they were from the meeting the other night and the restaurant after.

  “Holly, how great you made it!” It was Ted, the man from the meeting. “Have a seat. This is definitely going to change your life.”