Lesson In Red

by Maria Hummel

  Whatever Ray was thinking now, I suspected he wouldn’t tell me. This was how it would have been, working with him. My interview with the actress tomorrow—what a simple affair by comparison. It would be my own gig, start to finish. The actress would want the publicity, and so she would give me what I needed. Gilot would be with us in spirit, bringing the luster of a life well lived. There would be a tasty lunch, sparkling water with a twist of lime. Our common enterprise as clear as sunlight.

  Davi had three bandmates, all guitarists, and they didn’t stop strumming until the oldest one set down his instrument with a definitive thunk at the end of a long song. Heavyset and bearded, he rose first, swabbing his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, and then headed backstage. Davi and the others waited through most of their applause before following.

  “Now,” Ray said and grabbed my elbow, steering me toward the back of the stage, where a muscular bald man blocked the narrow corridor beyond. Ray gave a nod to the man, who blinked but did not stop us from edging past him and heading down the paneled hall to a door. I looked at Ray, and he gave a little shrug, as if to say, What did you expect? I know what I’m doing.

  Ray made one sharp knock, and after a moment the bearded bandmate poked his head out.

  “Naw, man, no,” he said, waving Ray off. “Come back after.”

  “Can’t do that,” Ray said. “We need to talk to him now.”

  The bearded guy retreated, and he said something to Davi in rapid Portuguese. Davi’s retort was loud, and they argued for a while. Finally, the bandmate heaved a sigh and turned away, leaving the door unguarded. Ray pushed in, and I followed.

  The four men sat on stools in a room with scratched purple walls and a mirror topped by a track of glowing bulbs. They stared at us, their faces and shirts soaked in sweat. Davi was clearly the youngest, and he wore the most suspicious expression, almost a sneer.

  “We’re on break,” he said. “Can’t this wait?”

  “I’ve got an early bedtime,” said Ray. Suddenly he looked colder and sterner than usual, more of a prototypical cop. His southern accent was stronger, too. “As I told your colleague here, I’ve been hired by someone who wants to find out the truth of what happened to your sister. I have a few short questions.”

  Davi cracked a can of beer and scowled at the foam rising through the hole.

  “When did you last see her?” said Ray.

  “The week before she died,” Davi said.

  “Which day?”

  “I don’t know. Saturday. She came to one of my sets.” He pounded half the beer, then tossed it in a nearby trash. “This stuff tastes like dung. We got anything better?”

  “Harder,” said his bandmate, pulling out a clear bottle.

  I watched Ray witness the exchange. He seemed to be measuring something in Davi, who up close resembled his sister more than he did onstage. They had the same dark brows and slightly short chin. Davi grabbed the bottle, unscrewed the cap, sniffed it, and handed it back. “That crap will ruin my voice,” he said. “Get us something from the bar. Top shelf.”

  His bandmate looked peeved by the request, but he stalked from the room.

  “Anything else?” Davi said to Ray with exaggerated slowness.

  “Did you notice anything different about her the last time you saw her?”

  “She seemed . . .” Davi paused. “Restless, I guess. Nervous. She dropped her beer, and my sister was not the clumsy type.”

  “Did she ask you about the money you owed her?”

  The other two men did not look surprised at this, but I saw something slam behind Davi’s eyes. “What are you saying?”

  “You owed her four grand. There’s a bank record of a check that she wrote to you. Just as she was about to lose all her funding at her school.”

  Davi blinked. “How do you know I didn’t pay her back in cash?”

  Ray just stood there and folded his arms. I didn’t understand his attitude. His posture. I would have thought he’d be polite to Davi, someone who’d lost his sister so violently. I would have thought he’d be thankful for any information he could give. Then I felt naïve for assuming all this.

  “Listen,” Davi said, “I never touched a hair on my sister’s head. The cops say she killed herself. You’re meowing up the wrong fucking tree—”

  “I agree,” said Ray in the same tough tone. “So what’s the right tree, Davi?”

  His sudden change in tack disarmed Davi, who shut his mouth and shook his head.

  “Get out,” said the bearded man, halfheartedly. “You asked enough questions.”

  “You must have an idea,” said Ray.

  Davi frowned. “She left us years ago, you know? She didn’t lose touch, but she always had different tastes and you could see her nose up, judging everything. So most hometown people just left her alone. I didn’t know her crowd at college. I never met any of them, not at USC, not at LAAC. But she was happy, she was practically flying, until late last fall, and something happened. She told me it was a breakup of a relationship that never should have been. But she didn’t say who.” He picked up his empty guitar case and ran a hand over the black velvet interior. He seemed inclined to say more. Then he shut the case and set it down again. “And then she was just crazy depressed. Again. I heard she stopped her meds, too.” His brow furrowed. “You must have your own idea.”

  “I’ve got too many ideas,” said Ray. “But thank you for yours. Great set.”

  Davi didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He was gazing at me. “Did you know Brenae?”

  I glanced at Ray. Should I lie? He gave no sign either way. He was studying the open guitar case.

  “No,” I said, clearing my throat. “I saw her videos. Did you shoot them?”

  Davi wore a quizzical expression.

  “It had to have been someone she knew well,” I said, feeling Ray’s eyes on me. “She seemed so comfortable. Also, it was someone talented.” I paused, lingering over the phrase. “I loved your set, too.”

  “No, I didn’t shoot her movies.” Davi turned back to the guitar case, his voice husky.

  “We got to do our set list, Dav,” growled one of the bandmates.

  “Thank you for your time,” Ray said to Davi, then nodded at me.

  When I followed him out the door, I heard Davi say, “I paid Brenae back. Not all of it, but some. I was going to pay it all.”

  “DID YOU THINK HE HAD something to do with her suicide?” I asked as Ray drove me home.

  “As much as anyone,” said Ray. “I was curious what he knew about LAAC. And her funding.”

  “I don’t think he knew that she’d lost it.”

  “Me neither. Or that she was behind on rent. LASD found an eviction notice in her mail. She was broke.”

  Ray’s tense, tough air had disappeared. He was a different man now, slouched in his seat, steering with one hand at the top of the wheel. The hair at his temples was damp with sweat.

  “Why did you talk to him like that?” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a . . . cop,” I said, wishing I had a different word.

  “What do you think I am?” Ray said. The streetlights made panels of his face. “You think if I went in there like his buddy he would open up to me? People like Davi hate cops. He doesn’t have a record, but their older brother does. He was in and out of juvenile detention for years. I go in there like I’m Davi’s pal, like I’m sorry for his loss, and even if I am really genuinely sorry his sister is dead, he’ll shut down. He’s trained himself to be guarded against assholes like me since he was a kid. He’ll think I have something on him, and he’ll shut down just in case I do.” He looked over. “You didn’t like it, right?” He shrugged. “That’s the point. It’s not about being liked. It’s about getting what you need, then getting out of people’s lives.”

  It was a long speech for Ray, and when it was done, the silence in the car felt thick and deep. It hadn’t occurred to me that he didn’t want this gig, either. Or did h
e? Why was he here, back in L.A.? It couldn’t be only for Janis. Ray had to have some lead on his own brother’s homicide, which had happened last winter, a mystery that had first driven him to California. I longed to ask, but there was something fragile in his speech, despite the direct way he had delivered it—I didn’t want to push him to confess anything to me now. The night had been full enough.

  We passed a small, glass-fronted burger joint with a sign in red cursive: MO MEATTY MEATBURGERS! My ex and I used to read it aloud whenever we passed. It seemed so L.A.: the flamboyant, if slightly incorrect, overstatement. But we’d never stopped there to eat. For the first time, I wondered why. What were we afraid of?

  “You asked a great question. One that I hadn’t thought through,” Ray added in his usual neutral, courtly tone. “I need to find out who filmed Packing. I don’t remember seeing credits, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “Maybe that’s the relationship Davi was talking about, though.”

  “Maybe.” His hand tensed on the wheel. The fado singer was still playing low, her voice distant and sorrowful. We slowed in a line of traffic for a stoplight. The smell of spicy fried meat seeped through the windows, and we passed steam and smoke first, then a man cooking sausages on an open grill by the sidewalk, his spatula waving through the air. My stomach growled.

  “You hungry?” Ray said. He sounded hungry, too. Or lonely. For a moment I felt a tug for him, for Ray as a man and not as a colleague or an adversary. The old tug, the one I’d felt months ago in the hospital when he put his hand over mine. But I shook it away.

  “I’ve got to turn in,” I said, sighing, “if I’m going to pull off being a gallerina tomorrow. And I will have to leave for lunch. Two or three hours.”

  A stillness fell over Ray. “You sure?” he said after a moment.

  “I have an important interview,” I said. “I’m not missing it.”

  “No, I mean about the other. Filling in at the gallery.”

  He turned onto the broad boulevard that led to my apartment, but even with his hands moving on the wheel he gave the impression of utter absorption, as if he were listening to something I couldn’t hear.

  “Sure as I ever will be,” I said. I wasn’t certain when I had decided this—maybe after watching Davi’s face go dark with grief—but it was for Janis and for the Rocque that I was doing it. If my listening in on a few students gossiping about their director would give her peace of mind about our museum’s future, then what did one week matter to me? I would leverage my interview with the actress toward more writing gigs. I would pave my own way.

  Ray waited for a moment, then nodded. “We should meet early tomorrow so I can brief you on the crew.” He named a café near the gallery. “Case report’s in the door there beside you. Terrific bedtime reading, if you want.”

  So he had been certain that he would convince me tonight. The music. The meeting place tomorrow picked out. The case file in the door. I had been manipulated like Davi into giving Ray the answer he wanted.

  “Thanks,” I said stiffly, lifting the thick folder from the pocket.

  He pulled up at the curb. I opened my door as soon as the car stopped. “Good night,” I said.

  “You don’t want to act like you’re playing a part,” Ray said suddenly. “People can always tell when you’re playing a part.”

  I held the handle, waiting.

  “I mean tonight, you asked the right question. A smart question. But Davi could tell you were trying to play him, flattering him like that,” Ray said, wearing a slight frown. “He didn’t mind, but he could tell. Someone else might distrust you, and you’d lose the setup right there.”

  I tried to remember what expression I’d worn in the bar’s back room, how I had been standing when I’d spoken to Davi. Then I saw myself crossing my arms, leaning on one leg, my hip cocked. Had I done that? Had I really pouted and looked out at Davi from lowered eyes? Ray was right. The body language wasn’t me. “So how should I act?” I said.

  “Like yourself. But yourself as the gallerina,” said Ray. He waved his hand and looked over his shoulder, as if he saw someone quickly driving up on us. “You know. Sweet. Brainy,” he said to his window.

  It took me a few seconds, but I swallowed all the mixed feelings this summary raised in me.

  I said, “See you in the morning.”

  The woman was still singing low when I exited the car. I closed the door on her voice, and on Ray sneaking a last glance at me, a slight puzzlement in his eyes, as if he wasn’t certain who I’d become. Then he gave me a polite nod, and we parted.

  SAFELY INSIDE, I PUT THE file down and took a bath. The bathtub had been a selling point for the sublet—deep and spacious for a boxy apartment and its generic little bathroom—and when I sank into it and closed my eyes, I felt like I understood why the woman kept this place, even as she fled it. It was reassuring to possess your own small retreat in this massive city, to have one spot that was quiet and yours alone. I didn’t read. I just soaked in hot water, sweating, the tub so full I could almost float. My mind drifted over memories of Janis: Telling Bas off in his office. Standing at the podium in the museum auditorium, delivering the news of Kim Lord’s disappearance. Holding Dee’s hand at a Rocque exhibition opening, the first time she’d publicly acknowledged their relationship. She’d looked defiant, happy, and supremely uncomfortable. For all her fame and influence, Janis hated the spotlight. She hated any notice at all. I couldn’t imagine how much she despised her body becoming public through her disease, her weekly face-offs with oncologists and technicians.

  After I toweled dry and dressed in my softest pajamas, I circled the death report a few times, making tea, a piece of buttered toast. Just as I was about to pick up the file, my stomach churned and I decided I couldn’t read it or I would never sleep. I still wasn’t sure I could bear getting tied up in the sadness of Brenae’s story.

  And the sadness was, unfortunately, beside the point. No matter what had happened to Brenae, her story was a pawn in Janis’s game. Janis’s real goal was to keep her own strong hand in shaping downtown culture. If L.A. in the sixties and seventies had had the best parties, and the eighties and nineties massive riots and earthquake devastation, then our moment now was about spending the future, building the new cosmopolis from the center outward. We were two years post 9/11, and American cities were precious, necessary, ours. Everyone rich enough in L.A. craved a building project; even famous actors and pop stars asked our museum director for introductions to the architects showing their designs at the Rocque. Drugs, sex, and high-end vacations were all fine and good, but renovating a loft building off Broadway, or opening a dark-paneled Sixth Street speakeasy—now that was a lucky life. Janis wanted her own vision to endure in this urban frontier frenzy, and who could blame her? For decades, the Rocque had been the reason to visit its block on weekends, when the surrounding skyscrapers had emptied themselves of their bankers and lawyers and the only open restaurant served the same Thai chicken pizza you could get in Hemet. Now Janis’s nemesis threatened to sail in and claim the same turf she’d fought so hard for. She would find a reason to stop him. But Brenae wasn’t a reason. She was a person. I looked over at the closed file, the thick stack of papers inside. I desperately need your help. I turned away, crawled into bed, and closed my eyes.

  AN HOUR LATER, I FOUND I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and wrote to my mother. Whenever I didn’t want to update my mother on my life, I told her about what I was reading. I presumed that we both found this a reassuring practice. In her mind, as long as I was reading books, I must be staying home at night and I had not fallen off a cliff into despondency or self-destructive behavior; in my mind, as long as Mom was there to listen to my thoughts, they actually mattered.

  Tonight, I wrote about the wonderful book I’d read that summer on James Compton, a lost figure in the 1990s British art scene. Brilliant, blond, brash, upper crust, and frequently spotted in an immaculate white suit, Compton had been the brief Warhol of his tribe
. He was the first to open a gallery in Shoreditch, one of London’s derelict warehouse districts, and it soon became a hub for a loose confederation of young artists. He organized a street fair with kissing booths, clowns, and drawings for sale, all staffed by young names who became art-world legends within five years. He also smoked crack, held a cake knife to his throat at his birthday party, and was rumored to have connections with a Turkish crime family. Within five years, he’d died, the victim of an ether overdose. The funeral for Compton was huge, but since then—without his powerful personality and showmanship—his name had ebbed.

  I told my mother that reading about Compton had made me sad for him, but that the writer’s eloquent praise of his achievements took that sadness and added something, the way the second note of a chord takes a lonely, simple sound and makes it lovely and full. When I finished the book, I felt bereft, partly because Compton had died at twenty-eight and there was so much he could have done, and partly because the text’s warm, edifying voice had finished talking to me.

  I didn’t say that the book was not a book, but a thesis. I didn’t say that the author was Calvin Teicher, Ray’s half brother, or that he was also dead, found in a Boyle Heights hotel about a year ago, beaten and floating facedown in a bathtub, the shower running, the drain closed. His death not from blows, but from water in his lungs. The investigation inconclusive. Calvin’s murderer still free. I didn’t believe Ray was back in L.A. only for Janis Rocque, or that, deep down, he really cared what had happened to Brenae Brasil. He must have some new insight into his brother’s case, and he would be chewing on it the whole time we worked together. You don’t want to act like you’re playing a part. People can always tell.