He gave me a face. “You’re gonna let your mom take that chance? What if these guys have guns? What if they shoot her?”
“Oh,” I said in a little voice, suddenly terrified.
I hadn’t thought of that. I supposed it could happen. Mom could get killed. And I had just let her run off without even trying to stop her, or to offer any help. She had wanted Chipper to follow her for protection, but he’d refused. And that old guy Bud the cabdriver didn’t seem like he’d be much protection. He’d probably have a heart attack if he tried to save her. I suddenly felt horrible. I should have insisted to Mom that I go with her. What kind of son was I? If something happened to her, it would be all my fault.
Troy took off his glasses. His pupils were wide, and the whites of his eyes were flecked with red. I knew what his eyes were saying to me. I saw my mother with her brains blown out. Do you want to see the same?
No, I didn’t. No, I wanted my mother safe and protected. To lose your mother had to be the worst thing ever, in the whole entire world. Look what it had done to Troy.
“Okay,” I said. “Take me down there.”
I turned and saw Nana. I couldn’t leave her alone. I opened the door again and called back out to Troy. “My grandmother’s got to come, too.” He just shrugged and got into the car to wait.
“Nana,” I said, “find your coat. We’re going for a ride.”
“Where are we going?”
“Just for a ride with my friend Troy. You’ll like him. He’s nice.” Troy wasn’t nice, but that didn’t matter at the moment. Neither did the nagging feeling in my gut that Mom would be very, very pissed that I had taken Nana out for a ride with a kid who didn’t even have his driver’s license yet. But Mom would certainly forgive me if I could save her from getting shot.
Just how I was going to do that was unclear. All I knew was that I needed to be with her. I couldn’t let her do this alone. That day, worrying about my mother, was the worst day so far in the whole ordeal of Becky’s disappearance. That worry was by far the worst I’d felt. I had let my mother go off on her own, possibly to get killed. I hadn’t tried to stop her. My own mother. The mother who had always been there for me, worrying if I got sick and making sure I wore my boots and making me drink extra glasses of milk because she thought I had a calcium deficiency. In third grade, when I was having a hard time with math, she was waiting for me every day when I get off the bus, with a pack of flash cards to drill the times table into my head. Even though I’d hated it at the time, I’d known she was doing it for my own good, because she cared about me, because she loved me, because she wanted me to grow up to be successful. And I learned my times table, backward and forward, all because of Mom.
And now she was out there, all alone. All I could think about was Troy’s mother, her brains dripping down the wall.
I helped Nana over the ice and snow and into the backseat of Troy’s Jaguar. She was silent. The car smelled like leather and cigarettes.
“Park at the far end of the lot,” I told Troy, “so we can keep an eye.”
He shook his head. “You should hide in the Dumpster. You should be in there so you can see who reaches in to get the money.”
I looked at him as if he were crazy.
“No, really, man. You should climb inside the Dumpster.”
“No,” I said. “We can keep a lookout from the car….”
“Don’t you care about your mom, Danny?”
Troy had taken off his glasses and was rubbing his eyes. They were tearing. I thought maybe he was emotional because all this made him think about his own mother.
“What if they have guns and shoot me in there?” I asked, my heart thudding.
Troy looked at me with his red, watery eyes. “Better you than your mother.”
He was right. I should get into the Dumpster. Kind of a stake-out for my mother’s protection. I steeled myself. Troy started the car, and we headed down the street. He drove erratically, slamming on the brakes at stop signs, causing us all to bolt forward. Nana didn’t seem to mind. “Wheeee!” she said, her eyes lighting up. Her worries over Aunt Patsy were far from her mind. At least she was having a good time.
I saw the Caldor’s sign from a distance, and I began to shudder. It was ten to twelve. The taxicab was nowhere in sight. Mom was probably going to arrive just on the dot of twelve, like they said. Troy pulled around to the back of the store and parked at the complete other end from the Dumpster.
“Go on,” he told me. “Get out and hop in there.”
“Yeah,” I said, though I didn’t move right away.
“Get going, Danny. Time’s wasting. Any minute now your mother could get here, and they could shoot her head off.”
“Where’s Patsy?” Nana asked from the backseat, her mood no longer so carefree.
I turned around to her. “Everything’s gonna be okay, Nana.”
She gave me a smile but said nothing.
I turned to Troy. “Watch out for my grandmother,” I told him. “Don’t let her get out of the car or anything.”
He grunted. He withdrew a cigarette from his coat pocket. “Does she mind if I smoke?”
“No, I guess not. Nana used to smoke. Just keep the windows open.”
He nodded, lighting up. It was an odd-looking cigarette, unevenly wrapped, like nothing I’d seen before.
“Keep an eye,” I said. “If somebody starts shooting, I’m gonna make a mad dash back here. So keep the motor running.”
Troy nodded. He didn’t seem so interested anymore. He was more intent on lighting his cigarette than anything else.
I hopped out of the car. I didn’t dare look around. I just ran as fast as I could across the lot to the Dumpster. It was big and green and smelly, with dirty snow piled up behind it. I used the snow, pushed there by plows, to reach the top of the Dumpster. I slipped once but caught myself. Throwing myself over the top, I landed on some wet cardboard boxes.
The thing stank of rotting bananas and spoiled milk. I tried to remain perfectly still, but the cardboard boxes beneath me were collapsing, and my ass was getting wet. I placed my hands down to steady myself and found myself sinking into a thick, sticky mess. Broken eggshells and celery stalks bubbled to the surface of the black water. Another smell was released, more foul than before. I closed my eyes and prayed to God not to get shot.
I didn’t wear a watch, so I didn’t know what time it was. But it had to be close to twelve. In a few minutes, I knew, I’d see a box of money tossed over the top by Mom. I couldn’t let her find out I was in there. I was still sinking into the muck, so I looked around for something to steady myself with. That was when I spotted the blue bag with the Connecticut Bank and Trust logo on front. Carefully, I pulled it close and peered inside. Wads of money, held together with brown wrappers.
Mom had already been there.
I waited. Overhead I could see heavy gray clouds moving in to obscure the blue sky. What if it started to snow again? My ass and legs were soaking wet and freezing cold by now, and the smell was starting to make me gag.
Then I heard the sirens.
A screech of tires, a slamming of car doors. “Come out of the Dumpster now,” a voice boomed through a megaphone. I froze. “Show yourself, with your hands up.”
It was the police. Maybe they’d caught the kidnappers. Maybe…
A rush of running footsteps surrounded the dumpster. There was a loud clanging of metal. Guns, I thought. Rifles hitting the Dumpster.
“Don’t shoot!” I screamed, standing up as quickly as I could, but I lost my footing, sliding down into the scummy water of the Dumpster. I looked up. A policeman’s face peered over the top, looking down. It was Detective Guthrie. I recognized him. And he was, indeed, holding a gun.
“Please don’t shoot me!” I cried again, terrified.
Guthrie’s face disappeared. I managed to stand, wet and cold, and climb my way back to the top. I exited the way I’d come, over the pile of hardened snow. I was covered with eggshells and
green, oily slime. Three police cars had blocked all access to the Dumpster. I turned toward Troy’s car at the other end of the lot and saw another police car parked over there. A cop had Troy up against the car and was frisking him. And then I saw my mother.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” she screamed. “It’s Danny! It’s my son!”
“Mom,” I said in a little voice.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shrieked.
I started to cry. “I just…I just wanted to make sure nobody shot you.”
Mom was so flabbergasted, she couldn’t speak. Detective Guthrie put his hand on my shoulder. “Why did you think somebody might shoot your mother?” he asked in a low, calm voice.
“Because…because she was going to hide and wait for them, and I wanted to make sure they didn’t hurt her.”
Guthrie looked from me to my mother. She was crying now, too, heaving. Her hands covered her face. She turned and walked away.
“No one’s going to hurt your mother,” Guthrie said to me. He was a thin man, with a narrow face, and his voice was kind. “We caught the guys who called your house. It was a prank. A couple of drifters who’d seen the publicity and thought they could make some easy money. Sickos.” He gave me a sad smile. “They don’t have Becky.”
“They…don’t?” I asked, hiccuping now through my tears.
“No. I’m sorry.” Detective Guthrie removed his hand from my shoulder. “They’ll be punished, you can be sure of that, for causing your family such distress.”
My mind was spinning. “How did you know I was in there?”
“We were watching from inside the store. There’s a monitor here. We had already apprehended the punks. They were loitering around here, and when we took them in, they admitted to making the call. But we were keeping an eye on the Dumpster to see if they had any accomplices. When we saw a kid get out of a car and hop into the thing, we thought we had one.” He smiled wanly. “But turns out it was you.”
I wiped my eyes with my sticky, stinky hands. “So Mom called you, after all?”
He looked over at my mother and sighed. She was leaning, with her head down, against a cruiser, sobbing into the backs of her arms. The other cops were keeping their distance from her.
“No,” Guthrie told me. “Mr. Kitchens called us after he gave your mother the money. He was worried about her, too, just like you were. We came down here and found your mom in the woods.” He nodded toward Troy’s car. “And then we found Mr. Kitchens’s own kid in the car over there.”
I thought of Nana. “My grandmother’s in the car, too. She’s getting kind of senile, so we should go get her.”
Guthrie nodded. “Oh, we got her out.” He cocked his head to look at me. “Were you smoking pot, too, Danny?”
I didn’t know what he was asking, but then it hit me. So that was the funny cigarette Troy had been smoking, and that was why his eyes had looked so red. “I didn’t know,” I said. “I didn’t know that’s what it was.” I felt like an idiot.
Mom had been right to call me that after all.
Detective Guthrie believed me. “We could charge Troy with a lot of things,” he told me. “Drug possession, underage driving, endangering the health of an elderly person. Not sure how your grandma would’ve responded to breathing in all that secondhand marijuana smoke if we hadn’t gotten her out in time.”
I felt sick. Troy hadn’t endangered Nana. I had.
“Next time, buddy,” the detective was saying, looking at me, “call us, okay?”
He replaced his hand on my shoulder. I nodded.
He led me to a police car, and I slid in back. In seconds Mom was inside as well. She was still sobbing into her hands, big, heaving sobs. She didn’t look at me.
“Your son was trying to help, Mrs. Fortunato,” Guthrie said, getting into the front seat. “He’s kind of wet and smelly, but he’s fine. He knows now not to try to do things on his own. I hope you realize that now, too, Mrs. Fortunato.”
She didn’t reply, just sobbed all the harder into her hands.
I understood why. All this commotion—and in the end, Becky still wasn’t coming home.
I looked out the window. I saw a couple of officers retrieving the bag of money from the Dumpster. I saw Troy being put into one cruiser and Nana into another. I felt sick again, as if it were all my fault.
And it was. Just how it was my fault, I wasn’t quite sure anymore, but I knew it was. It was me who had gotten the call this morning, who hadn’t asked the questions I should have asked. It was me who’d let Mom go off on her own. Now all I had to do was look over at her to see how bad a decision that was, how utterly disappointed she’d turned out to be. So completely crushed. I had let that happen. Me. It was my fault.
I had let her down in so many ways. I’d never told her what I’d seen the morning of Becky’s disappearance. Now it was too late to tell. Mom would hate me forever if I told her now. But would that matter, really? She hated me already. I could see that. I could see from how she cried that she wished it had been me who’d gone missing—me, not Becky, not her precious daughter. Despite all the fighting and arguing they’d done, Becky was still her favorite child. I was just the stupid idiot son who’d let her down. That was why Mom cried as hard as she did.
I rested my forehead against the glass of the police car as we were driven home. The sky got grayer, and finally it began to sleet. I knew then that Becky was never coming back. And I knew that for the rest of my life, I would carry the blame.
WEST HOLLYWOOD
The house, as I knew it would be, was magnificent. A marble gate opened electronically when the driver of the car tapped a button on some kind of car phone. Out of the tinted car windows, I discerned the last pink rays of the sun illuminating the city, the spires of downtown L.A. glowing in the far distance. Ahead of us was the house, perched on a hill, with its orange tile roof and marble columns, a curving staircase leading up to a pair of antique-looking mesquite doors. The driver stopped the car. I popped a breath mint into my mouth.
“Jesus, Danny,” Randall had gushed, not twenty minutes earlier, as he’d looked out at the car Gregory Montague had sent to pick me up. “Look at that car!”
“What kind is it?” I’d asked, too nervous myself to peer outside. “A Jaguar?”
“Not a chance,” Randall had replied, looking at me with eyes like poached eggs. “That’s a goddamn Aston Martin.”
I had no idea what an Aston Martin was, but from Randall’s stunned expression, I knew I should be impressed. I took one last glance in the mirror. I spiked my hair with a bit more gel and made sure my tiny crucifix earring was in place in my right ear. My bolo tie with the turquoise gemstone hung straight down from my collar. My black jeans were skintight, showing off my butt to the best possible advantage. My black leather boots were buffed to a high gloss, with silver caps on the pointy toes.
The doorbell rang and I jumped. “Do you want me to get it?” Randall called. I told him no, hurrying myself to open the door. A Mexican man in a black pin-striped suit stood there. “Danny Fortunato?” he asked. I nodded. “I’ve been sent by Mr. Montague,” he said. I nodded again, yelling good-bye to Randall. The driver held open the door of the shiny silver car for me. I slid into the backseat, nearly overcome by the pungent scent of leather. I settled in for the ride up Laurel Canyon and into the Hollywood Hills. The whole time I didn’t speak a word.
Mulholland Drive followed the jagged ridgeline of the hills that led into the Santa Monica Mountains. The many twists and turns left me just the slightest bit nauseous. I closed my eyes. How had I gotten to this point? I remembered gathering my nerve, after nearly a month, to call the number on the card Gregory Montague had given me. And why the hell not call? He was an agent, after all, and I was an actor. I needed work. I certainly wasn’t getting any on my own. So I’d picked up the card, which had been sitting on my bureau all those weeks, and dialed his number. It was obvious now I stood no chance with Frank, his hunky friend. I ought to a
t least get something out of that disastrous meeting on Hollywood Boulevard.
Montague remembered me. Yes, indeed, he was very interested in talking with me. Would I be willing to come to his house the next night? He’d send a car.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Randall had asked.
I’d made a face. “You’re the one who got me into this! Why are you second-guessing now?”
“Just want to make sure you’re sure.”
I’d nodded. I was sure.
“Welcome to Mulholland Pines,” the driver said as he opened the car door for me. I stepped outside into the fading sunlight. Enormous, fragrant pine trees spiked into the air all around me, tinted with the same pink glow that bathed the Los Angeles basin below. I mumbled my thanks to the driver and looked up at the house. I swallowed hard—downing my breath mint in the process—and began the long ascent up the stairs.
There was no doorman, no butler, no housekeeper, as I’d expected. Gregory Montague himself opened the door. He was wearing a gold satin smoking jacket with a paisley design, a white shirt with an open collar, and blue jeans. He was barefoot.
“Well, Danny, it is good to see you again,” he said. “Welcome.”
He gestured me inside. I stepped in, looking up at the vaulted ceiling, the chandelier of colored glass. There were white lilies everywhere, and their perfume was nearly intoxicating. The floor was high-gloss parquetry.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Gregory asked. I saw his eyes drop from my face to my crotch. I was pleased I’d worn tight jeans.
“Not right now,” I said.
“Fine.” He gestured for me to follow. “Let’s talk in here.”
He led me down a short hallway to a study. It was lined with bookshelves, though most were empty. In the middle of the room, a curved pink sofa sat in front of an enormous television set. Plaid pillows were scattered randomly across the floor. It was the kind of room I imagined rich people to have, the kind of room I’d always wished for myself. On the wall were dozens of photos. I glanced quickly at some of them. Gregory Montague with President and Mrs. Reagan. Farrah Fawcett-Majors. Ron Howard. Bill Murray. Jennifer Jason Leigh. Cher. I wondered if they were all Gregory’s clients. The photos seemed recent. In all of them, he had the same beaming white smile and bushy white eyebrows and surprisingly thick shock of white hair.
Object of Desire Page 16
