by Avery Duff
You’ve done all you can, right? What’s left? Becoming trustee for a trust with almost no assets? Sure, okay, you can do that, too.
Later, Gia slipped outside, easing into his chair and resting against him. They lay there a few minutes. So quiet back here with her heart beating against his body.
“Found a charger at Best Buy,” she said. “Teo’s phone’s charging in the kitchen.”
“Thanks. You still okay, laying out of school?”
“I’m keeping up, kind of. Did you pray tonight?” she asked. At the hospital, she meant.
“Uh-huh.”
“For what?”
“Same as you, I’m pretty sure,” he said. “When she holds my hand, it really gets to me.”
“Sometimes I go in the bathroom and cry about her.”
“I’m sorry, baby. You didn’t ask for any of it.”
“Told you already, don’t say nutty things.”
She touched his face, letting him know she meant it.
Then he told her, “I found her mother’s passport in the truck. Beatrice Brewer, born in Bakersfield. On one of our walks, Teo said the odds are good Bee’s no longer among the living.”
“Anything we can do?”
“Should we?” he asked.
“What about the Mission downtown? They know Teo. If she went home, they’d have contacts up in Bakersfield, wouldn’t they?”
“They’d have to, I think.”
“I’ll call, then. Kids,” she said. “You ever think about it?”
“No. Well. Not until recently.”
“Like, this week recently?”
“Yes, baby, this very week.”
“Me, too, sweetheart,” she said.
One thing about Gia: she never played guessing games about where she stood.
Robert said, “Erik talked to Priya. If Teo doesn’t come out of it, if Delfina goes into the system, they’ll put in for adoption. Unless we . . . you know . . . ?”
“I know,” she said.
They dozed off, lying together that way, until she woke him and they stumbled half-asleep across the mist-covered grass. Passing through the kitchen, he noticed an Argonaut spread on the breakfast table. It lay open to that classified personals ad Carlos had placed.
“Don’t forget,” he mumbled.
He tossed it in the trash and headed into the bedroom, falling facedown into bed. Gia wasn’t far behind. Sleep came but not for long. Something stirred in his mind. Rolling over, he recalled Delfina outside the hospital earlier tonight, stopping at a stack of Argonauts by the door, taking one. The new one, she’d called it.
That can’t be right, his sleeping mind was telling him.
Getting up, groggy, he looked in on Delfina, then weaved down the hall to the kitchen. Retrieving the Argonaut from the trash, he checked the cover. It wasn’t the Argonaut Delfina had showed him on the boardwalk. It had come from the hospital stack and had been published today.
He found the page he’d noticed before and read:
Important Notice. Hearing in Matter of Vincent Famosa Trust.
Final Accounting. Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Room 356.
Don’t Forget!
The date was for the following Monday. One week after the hearing he’d already attended. Then he noticed Teo’s phone charging on the counter—muted but pulsing, a call coming through. As he picked it up, it looked like this was the fifth call from the same number.
“Hello?” asked Robert, waking up fast.
Someone on the other end ID’d himself as Benny Smartt—and he sounded upset.
“Teo? I been calling and calling and calling you. What the g.d. hell’s going on?”
Turned out, Benny hadn’t recognized Robert’s number when Robert called him and hadn’t listened to Robert’s message. This was Benny trying to find his missing AA sponsee.
“He won’t be coming to the next AA meeting,” Robert said. He told him Teo was in Saint John’s and asked if they could meet up tomorrow.
CHAPTER 25
Robert sat at a round concrete table next to Marck’s Brentwood Newsstand. Fronting San Vicente Boulevard, forty yards long, the stand had current and back issues of the newspapers Robert needed to check out. By the time Erik unlimbered from his Prius and joined him, Robert had called several newspapers and had a clearer picture of what had happened with the Argonaut—but still no idea why.
Erik checked out Robert’s buys: Los Angeles Times, weekend edition; the Santa Monica Mirror; the Pasadena Star-News; the Argonaut; LA Weekly; Culver City Observer; Culver City News; Los Angeles Daily News, weekend.
Erik said, “So last week, after his death, Carlos Famosa’s ad ran in every one of these papers?”
“Prepaid, yeah, I couldn’t believe it. And next week, according to the Argonaut, they’re running it again.”
“How effin’ much that cost?”
“Has to total five grand a week.”
“Ten grand so far? C’mon, that’s deranged.”
“I’m not so sure anymore.”
“Is there another probate court hearing?” Erik asked.
“Nope. So hearing or no hearing, Carlos wanted his brother to meet him at Room 356—and please don’t ask why.”
For the next hour at the IHOP off Bundy Drive, Erik scarfed pancakes and bacon, and Robert contacted three of the newspaper’s classified departments, explaining that Carlos Famosa was deceased and asking them to stop billing either Carlos or the trust. He spoke as the trust’s representative, which he was—other than legally—but each office said Carlos had paid cash in advance for a discounted rate, and payment for next week—the last ad—was nonrefundable.
After that setback, Robert kept kicking it around with Erik, who had signed on for another day of investigative services and another side of sausage links.
“Three consecutive weeks of ads?” Erik asked.
“Pretty clear to me,” Robert said, “Carlos’ notices weren’t just a random guilt trip before he died. Carlos was reaching out—he wanted to see Teo, face-to-face.”
“If there’s no hearing, why meet at the courthouse? Why not at IHOP, have a rasher of bacon, stack of cakes, get off on the right foot?”
“I know. I was in Carlos’ shoes, probate court’s the last place I’d go. Judge Blackwell was steamed. Carlos ran a real risk of getting sanctioned by the court to pay back Teo’s share of what Carlos lost—almost two million dollars.”
“Sanctioned? Like the NFL? Deflategate?”
The question sounded wiseass at first. Then Robert thought about it.
“Sanctioned exactly like Deflategate. Even so, Carlos still wanted to see Teo.”
As a waiter cleared their plates, Robert whiffed down more coffee.
“Is it possible I’m totally wrong about what was going on with Carlos?”
Erik: “Hate to say it. Thought we’d nailed it down pretty good last night, but now?”
Robert spotted a man coming in. Looking around like a Match.com first date. Based on Benny’s description of himself—I’ll be wearing a shamrock-green watch cap, reads “Benny Boy”—that man was Benny. After motioning him over, Benny motioned back that he was hitting the head.
Robert told Erik, “Would you find Ana Short? Do whatever you can to look at that Playa Vista office’s guest register.”
“SoccMom? There’s not one. It’s digital, remember.”
“Not the tenants, the guest register.”
By the time Robert told him exactly what he was looking for, Benny was headed over.
Robert knew that getting an AA member to talk about what went on in a meeting would be difficult.
“Erik, let it slip with Benny that you’re a cop.”
“Got it. Subtle.” Erik stood, shook Benny’s hand, and held up his badge. “Hi, Benny. Erik Jacobson, LAPD, retired, lead investigator on the Matteo Famosa case. Nice to meet you, man, but I gotta go bird-dog a few leads.”
Subtle?
As Erik headed out, Benny sat across from
him. Robert handed him his business card, thanked him for coming.
“Robert Worth, Attorney-at-Law,” Benny said, reading the card. “I called the hospital after you gave me Teo’s last name. They backed you up. Teo’s a patient, but just so we’re clear, I liken AA sharing to a priest in a confessional. Not quite as sacred but almost, so me sharing anything Teo said with you’s a doubtful proposition.”
“You’re Teo’s sponsor?”
“Like I said on the phone.”
“I doubt you know that Teo was a hit-and-run victim two nights ago in Santa Monica. Deliberate, I believe.”
Robert explained the lack of skid marks and the protruding trash bins.
Benny said, “Guy like Teo, that’s hard to figure.”
“I was with him at his brother’s house several hours before it happened. He went into his truck, took something from his personal drawer, put it in his backpack. Said he needed to go to an AA meeting right then. He was so ramped up after being inside his brother’s house, where his brother died, that—”
“Overwrought?” Benny asked.
“Good a word as any. I thought he might start drinking again, but he said he wasn’t looking back, he was looking forward.”
“Doesn’t matter what he said. When it comes to drunks like me and Teo, it only matters what we do.”
“That’s what I hear. Look, I’m trying to find out why anybody’d want to hurt him. His nine-year-old daughter wants to know, and I’m not asking if he confessed to a crime—I know he didn’t do that. I just want to know . . . Look . . . he was very concerned about his relationship with his brother when I saw him. I’m pretty sure you were the last person to talk to him before he was run down. And I need to do everything I can to help him and to help his daughter.”
“You just his lawyer?”
Robert thought about the question.
“Started out that way, but since I met him, I started measuring my own life, counting my blessings. I’m healthy, no financial worries, a great woman, great this, great that. Teo’s had it really tough—lotsa people had it tougher, I know—but life’s been tough on that guy, and he’s been tough on himself, so I want to help him, Benny. Can you help me out, or what?”
“You a drinking man, Mr. Worth?”
“Not like you mean.”
“Any addictions?
“Does caffeine count?”
“Afraid not. You’d be good at the lectern, leading a meeting.”
Robert nodded but didn’t speak and saw that Benny was getting ready to open up to him.
“In AA meetings, we hear about families where, for tons of reasons, there’s not enough love to go around. A deficit, you could call it. Fighting, friction, background noise, and at AA, we hear variations of Teo’s life quite a bit. But I never heard anybody pin down a moment quite as specific as he did. Never quite as focused as Teo’s moment was.”
Another nod. Robert let him talk.
“I know you’re telling the truth about his emotional state—looking forward, not back—because of what he shared in the meeting. And I know you’re right about his brother weighing heavy on Teo’s heart. Starting out, he told the meeting he wasn’t a good brother. He was a bully. Even though he was younger, he was bigger and picked on the older one.”
“Carlos.”
Benny, nodding: “Carlos, the weakling. Teo told a story, shared how it wasn’t always that way between the two of ’em. What I mean is, it was almost always bad, but there was this one time with Carlos when it wasn’t. His parents . . . ?”
“Vincent and Zara.”
“Those two, yeah, usually fighting about something, but this one time their illness musta worked itself out. And the two of ’em, the brothers, were in the back seat of a car. Vincent and Zara sittin’ up front, holding hands. Teo could see their hands between the seats. And so, Teo tells me, him and Carlos, each of ’em, had a rock. They’d bought ’em somewhere, cost maybe a nickel, dime apiece is all, and they started knocking ’em together. Click, clack, click, clack, stupid crap boys get a kick out of doin’. After a bit, his brother and him, they start swapping those rocks, still clacking away. Like it was a game or something—guess it was a game—and then they’d clack once, and swap rocks fast, and do it again, until one of ’em dropped a rock, and they stopped. But they kept on playing. Thing is, when they started out, Teo knew which rock was his, but after a while, he lost track of it. He didn’t recall how long the game went on, coulda been fifteen minutes, coulda been an hour, just playing with his brother in the back seat. Laughing and smiling at each other, physically close, too. And when the game was over, he kept whatever rock was in his hand. Didn’t matter which one he started out with, playing their silly, made-up game. For once, they were real brothers. Loving each other like real brothers. Funny what people hold on to, ain’t it?”
“Sure is.”
Robert often recalled sitting on a huge tree limb with Rosalind, two kids inside a spreading oak at the farm. That was before his family had been poisoned by his father leaving the farm—cashing out his inheritance, striking out for Texas, and failing miserably. That enormous live oak, canted into the farm’s steep hillside, had been his and Rosalind’s secret spot. Their spot. Where best-friend first cousins would drink cold Yoo-hoos from an Igloo cooler, wait for their rock-hard Abba-Zaba candy bars to thaw out, and share their childhood secrets.
Benny said, “Forever and ever, even after that car ride, Teo didn’t think Carlos loved him at all. Turns out, Teo just now came to believe that Carlos loved him, too. That made Teo feel, guess you could say, made Teo feel fulfilled.”
Robert was puzzled by that: on Carlos’ front steps, Teo said him loving Carlos was enough. A couple of hours later, Teo’s telling Benny, in essence: Carlos loved me, too.
Benny said, “Thought I could be of service to Teo in AA, but what do I know?”
“Sober all these years, you can’t tell who’s gonna make it?”
Benny laughed. “Two years into sobriety, thought I could size up a drunk, tell if the program was gonna take or not. After a while, I knew I couldn’t tell, no matter how powerful their testimony was. Take Teo. He inspired everyone who heard him, but he coulda had a bottle to his lips before he left that building.”
Benny stood to leave. As Robert followed suit, Benny looked at him hard, as if what he’d just told Robert was actually a question. Robert figured out what it was.
“According to Teo’s blood work, he was sober when the car hit him. And a store owner saw him right before it happened. Said he looked very happy.”
Benny brightened as they headed for the door. “Shouldn’t matter to me, but it does. Being sober when fate rises up, it makes a difference in how a man’s perceived.”
From IHOP, they walked up to San Vicente, where joggers ran the wide median beneath just-trimmed coral trees that reminded Robert of green French poodles.
Benny said, “Know why I decided to open up to you?”
“Not really.”
“Teo showed me what he put in his backpack. And I believe you truly want to help him, so I thought you needed to know as much as I do.”
Robert stopped walking. So did Benny.
“It was his rock,” Benny said. “He had it in his backpack. About the size of an extralarge egg, but flatter.”
“Was it a river rock?”
“Mighta been. Light gray, smooth. Thing is, you could see still white marks on the side of it where Carlos and him clacked ’em together. And it had something etched on it, too.”
“Etched? Do you mean that the rock was kind of hollowed out?” Like Delfina’s.
“No. Etched, for sure. Scratched into the surface. It was a Joshua tree etched there.”
They talked a little longer. Benny said he was going back to IHOP for some bacon and syrup—some things were better than booze, Benny told him—and Robert said he’d get in touch when he had any news on Teo.
Even though he looked calm while they’d talked, Robert’s mind spiral
ed on what he’d just learned. Two things were clear now: Teo had placed a rock in his backpack. And Teo’s rock had been stolen—but only if Robert wanted to be hypertechnical about it.
CHAPTER 26
Robert was driving to Carlos’ house to meet Reyes about selling the furnishings when Gia called from the Apple Pan on Pico. Evelyn was here, Gia told him, and they were about to order midmorning apple pie. Then Delfina came on the phone.
“Gia’s skipping law school again.”
Gia took back her phone.
“We were thanking Evelyn for the books . . . and for the other thing she brought over to my house.” That wristwatch. “She’s not feeling so hot from chemo, but she has something she wants to run by you.”
Robert delayed Reyes and detoured to the Apple Pan counter. It had been rough enough at IHOP, not matching Erik pancake for pancake and bacon strip for bacon strip. Now, the Apple Pan? Old-school LA, counter seating only, home of everything the Westside svelte found unholy: hot, homemade apple pie with two scoops of melting vanilla ice cream. In a word: Satan!
When he reached the U-shaped counter, he took a red vinyl stool beside Gia. Delfina halfway faced him at the corner in a gold-braided, kitty-ears headband. Evelyn, Gia said, had gone to the restroom.
He put his arm around Gia. “Let’s see, cutting class and eating pie—is there anything more depraved than that?”
Her hand snaked inside his shirt, slid up his back, and clawed its way down.
“Want two scoops of that?” she whispered.
“Not here, that’s takeout,” he whispered back. Then in a normal voice: “Have you seen any kitties in here?”
“No, why do you ask?” Gia asked.
“Because I’m allergic to kitties, and my nose itches. Pretty sure there’s a kitty in here.”
He looked at Delfina, who shrugged. “Maybe you have a cold?”
Looking under the counter, he said, “No, it’s pure kitty. I can tell.”
He caught Evelyn motioning from the bathroom alcove and walked over. She looked pale, thinner than last time he saw her.
“How’s it coming, counselor?” she asked.
“Making progress,” he said.
