by Bruce Wagner
A newborn dies minutes after being delivered, without awareness of having existed; an ebullient Florida tourist is taken out by a 350-pound manta ray when it leaps on deck; a barefoot bride poses for a wedding photo in the shallows of a river. Water creeps up the gown and she stumbles on the embankment—the soaked dress, now heavy as concrete, makes rescue by the photographer impossible. A posh barrister, fatally diagnosed, has ample time to reflect on life’s mysteries before morphine companionably hastens his death. What did any of it mean? In a world of drowned brides and murderous, bitch-slapping flying fishes, it meant nothing. He felt asinine even posing the question, even thoughtlessly having the thoughtless thought . . .
Jeremy only prayed that when his moment came, he’d be quickly absorbed into the masterpiece of dark matter and infinite nebulae—of black holes from which neither light nor three acts could escape.
—
At midnight, just as she turned out the light, Larissa’s cell lit up with SHITHEAD.
(How Derek was listed in her contacts.)
Her gut clenched. He’s drunk.
When she picked up, a woman very tentatively said, “Is this Larissa?”
“Who’s this?”
“Uhm, Beth. Derek’s in the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“He had the flu but now they think maybe it’s his heart? They’re transferring him to the ICU. Uhm, did I—? Sorry if I woke you.”
Larissa stewed. The asshole made the girlfriend call his mommy! Unfuckingbelievable. Then she laughed, imagining how the doctors and R.N.s probably kept asking if she was the granddaughter.
Larissa got out of bed, empowered by her abrasively carefree assessment of the situation—it really was liberating to feel nothing. No way was she going to get in her Uggs and race over there.
It started to gnaw, though, as her thoughts turned to Rafaela. “ICU” never meant anything good . . . if the piece of shit upped and died and she never woke her daughter, she wouldn’t hear the end of it.
Seeking clarity, she had herself a pee.
She crept to Rafaela’s room, softly calling her name. Turned on a light. The sleep-confused girl yelped when Larissa said her daddy was sick and had been taken to the hospital and that they probably needed to go. When Rafi asked what was wrong, she snapped, “His girlfriend wouldn’t tell me.” On the way to UCLA, she regretted the snark.
Her daughter whimpered the entire ride like some puppy outside Starbucks. (She should have given her a Xanax.) They stopped at a light before the final turn. A woman at the intersection held up a sign.
I failed
Now what?
HOMELESS
Can you help?
—
He was still in the ER when they arrived.
They sat for a moment before a volunteer came to escort them back. Larissa demurred and told Rafaela to go by herself. Mom said try to be calm but it was no use.
Larissa scanned the waiting room for the g.f.
Just as she returned to her seat, a slender gal emerged from the ladies’ room—emo wallflower with a twee trunk of retro tattoos covering her arms, petering out at her jawline. They smiled at each other and knew. Well, that’s sorta interesting, she thought. Definitely not his type—though maybe she is . . . good on ya, Derek! What do you call that, a frickin’ millennial? At least she didn’t look like what Larissa feared: a 2.0 version of her younger, voluptuous self.
Her anger dissipated as the girl timidly approached.
Larissa smiled and extended a hand—a grownup’s power move. “So, what happened?” she said, trying to colonize her with a WTF, big sister vibe.
Beth smiled wanly. She was disarmed—she’d prepared herself to be ambushed by a flurry of hostile innuendo. It had been such a very long day.
“He had—he’s had this fever for, like, three days. I told him not to go into work but we had this really important deadline. He was breathing funny. I tried to get him to go to the ER but he wouldn’t.”
“Sounds like Derek!” she said, with a smile that overplayed. The collision of her vanity with the lover’s callow youth (she felt so old!) made everything go large. She couldn’t help herself.
“What freaked me out was that he coughed up blood.”
“Oh shit.”
“When we got him here—we’ve actually been here since six—I wanted to—I thought I should call someone, I thought I should call you, but he wouldn’t let me. But they said his lungs had fluid in them and his heart was, like, really racing. I think his pulse was, like, two hundred—”
“Whoa.”
“—and I kind of started to get scared maybe something was going to happen? I think they think it’s like a really bad upper respiratory infection? Someone even said asthma? But they’re checking his heart. One of the nurses said there wasn’t enough oxygen in his blood.”
Once Beth finished relaying the essentials, it got awkward. Things went quiet until a flurry of Tessatexts came to the rescue. She was at Pump and fully drunk, urging Larissa to GET YE BISEXUAL GINGER ASS OVER HERE RAITCH NOW because an Eddie Redmayne lookalike was there with a hottie WHOS PUSSIE YOU WOULD DEF LIKE TO LICKK. Larissa laughed out loud and texted back guess where i am? While she waited for a response, she considered sexting Allegra, but thought, Nope. Too soon.
As another tessellated bulletin came in, Rafaela stormed toward her, in tears.
“How’s he doin’, babe?”
“Not good!” she said, falling into her mother’s arms.
Beth hung back, which was smart.
“Tell me what’s goin’ on,” said Larissa, cool and steady and interested. For her daughter’s sake.
“They’re saying they need to test him for a stroke!”
“Fuck.”
“Mommy, is he going to die?”
“I don’t think so, sweetie.”
“I don’t want him to die!”
“He’s going to be fine, okay? Daddy’s tough, he’ll pull through. And he’s totally in the best place if something goes wrong, okay?”
“Something already has gone wrong!”
“There’s no better place for him to be. They’re going to figure out what’s wrong and they’re going to fix it. Okay?” She drew a hand over Rafaela’s hair. “Let me go see what I can find out. Want me to, babe? Want me to go talk to someone?”
“Yes! Yes! Please, Mommy! Please!”
The poor thing was in a state.
As Larissa stood, her daughter said, “He really wants to see you, I know he does. And he said for you not to tell Tristen. He said he didn’t want to deal with Tristen.”
—
Richie “Snoop” Raskin was a virile, dapper, imposing figure—what they used to call a “gent.” Pop culture had bestowed upon detectives a colorful rep as snappy dressers, men’s men who weren’t afraid of a little bling, but Dusty never saw anything quite like this: the cologne that reeked of fathers and forest gods, the wedding ring that was the broadest gold band on the thickest finger she’d ever seen, the old-school Brioni suit (courtesy, so he informed, of the ancient haberdasher Sy Devore), the vintage “Los Angeles Railway” cuff links fastening crisp, blindingly white sleeves . . . The old, swinging dick veritably hydroplaned into the room on buttery John Lobbs, a soigné king of forensic flatfoots and Hollywood fixers gone by. That he was host emeritus of an Emmy-winning cold-case series called The Spirit Room only further burnished his legend and general legerdemain. He’d been a confidant of Sinatra (of course he had), having met the Chairman in Vegas when he was just nineteen; it was Frank who’d christened him “Snoop.” (Of course he did.) Their relationship forged his career and forever changed his life.
“I acquired the name long before Mr. Calvin Broadus Jr. was born,” he said, referring to his more famous namesake, Snoop Doggy Dogg. “Though Mr. Dogg does defer, when we’re together sociably
—I call him Snoopy and he calls me Snoop. He’s actually a client of mine. Good people. Hardworking, honest, very savvy. Smokes a bit too much of the funny stuff but to each his own. I’ve helped him out of a few jams,” he winked.
Marking time, she reminisced about her own run-ins with Sinatra and a few other folks they shared in common. Dusty was glad she’d asked her wife to sit in, not just for support but because she didn’t want the rift between them to widen, not if she could help it.
He could tell she was anxious—through Livia, he already knew the actress was convinced that her baby had been the victim of foul play. As if sensing her dread at wading in, the detective gently informed that, for now, he had all the facts he needed. Instead of homing in on “the case,” he spoke with discerning intelligence about her filmography, with a hobbyist’s emphasis on the obscure. Apparently, he used to frequent weekend screenings at Liz Taylor’s (another client). “Liz told me, ‘Keep your eye on that girl. She’s the one to watch.’”
Dusty was moved by that.
Livia’s instincts were spot-on: he was the man for the job. Dusty felt a rush of hope, like an end-stage cancer victim being told that surgery and chemo wouldn’t be necessary to effect a complete cure—just a change in diet.
“Do you know Joni?” he asked. “Joni Mitchell?”
“Yes! Not super well—I haven’t seen her in . . . a long time.”
“She’s had some hard times lately but she’s still with us. A tough old bird. Brilliant.”
“I know. I feel so awful for her. It was an . . . aneurysm?” He nodded. “Love her, love Joni. I could listen to her for hours. Not sing—I mean, that too!—but talk. She’s an amazing talker. So brilliant! Knows everything about everything.”
“I think she knows a little too much,” he said mischievously. “And she likes to let you know that she does. And that you know too little.”
“We had a period where we kind of hung out, before she got that weird disease.”
“Morgellons,” said Snoop, with amused disdain. “I have a whole opinion about that—some other time! The reason that I asked—if you knew her—is because there are similarities.”
“Similarities?”
“You know she gave a daughter up when she was twenty.”
“I did know that.”
“You lost Aurora at about three months?”
“Yes.”
(It was interesting to hear a stranger say the name and the detail.)
“Well, that’s about the age Kilauren was when Joni put her up for adoption.”
“Really! That, I didn’t know.”
“And it’s curious: I think she was exactly your age when Joni decided to see if she could find her little girl.”
“Wow,” said Allegra. “How weird!”
“The minute the search went public, gals started coming out of the woodwork to say, ‘You’re my mother!’ ‘Hi, Mom!’ We had to put everyone through a fairly rigorous screening process.”
“I can imagine.”
The conversation rambled—shared friends and timeworn anecdotes from his end—before he circled back to Aurora, in regard to his fee. It had been a long while since anyone spoke directly to her about payment of services. Again, very old-school, and she loved it.
Before Snoop left, Dusty wanted to know how he became a cold-case maven. As it happened, he was a pioneer in the field, long before it was a cultural and living-room staple. Initially, the work had called to him because “like Elvis, I had a twin who died at birth. Not to get too psychological about it, but I think part of me is always looking—for that other part, that other me. The thing that will make me whole.”
Standing at the door on the way out, he doffed his hat and said something so crazy that after he left she had to ask Allegra if she’d heard him right.
“Did he say dig up the yard?”
“I think so,” Allegra said grimly.
“What exactly did you hear him say?”
“He said—I thought he said not to worry—that he’d find her—‘we’ll find her . . . even if we have to dig up that yard.’”
—
They used to smoke weed, hop in Joni’s red Mercedes 280SL, and drive through traffic just to blow people’s minds. She could really make Dusty laugh. It embarrassed and surprised her that she didn’t know more about the singer’s whole adoption deal. It was a famous story that she hadn’t followed too closely, which in itself was deeply telling. Because after all, Joni was looking—and Dusty wasn’t. Probably struck too close to home. Why would she have been interested in the journey of an artist and a peer who had the guts to do what she herself wasn’t yet capable of?
They lay in bed, watching a YouTube interview from a while ago. (Allegra’d been Google bingeing; Patti Smith had given up her baby girl around the same time Joni did. WTF!) Joni wanted to clear the air because she was tired of people saying she’d put her kid up for adoption because of her career. Looking elegant and patrician—matrician? mortician?—probably in her early sixties at the taping, she defended herself by explaining how she was young and poor, and the father of her child had left three months after the girl was born. It was freezing cold and she had no prospects; she knew she couldn’t make a home for her daughter, let alone a life. The presentation was so plausible and forthright, she was so articulate and made such sense, but, still, Dusty was uncomfortable. Why couldn’t Joni have just said she wasn’t ready to be a mom? Wouldn’t that have been cleaner? Where was the sin? What was wrong with saying you weren’t ready? Because if you were, you could overcome anything . . . couldn’t you? Joni told the interviewer that it was a different time, a different, harsher time, but what did that even mean? A time when mothers gave up their daughters en masse? She hated and loved Joni, forgave and condemned . . . because wasn’t not searching for Aurora the very same as having voluntarily given her up? If only she’d taken the singer’s sensible, guilt-free path! She’d have been spared so much.
Joni was saying how she watched from a balcony as her daughter arrived for the first time. “It was like Romeo and Juliet.” In another clip, Kilauren said it felt like she was coming home after being away just a short while. Supportive, famous friends of Joni chimed in, taking note of how the genius’s demeanor, her very face, had changed upon reuniting with her lost child, that she’d finally come full circle in her life and her work, the whole both-sides-now thing—paradise regained. If only I can have that chance, thought Dusty. Please, God, give me that chance! It didn’t matter a whit that Kilauren’s boyfriend sold pictures of the reunion to the tabloids or that Joni and the foundling ended up “divorcing,” with “incompatibility” being cited . . . didn’t matter that Joni allegedly slapped her daughter in the face during a disagreement at her home in Bel Air, and police had been called—
None of it mattered!
Because, oh! What she would give to bring her own daughter back! And a granddaughter . . . oh! It astonished her that the very idea of a grandchild hadn’t occurred until now—
What she would give!
What she would give, for a daughter to slap, or be struck by, hard across the face! To break skin and teeth, and draw welts! What she would give for a daughter whose passions commanded the police to be summoned, lights flashing, sirens blaring—SWAT teams, stun grenades, bomb-sniffing dogs!
What she would give, what she would give, what she would give!
—
On Fridays, Dusty had a standing poolside lunch date with her assistant. Their little ritual—savories, gossip, and talk of old/new business:
Jimmy Fallon wanted her for a lip-sync battle. One of the young stars of Bloodthrone was hosting SNL and Lorne called to ask if she’d make a surprise walk-on during his monologue. Did she want to go to an investment conference in New York in November? “Hunh?” she said. The assistant informed that it was at the Met, happened every year, and Sir Paul (�
��not RuPaul”) was the last musical guest. Dylan was supposed to be doing it—that was the rumor anyway. “If you want, I can reach out to Bono. He usually goes. You could fly on the Google plane.” “I need Bono to fly on the Google plane?” she said impishly. “That’s not what I meant!” he said, laughing. “Then what did you mean? And I’m kidding.” “Google would be totally thrilled to have you—everyone would be thrilled.” “Now you’re digging yourself deeper, bubba.” She liked to goof on him. “Just let me know if you’re interested,” he said. “I mean, whenever. But sometime in the next two weeks!” Moving on, he said there’d been “whispers” she was up for a Kennedy Center Honor. “Whispers!” she said. “Whispers! I love it!” She put on a pixie face and mused, “I wonder who votes on that.”
He turned his attention to the nonsectarian. “I got an email from a very sweet elderly person who said she knows you. Ida Pinkert. Ring a bell?”
“Ida Pinkert, Ida Pinkert . . .”
“She used to be a neighbor? In Tustin?”
“Ida Pinkert! Oh my God! She must be a hundred and seven!”
“Let me pull it up,” he said, scrolling his phablet.
“She was a ‘friend’ of Reina’s—the neighborhood spinster. Lived catty-corner from us.”
He stared at his screen, muttering, “Why can’t I find it?”
“I’m sure she’s sending condolences.”
“I actually don’t even know how she got my email—oh, here!”
She took it out of his hands to read.
“Okay,” she said, blankly. “I’ll take care of it. Are we done?”
—
The old woman’s email had been sent via library computer, “with the help,” she wrote, “of a very kind young man.” She apologized for the intrusion and expressed sadness at her mother’s passing (“I’m most certain you had mixed emotions”) before inviting Dusty to visit her home (“If you find you may have time in what I am sure is your very hectic schedule”). The caveat IT IS MOST URGENT leapt incongruously from the screen, like a message, both hidden and decoded, meant for Sherlock Holmes. She had probably asked the very kind young man if he could underline the words for emphasis; he would have said we do that in caps these days. Ida wrapped things up with more apologies for not “giving you a ring,” as a phone call was precluded by deafness.
