Lorena said, “What now?”
Waldo thought about the options. “I wouldn’t mind another conversation with Papa Wax.”
“Let’s get him at home this time, before he leaves for work. I’d kind of like you to meet Mama Wax, too.”
This left them once again with the tiresome problem of where to spend the night. Given the emission costs of the round-trip drive to Lorena’s, the likely presence of Willem and the quick turnaround they’d need to fight traffic back down to Newport Beach, trying to find an environmentally acceptable hotel nearby seemed like the least bad idea. Lorena, who made a practice of keeping an overnight bag with a change of clothes in her trunk, found their way out of Lacy while Waldo opened his browser.
He grumbled at everything that came up, one gimmick after another, like the inn in Huntington Beach with beehives on the roof to make their own honey, or the so-called green resort in Anaheim that boasted of the recycled hydration system it used to water its golf course—its golf course! Near the entrance to the freeway Lorena pulled over and put the car in park. Waldo braced for a scolding about how difficult he’d become, but now she just looked sad and exhausted. He was burning her out.
He Googled “greenest hotel in Orange County,” accepted the first suggestion without review, and in less than a minute they were heading south on the 5 to Laguna Beach and something called the Hotel La Vela.
It was almost midnight when they checked in, holding the room for a second night on the likelihood that the search for Stevie would keep them down here at least that long. Lorena said she was going to take a shower and wash the whole sleazy day off of her. Through the open bathroom door she said, “Ooh, they’ve got one of those rainfall showers.”
Waldo stretched out on the bed and tried as hard as he could not to think about the flow rate of that showerhead nor to question the seriousness of the La Vela’s commitment. The die was cast, at least for a night or two, and scrutiny would only drive him crazy and Lorena crazier.
“Hey,” Lorena called from under the simulated rain, “you going to join me, or what?” He rose from the bed but hesitated, frozen by all he knew about the worldwide water shortage and the unconscionable gallons they’d be wasting while they frolicked. “Please tell me,” she called, “that you’re not out there thinking about drought!” He chuckled surrender and peeled off his shirt.
Then his phone rang, unfamiliar digits. “Fuck you doin’, Waldo?” came the voice from the other end. “Callin’ me on a regular phone and talkin’ business.”
“Only number I had. You on a burner? I need to know about a guy—”
“I still ain’t doin’ this on your unlimited minutes. Where you at?”
“Orange County.”
“Orange County? Shit, man—only part of O.C. I can stand is Laguna Beach, and even that ain’t the same since MTV fucked it all up.”
Waldo knew that Q was referring to a fairly watchable reality show from a decade before, though he had no idea how it had ruined the town. “Well, that’s where I am now. Laguna.” There was nothing from the other end. “You still there?”
“Lifeguard tower. Main Beach. Three thirty.”
“Wait—A.M. or P.M.?”
“Shit, man, A.M. You see me on the muthafuckin’ 405 at rush hour?”
* * *
• • •
Waldo walked the mile or so up South Coast Highway to Main Beach and waited for Don Q on the bench closest to the lifeguard tower. There was a tangle of threats and debts between them, property stolen and property returned, lives spared and lives taken. Next to all that, Waldo’s help getting Don Q’s daughter into a second-grade class—the most recent favor—seemed trivial, but if the dealer was driving an hour to come help him, he must be more grateful than Waldo realized.
A man slumped toward him down the boardwalk, stringy hair and ratty army jacket, a green garbage bag slung over his back. In the light of the full moon Waldo recognized him: he’d just seen the same guy sleeping in the doorway of a jewelry shop, one of several homeless people he had passed on the walk from the hotel. The man stopped abruptly in front of Waldo. “Yo.”
“Yo.” He wanted the guy gone before Don Q arrived.
“You got any tips? I just got here today. I been in Seal Beach, but everyone says you can’t beat Laguna. That Friendship Shelter always full?”
It took him a second to get a handle on the man’s misapprehension, but when he did, it made all the sense in the world: looking like Waldo did, in this town, out in the middle of the night—what else would a stranger think? “I don’t know. I’m not . . .”
“Not what?” The guy, suddenly intense, demanded an answer. “Not what?”
Waldo, pinned, said, “Homeless. I don’t live on the street.”
The guy looked Waldo over and burst out laughing. “Me neither! I’m staying at the Montage!” The guy staggered away, cackling. He turned and called, “Meet me there for brunch! Eggs Florentine!” before disappearing into the night.
Don Q startled Waldo by dropping onto the bench next to him unseen, his approach covered by the sound of the waves. “Fuckin’ MTV, man.”
“I liked that show,” Waldo said, defensive. He had, in fact, watched all three full seasons of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County just the year before, when it ran on MTV Classic. It was exactly the sort of thing he liked over dinner in his own spartan cabin, and while its soapy contrivance couldn’t match the purity and shamelessness of, say, Cribs, he’d found himself hooked by the characters’ clueless privilege and sun-drenched youth.
“Ain’t you too old to watch that shit, Waldo? Damn.” Don Q looked up and down the boardwalk and took a deep whiff of the ocean. “Man, used to be you could walk around this muthafucker and breathe. Take a weekend with your lady, enjoy the salty air, fish taco maybe, check out the galleries. No one hardly knew this bitch was here. Shit, now? Weekends, might as well be at fuckin’ California Adventure. And the hotels, man, they, like, doubled. I got a kid in private school—I can’t afford no eight hundred a night at the Surf and Sand.”
Over Q’s shoulder, Waldo spied Nini, the Inuit bodyguard who’d pummeled Waldo a couple of times in the past. Waldo waggled his fingers at him. Nini didn’t wave back. Waldo said to Don Q, “I’m looking for a missing girl. Fifteen. Dealer out of Santa Ana might know something, guy named Marwin Amador.”
“Don’t know him. O.C.’s a whole other nation, man. But I can ask around.”
“Thanks. And thanks for coming all the way down here.”
Don Q shook his head again, his thoughts elsewhere. “That private school. I wanted her in there for the quality education. I didn’t realize how liberal that shit was. You know what they got them studyin’ right now? Public sector employees. Second grade. I never even heard those words growin’ up, ‘public sector employees.’ Tryin’ to show how important they are—teachers, po-lice. If teachers in the public sector are so fuckin’ great, why am I givin’ these muthafuckers twenty-two G for second grade?”
Waldo knew he was working up to something. Please, he silently prayed, don’t ask me to go complain to the headmaster about the curriculum. “How do I fit in?”
“Homework. Dulci gotta bring one to school.”
“One what?”
“Public sector employee—fireman or parole officer or child services or some bullshit. Fuck am I supposed to find somebody like that? She’s cryin’ to my wife ’bout it—new school, teacher gonna flunk her out.”
“And you want me . . . ?”
“Former cop. Friend of the family.”
“You want me to be your daughter’s show-and-tell?”
“Shit, Waldo, you don’t think I come all the way down here ’cause a’ the girl you’re worried about.”
* * *
• • •
Their early start for the Waxes meant he only got a couple of hours’ sle
ep. At least his clothes, which he’d washed in the sink after getting back from his meet-up with Don Q, were somehow dry. Lorena said, “I used the hair dryer on them before you woke up.”
“Why?” he said, scandalized.
“Because I knew you wouldn’t.”
While she wasn’t looking, he took the PLEASE CHANGE THE SHEETS card, which she’d placed atop her pillow, and slipped it back under the telephone.
Newport Beach was only one town up the coast and they reached the entrance to the gated community a little before seven thirty. The guard, fiftyish with a pinched face, slid open the window of his booth. Waldo and Lorena could hear scratchy bits of talk radio coming from inside.
Lorena said they were there to see the Waxes. The guard asked for her name and the name of the other person in the car with her. When she told him, his eyes widened and he repeated, “Charlie Waldo?” and leaned down to get a look. “I’m listening to your radio show! Right now!”
Waldo said, “I don’t have a radio show.”
The guard said, “No, KFI—there’s a guy, I think used to be FBI, explaining how those people forced you to say all that stuff. About Pinch. And then you come driving up! It’s true, right?”
“Could you please call the Waxes?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.” The guard slid his gate window shut, had a brief phone conversation, opened it again and said to Lorena, “They’re not home.”
Lorena said, “Then who were you talking to?”
“Ma’am, if they say they’re not home, they’re not home. Know what I mean?” He peered in at Waldo again. “Hey, could we call in? Bet you KFI puts us right on the air.”
Waldo, speaking loudly across Lorena, said, “Make you a deal: get the Waxes on the phone again, and repeat the things I tell you, and then we can call into your show before we go in and see them.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’ll be fun.” Lorena covered her face.
The guard said, “I hope my wife’s listening,” and dialed the house again, this time leaving the window open. He nodded at Waldo when he got one of the Waxes on the phone.
Voice still raised, Waldo said, “Tell them, ‘Lorena Nascimento and Charlie Waldo are here.’”
The guard repeated it.
Waldo said, “‘Stevie Rose is missing . . .’”
“Stevie Rose is missing . . .”
“‘And your son, Daron, is the last person she was seen with.’”
The guard hesitated but said, “And your son, Daron, is the last person she was seen with.”
Waldo slowly fed him the next line. “‘How much other shit about you do I have to tell your security guard . . .’”
The guard hesitated, listened through the phone for a moment, then said, “Will do, sir,” and hung up. He said to Waldo, “He could hear you,” and opened the gate. “Okay, I’m going to call the radio station. I bet they don’t even put us on hold.” He looked down and started punching numbers into his own cell phone.
Waldo said to Lorena, “Drive.” She gunned it.
“Hey!” shouted the guard after them, leaning out of his booth.
They found the street number painted on the curb. Both Waxes were waiting outside their front door. Brenda, smaller and more birdlike than she’d appeared in the magazine photos, said to them, “Stevie’s missing? For how long?”
Lorena said, “Three, four days.”
“And Daron . . . ?”
Waldo said, “She was at his apartment. He says they had an argument and she left. That’s the last time Stevie was on the grid.”
Brenda said, “Please. Come in.” Lorena darted past Roy, cutting off his opportunity to protest.
Brenda directed them all to a living room decorated in coastal style, lots of blue and white and rattan. French doors led to their dock and a sixty-foot yacht.
Roy said, “This isn’t our problem.”
Waldo knew to ignore him. He said to Brenda, “We were working with the Roses before Stevie disappeared.”
Brenda said, “On what?”
“That’s confidential, but—”
Roy clapped his hands together and said, “We’re done here. And everything I said to you in my office still holds: you’d better tread carefully, even with whatever’s happening with Stevie.”
Waldo said, “Your niece disappeared at the same time somebody was setting you up. Eighteen million people in greater L.A.—hard to believe there isn’t a connection.”
Roy said, “Believe it. I already figured out what happened on this end.”
Lorena said, “You did?”
“It’s related to my business. Beyond that: not your concern.”
Waldo pressed him. “You know we won’t let that alone. Police won’t either, if this turns into a missing persons.”
“Fine. I have an option to buy a factory in Korea, which would put a competitor out of business. This stunt with you was my competitor’s way of letting me know that he’s willing to play dirty. That’s all you need to know.”
Waldo let that angle go for the moment and turned back to Brenda. “Is there bad blood between you and Paula’s family? When’s the last time you talked to her?”
Roy answered for his wife. “Is that what Joel told you? ‘Bad blood’? Look: we’re families who annoy the shit out of each other on Thanksgiving, and then everyone’s glad it’s over until next year. That’s it.”
Waldo said, “I’d like to hear from Brenda.” He asked her again: “When’s the last time you talked to your sister?”
She looked to her husband before answering, as if for permission. “Thanksgiving. Five months?”
Waldo asked Brenda to tell them a little about their background, how she and Paula grew up. She described much the same story as Paula did, of the divorce and the subsequent parade of suitors. There were a couple of differences: older than her sister, Brenda had more vivid memories of their father, an assistant manager at a dairy farm, and she had a different spin on the original strain, attributing it to Paula’s brattiness, her spying and sabotaging and provoking, unrestrained by their distracted mom.
“Interesting,” said Lorena, “that you two started out so modestly and both ended up marrying such successful men.”
The comparison set Roy aboil. “Do not compare me to Joel Rose,” he said, twisting in his club chair. “Joel Rose is a smug little prick with no self-control.”
“Roy . . .” said Brenda.
“You should have seen him at Thanksgiving, waving around a carving knife like a crazy man.”
Lorena said, “Sounds like bad blood to me.”
“It wasn’t me he was upset with. He was out of his mind about the election. Trump derangement syndrome.”
Brenda added, superfluously, “They were big Hillary people.”
Roy snorted, then repeated, “Smug little prick. So offended by anyone who’s actually pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, anyone who believes people should have to at least try before the government starts giving them handouts.
“He looks down on me, can you believe that? I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps”—he liked this bootstraps thing—“and now I’m giving kids a love of history, a love of their country. Meanwhile that prick does nothing but pour sludge into the culture. Ever watch their TV show? And you know what he says? ‘That’s how teenagers behave.’ How about you teach your own kid to behave instead of running wild all over Southern California? That girl’s a nightmare, but you could see it coming from the beginning, the way they indulged her. Whatever’s happening,” he said, “they brought it on themselves,” and walked out of the room.
Waldo didn’t entirely disagree with that assessment. Then again, he was pretty sure Roy Wax’s son hadn’t paid for his Postmates from Mastro’s by buckling down and studying for the CPA exam.
Brenda said t
o them, “I wish I could help you find Stevie, but we truly don’t have any contact with them.” She thought for a moment, then added, “It’s not easy for us. Paula and Joel have a lot of hate in their hearts. And Roy is right about their values. We make choices in this life, and sometimes they lead us straight to hell.”
Lorena said, “Well, they’re definitely going through hell right now.”
Brenda Wax let out a condescending sigh. Waldo knew she had something warmer in mind.
FIFTEEN
The address texted from Nini’s phone turned out to be a two-story gallery on Forest. Don Q wore a straw fedora and was so still as he studied a nude on the upper floor that Waldo almost didn’t notice him even though the room was nearly empty. “Look at that,” the drug dealer said. “Rosemary.”
“That’s her name?” said Waldo.
“No, man. The shit you put on chicken. Rosemary.” He pointed to the figure’s pubic hair. “Look—pushed it right into the canvas. This here bitch musta really wiggled his churro. This artist, Hampton? He did those, too.” He pointed to two large wooden boards, one with a painted gorilla and one with a tiger. “I got the giraffe.”
“What, at home?”
“No, I drive around with it strapped to my roof. Fuck you think?”
“What happened to ‘kid in private school, I can’t afford the Surf and Sand’?”
“It’s a investment, Waldo. This muthafucker gonna pop. His shit make you feel good, you know? Make you happy.
“So,” Don Q said, dropping his voice. The only other people in the expansive space were a middle-aged white couple in the far corner bickering unselfconsciously about whether to buy a piece downstairs that the husband thought overpriced. “This dude you asked me about. He’s a raitero. You know what that is?” Waldo didn’t. “Raitero: it’s like Spanglish—dude gives you a ride. But what it really means is scumbag. You know temps?”
Waldo shook his head again.
Don Q got impatient with him. “Temps—shit, Waldo, what do you know? Company gotta unload a truck, need to hire some oompa loompas for a day. Or their secretary calls in sick—”
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