by Sean Platt
“I already told the cops I didn’t see nothing. She wasn’t a regular. All I remember is that she sat at the bar, drinking, then left after a while. Wish I could tell you more.”
Derrick locked onto Mike’s eyes, trying his best to seem open and honest. While his eyes and face were selling the lie, his hands, in his pockets for the first time all night, were not.
He was definitely hiding something.
“Listen, I’m not looking to jam you up or anything,” Mike said. “I know there’s something you’re not telling me. Something you remember from that night that you’re not saying. Maybe it’s something little you don’t think matters, but … ” Mike reached into his coat again. This time pulled out another photo, of the murder scene, and set it on the counter, “ … anything you can tell me, anything at all … ”
Derrick recoiled at the image, backing away, his face red and enraged. “Man, get the fuck outta here with that shit!”
“Please,” Mike said, slipping the photos back in his coat as he felt the scene getting out of control in a way he wasn’t looking for … yet. “Please, I’m her father. I just want answers.”
“I told you I don’t know shit, now get out.”
Derrick pointed at the door. His muscular arm twitched, as if offering to help Mike outside if he wasn’t willing to listen.
Mike nodded, then obeyed.
For now.
Aug. 15, 2009
2:15 a.m.
Mike trailed Derrick on foot to his apartment, six blocks away.
He stopped along the way a few times, running into a surprising number of people on the streets, despite the late hour, shooting the shit, and seeming to flirt with more women — though it was hard to hear from 60 yards back. Mike was afraid Derrick would find someone to accompany him home, but despite his gregarious nature and obvious attempts, Derrick somehow managed to make it back to his apartment alone.
The apartment building was a three-story walk-up, run down like most of the neighborhood. Mike hung back on the far side of the street, in front of a small shopping plaza, watching as Derrick climbed the stairs and made his way to a second-floor apartment. He went inside. Moments later, the dark window beside the front door went bright behind verticals.
Though Mike knew Derrick lived alone, it was always possible that someone was staying over. A dark apartment a few minutes before made it less likely.
Mike waited a few moments, watching both street and building, then crossed at a trot.
He didn’t bother knocking.
Mike used the bump key he always carried, unlocked the door, and entered the apartment, gun in hand.
The living room was empty. To his right, Derrick laughed out loud. “Fuck you, noob!”
And then the sound of a machine gun firing.
Mike spun, gun aimed, to see Derrick sitting at a desk in the bedroom, his back to Mike, headphones on, playing some war game on his computer.
Mike smiled as he closed the front door, locked it, and made his way to the bedroom. He pressed his gun against Derrick’s head.
Derrick, startled, jumped from his chair, spun around, fists curled and ready to strike. He saw the gun, and recognized Mike from the bar.
“What the fuck?” he said, throwing his headphones aside.
“Sit down; we need to talk!” Mike growled.
Derrick looked Mike up and down, eyes seemingly assessing the odds of him actually using the gun or maybe figuring out whether he could wrest the weapon before Mike could fire a shot.
He short circuited Derrick’s possible plan by yelling, “I said sit!” then gave him a look that showed the itch in his finger.
Derrick fell back into his chair, some of his bluster and most of the bravado missing from his face.
“Now,” Mike said, “you’re going to tell me everything I want to know.”
“I told you, I don’t know shit,” Derrick lied.
Mike smacked him across the face. Before Derrick could rise from his chair to retaliate, Mike shoved the gun in his crotch. “Sit!”
Derrick’s eyes went wide, and he swallowed hard.
“Now talk.”
“Fine, fine, I’ll tell you, but if you tell the cops, or try and get me to testify at a trial or something, I’m not saying shit! You got that?”
“I get it,” Mike said, not bothering to tell Derrick that if he found the fucker that killed his daughter, there would be no trial, except maybe for Mike’s — if he got caught.
“OK, there’s this guy that worked the kitchen at Lucky Puck’s for a while. Name was Jim Silva, dude was always flirting with the waitresses and shit.”
“OK, and?”
“Well, he up and left a day after the murder. Didn’t call in, didn’t pick up his last paycheck, nothing. Just vanished.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell the officers who talked to you?”
“He was working under the table,” Derrick shook his head. “I didn’t want to make problems for my dad.”
“So, you screwed up a murder investigation?”
“I’m not saying the guy did it! For all I know, he just up and quit. It’s not like the bar business is known for steady workers. People leave all the time, ya know?”
“I want whatever you have on him, license, address, anything.”
Derrick shook his head, “Dad doesn’t keep paperwork on people who work under the table.”
Mike sighed, “Come on … OK, tell me everything you remember about him. What he looks like, does he have tattoos, significant features, anything that stuck out about him?”
“Stuck out?”
“Yeah, anything odd or different, anything at all — like maybe he had Tourette’s, or a limp, or drawl, or something?”
“Now that you mention it, he did have a sorta Southern drawl, but not like a hillbilly. He was an asshole, but almost poetic? He had this expression, said it all the time, though it annoyed the shit outta me and the rest of us. I swear, the guy was like a 4-year-old, saying the same crap over and over whenever he didn’t like something.”
“What was the expression?” Mike asked.
“Beer-battered bullshit.”
Two
Boricio Wolfe
Hollywood, California
September 2013
“Well, ain’t that some beer-battered bullshit?” Boricio said, nodding toward one of the yellow-jacketed Designers blocking the entrance to Cache, the restaurant where they were meeting Rose’s agent.
The Designers were members of some New Age, pseudo-religious cult called the Church of Original Design, sorta big and recently bigger. Boricio didn’t know shit about the church, but figured that Hollywood was probably ground zero for the freaks, and had seen five of the yellow-jacketed aberrations since arriving. This particular freak held a periwinkle flier toward Boricio and Rose. “Hello, brother and sister,” he said, “have you forgiven yourselves and found your true potential?”
Boricio wanted to find his true potential slopping two knuckles with the Designer’s gravy. He could both forgive himself and find his potential fine, and needed no help from Tweety Bird to do it. But Boricio wasn’t broken anymore, at least not like he once was, partly because of Luca the Boy Wonder’s fixing, and partly because of his summer Rose. Either way, his fair lady could smell a bristle on Boricio, even if she didn’t know his scent had horns.
She squeezed his hand, and he glanced over. Her worried eyes and nervous smile pleaded, Please don’t make a scene.
Boricio smiled back, then dug deep into a shit-eating grin. “Why thank you, kind sir! I woke up just this very morning hoping someone would offer me various paraphernalia on ways I could start finding my true potential! I will read this over, thrice at least, highlighting those lines that might change me most for a fourth and fifth gander in the ‘morrow!” Boricio trailed off as Rose yanked him through the front doors and into the posh restaurant he hoped would live up to its reputation.
“Thank you,” Rose whispered behind her, shoving the
flier into the belly of her purse. She turned to Boricio. “You could’ve just said thanks, ya know. We didn’t need your hammy Sir Laurence Olivier.”
“You ever know me to just move on from anything? I was delighting their enlightenment. We were the best flier-takers all day. I’ll bet you the relish on my ratatouille that they’re going home to Designer HQ tonight and telling all the other wackos about the nice couple they met, and how they said they’d be highlighting lines on the flier when they got home. Way I see it, you owe me,” Boricio teased. “But I’ll be a good boy until we’re finished with Veronica, especially if you promise I can be a bad boy again when we get back to the hotel.”
Rose smiled at him, her cheeks blushing pink.
The maître d’ led them down a short set of stairs and over to a table, centered in the middle of a bright dining area, sucking in the Southern California sun from behind wide walls of glass. Boricio tailed Rose, squeezing her hand, soaking in the restaurant’s surroundings with a smile.
A restaurant could brag all it wanted, with A’s and stars and reviews across their walls, but only one restaurant in a hundred — if that — knew how to turn a meal into an adventure. Taste mattered as much as experience. A restaurant with swagger was best: balls without bragging, subtle enough to know it without having to prove it. So far, Cache was ticking Boricio’s boxes, the vibe seemed right, but the real test would be the food. Decor, music, service, even 200 pages of wine, all of it meant dick if the menu went flaccid.
Veronica Barrow waited at their table, smiling.
“Ah, so this must be the Boricio I’ve heard so much about,” she said, standing. Veronica was tall, at least 6 feet, with a long curtain of fiery-red hair. Rose had said she was in her early 50s, but Boricio would’ve taken her for a few ball hairs from 40 at most. Apparently chichi hippie agreed with her.
“Well, well, don’t you think for a second that our Rose only whispers sweet nothings to you.” Boricio took Veronica’s hand and managed to wink at both girls as if he was aiming right at them, though Veronica was directly in front and Rose was at his side. He kissed her hand and finished. “She’s told me so many things about the ‘brilliant Veronica Barrow’ I had to start carrying a scroll so I could just unroll it and scribble at the bottom each time Rose felt the burning need to add a new one, which happens every once upon the hour or so.” Boricio added his widest smile to the full stop at the end of his sentence, then dropped Veronica’s hand as she laughed out loud and started brushing shades of red onto her pretty porcelain skin.
Smells like she knows how to sweat money in tall stacks.
“You know with this much charm, I could get you cast in something just like that?” Veronica snapped her fingers, still smiling.
Boricio said, “You’re just being kind, but even if you weren’t, I’d like to get into Hollywood same as I’d like to have chemo for fun.”
“Boricio!” Rose punched him on the arm.
Boricio pulled out Rose’s chair, waited for her and Veronica to both sit, then took his own seat and said, “I’m interested in it for Rose, though, her words are worth buying and turning into pictures with all the purty people and their shiny teeth. So, let’s focus on her.”
Veronica smiled, said “Of course,” then asked about their flight.
Boricio waited for Rose to finish saying it was terrific before he cut in with the truth that it was really sorta awful, his story drawn with just enough color to relax Veronica more than she already was, and soften Rose’s shoulders with the promise that her beaux was at his articulate best.
“So, how long are you in town?”
“A week,” they said together.
“Boricio wanted to see the sights,” Rose said. “He’s never been.”
Of course, Boricio had been up and down the West Coast, suckling the state’s titties from north to south. He learned to leave fry-cooking behind and become a chef out in Napa, though he didn’t stay long, moving to Houston and then New Orleans shortly after that. But Rose didn’t know that side of Boricio, or most sides for that matter. Not that he wouldn’t be happy to tell her; Boricio loved to let his insides outside to play, but he’d never loved anyone before, and was still circling the animal, inhaling its scent and trying to figure it for what it was. If he breathed out half of what brewed inside him, Rose would’ve run screaming already.
“I’m just a passenger,” Boricio said. “Here to keep Rose entertained.”
“So modest,” Veronica said. “Rose tells me you’re a fountain of ideas, and that The Billfold’s final draft wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for you.”
“I do tend to ramble,” he said.
“He’s a genius.” Rose said as a well-coiffed gentleman gently set a sculpted, silver basket of bread at the table’s center. She grabbed a piece of bread from the basket, buttered it, passed it to Boricio, then buttered one for herself.
“Don’t believe a word, Ms. Veronica Barrow, my genius ain’t nothing. Rose is a tremendous listener, and knows how to find a hog in the codswallop. I never shut up, and she never muffles her curious nature. I just give her plenty of codswallop to sift through.” Boricio wrapped his arm around Rose. “You’ve gotta admire a brain like that, someone always hungry to know why. Most folks you meet are too busy waiting for their turn to talk, myself included. Rose is always happy getting another turn to listen.”
Veronica laughed, her look knowing. “That is true,” she said.
They circled this and that and about a dozen other topics until Boricio finally got to the hog. “So, the Maris Brothers,” he said, swallowing his bread. “Aren’t they a part of that whack job Designers cult?”
“This is Hollywood,” Veronica said, “Everyone’s part of some weird thing or another. Don’t let that put you off.”
Rose had her mouth half open, but Boricio cut in front of her, not because Rose couldn’t speak for herself, or because he didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but because that was precisely why she had asked him to come to lunch, and California, in the first place.
“So why the Maris Brothers?” he asked.
“Because they’re the best fit for The Billfold.”
“You make a beautiful echo, Ms. Veronica Barrow,” Boricio smiled. “But isn’t that exactly the same thing you said about Epic Media? And that was before we booked our tickets to come meet you. So what’s changed in six short days?”
“Nothing, really, except that now I know the Maris Brothers are interested. They weren’t on my radar before, not because they weren’t right, but because they don’t take pitches. Don’t get me wrong, Epic Media is a great fit. Perfect for you, really. And short term, absolutely the right thing, more than anyone in Hollywood. I promise. But the Maris Brothers are something else entirely.”
“So, why the sudden interest if they don’t like pitches?”
“I wasn’t pitching. I was just talking about your project, as one friend to another. I adore The Billfold,” she turned to Rose, her eyes earnest, “more than anything I’ve ever repped, and I’ve been at this a while. I’m sure Jared could see it in my eyes.”
“He the tall one or the fat one?” Boricio asked.
“The fat one,” Veronica admitted, though Boricio could tell she didn’t like the insult’s taste on her tongue.
Rose held her quiet, looking over at Boricio with her bright enough with appreciation that he felt compelled to continue. “So, what makes you think these brothers can make a better movie with a fraction of the budget, and why do you think less money is better for Rose?”
Veronica sighed. “I know this is a hard argument. And I’ll even admit that it would be difficult to convince me if I was sitting on your side of the table. But these brothers know their stuff. They’re already legends on set, and they’ve only made two pictures. Considering Dappled was shot for under a million, looked like 20, and grossed over 100 domestic, and then they topped that with Wormhole, which tripled every number, they’ve already proved themselves the better bet, at
least as I see it. Long term, there’s no question who you want making your movie. Right now, today, Epic will change your life more. Definitely. They’ll give you seven figures for your script, and that’s the best deal you’ll get in Hollywood. Your movie will get made and it will make money. It will probably do OK critically, and you might eke by with a 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. But your next project will be a tougher sell. The Maris Brothers, on the other hand, will hit it out of the park, and your follow-up, Insanity, which already sounds fantastic, by the way, will be firmly in a seller’s market.”
Boricio squinted his eyes at Veronica while listening to Rose’s heart make a thumpity thump beside him. He chewed on her words, each sounding like perfect sense to him, as he considered Rose’s reaction. The breath in her chest said it made sense to her, though she’d be juggling he loves me, he loves me nots with the thought of turning down a right now paycheck.
The table filled with food as Boricio deftly changed the subject, saying they’d need to think on it. The meal was good enough, but not great, which thoroughly disappointed Boricio, shocked to find conversation beating the food. But he was pleased that he liked Veronica as much as he did. She was sparky, and could hold her side of a volley, but what Boricio liked most — what truly mattered — was that she showed respect to Rose and seemed to have her eye on his lady’s best interests.
Veronica wanted to pick up the check, but Boricio covered it on his way to the restroom. It’s what Rose wanted, and Boricio approved. He liked owing no one anything for anything ever. After the meal, Veronica profusely thanked them for their time, and again apologized for the last-minute change.
They said goodbye at the table, then Boricio took Rose by the hand and led her to an outside terrace where they looked over a koi pond and onto the boulevard.
“So, are you going with the Brothers or the sure thing?”
Rose wrinkled her nose. “What do you think I should do?” She looked at him, her eyes large and wanting. Rose had come to trust Boricio so much and in such a short time. It was an odd weight to carry, and half the time Boricio half expected to drop it.
