The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (20 page)

Our waiter appeared. I let Eric order for both of us. He picked what he wanted and asked the waiter what he thought he should bring for me. The waiter said he knew just the thing and went away. I’d either been dissed or treated like a king.

I took in the throng. “I heard this place was hard to get into.”

He smiled. “One of the perks.”

“Must be a lot of them.”

“If somebody wants them.”

“You don’t?”

“Ones like this, yes. Not a lot of the others.”

“Like the girls and the drugs.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Just making conversation.”

The wine came. Eric and the sommelier went through the showing, pouring, sipping, approving routine. I tried it. Red wine is red wine.

“With Dennis gone,” I said, “you must have more to do at work.”

“Not really. He wasn’t that involved with day-to-day operations. He was more the visionary.” There was no irony in his voice.

“How did the two of you get along?”

He frowned. “Just fine.”

“Because Ronnie said you said the world might be better off without him.”

He waited a beat. It was deliberate. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“How did you mean it?”

I never found out, because someone else came over to pay his respects. A character actor who always played the put-upon neighbor or minor functionary. I’d seen him in dozens of things, didn’t know his name, forgot it again the second he retreated.

After a couple of bites of salad I said, “Most of the people I’ve met who knew Dennis, he did something lousy to. Take Ronnie, for example. Do you know why he fired her?”

“She told me.”

“That was totally cold-blooded. Not just firing her because she wouldn’t sleep with him, but dragging me, a person he barely knew, into it. And then before that. With the roofies. Did you know about that?”

His blinked a couple of times more than he should have. “He was trying to change.”

“Please.”

“No, seriously. Regardless of what you might think about Dennis, he did have a conscience. He did sometimes feel bad about the way he treated people. He fired me twice, did you know that?”

“No.”

“And each time he bought me an expensive gift to make up for it.”

“Real thoughtful of him.”

“I know, I know. But lately … well, actually, just in the couple of days before he died … something was different.”

“How so?”

“He’d stumbled on something … I don’t know what it was.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me either. We just talked about it on the phone once, for half a minute. He said it was going to change his life.”

“Forgive me if I’m not convinced.”

“Understandable. I’m sorry. That’s all I know.” The waiter came and took away our salad plates. “Look,” Eric said.“Dennis is dead. What’s the point in talking trash about him?”

“The point in talking trash is that his father asked me to help figure out who killed him. And when someone’s an asshole and he gets shot, one natural conclusion is that he got shot
because
he’s an asshole.”

“You know, it’s not very graceful, letting someone take you to lunch and subjecting him to the third degree.”

I almost broke it open right then. But I was determined to play it cool, keep him on the line as long as possible, extract every bit of information I could. “Hey, lunch was your idea. I had every intention of subjecting you to the third degree right there in your office.”

Our entrees came. His was steak. Mine was slices of beef and some root vegetable in a sauce. It was good. Not three-stars good. S. Irene Virbila, I was sure, had awarded the place for its in-factor, maybe for Gina’s design, definitely for the way it made S. Irene feel like she was somebody important.

We behaved ourselves through the main course. We talked about his stepkids, and my remodel, and Iraq. He ate the next-to-last bite of the green stuff that was his side dish, put down his fork, said, “You want to talk about Ronnie.” No question mark.

“You know me so well.” I pushed a bread crumb around with my fingertip. “I understand you suggested to her that I might have murdered Dennis.”

He’d mastered the all-will-be-taken-care-of smile. “Not seriously. Just exploring possibilities. And I understand you said the same thing about me.”

“You told her I was the one who drugged her.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“From her.”

He leaned forward. “All right. So I said it. So what. It’s a natural conclusion, how gorgeous she is.”

“You’re right,” I said. “A woman that gorgeous, a guy would do a lot to get her in the sack.”

His eyes fluttered, darted away, came back. His cheeks turned a shade paler. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you were frustrated as hell that you couldn’t talk her into bed with you.”

“This is none of your—”

“And I guess while you were out of town you decided to do something about it. So you charmed her by showing up at the party. It was a nice move. Very romantic. Stop looking for the waiter and look at me, you piece of shit.”

He turned and saw my face. The air went out of him.

“But the romance routine wasn’t enough for you. You put something in her drink. I’ve been going under the assumption it was a date-rape drug. Am I right?”

“That’s the most ridiculous accusation I’ve ever heard.”

“Really? Of all the accusations you’ve heard in your entire worthless life, it’s absolutely the most ridiculous?”

“It’s libel.”

“I think you mean slander. Libel’s written, and so far I have written anything about it. So far.”

“You’ll never prove anything. It’s way too late for that.”

“Maybe I’m wearing a wire. That’s what they’d do on
Protect and Serve
, right? They get the bad guy in a situation where he’d have no reason to think he was being recorded and—” I patted my chest, about where I thought the microphone ought to be. “—and everything’s all cleaned up neat and tidy by the end of the fourth act.”

“Stop it. Stop it right there.” His eyes were glazed. His breathing was shallow. “This meal is over,” he said.

“You haven’t finished your greens.”

He stood, pulled out his wallet, tossed a hundred and a fifty on the table. He brushed off all attempts at communication as he made his way outside. A couple of minutes later Johnny Depp brought the van around.

I finished my meal. Did a quick calculation. I could have dessert and still leave the waiter a healthy tip.

The pear tart was definitely three-star. The tea was excellent too.

There’s a popular misconception that nobody walks in L.A. There was even a song back in the eighties with lyrics that said so. But lots of people walk in L.A. It’s usually good walking weather, except for the dozen days in the winter when it rains and the half-dozen in September and October when it’s too hot. If you pretend your neighborhood is a small town you can get by for days without a vehicle.

So it wasn’t a big deal for me to make my way on foot back to the Fox lot. It wasn’t more than a couple of miles. A half hour stroll. I took Olympic most of the way, cut down Avenue of the Stars past the office tower where they shot
Die Hard
, finished the trip on Pico. I paid my respects to my friend the guard, walked to the truck. I drove out and west on Pico, looking for a pay phone. The first one I spotted was outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was broken. The next was in the lot at a 7-Eleven. It didn’t work either, and ate my coins to boot.

Sometimes you resist something so much that opposing it becomes a point of pride. Even when all the evidence points to capitulation, you continue struggling against it, convinced that to give in provides evidence of some inner weakness, some flaw in character that, once recognized, will result in awful consequences.

Sometimes you just say to hell with it.

I thought of all the times I’d wanted to check in with Gina but couldn’t because I couldn’t get to a phone; all the abuse I’d endured from Elaine because she couldn’t get in touch with me about an audition; all the 7-Eleven lots I’d stood in, cursing Alexander Graham Bell for starting the whole thing.

And Gina had demolished my objection about the cost. A couple of days ago she’d presented me with a brochure for a prepaid plan that would only cost us seven or eight bucks a month. And with my new vocation, I could write even that small sum off.

I vaguely remembered an AT
&
T store somewhere along Pico. I found it in a building shared with a piano showroom and a party store. I went in and half an hour later walked out with my brand new Nokia and a fuzzy idea of how to use it.

My first call was supposed to be to Gina. I reached a tire store. An auspicious entry into the world of digital communications.

I managed to dial Mike’s number. He picked up. I told him what I wanted. He said he was gassed that I was coming over.

I hadn’t been to his place before. Everything we’d done had been east of my house and it always made sense for him to pick me up or drop his car at my place while I drove. Not to mention the parking situation, which was even worse in Mike’s neck of the woods than in Carrie’s and Samantha’s half a mile away.

But I got lucky. As I drove up Pacific I glanced down one of the narrow side streets and spotted someone pulling out. I hung a
Dukes of Hazzard
right and snapped up the spot. Two minutes later I was at Mike’s. It was one of those two-story places overlooking the boardwalk. The bottom floor was Feed Your Head and the top his apartment. I’d finally figured out that he moved into the apartment after Donna went missing, and that he rented out the house they’d lived in together.

It was always noisy there on the boardwalk, what with the skaters and tourists and homeless people beating drums. It wasn’t where I would have chosen to recover from blunt force trauma to the head. Were I Lu, I would have gone back to Dennis’s place. But maybe she couldn’t go back, just like Gina never went back to her condo in West Hollywood after someone met a violent end there.

I climbed the staircase leading up to Mike’s front door. A tattered and faded Christmas wreath hung there. Knowing Mike, probably left over from last year. I rang the bell and the nurse answered. She was a Filipina, very short and perky and younger than I would have thought. She said Mike was downstairs in the shop. I asked how Lu was and got told she was feeling a little bit better every day.

I went back down and around to the shop. The Yardbirds were blasting from inside. The front window was filled with hash pipes and water pipes and a bunch of gadgets I didn’t recognize. Technology had caught up with the dope-smoking industry. There was also a fancy golden hookah, hand-painted in reds and blues and yellows.
On Special
, said the sign.
Makes a Great Xmas Gift
.

Inside. More paraphernalia. Twenty or so kinds of rolling papers. Scales and tiny pruning shears and plastic bags guaranteed to repel ultraviolet light. Posters with peace signs or long-dead rock stars. Black lights from six inches on up.

Three of the five people inside were drinking Snapples around a wooden table. There was a spindly old guy with a gray ponytail, a middle-aged heavyset man wearing a
FREE HUEY
T-shirt, and a teenage girl in a bikini top and overalls. They were discussing how we were going to get rid of W. The girl’s position was that Howard Dean was going to be the salvation of the Democratic Party. The heavy guy said he was unelectable. The senior citizen said it didn’t make any difference, politicians were all the same.

A woman my age was buying rolling papers. She couldn’t decide between two kinds. She was on her cell phone with someone named Dewey, insisting he make a choice. Mike stood behind the counter, wearing a tolerant smile. He was nodding in time, more or less, with the Yardbirds.

Mike spotted me and waved me over. “Tell Belinda here which papers to get.” To the woman: “Joe here’s an expert.”

Belinda said, “Hold on,” and took the phone from her ear.

“What are my choices?” I said.

“The JOB Tribal or the Bob Marley King Size Pure Hemp.”

“I’d go with Bob.”

“But the JOBs are chlorine-free,” she said.

“Bob would never steer you wrong.”

She nodded, told Dewey she’d made her choice, finished the transaction. She was about to walk out when Mike said, “Oh, hell,” and threw the JOBs in the bag too. “Try ’em for yourself. The best way.”

The woman thanked him and made her exit.“An expert?” I said.

“Whatever. Made her happy. Come on upstairs. Summer.”

The teenager looked over.

“Man the store for a while. I’m going upstairs.”

Summer made a face. “Don’t you mean ‘staff the store’?”

“Whatever.”

Mike led me through the back room and out the back door. I said, “Isn’t she a little young to be working in a head shop?”

“She doesn’t work here. Just covering for a while. Lots of people do that sometimes.”

The door deposited us at the base of the stairs. We went up and into the apartment. The inside was cluttered but functional. A sliding glass door led out to a balcony directly over the boardwalk. The living room was dominated by a giant TV. There was a food show on with the sound way down low. They were showing us how Hershey’s Kisses were made.

Mike went in the back, returned, told me Lu was tied up with the nurse and sat me down at the dining room table. A Chinese checkers board was set up on it. There’d been one at Dennis’s house too. One of the ties that bound father and son.

A couple of marbles had rolled onto the floor. I picked them up and dropped them into random slots on the game board.

“Been playing some with the nurse,” he said. “She’s good.”

“Who’s paying for her?”

“Dennis.” He was rolling a couple of marbles around in his hand. Made me think of Captain Queeg.

“How you doing?” I said.

“Okay. You want some tea?”

“You should take a vacation.”

“Where would I go?”

“Las Vegas. Mount Rushmore. Liverpool. Hell, I don’t know.”

“Maybe China, huh?”

“If you want.”