The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (30 page)

I walked back to my father’s house. I rang the bell and he let me in. Catherine and Leonard, he said, were at Beverly Center seeing the third
Lord of the Rings
movie. Rather, Catherine was seeing it; Leonard, being legally blind, was watching vague moving shapes on a big bright screen.

We sat at the table in the back yard and watched it get dark out. He picked at his leftover blueberry pie. Suddenly he was talking about his childhood. I found out things about him I’d never known. Like which elementary school he went to, and who his first girlfriend was, and how one of his best friends when he was a kid went off to the camp at Manzanar and never came back.

He told me the story of how he met my mother. I knew the basics, but most of it was new. It was a Romeo and Juliet tale of sorts, the Catholic girl and the Jewish boy, each family suspicious of the other until one night they all got drunk together on Chianti and Manischewitz and realized their commonalities were a lot greater than their differences. He told me my Aunt Esther disappeared into a back bedroom with my Uncle Anthony, and came out an hour later insisting all they’d done back there was discuss the Red Menace.

Eventually Catherine and Leonard returned. They came outside and said hello and Catherine asked if I wanted to stay for dinner. I told her I needed to get home to Gina. They went back in, and my father pulled out a half-smoked cigar and lit it. He blew a smoke ring, and we watched it dissipate into the near-dark.

“Everything get settled with John?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Anything we need to talk about?”

“No.”

“So I don’t have to worry about you for a while?”

“Well …”

I told him about my new career.

When I was done he said,“I knew this was coming. You’ll be careful?”

“I’ll be careful.”

Another puff. Another smoke ring. Then, “I have something to tell you too.” He snuffed the cigar on the underside of the table, made sure it was out, dropped it into his shirt pocket. “Mary Elizabeth and me. We’re getting married.”

“Dad, that’s great.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“You don’t think I’m being unfaithful to your mother?”

“Dad …” I got up, knelt by him, put my arms around him. “I’m sure Mom would be … is … very glad that you’ve found someone.”

“You like her?”

“Mary Elizabeth? Of course I do.”

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Of course I’m not. You know I like her. We get along great.”

“There’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to have Leonard be my best man.”

“That’s great.”

“If he wants to.”

“You haven’t asked him yet?”

“I wanted you to be the first to know. You’re not mad?”

“About what?”

“About not being the best man. Because you had me be yours.”

“It doesn’t matter. Not a bit.”

“Leonard’s old. He doesn’t have a lot of years left. I think this would make him very happy. Maybe make up a little for him having to find another roommate.”

“You’re moving in with Mary Elizabeth?”

He shook his head. “She’s selling her place. We’re getting a condo. We’re too old to deal with a house and a yard and all that.”

“What about your posies?”

“You can grow posies in pots. Place we get, we’ll make sure it has a nice patio. With plenty of sun and plenty of room for posies in pots. So you’re all right with this?”

“Of course. I’m ecstatic. For both of you.”

“Not this, the wedding. This, the best man thing.”

“I already said I was.”

“You can be the head usher.”

“I’d be the flower girl if you wanted me to.”

Slowly, he smiled. I could smell the cigar smoke on him, bringing memories of summer twilights throwing a softball back and forth where my greenhouse now stood. Underneath the smoke was the harsh-soap-and-cologne scent of my father, the one I imagined I could smell all those years he was away at San Quentin.

“Yes, Joseph,” he said. “I think you would.”

I’d come to terms with Alma Rodriguez getting away with murder. But there were other things I didn’t feel like letting people get away with. Three things, three people.

I talked it over with Gina. She told me not to bother. That I’d been shaken up enough by the goings-on of the last few weeks, and that there was nothing to be gained by stirring the pot. It was a perfunctory attempt at persuasion. She knew I was going to go ahead and stir.

I called Claudia Acuna at Channel 6 and scheduled lunch. We walked to a Thai Dishes near the station. But when we reached it she kept going. I’d slowed to enter, caught up to her, said, “Not hungry?”

“You don’t want to have lunch with me. You just want to give me a hard time for going back to work.”

“Yeah.”

“So go ahead. Yell at me.”

“I’m not going to yell. I just don’t understand. You seemed so happy.”

She turned up a side street. It was lined with tiny homes with metal bars over their windows. We walked halfway to the next intersection before she said anything. “You know that joke about the man who gets a job cleaning up after the elephants at the circus?”

“‘What, and leave show business?’”

A smile. “That’s the one.”

“Once you got what you wanted, it wasn’t really what you wanted.”

“It was that damned Madera. Seeing her face on the screen where mine used to be. She was
so
bad.”

I remembered thinking she wasn’t as terrible as I’d thought she’d be. “And if she’d been the best young reporter you’d ever seen?”

“Wouldn’t have made a difference. I’m addicted to the celebrity, as minor as it is.”

“What about being happy for the rest of your life?”

“Bottom line? After that first flush of liberation, I was happier being on-screen doing car chases than off-screen watching them.”

“I see.”

“Don’t be mad.”

“I’m not mad. It’s just … you had the opportunity to get what you wanted out of life, and you retreated to what you had before.”

“That’s not what I just said.”

“What you just said is bullshit. You were too scared to change.”

We stopped in front of a house with a big pomegranate tree in the front yard, overhanging the sidewalk. Most of the leaves were gone for the winter. A couple of lonely, fractured fruits remained up in the highest branches. She examined the tree, touched a twig, turned back to me. “You’re right, of course.”

“I know I am.”

“But did you have to rub it in my face?”

I started us back toward the station. “That wasn’t my intention.”

“What was your intention?”

“Maybe to change your mind back.”

“Go ahead and try.”

“No. Because it’s not going to do any good. Is it?”

“No.”

“So, fine. It’s your life.”

We walked on in silence. We were almost back when I said, “I thought they were glad to be rid of you. How’d you get your job back?”

“I called in a favor.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“Believe me, I do.”

“Because that’s the way the world works, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the way it works.”

Having achieved such satisfaction from my showdown with Claudia Acuna, I moved on to the next.

I met Alberta Burns at the bagel place in Marina del Rey. We ordered and went outside, found a couple of chairs the birds hadn’t messed up, took our places.“So,” she said.“What do you want now?”

“You and my father. Both think I only want to see you when I need something.”

She unwrapped her bagel. “This time’s different, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“How much do you know?”

“I know that John Santini found out about me from you. And that my father’s name came up, and that was what got this whole thing with him started.”

“You’re better at this than I thought.”

“I also know that you didn’t really look anything up when I asked about those tickets. That—Jesus, you had me pegged—that you and he knew that if I had to find out whose tickets they were I’d go right to you.”

“Stood to reason.”

Except it wasn’t me that thought of going to Burns. “Please tell me Gina wasn’t in on this too.” My stomach was jumping. I wished I’d brought Santini’s pills.

“Now you’re getting paranoid.”

“She wasn’t?”

“She wasn’t.”

“Why were you talking to Santini?”

“It was about something else entirely. Your name came up in passing.”

“Alberta.”

“Whoa,” she said. You could count the times I’d called her by her first name on the fingers of Mickey Mouse’s hand.

“You knew what I was asking.”

“Hey, what about those Lakers?”

“Stop it.”

She opened her bagel, found nothing unexpected, put the halves back together. “You want to know why I was in a position to be having a conversation with him at all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I can’t tell you.”

“Please. Cut the secretive shit.”

“No, I can’t. I’m sorry, Joe, I really can’t.”

“Can you tell me how long you’ve known him?”

“Almost ten years.”

“And have you been involved with him all that time?”

“Part of what I can’t tell you.”

“Goddamn it, Burns.”

“Maybe someday I can tell you. Maybe a day not too far off. But not now.”

“I could go to the press.”

“But you won’t.”

Of course I wouldn’t. What would it accomplish? And why would I want to hold her up to the kind of inane public scrutiny my former comrade Claudia Acuna and her tribe would subject her to? “You owed him a favor, didn’t you?”

“I owed him a few. I’m still in the red.”

“What if I tried to find out the history without your cooperation?”

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d have to stop you. And you wouldn’t like how I would do that.”

“Oooh, I’m scared.”

“And he’d have to stop you too.”

“And I wouldn’t like how he did that?”

“You wouldn’t care. You’d be dead.”

“Oh.” I picked up my bagel. Put it down. “There’s one thing I don’t—”

“The subject is
closed
.”

She bit into her bagel. A dab of cream cheese deposited itself at the corner of her mouth. I touched myself in the same place, and she wiped it away.

“One more question,” I said. “I promise, just one more, and we’ll be done with this until you decide to bring it up again.”

“Would it do me any good to say no?”

“Of course not.”

“Then shoot.”

“How did he manage to fix me up with Mike? I mean, he comes up with this plan, he drags Mike into it, and then I just happen to be at a party where Mike can latch onto me?”

“Why do you think he picked Mike?”

“I don’t get you.”

“It’s simple. Once John decided to do this, he quizzed me about you. I mentioned your little friend next door. He knew Dennis produced her show, and that Mike was Dennis’s father. That’s when he picked Mike. Other circumstances, your friend was on a Bochco show or something, it would have been someone else. He’s got lots of people in this town. Dozens. Hundreds.”

A lot to think about. Santini’s tentacles extended throughout Los Angeles. Who knew how many public figures were in his debt? And what he’d done to put them there?

But that wasn’t what I found most interesting about this last disclosure. What I found most interesting was that she’d called him by his first name.

“Still buddies?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“But you’re still mad at me.”

“A little.”

“Trust me on this,” she said. “All will be revealed. All in good time.”

“It better be,” I said.

A couple of days later, the police closed in on one Robert Leighton “Bobby Lee” Fillmore at his Gardena apartment. Shots were fired. Bobby Lee Fillmore died on the scene. The police announced the solution of the Dennis Lennox case. Bobby Lee’s sister Janeen had worked in the commissary at the studio where Dennis had his office. They’d gone out a few times and Dennis had dumped her. Bobby Lee took offense and blew him away. When reporters searched down Janeen Fillmore for her comment, they found she’d returned to her Missouri home. When one went so far as to look for her there, she found a community intent on giving Janeen her privacy.

Bobby Lee Fillmore was a creepy little loser. No one would miss him. Probably not even his sister Janeen. If she even existed.

The day after Bobby Lee Fillmore’s untimely demise, Gina and I were awakened by a hubbub in our back yard. We stumbled outside and found half a dozen men hard at work on our new master bedroom. When asked about the sudden burst of activity, the guy in charge gave me a queer grin and said something about an opening in the contractor’s schedule. If I knew what he meant.

I knew what he meant. What I didn’t know is if this added to my favor account with John Santini. Was it a favor if you didn’t ask for it?

Spring eventually made its appearance. Our remodel, once it got going, was accomplished in record time. Gina and I greatly enjoyed our new bedroom. It’s good knowing people in high places. Or low places. More I see, more I think they’re the same places.

One thing we loved about our new bedroom hung over the long-anticipated fireplace. It was a painting of a woman in T-shirt and cutoffs standing by a lamppost near the El Rey Theatre. A sign on the lamppost said
Miracle Mile District
. Samantha dropped it by one Saturday afternoon. She said she had a new therapist. Things were going well. Another six months, she said, and she wouldn’t be any crazier than I was.

They announced the schedules for the fall TV season. Though
Protect and Serve
and two of Dennis Lennox’s sitcoms continued as before,
The Galahad Sisters
was no more. Stephanie Urbano, the blond sister, was scheduled for a new show about an ornithologist and a beekeeper who meet cute and fall in love. It was called
Birds and Bees
.

And Ronnie? With her name all over the papers, other producers got interested. So she let her firing stick. And moved to a new hour-long police drama called
Badges
. It was based on the exploits of a former LAPD homicide detective named Alberta Burns. Ronnie was cast as the young white detective taken under the wing of the older black one who was Burns’s alter ego. Burns’s partner Paul Witten was one of the producers. I had a small part in the pilot. Very small. “Over there, officer.”