About Face (11 page)

Wes ordered a Manhattan and faced outward on his stool, blocking me from view. I doubt I would have been recognized, anyway. I wore long, black curly hair, a goatee, shades, and a studded jean jacket. The original intention had been a latter-day D'Artagnan, but Wes said I looked more like Frank Zappa. A mirror in back of the bar allowed me to keep an eye on the room and the entrance. A full-length curtain divided the bar from the dining room. Every few minutes Wes got up to check inside, in case Alissa or Wendy had slipped in the back way.

The stage was empty now, but we were told when we came in that a go-go show would commence at eleven. That apparently justified the three-drink minimum.

“We can bring our Silicon Glamour dates here,” Wes said. “I think I'm in, Billy. They're setting me up with Erika and a friend on Friday.”

“Oh yeah, this'll impress them.” Friday was two days away and a lot could happen between now and then. “Did you ever talk about dating or girlfriends with Rod?”

“Sure. He had a wicked crush on someone at every conference we went to, but he was always too shy to do anything about it. It got a little tedious. I wouldn't think he'd go so far as to pay for it, but maybe he was lonelier than I realized. The girlfriend interface can be a tough one.”

“Alissa told her mother she was giving him the full Girlfriend Experience.”

“Hey, experience is the latest commodity. The Explorer experience—as if you become one by getting into an SUV. You can make a lot of money selling simulations.”

“Well, reality has its ways of biting back. All I need to know right now is whether Alissa's safe. And then I want to find out if she diddled Rod.”

Wes drained his glass and ate the cherry. “Ready for another?”

“Sure. But I'm sticking to two parts H and one part O, with bubbles.” I checked my watch. “Damn, Wes, it's ten-thirty. Where's Rod?”

“Maybe he wants to make sure Alissa shows first, so he's not stood up.”

“Like she's going to sit around waiting for him.”

Wes swatted my arm. “Here we go. At two o'clock, headed for the dining room.”

“Don't be so obvious,” I said. I took off the shades to track her in the mirror. The hair was piled high. The cashmere minidress, the knowing walk: It was Wendy, dressed to be noticed. She made no secret of inspecting the bar patrons.

I told Wes to follow her around the curtain. She came back into my mirror view sixty seconds later. I turned in time to see her exit the front door. Wes sat down next to me.

“No Alissa?” I asked. He shook his head. “Follow Wendy,” I said.

Wes went out the door. He returned, breathless, two minutes later. “She took off in a Toyota. Do we go?”

“It's too late. Shit. Rod's still not here. He may have blown it.” I got out my cell phone and dialed him. His voicemail answered. I warned him that Wendy had come and gone and he'd better get over here. Then I turned back to Wes. “You'll have to give him the bad news when he comes in. Tell him to stay put and eat dinner or something.”

We went back to our drinks. Wes finished his second and I drank my six-dollar soda water. At eleven, a few bass thumps
from the drummer announced the start of the show. The band members took their places and the house lights went down. I decided it was safe to turn around. The dancers wore suede outfits tiny enough to have come from the same small patch of steer.

Strobes flashed and the band cranked up the volume. The minutes stretched on. Still no Alissa. Still no Rod. Still no answer on his phone.

After his third Manhattan, Wes plucked the cherry and showed me the stem. “Ever had a girlfriend who could tie one of these in knots with her tongue?”

“You've got to chew on it first. Softens it.”

Wes leaned away from me in mock amazement. “You've got skills.”

I checked my watch. Eleven-thirty. “Let's take one more look around, then go,” I said.

We had to dodge beer-slopping patrons to make our search and get out of the place. I held out my hand for the car keys. We'd come in Wes's Jeep in case Wendy knew my Scout. “I'm all right,” he said.

“You still working on that cherry stem?”

His tongue did a quick inventory of his mouth and came up empty. He gave me the keys.

» » » » »

Rod's Volvo was in the driveway. The front porch light was on, and a dim glow slanted from the rear of the house. I rang the bell. There was no answer. I rang several more times, then tried the door. It was open.

Wes started to say something. I signalled for him to keep quiet and stay at the door. The only sound in the house was the lonely tick of a clock in the dining room. I took a few careful steps inside. The smell of coffee came down the hallway.

I motioned Wes to close the door. “Stay here,” I whispered. “He might have freaked out or something.”

The living room was empty, the hearth dark. In the dimness I could see that items on the shelves had been knocked over and the sofa cushions were disarranged. Lights came from the bathroom and kitchen down the hall, along with a sound of faint static. I had a sensation again of peering into recesses of Rod's psyche he wanted no one to see.

“Rod, are you all right?” I said before turning left into the bathroom.

No answer. The sink tap was running. It was the source of the static. I turned it off.

The bathroom was a mess. Dirt was spread across the floor. An amaranth plant and its pot—an Alissa item, I was sure—lay broken on the floor by the toilet. The idea came to me that Rod had learned the truth about Alissa and had smashed the plant. A crumpled towel lay next to the shower. I found a nail file next to it. It had made small tears in the towel. The cabinet drawers had been pulled out. Antibiotic ointment lay on the sink counter.

If Rod did this, he was in bad shape. If he didn't, he was in worse.

I looked into the bedroom. His best shirt, jacket, and tie were laid out on the bed. He'd been getting ready to go to the Cheshire Cat and for some reason had stopped. The chest drawers were open, as if he'd been searching for something. A pair of dress slacks hung on a closet doorknob. The bed was made neatly. I glanced at a pair of books on the bedside table:
How to Romance a Woman
and
Why Sex Is Fun
. A bottle of massage oil sat next to them.

I called Rod's name again as I came into the hallway. He might be in the basement, taking refuge with his computer, if something had made him decide not to come tonight.

But he wasn't, and the laptop he usually brought home with him wasn't there, either.

I found him in the other room with a light on, the kitchen. Coffee was splattered over the floor and on the wall. The phone had been ripped from the jack and the line was tangled in his socked feet. The handle of the coffee pot, with some Pyrex still attached to it, was near the back door. Other shards were close by. So was a dented toaster.

Rod was in the middle of the floor, on his stomach. He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. His back was a mottle of pink scalds and brown stains, like temperature zones on a weather map. His left arm was crooked so that it touched his waist. A series of cuts marked the arm like a broken alphabet, along with a dark ruby port-colored streak.

In his right hand was a cutting knife. The seven-inch blade was stained crimson. His carotid artery had been severed. Blood had spurted on the floor to form a glistening maroon lake. I could only bear a quick glance at his face. Smears of shaving cream ran down the jaw. The eyes bulged with surprise and the lips were stretched in a scream. The skin was drained a worm-white that told me it was too late to call an ambulance.

A piece of paper torn from a notebook rested near his head. I didn't see a pen. Scrawled on the paper was the word “Sorry.”

» » » » »

I drank coffee because I didn't know what else to drink. I didn't figure on sleeping tonight, anyway.

Wes and I sat in an all-night diner on El Camino Real. I couldn't say where it was or how we got there. I'd been going through the motions for the past three hours. After I'd found Rod, the room had begun to spin. I went out to the living room and sat with my head between my knees until Wes's inquiring
voice forced me to stand up. We called the police and then picked through the house for some hint of what had happened and why. The towel, the nail file, the toaster and coffee pot, the note—we couldn't make sense of it.

The police came and I told them what I knew. Evidence was collected and photos shot. The corpse was wrapped and taken away like a piece of discarded furniture. I'd gazed at the yellow tape marking off the scene and thought: My job had been to prevent the arrival of the yellow tape.

But I was not fixated on my failure just now. I was only trying to grasp the fact that Rod was dead. My brain was numb, like a useless limb, my stomach still queasy. Everything in the diner— the chipped porcelain, the scorched coffee, the hideous fluorescent lights—was a nightmare simulation in which I was trapped. Real life was stuck in the moment that knife went into Rod's neck. My mind was frozen there, picturing the gash. The fountain of blood. Picturing myself preventing it, somehow. Picturing Rod alive and, like as not, still agonizing over Alissa. Pacing in front of the hearth. Tapping his front teeth. Berating himself for his naïveté yet clinging to a thread of hope.

I wondered if Alissa, wherever she was, had gotten what she wanted. If she would care when the news reached her. Or if she herself . . .

There were too many variables to solve for. Wes had barraged me with questions when we sat down. I'd told him to shut up. The same questions were swirling in my mind: Did Rod kill himself? If so, that could mean he was implicated in Alissa's disappearance, as Rupert accused, and guilt had overwhelmed him. But then why all the signs of struggle? He could have done it himself if his lid had finally blown, the volcano erupted. Denial drove him berserk and he self-destructed.
Sorry
, the note said.

But I couldn't believe Rod would do it that way. He'd have found an elegant poison or put a neat bullet through his brain. Stabbing oneself in the neck was not a typical method of suicide. Someone must have done it to him. Wendy could have set him up. But she wasn't strong enough to do the killing herself. So she had help. Who? And why at Rod's house, when they'd tried to lure him to the Cheshire Cat? We'd seen Wendy there ourselves. Okay, so maybe it was Rupert and Gary from SG. Their motive was fuzzy, but Rupert did seem to believe that Rod was holding Alissa against her will. Or maybe it was just a plain, stupid, random burglary gone wrong. A couple of cranksters who didn't count on Rod being there, didn't count on a struggle, didn't know how to finish the job, and then fled once they realized what they'd done.

Then there was Alissa. Victim? Perpetrator? Both? Maybe she was victimized by Rod in some way and had brought some muscle, a boyfriend, back for revenge. Or the hypothetical boyfriend did it on his own.

I couldn't say any of this aloud. Words were betrayals, hypotheses were lies. Until I knew what really happened to Rod, I didn't feel like speaking at all.

“I can't accept it, Wes.”

He sat up, startled after my long silence. He'd been slumped back against the wall, his feet up on the booth.

“I can't get it through my head. It's so wrong.”

“It'll take some time, Bill.”

“Thanks for the wisdom.”

He touched my arm. He knew I had to vent some anger. The room was starting to spin again. I let my head drop to my arm on the table. The coffee squirmed in my stomach. The sick feeling would not leave me any time soon.

Mike Riley woke me with a phone call. Somewhere around dawn I'd crumpled into sleep on my sofa. My first thought when the phone rang was that it was Rod, calling with the latest news. I ran to pick it up, disoriented about what day it was and what time it was, thinking I must be late for an appointment. Mike's voice jerked me back into the ghastly present.

I had no patience for Mike Riley and his hearty-fellowness. But, of course, he was now my primary contact at Algoplex. He was the man I'd have to work with. He was devastated by Rod's death, too, but his method was to chew the same phrases over and over: “This blows me away. Unbelievable it could happen to Rod. He was such a good guy. He never hurt anyone. Unbelievable. He was top shelf. . . .”

Mike wanted to see me right away and hear everything. I told him I'd come down later. He kept pushing. I repeated that I'd come down later and hung up.

I grabbed a blanket and collapsed back into the couch, which fit into the cove of a bay window. My flat was an Edwardian, with high ceilings and tall windows, expensive to heat. November sunlight angled in. I closed the blinds and curled back up. The living room was a wreck: camera gear, bags, newspapers, tapes
everywhere. I hadn't had time to clean up since the shoot. Rita was still working on a final cut of the film. I'd have to call her. Mike would probably want us to complete it, if only as a kind of memorial to Rod. I couldn't bear to work on it myself right now.

My eyes closed, defying orders from my head. There were so many things I should do. Look for Wendy. Find out if Alissa really was back. Confront Rupert. Speak again to the police. Go to Algoplex. Yet I wanted nothing more than to escape back into sleep. It would not return Rod to life, but at least I wouldn't have to be present, either.

By midafternoon, I was ready to get back into the fray. My little cove had been warmed by the sun, even with the blinds closed, and I stayed on the couch to make my calls. Wes was the first. I told him to book the SG date with Erika for Friday night. He wanted to know how I was doing. “Busy,” I said.

Then I gave Rita the news. She offered her help, of course, anything; I said that, assuming Mike wanted it, I'd ask her to finish editing the Algoplex film. I started to dial Silicon Glamour's number, then thought better of it. Rupert should have no chance for evasion. I wanted to watch his face in person when he responded.