Authors: Steph Cha
Beware Beware
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To Matt
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Contents
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One
The weekend hovered in full view an hour away, like an island in silhouette gaining color with its steady approach. There was a time when this meant something to me, when the school bell or the desktop clock said it was time to go home, time, at least, for happy hour.
I sat on the floor with my bare foot flexed under the desk. It was a slow day in the office, and my toenails were about as long and dirty as I'd seen them, and they'd been long and dirty before. There was no sense keeping them pretty from November to March, with my flip-flops put away. It was February now, and my nails chafed against the insides of my shoes. They were starting to hurt.
A thick rind flew off a big toe with a crisp, clacking sound. It ricocheted off the back of my desk, the panel of cheap wood that hid me from view should a client barge in. As I reached to pick up the crescent, footsteps shuffled behind me and a sneaker pushed into my lower back. I turned my head and looked up at Chaz Lindley, who stood arms crossed and scowling.
“Song, if Art sees you like this I'm the one who's got to suffer. You know that, right?”
A week ago, I'd walked into Chaz's office and caught him with his shirt up, tweezing nipple hairs with a binder clip. I'd shuffled out the way I'd come in, and neither of us had brought up the incident. I felt the easy comeback on my tongue, and let it go unsaid. Chaz was my boss.
I met private investigator Charles Lindley under strange circumstances. He got me out of a couple good tangles, and when I was in the clear, he recruited me. I'd always liked the idea of PI work. I spent a lot of lonely years dreaming of Philip Marlowe instead of living my own life. When I crossed paths with Chaz, I was in the thick of my first real case, which I hadn't asked for in the least. I wasn't half bad at the work, but it ended disastrously anyway. It scoured me clean of any romantic feelings for the job, but when Chaz offered to hire me, I was grateful. The fact was, I had nothing better to do, and we both knew it.
I joined Lindley & Flores as a gofer, with the idea that I'd get my own license once I racked up the work experience. He ran his practice out of a small office in Koreatown with a forty-five-year-old ex-cop named Arturo Flores. Chaz said they could use a scrappy errand girl with nothing to lose. His exact words.
So far I'd done grunt work in the office and three straightforward assignments on cheating spouses. Two pissed-off husbands and one pissed-off wife paid good money to learn things they already knew. It was low-glamour stuff, but I knew that going in. I spent a lot of time in the office, bored out of my mind and always uncomfortably hot. I helmed the receptionist desk, and when Chaz wanted to look good for a client, I played the quiet, efficient office lady as best I could in blue jeans, but mostly I just sat around. Arturo had been out all morning, and it was just me and Chaz passing time. I knew better than to clip my toenails with Arturo around. He was a serious man with a line for a mouth. He thought I was a bit of a joker, who Chaz had hired out of pity. He was probably right.
I started to get up off the floor when Chaz plunked down in my chair. “You can finish,” he said. “But then I have some actual work for you.”
I stood up and slipped my feet into my shoes. “What's up?”
“I got you a client.” He smiled, broad and goofy, showing his big teeth. “Girl needs someone to check up on her boyfriend. You up for it?”
Quitting time was around the bend, and I jumped at the chance to postpone it. The week had been slow and I had nothing in the way of weekend plans. “Sure. Cheaters are kind of my specialty.”
“Yours and everyone else's.” He pushed a Post-It onto my desk with a phone number scribbled in his incongruously elegant hand. “Name's Daphne Freamon. Give her a call. I think she needs a woman's ear.”
*Â Â Â *Â Â Â *
With three divorces under my belt, I was starting to feel a little comfort in the job. Each assignment was quick, simple, and dirty in a way that didn't compromise me. I cleared them, and with each clearance I increased the distance between me and my past mistakes. I wasn't delusional enough to think this was good work that might buy my atonement, but it helped to put whatever skills I had to someone else's bad use.
My new client had a 917 area code. I dialed, and she answered after three rings.
“Hello?” She sounded quiet and expectant, like she was speaking into a darkened roomâshe'd been waiting for my call.
“Hi, Miss Freamon? This is Juniper Song, with Lindley & Flores. How are you today?”
“Call me Daphne, Miss Song.” She had the kind of distinctive voice that I knew I could recognize out of context months, maybe years later. It was timid thin-wired high-pitched but a little raspy. I wondered if she was a smoker.
“Sure, Daphne. Call me Song. It's what people call me. What can I do for you today?”
“Well,” she said. “Listen, SongâMr. Lindley says you're twenty-seven, unmarried. Is that right?”
I smirked. “Yeah, that's right. What else did he say about me?”
“Oh, no, nothing much. It's justâwe're the same age. I talked to Mr. Lindley for a bit, but I think he thought I'd rather talk to you.”
“Would you rather talk to him?” The idea didn't offend me. Despite his groin-scratching solicitous dad-ness, Chaz was the pro to my peewee league. I'd go straight to him if I wanted shit done.
“No, no, this is much better,” she said. “Song, do you have a boyfriend?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I called you guys because I'm worried about mine. We're long distance. I live in New York and he's in L.A. He got this gig ghostwriting for Joe Tilley about six months back and moved out there for a while. Do you know Joe Tilley?”
The name sounded familiar, but it was generic enough. “I might. Who is he?”
“He's an actor. A pretty big one. He used to be a bit of a heartthrob in his twenties, but he's turned his career into something pretty serious over the last decade. He was nominated for an Oscar a couple years ago and a lot of people think he was robbed. You'd probably recognize him if you saw him. Late forties, lot of muscle. He kissed pop stars on-screen in the nineties. These days he plays mysterious men with obsessions and dark pasts.”
I typed the name into Google and the face clicked into place. “Oh, this guy. I know this guy. Nice. He's a pretty big deal.”
“Jamieâthat's my boyfriend, Jamie LandonâJamie says Joe's been keeping him busy writing this screenplay, but I don't really know what else he's been up to. He disappears for days at a time, won't answer my phone calls, and I'm afraid he's getting into trouble again.”
“What kind of trouble?”
There was a lip-biting pause. “He has a coke habit.
Had
a coke habit. It's supposed to be past tense, but I'm skeptical. I'd say the odds are good that he's holed up on a coke binge, who knows who with.”
“Has he done that before?”
“Yes.” She hesitated for a second, unsure of how much to share. “He's been in rehab twice. I gave him an ultimatum. Told him it's over between us if he falls off the wagon.”
“You must be pretty serious about it to call me.”
“You have to understand. Jamie thinks of himself as this nice guy, but as soon as he can blame asshole behavior on anything else, he becomes an asshole. Drugs are an easy scapegoat. It isn't so much that he blames the coke to my faceâit's that he can tell himself it isn't him, so he cuts himself tons of slack when he's high or between highs. I wouldn't even have to know about it.”
“Oh,” I said, and waited for her to continue.
“I'm a painter. My paintingâit's one of the most precious things in the world to me; it's my life. I had an exhibit a few months ago, a really important one. He knew about it for months, bought plane tickets and everything. I was stressed out and emotionally restless to begin with, and then he disappeared, never got on the plane. I couldn't reach him for days. You know that feeling? When you want so badly to reach somebody, and you just can't get them to hear you?”
I nodded into the phone, mumbled recognition. I knew.
“My mind always goes to the darkest places. I almost called the police because I was so convinced that he couldn't do this to me, that he would sooner be dead in a ditch than stand me up on that day. But I thought, how embarrassed will I be if he is, in fact, holed up doing blow, betraying me for a stupid high.” She sighed, one raspy drawn-out note. “So I told myself if I found out he was getting high again, it'd be over. I've given him about eight second chances, so I decided to throw some money at it this time around, hire someone and see if maybe that would make this breakup stick.”
She paused for a while, so I said, “Sure.” It came out more callous than I felt.
“Sorry. I've been going on and on.”
“No, not at all,” I said quickly. “Can I ask why you've put up with him until now?”
“Good question.” She laughed, a bitter, cornered laugh. “When he's good, he's really good, you know? He's sweet and he's got this puppy-dog charm. Sometimes I look at him and I just want to take care of him, do you know what I mean?”
“I do,” I said. “Okay. When is the last time you heard from him?”
“It's been three days now, and I've been calling.” Her voice thinned to a gasp, and I listened to her held breath for half a minute, afraid that it would dissolve into tears. “I'm really worried, Song.”
“Okay Daphne, so what is it you want me to do for you? You want me to check on him?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Today?”
“Starting today.”
That caught me off guard. “You want a tail on him, then.”
“Yes. I guess that's it.”
“Can I ask why?”
“What do you mean?” She sounded defensive.
“No, it's justâI thought you just wanted to know if he was alive or coked up or whatever. I could find that out for you in an afternoon.”
One thing I learned quick about PI work was that the overwhelming majority of it was overwhelmingly boring. Chaz and Arturo didn't deal in big mysteries, didn't come across too much of anything that wasn't straightforward. The job was almost routine, and after all the upsets of the previous year, I kind of liked its plainness. All the same, my heartbeat responded to Daphne's meaningful silence.
“There's more,” I ventured.
“There might be more. I'm not really sure.”
“Okay, well, that's why you called us, isn't it? But this will work a lot better if I have a vague idea of what to look for.” I rubbed at the hinge in my jaw and kept my voice level. “What are you worried about, Daphne?”
“I'm worried,” she said. “I'm worried that he's using, but I'm also worried that he isn't
just
using.”
