Borderline (18 page)

32

“May I come in?” said Ellis Barnes, PI.

“This isn't my house,” I said, not budging from the doorway. “I don't have the right to let you in, and I don't think my friends are too keen on meeting you. State your business and let's keep this brief.”

“I want to know why you called my client and why you lied to her about who you are.”

“It's true I'm not a licensed PI,” I admitted, “but I never explicitly said that I was. I am working for Berenbaum and trying to track down John Riven, and that's really more than you have any need to know.”

“I'm investigating Riven too,” said Ellis slowly, an odd expression on his face. “It seems as though we could help each other.”

“Things aren't always what they seem. Anyway, I thought you were tailing Berenbaum, not Riven. What was that about this morning, with the screenplay?”

Ellis sighed. “My brother-in-law. He's obsessed with Beren­baum and likes to tag along when I do surveillance of him. I finally let him make contact because I wanted to get a better read on the relationship between the two of you. I'll confess
I'm intrigued. If Berenbaum were having an affair, he'd hardly flaunt it. So what's going on there?”

“I've already told you more than I need to.”

“What if I had something to tell you in exchange, about John Riven?”

“I have the feeling that between the two of us, I'm probably the one with better dirt on Riven.”

I heard a hissing noise from behind me and turned to see Teo making a slicing motion across his throat. I made a face at him and turned back to Ellis.

Ellis said, “Does your ‘dirt' include his whereabouts last night?”

I blinked. “No, and neither does yours.”

“Doesn't it?” Ellis said with a smile. “All right then. I'll leave you to your day. Here's my card if you decide you want to talk.” He held it out, and I just glared at him, leaning on my cane. Unfazed, he smiled wider and left the card on the arm of the moldering love seat on the front porch. “Stay in touch,” he said.

I waited until he had driven away, then took the card, went back inside, and bolted the door behind me.

Tjuan had apparently left during my conversation, but Teo was half sitting on the arm of the nearest couch, his eyes narrowed. “What did that dude mean, asking you if you knew where Rivenholt was last night?”

I shrugged. “He needs info about Berenbaum, so he's trying to get me to slip some. First he weakens me with guilt, then tempts me with dirt. If I weren't such a stubborn cuss, I'd probably be eating out of his hand.”

“What if it's for real?”

I rolled my eyes. “He left his card. Take it if you want to call him.” I held it out, but he didn't take it, so I stuck it in my pocket.
“You know, maybe you and I should straighten out who's Good Cop and who's Bad Cop.”

Teo made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh. “Until now, I would have said there was no one in the world who would be worse at Good Cop than me. Whatever. I'm gonna go have a smoke.”

“Isn't that against house rules?”

“I'm not going to smoke in the house, and I don't keep 'em in the house. If Caryl wants to make a thing out of it, she can change the wording in the contract.”

“Hey, Teo, before you go . . .”

“Yeah?”

“It's probably against the rules to ask, but . . .”

“Spit it out.”

“Why does Tjuan hate me so much?”

Teo stared at me for a second, then laughed. “You're kidding, right? The dude's got massive trust issues. When I first moved here, it took him three months to even answer when I said hi.” He shook his head, walking away. “Not everything's about you,
mija
. Really gotta get that into your head.”

After Teo left, I allowed myself a few moments to enjoy the peace and quiet and have a few crackers from the kitchen. The place was a little spooky when not populated, even in the daytime. The cracks in the bathroom tiles, the water stains on the dining room ceiling, the sun discoloration on the carpet by the sliding glass door: all symptoms of a house that wasn't cared for by its owner. I felt a little sorry for it.

I had just stuffed a handful of crackers in my mouth when I turned and saw Gloria in the kitchen doorway, staring at me with a look of naked contempt.

I coughed, spraying crumbs. “Uh, hi there,” I said.

She smiled, sweet as antifreeze. “Does Caryl know you have plans to become a celebrity?” she said.

“Beg pardon?” I yanked a paper towel off the roll and attended to the mess I'd made.

“You're all over the paparazzi sites,” she said. “Cuddling with David Berenbaum in his convertible. What's that all about, hon?”

I froze, feeling my hands go cold. As always, my first reaction to anyone talking to me in that tone was shame, as though I, and not the paparazzi, were guilty of something. I took a moment to talk myself down so I didn't go into a full-on panic attack. All I was guilty of, as far as I could see, was being interesting enough to be photographed. So just exactly what was Gloria's problem?

“I don't know what to tell you,” I said. “He and I hit it off. It's perfectly innocent.”

If anything her smile got frostier. “Shall we expect you to be starring in your own reality show soon?” she drawled. “Or do you think you've maybe attracted enough attention to the Arcadia Project for now?”

“I'm sorry about that,” I said. “I didn't really think it through.”

“And just what good is ‘sorry' going to do if the paparazzi start camping on our doorstep? Is there anything else you ­haven't thought through that we should maybe know about before it shows up all over the Internet?”

My pulse accelerated. By the grace of Dr. Davis I managed to keep it together, though I couldn't stop my hands from shaking or think of anything clever to say. In my directing days I could have won a shouting match with a howler monkey, and now I was trembling at a few sugarcoated rhetorical questions.

“What exactly is it you'd like me to do?” I said as calmly as I could.

“There's nothing you can do,” she said. “I e-mailed some of the worst links to Caryl. I normally keep out of this kind of stuff, but ever since I heard about what you did to Teo, I've been keeping my eye on you. I don't take kindly to people who mistreat that boy, so you'd better step real carefully from here on out, hon.”

“I—
what
?” Mistreating Teo? She must have meant the time I hit him, but who had told her? And she was full of shit anyway; she'd been trying to cut me down to size from minute one. But before I could retort in any coherent manner, she'd already made her exit.

I used my good knee to deliver a weak kick to the kitchen cabinet, leaning both hands on the counter. Venting anger is a hard thing to do when you have no one to yell at and very little kicking power. I fumbled through Dr. Davis's exercises in my mind, but it was hard because I was dealing with anger and panic at the same time. Through my Borderline filter, everyone in the house had turned against me and was plotting to bring me down. All it takes is a fragment or two of evidence, and my mind leaps to join dots that aren't there, constructing a picture of conspiracy that is almost impossible to unsee.

My attempts at calming myself with DBT skills were not working, at least not fast enough to satisfy me. So I answered that frantic little voice saying
do something, fix it, fix it
, and called Berenbaum. Another bad move straight out of the What-Not-to-Do Handbook. Never, ever call someone important when you're having a spell of “intense episodic dysphoria,” as the DSM-V calls it.

Araceli put me through to Berenbaum without a lot of fuss, but he didn't sound as warm as I wanted—no, needed—him to sound. It was probably because of work, my Reason Mind should have prompted, but my paranoid Emotion Mind was making everything about me.

“What can I do for you?” he said.

“I don't want to work for the Arcadia Project anymore,” I said. It was by far the least crazy thing I could have said under the circumstances. Perhaps Dr. Davis's lessons in self-control were buried somewhere in my subconscious after all.

“You'll want to set up a meeting with Vivian,” he said.

Not what I wanted to hear. Very much not.

“I've met her before. We didn't get along.”

“She doesn't get along with anyone. But she will play ball on this, I guarantee. She's been desperate for someone who can mediate between the studio and the Project.”

“Can you call her and set something up?”

“I would, but I'm up to my ass in a new pile of alligators. Crocodiles, too, and I think there's a Komodo dragon in there somewhere. Are those things poisonous? Besides, you need to make the call, because you have to get her to promise not to cause you harm.”

“Oh, I always do that when I set up job interviews.”

He laughed, thank God. I could feel all the tension draining out of me like he'd stuck me with a pin. “Just be sure you say it like that, ‘cause me harm,' not ‘hurt me.'”

“Why?”

“Well, if she somehow causes an anvil to fall on your head, technically it's the anvil, not her, that hurts you.”

“Jesus. Okay. Can I have her mobile number?”

I programmed it into my phone, then called it while I was still on a high from talking to Berenbaum; otherwise I would have chickened out.

“Hi there,” I said when she answered. “It's Millie. David told me to call you.”

“Millie who?”

Oh right. She'd never gotten my name in Santa Barbara. Then I remembered why, and panicked. Could she do scary hoodoo with just a first name? I hoped not. It also occurred to me that connecting myself with the resort incident might not be to my advantage anyway.

“I'm a protégée of David's,” I said instead. “He told me there was some stuff about the studio he wanted you to explain to me, and that we should meet to talk about it.”

“I can't imagine what he was thinking.”

“You can ask him if you like,” I said. “He just told me he wants me involved and that I have to meet with you.”

Vivian let out a delicate snort. “If he thinks I'm going to bark on command like everyone else in his life, he can think again. I'm not interested in bringing in anyone else.” I could tell she was winding up to a curt good-bye, so I pulled out the stops.

“I'm with the Arcadia Project. We've met, actually.”

I held my breath, wondering if the silence on the end of the line indicated that she was taken aback, that she didn't remember me, or that she'd hung up before I had the chance to blow her mind.

“You were the one with Caryl at Regazo de Lujo,” she finally said.

“Yes, ma'am.”

“You're right. David did mention you. I'm sorry; I've been a bit distracted lately.”

An uncanny number of people in my life were saying that right now, and I was beginning to suspect that they were all distracted by the same thing.

“So you'll meet with me, then?”

“How about tonight? Latish.”

“First, promise you won't cause me harm.”

“David's been coaching you, I see. I promise I won't cause you harm
tonight
, but that's all the commitment I'm ready for. Does nine o'clock work for you?”

“So long as you promise you won't keep me past midnight.”

“Ugh! Fine. I promise I will end the meeting before midnight. Two promises in one phone call! I'm going soft. Meet me at nine o'clock at Gotham Hall.”

“Goth— That weird bar on the Promenade? Didn't it close ages ago?”

“Did it?” she said with a smile I could hear through the phone. “You may want to check again. Really look hard, and think of me when you do, darling.”

33

When I told Caryl that I intended to meet with Vivian, Elliott turned a flip and fluttered blindly into the wall of Teo's bedroom.

Caryl had found me there snooping around on the computer, but I was pretty sure she hadn't seen exactly what I was doing, which was for the best. You'd think that “Gloria Day murders” would have turned up something on Google even without adding in “dwarf” or “midget,” but no matter what combination of keywords I tried, I couldn't dig up a speck of information on the alleged crime. How was this not plastered all over the Net?

“No,” Caryl said calmly. “You are not going to meet with Vivian Chandler.”

“David pretty much ordered me to,” I said, adjusting my fey glasses farther up the bridge of my nose. They weren't a great fit.

Caryl folded her arms and leaned back against the wall. “Why would he do that?”

Oh. Right. Probably not a good idea to tell her that part.

“Well, we're pretty sure she was involved in getting Rivenholt out of the train station, right?”

“Even if she was, it remains ambiguous whether she was helping him or whether she was part of the attack.”

“That's exactly what I'd like to find out.”

“I will go with you,” she said as Elliott fluttered back to her shoulder.

In my experience, it's generally a bad idea to take your current boss along on a job interview, so I groped for an objection. “Vivian doesn't like you.”

“True, but you'll be defenseless without my magic.”

I started to tell her about Vivian's promise but hesitated. She might wonder why Vivian would take the meeting seriously enough to offer that promise. “Why would she bother hurting me?” I said instead.

“She owns a pest control company, Millie; she had a large fortune and chose to invest it in wholesale extermination.”

“Killing me would harm Berenbaum, wouldn't it?”

“Negative emotions do not fall under the fey's under­standing of ‘harm,' since humans frequently and demonstrably seek them out.”

“Vivian can't lay a hand on me without destroying her own facade. What harm could she do?”

“She doesn't need to lay a hand on you. She can create metaspells.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Her wards can cast their own enchantments. Say Vivian is in Paris and you try to break into her warded house in Los Angeles. The ward casts an enchantment on you when you pass over the windowsill, and the enchantment causes your heart to explode. She has a perfect alibi.”

“Wouldn't my touch disable the ward, though?”

“Not if she was still powering it.”

“But it couldn't work
while
I was touching it. Anyway, I'm not sure a curse on me would even stick.”

Elliott spread his wings halfway out and bared his teeth, shifting from foot to foot. “She could cast a charm on an object,” Caryl said, “a charm that psychically compelled you to kill yourself. You've seen that you're not immune to psychic spells.”

I exhaled, defeated. “Look. I made her promise not to cause me harm.”

“I find it hard to believe she would consent to that.”

“Well, she promised not to cause me harm
tonight
, or to keep me past midnight.”

“That sounds slightly more plausible.” She considered. “But I didn't hear the conversation; there may be a loophole.”

“This is like Russian roulette with six thousand chambers. I'm okay with that level of risk.”

“If you find yourself on the end of the wrong chamber, it does not matter what your odds were.”

“If I die, you can say ‘I told you so' at my grave, and that would probably be more fun than working with me.”

Caryl gave me one of her long, blank stares as Elliott tucked his head and closed up his wings. “Very well,” she said, “do as you like.” She turned for the door as Elliott gave me a tragic look over her shoulder.

“Caryl . . . ,” I began. But she was already gone.

•   •   •

Gotham Hall, as best I remembered from my dance-club days, had been near the Broadway end of the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. It was a quarter till nine when I got there, so
the Westside's pedestrian shopping paradise was aglow with strings of lights and loud with the music of street performers. I paused by the vomiting-stegosaurus fountain to slip on my fey glasses.

I still couldn't see the entrance to Gotham Hall, but I could now see a suspicious dark webbing stretched across the narrow space between the clothing store and the mortgage broker on the corner. It reminded me of the glamour on the Seelie bar, but it was infinitely more intricate, a thing of mesmerizing fractal beauty.

I wasn't sure how literal Vivian had been when she said,
Th
ink of me
, but I gave it a shot, holding her image in my mind. As I did so, the strands of the dark web began to snap, parting dramatically like a theater curtain to reveal the red maw of Gotham Hall. The doorway was narrow, oppressed by the two buildings on either side of it, and just inside the dimly glowing passage stood two gorgeous, bored-looking bouncers.

“Ten dollars, please,” said the ebony idol on the left as I approached.

“Vivian told me to meet her here.”

“Do you have an invitation?” said the bronze idol on the right. They were both human, according to my sunglasses, but
damn
.

“If you mean a written invitation, then no.”

“Ten dollars, please,” said the ebony idol.

I grumbled and fished for my wallet.

Inside, the narrow hallway was a dim Looking Glass nightmare of venous red walls, purple curtains, and chessboard tile. Just the sort of place a homesick vampire might find comforting. Soulless dance music pulsed in my ears as I tried vainly to
adjust my eyes. Weirdly, the patrons seemed to be human. If any of them found it odd that I was wearing sunglasses in the dark, they neglected to say so.

As I recalled, the downstairs consisted only of a dance floor and a billiards room, so I painstakingly climbed the surreal stairs—almost too narrow for two people to pass each other—up to the bar and eating area. The second story was elegant, though still moody: cinnamon wood floor, honey-gold wallpaper with the texture of crushed velvet, cloudy violet ceiling. There were a dozen or so people wandering about in various states of substance abuse.

Vivian sat with her back to me at the bar, posed with casual grace, dark hair shining. She wore Elvira heels and sheer black stockings with a seam up the back. Despite her come-hither attire, three bar stools on either side of her were clear. Perhaps the patrons could sense what I saw through my glasses: the aura of bruised misery that hung over her like San Fernando smog.

The sound of my cane caught her attention as I approached. She swiveled and held out her hand without getting up, speaking with that bubbly L.A. lilt that mismatched her appearance so disturbingly. “Millie. A pleasure to finally have a name to go with that unforgettable face.”

“Forgive me if I don't shake your hand,” I said, stopping just out of arm's reach and taking off my sunglasses.

“Oh my, my,” she said with a Cheshire smile. “What has ­little Caryl been telling you about me?”

“More to the point, what has she told you about me?”

“Not a thing.”

“Then first, you need to know I have so much steel holding
my bones together I get hit on by robots. Second, I'm pretty sure you don't want the good people here to see you without your makeup on.” It was the best I could do to warn her without mentioning the word “magic” around a bunch of human eavesdroppers I didn't know.

“I see,” said Vivian slowly, retracting her hand. “I
see
. Please have a seat. So Caryl has Ironbones on call now. Charming.”

“People keep calling me that,” I said, leaving a stool between us so our legs didn't accidentally touch. “Is that a thing?”

She laughed. “Not really. It's like, oh, what do parents say around here? The boogeyman.”

“A monster with iron bones, I take it?”

“Also claws. The comic book character Wolverine is loosely based on him, in fact, or so the rumors go. Len Wein's Echo must have been very naughty as a child.”

“I'm the fairy boogeyman,” I said dryly. “No wonder everyone in the Seelie bar panicked.”

Vivian let out a musical laugh, even as she touched a finger to her lips to silence me. She leaned in a bit, lowering her voice to an almost seductive murmur. “I'd love to have been there to see that,” she said. “Seelie are so adorable when they're frightened.”

“So all these people,” I said quietly, “they're just regular ­people? Not . . . in the know?”

“That's right.”

“How did they even get in?”

“They have invitations,” she said. “If you have an invitation, it's a perfectly normal club. If not, it doesn't appear. That makes the bouncers' jobs boring, but it gives me
exquisite
­control over my social life.”

“Well, if we can't talk business here at the bar, could we move somewhere else?”

“Am I keeping you from a date? By all means then, let's hurry things along.”

She moved us to a small corner table in the next room that was removed from the general flow of traffic, but unfortunately, it was still not secluded enough to allow us to talk with perfect privacy. The chairs were spidery and misshapen in a way I couldn't quite place.

I declined a stoned-looking waitress's offer of something to eat, but Vivian ordered a slice of chocolate cake before leaning back in her chair at ease. “Before we talk about the studio,” she said, “let's talk about you a little.”

“All right,” I said warily. “What would you like to know?”

“What exactly happened between the time you slept with your screenwriting professor and the time you jumped from the roof of Hedrick Hall?”

If I'd had a drink, I would have choked on it. I had a feeling she was dying for me to ask how she knew, so I didn't.

“It's complicated,” I said, running my fingertips over the wood of the table. Its gleaming, raspberry-chocolate finish echoed Vivian's hair. “And it's really not relevant to our business here.”

Vivian did nothing more than shift her gaze directly to mine, but I felt as though she had grabbed me by the collar and yanked me across the table. “I asked you,” she said in a tone that made my arm hair stand up. “That makes it relevant.”

For maybe the length of two frames of film I
saw
her. I don't know if she dropped her facade, or if I disrupted it in some way, or if I simply saw through it. But for that subliminal
flash of a moment I was sitting across from a bat-winged creature of horrible grandeur, with spiderweb hair and mantis jaws and eyes like bleeding wounds. And then it was Vivian again, smiling sweetly.

“I'm going to ask you one more time,” she said. “What
exactly
happened at UCLA?”