City of Mirrors (15 page)

R
eturning to Malibu, we stopped at our local bar, Kiki's, on Pacific Coast Highway. It was within walking distance to our homes. As I slowed to find a place to park, Ryan leaped out of the Jag, slamming the door behind him, and loped into the lounge.

I found a spot but stayed in the car resting my head against the seat, mulling over what I had I learned. Pearl had sold the key to Zackary Logan who was pimping. She met the clients at Bella Casa, which she had told Logan about. But she wasn't sure if he was videoing her. Pearl also said he'd talked to a woman on the phone, a woman he seemed to fear. Jenny Parson? Then Zackary had let Pearl go, told her he was “changing his business plan.” Was Jenny the one who had changed it into a game of blackmail?

I gave up trying to figure it out and checked the messages on my cell. My agent's hyper-energetic voice told me he had set up a reading with Pedro Romero, the director I'd met at Ben's birthday party, for his new movie. Hope shot through my veins. I may have lost my part in Zaitlin's film, almost gotten a nice man killed, found two corpses, but miraculously I was an actress again. And all because of a chance. A possibility to try. I got out of the car and went into the bar.

Removing my sunglasses, I let my eyes adjust to the tranquil darkness. Kiki was a collector of antique surfboards and old hot-air balloons, which he rented out to the movies. It was a small lounge with his boards and fertility-god masks covering the walls. He also was the proud owner of the first bungee jump rope ever used. How he knew its pedigree I could never figure out. It was framed in teak wood behind glass and hung on the wall over the center booth. It looked like a cross between a noose and a decaying cobra. Kiki's was the kind of place where stars, working actors, the locals, and surfers could mingle without getting in each other's way. Tourists were frowned upon. And Kiki could spot one a mile away. But since Kiki's purposely looked like a filthy dive bar, they rarely found their way in.

Ryan was hunched in the black fake-leather center booth. The coiled noose/cobra hung above him like an albatross. An empty Martini glass stood elegantly on a cocktail napkin as he nursed a second. I slid in next to him. A martini with three olives waited for me.

“Thanks.” I took a sip. “And thanks for the three olives.”

Kiki was sitting at the end of the bar. He raised his ubiquitous cup of coffee to me. I waved back. In his late fifties, he was a small wiry man with skin so tan and shriveled it looked like beef jerky. Tattoos covered most of his body. His ink art consisted of quotes and writings such as: “One day at a time.” “Don't tread on me.” “God is good, so is Heavy Metal.” He called his tattoos notes to myself.

“My agent left a message that Pedro Romero wants me to read for him.”

Ryan raised his glass. “That's fantastic. His new movie is about death. You'll be perfect.”

I laughed, then we clinked and I drank again.

“If you think about it, Binder saved our asses. We'd have the police and the media all over us right now,” Ryan said.

“He did it for Pearl.”

“He did, didn't he? Why can't we make movies about love anymore?”

“Have you ever been in love?” The minute the words came out of my mouth I regretted them.

“Yes.” He avoided my gaze. I didn't ask him who the woman was, I already knew. Then he said in a forced light heartiness, “Let's run away together, Diana. I have a ton of money. We could hide out where Parson could never… .”

“If you have a ton of money, why do you still owe Parson?”

“A debt like the one I have never ends. There's no
paid in full
stamp for it.”

I changed the subject. “Pearl said she sold the key to Zackary Logan and gave him the idea for using the Bel Air house.”

“Do you think Binder knew that?”

“I don't know.”

“At least there's no way anybody can connect us to the pool-supply store. Binder will make sure of that.”

“There's a man, Leo Heath, he owns a security firm.”

“I've heard of him. He helps people out.”

“You mean he's a fixer.”

“You can look at it that way”

“He's searching for Jenny's killer for Zaitlin. And sharing information with Parson.”

“What?”

“Didn't I tell you?”

“No. You mean Heath is looking into this besides the police?” He downed his drink, then raised the empty glass so the bartender could see he needed another refill.

I caught the bartender glance over at Kiki, who gave him a nod, and only then did he begin to fix Ryan another. So Kiki was keeping count on Ryan's number of drinks.

“Did you tell him about me?” he asked.

“No. But Heath isn't stupid, nor is Detective Spangler. Someone will eventually put the so-called robbery at Binder's store and his cleaning the pool at Bella Casa together.”

“The Valley's not Spangler's bailiwick, is it?”

“West L.A.”

“Then she may never see the report on the shooting. And Parson isn't going to make trouble over losing one of his men. Not with the police anyway. What do we have to worry about?”

“It's not the dead man I'm worried about. It's the one we left in the alley. He knows where we live. And so does Parson. Maybe we should go to the police,” I said in a low voice.

Ryan looked stricken. “We've discussed this. You promised not to tell them.”

“We almost got Binder killed and Parson's thug doesn't strike me as the kind guy who likes a woman getting the better of him.”

“He was hurt. Probably a broken leg. How much damage can he do?”

“He can talk to Parson. I got us in over our heads, Ryan. This isn't what I had in mind when I said we should take control of our lives. The police could protect us.”

“Protect us? By arresting me? And you have a reading with Pedro Romero. Going to the police could destroy your chances for a part in his movie. Think of what you've just been through with Jake Jackson.”

“There's also Leo Heath. He doesn't have a bailiwick. He can roam anywhere. And he has contacts inside the force. What if he discovers we were the reason for the shooting at Binder's?”

“I heard he never goes public with any information he has. That's why people trust him. We may still be safe.”

I chewed an olive, then said, “He may not go public, but he can tell Parson. I don't know if I can go on living like this.”

“You have to. For God's sake, Diana, you have an incredible opportunity with a famous director. Go for it. Colin would have wanted you to.”

“Christ, your sense of reality is so screwed. I don't think Colin would want me to ‘go for it' if it was going to get me killed.” Studying Ryan's tense profile, I took a long sip. I put my glass down. “Tell me what Parson had on him.”

“Get off this, Diana. I told you, he has nothing.”

“Then tell me why you still have to pay Parson off. I have ghosts.”

“You told me to leave the dead alone.”

“I told you not to compete with them. Actually, Heath told me to leave them alone.”

“Take his advice. You're being self-destructive.”

The bartender arrived at the table and set down the martini and took away Ryan's two empties. I watched Ryan shake his olives dry over his drink, then toss them on the table. And I knew if I was ever going to get the truth from him, it was now.

“How is my wanting to know what Parson had on my husband self-destructive?” I decided to force the issue even further. Reaching into my purse, I pulled my cell out and set it on the table. “Ryan, tell me the truth or I'm calling Spangler.”

“My owing Parson money doesn't matter in any of this.” He downed half his martini.

“Getting drunk isn't going to save you.” I picked up the phone.

“Wait.” He grabbed my arm and shook his head accusingly at me. “Women. You're all the same. You never keep your word.”

The candle in the hurricane lamp flickered.

He let go of me and rubbed his face, then he leaned close and whispered, “Remember, you asked for this, Diana. Parson has pictures of Colin.”

I could feel my gut turning hollow. “With another woman?”

He nodded.

“Who?”

He blinked his reddish-golden lashes, waiting for me to understand.

“Do I know her?”

He continued to wait for me to get it, to see the obvious.

“Jesus. My mother.” I felt limp.

“He met her on Parson's boat. It was just a one-night kind of thing. You were off on location. But Parson's guy, Luis, was secretly taking pictures.”

“She won,” I said. “All the Berts and the Barts I went to bed with and she won.”

“You made me tell you.”

I clutched the stem of my glass until it broke in half. The martini spilled.

“Are you all right?” Ryan took my hand and checked it as Kiki hurried over with a bar towel.

“Cheap glasses. I'll bring you a fresh drink, Diana.”

“I don't want any more.”

Kiki scooped up the bowl and stem of the glass and dabbed at the spill, then hurried away

“No blood, you didn't cut yourself.” Ryan let go of my hand. “Diana, Colin and your mother were drunk. It just happened, that's all.” He gulped down the rest of his martini. “Parson showed him the pictures and Colin began to pay. He didn't want you to know. He understood that was the one thing you would never forgive him for.”

“But it didn't stop him, did it? Did my mother help him pay?”

“According to Colin she wouldn't, in fact she told him not to.”

I studied his rebellious red hair, his Hawaiian shirt with the hula dancers printed on it, beckoning me to paradise. “And you helped Colin with the money. And when he died you took over his debt.”

“He loved you, Diana.”

I gripped his hand. “Oh, Ryan.”

I leaned back in the booth and wondered if there was anything in my life that didn't somehow in one way or another belong to my mother. I thought of Colin's memorial service at the Writers Guild. Mother had handled that. I was too distraught. Or had I just let her? “Not because somebody has to care, but because,” she'd said, “the man deserves it for trying to be true to himself in a town where nobody knows who the fuck they are. We're all walking into mirrors.”

“Do you think Colin was a man who was true to himself?”

“More than most of us.”

“My mother thought he was.”

“He loved you, Diana, not her. You know that.”

“Why didn't he just tell me?”

“Why do you think? Because he knew he'd been in the wrong and he also knew you couldn't handle it. ‘The awful emptiness of the truth' is what I think he said. You would've left him. And that would've killed him.”

“He was right. I would have.” Tears rolled down my cheeks.

“Don't do that, only drunks cry in Kiki's.” He handed me a cocktail napkin.

“The blackmail, not being able to pay, not being able to tell me, maybe that caused his heart attack.”

“You don't know that.” He held his empty glass up toward the bar.

I watched Kiki give another okay and wondered what his cut-off number was for Ryan. Or did it just make Kiki feel important. “You can stop paying Parson,” I said.

“He'll find a way to use the pictures.”

“What can he do to me now? Take Colin away from me? Ruin my career? Make me hate my mother? The most horrible possibility has been accomplished. Colin's dead. And she won.”

“Diana, when are you going to let her go?”

“Colin wasn't true to himself. And he wasn't true to me. But you were.”

“I did it for both of you.”

“I'm going home. Do you want a ride?”

“No, I'll walk.”

“Don't drink too much.” I leaned over, put arms around his shoulders, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Ryan.”

He shrugged in my embrace. The martinis had dimmed his intelligent eyes.

Gathering my purse and phone, I slid out of the booth and stood looking down at him. “Tell Parson to call me when he wants his next payment. That is if he, or his lackey, don't kill us first.”

It's always depressing to leave a bar and walk out into the daylight, but this time it fit my emotional state perfectly.

T
he tether that held me to Colin had snapped completely and I sat in my car not knowing what to do with myself. I couldn't go home. What would I do? Stare at Colin's Oscars and my mother's urn? Christ. How could she? And I'd been trying to find a way to love her. I decided to go grocery shopping. I drove further up the coast to Ralph's Market in the Malibu Colony Plaza.

Filling my cart with Lean Cuisine, a lot of wine, and the antidote coffee, I thought of Beth Woods telling me that lonely women don't have alibis for the early morning hours. And Celia realizing her life, which she had so carefully structured, gave her no support. And I'd been clinging to eight years of my past for support.

A blond actress I knew from various readings where we'd been up for the same roles pushed her cart toward me. I stood riveted by the freezer cases. Seeing me, she immediately ducked down another aisle. Had she seen me with the urn on TV? Or didn't she want me to see her doing something as humdrum as shopping for dish soap? I caught my reflection in the glass of the freezer door. An un-tethered, abandoned, frightened, forty-year-old child in the clothing of a confident actress. Okay, so it wasn't the urn or her own concerns that made her turn away. It was the expression on my face.

On the way to the cashier I tossed a California Wrap, a kind of healthful gourmet burrito, into my cart.

Now with a bag of frozen swill wedged onto the passenger seat of my car, I was forced to go home or it would defrost.

In the kitchen, I put the food away and poured myself a very large glass of white wine. Taking a few gulps, I opened Colin's office door. I gazed at the computer, the mementoes, the books, and the empty chair that was turned toward me, always waiting for me.

“You bastard!” I threw the wine at the chair and watched the chardonnay run in rivulets down its tufted-leather back and eventually drip off the edges of the seat. “Why her? Why?”

I slammed the door.

Standing on my deck watching the sun make a fiery red dramatic exit, I ate the California wrap. Swallowing it back with my tears, I thought of my mother, Colin, and me sitting out here one summer afternoon drinking Margaritas and chatting about which famous star was better at shooting a gun. Colin had said it was James Cagney. I went for Clint Eastwood. My mother had chosen Bette Davis.

“She killed men while wearing a mink coat and holding a handbag,” she said. “And Davis was always walking downstairs toward her male victim, arm straight out, gun unwavering.” She'd extended her arm, her hand, imitating a gun, and said in a deadly voice, “Bang. Bang. Bang.”

Colin laughed. “No, it's got to be Cagney. When he shot a gun, it was as if he were dancing.”

Then I said, “Bette Davis's mother wanted everything her daughter earned. If Bette got a new mink, her mother had to have one too.” I looked off across the ocean. “I wonder if that also included her daughter's husbands and lovers.”

Turning somber, Nora stared down at her gold-sandaled feet, her blond hair falling across her face. “I need another drink.” And even though her glass was full, she went into the kitchen.

I'd closed my eyes against the sun, assuming she'd interpreted my comment about Davis and her mother as Diana not wasting any chance to attack her. So sure of the one person I loved, it had never occurred to me that I'd spoken a truth. Or had I intuited in some deep primal place the truth all along: that my own mother had known what Colin's naked body had smelled and tasted like.

“Diana?” The sound of my name jolted me back to the present. I recoiled back into the shadows of my house.

“It's Heath!” The voice called out louder.

One of the last men I wanted to see. Wiping my tears away, I stepped forward and peered down. Looking up at me, Heath stood on the beach, the wind blowing his dark brown hair, and his graying temples almost silver in the dimming light. “I rang your doorbell. You didn't answer.” He wore an expensive suit jacket, jeans, a white shirt open at the neck, and lug-sole shoes too heavy for the sand. He was a man who belonged on cement.

“I can't hear it when I'm out here on the deck,” I shouted back.

“We need to talk.”

“I'm busy.”

“The pool man at the Bel Air house got shot.”

My muscles tightened. “What does that have to do with me?”

“I know you were there.”

“I'll give you ten minutes.”

Inside the house, I sat down on the sofa. Legs apart, Heath stood in front of the fireplace, my ghosts on the mantel lined up behind him. He moved toward me, placing a wrapped piece of candy on the table.

“What's this?”

“Your mint from the Red Pepper Restaurant in Camarillo. Two of them came with the check. I ate mine. That's yours. It reminds me that you and I should be more truthful with each other.”

“Really? You go first.” I leaned back and crossed my arms.

He returned to his spot before the fireplace. “In Santa Barbara I held on to your cell phone because I knew if you had it you'd do just what you did … call a cab so you wouldn't have to drive back with me.”

“Why was it so important I drive back with you?”

He ran a finger down the ridge of his battered nose. “To see that you got home safely.”

“And?”

“And I needed information.”

“Who told you I was at Binder's?”

“I can't tell you. But I know Parson's men were following you. Your turn. What happened at the pool-supply store?”

“I haven't lied to you. I haven't abducted you. I haven't threatened you.”

“Parson is a man out of control.” Urgency filled his dark-chocolate eyes. “His daughter has been murdered. One of his men got killed and another is very pissed off. And you don't want Rubio pissed at you, Diana.”

“Is Rubio the guy with the tattoo?”

“Yes.”

“Too late,” I said.

“Christ.”

“I may have broken his leg. Unintentionally.”

“You really don't know the people you're dealing with, do you?” His voice rose with anger. “You can criticize me for what I did in the military while you run home and sit here smug and secure in your little make-believe Hollywood bubble …”

“The same bubble you get paid to keep intact for a lot of ugly people.”

“I need you to tell me what you found out at Binder's and why one of Parson's men ended up dead. And I need it to be the truth.”

I thought of Pearl, who had stolen a key so she could go back to hooking. An old man who loved her. Ryan, who'd had sex with Jenny Parson not knowing who she really was, and who had protected me and Colin by paying Parson off all these years. “I can't.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you trying to save your friend Ryan Johns?”

I sucked in my breath. “Why do you ask?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “A DVD was mailed anonymously to my office this afternoon. It was Ryan Johns and Jenny Parson having sex.”

“Did you give it to Parson?”

“No. I locked it in my safe. Nobody has seen it but me. But that doesn't mean whoever sent it didn't send a copy to Parson. I recognized the purple velvet sofa. It's the same one that's in Bella Casa. Talk to me.”

I needed time to think. I needed to talk to Ryan before I even thought of turning him over to Heath.

“Your ten minutes are up.”

As I started toward the front door to let him out, he stepped in front of me, blocking my way. “Guilty or innocent of Jenny's murder, Ryan Johns is in real danger. And he's probably not the only one.”

“I can't say any more.”

The sound of a sharp pop, like an exploding arc light on the set, filled the room. As I looked toward the deck, where I thought the noise had come from, Heath grabbed my shoulders. There was another quick pop and my feet were no longer under me. He was pushing me down. I landed on my back on the floor with him on top. My breath slammed out of me. And then there was nothing, only an eerie silence.

“What happened?” I gasped.

“Somebody just tried to shoot you. I guess Ryan isn't the only one in danger.”

My permanent chill sliced through me. “Maybe he was aiming for you.”

A hint of a grim smile. “Keep down.” Quickly getting to his feet, he stayed low, took a gun from a holster on his belt, and crept toward the deck door.

I rolled onto my stomach and then up on my hands and knees and stared at two jagged bullet holes in the pane of my sliding door. Fissures radiated from the holes like giant, icy spider legs. I felt as fractured as the glass.

Heath glanced over his shoulder at me. “Stay here.”

Holding his gun in one hand, he reached out with the other and carefully slid the door to the side. As he did, the glass broke into shards and clattered onto the floor. The damp ocean air billowed in as he ducked out onto the balcony and crouched behind the wicker chair. We both froze in our positions, waiting. Then the roar of a motorcycle, its tires squealing, came from the walkway between my house and Ryan's. I jumped to my feet and ran out on the deck. Heath was already bounding down the stairs. I was right behind him.

With Heath in front of me, we sprinted up the path to the front of my house. The biker had disappeared into the traffic, but not before I glimpsed the back of his bomber jacket and his white helmet.

“I guess Rubio didn't break his leg.” I was out of breath.

Heath whirled around, facing me. “You finally ready to talk?” Headlights from the highway spread across our faces.

“Take me to Kiki's bar,” I said. “Ryan's there.”