Dateline: Atlantis (5 page)

She calls Barney back and tells him to meet her at a down-at-the-heels section of Hollywood that Garret calls home. She'll talk to the cops later. She drives like hell to get there first and wants to extract the story from Carlos, the photog's landlord, before her bosses arrive.

Carlos is working on the stucco-covered bricks that have fallen from the disintegrating wall surrounding this shabby set of bungalows.

“Hey, would you see if Garret Lucas is home? I work with him and he's not answering the phone, e-mail, nothing,” she pleads.

He shrugs at her questions and walks over to pound on the door himself. After getting no response, he stands puzzled, shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Did he come home yesterday? I saw him leave the cab,” she asks.

“Yeah, sure. Lucas, came home the yesterday to drop off his photo equipment,” Carlos says. “He said, ‘Hey, Carlos, I'm beat,' and asked me not to hammer so hard on the wall. We chatted a bit about Mexico, but Lucas wouldn't tell me where in the country he had been.”

The landlord shifts his feet and looks up as if remembering something.

“I thought something was off because Lucas edged away from me, nervous like a little terrier dog, yeah. He seemed more agitated than tired. Then he shut himself inside the bungalow.”

Amaryllis looks around her. The small residences, twelve in all, were built for starlets who flocked to Hollywood in the 1920s, all looking for fame in a Busby Berkley musical and a cheap place to flop for the night. The bungalows aged better than their long-gone inhabitants. Still strong in frame, the two-room homes were downtrodden but retained a sort of Jazz Era glamour, complete with Art Nouveau wall stencils and iron-shaded light sconces over arch-framed doors. It is just the sort of nesting spot for a man like Garret, arty without a hint of trendiness.

As she continues her conversation with Carlos, she realizes that around noon yesterday, at the exact time Amaryllis was having her strained conversation with Wright, Carlos saw Lucas leave, locking up with care. The landlord knows his tenant well, because he noticed the photographer left with his shoulder free of the camera bag that usually weighed it down. But he was carrying a large bag. Lucas waved and jumped into his Ford SUV, squealing his tires as he pulled away from the curb. All his curtains were drawn, Carlos said, and Lucas usually liked the sunlight to stream in. Carlos never saw the man re-enter the building but assumed he'd had a normal night, because today, the morning paper is off the front stoop and the mini-truck is back in its parking place.

Yet Lucas was not around this morning when Wright tried his e-mail address. Nor had anyone picked up the phone when Wright, and then Barney, rang the number. That left Amaryllis and the landlord huddling around an unopened door and an uncertain future looming for the
Star's
big story.

“Oh, c'mon, maaaan. I know you're there. C'mon. Open up.” Carlos bangs on Lucas' front door with a fist that looks mammoth enough for prize fighting. The wooden door rattles and chains jingle in time to the pounding, but the door remains impassable. “Jeez, man, you mean I got to get the keys? This is crazy.”

Wright and Barney come puffing up the walk just in time to see Carlos banging on the door again. The knuckles thud against the boards again, to no avail. The man turns his flushed face to Amaryllis, Barney, and Wright. She searches the landlord's black eyes and sees fright hiding inside the pupils. People don't simply disappear in the middle of the day, even in Hollywood.

Now, after enough pointless knocking, Carlos goes over to an older Hispanic man, who pulls from his deep pockets a dazzling display of bronze keys, all hanging from a single chain. He sorts through the metal objects as if he knows each one intimately and finds Lucas' number. At the key master's command, the door lets out a deep squeal before yielding. The inner chains, un-fastened, rattle as Barney, Wright, Carlos, and Amaryllis crowd the opening for a peek. From the bathroom to the minuscule efficiency kitchen, the little dwelling looks tidy, for a bachelor living alone. But one peek at the bedroom turns Amaryllis' skin cold.

“Oh, Lord,” Wright moans as he takes a step inside. The entire group moves as a unit behind him, each one seeming afraid to penetrate Garret's private space without comrades.

“We better get a cop over here,” Barney grumbles.

All over the bed are jumbled objects: clothing, cameras, maps, and hats. The photographer's bags are unzipped. From behind Wright's broad shoulder, Amaryllis sees that Garret's film pouches are open and empty. She had watched Garret fill each compartment with film with great care before the flight home. Now the flaps hang open and the space inside is as void as her story soon will be.

Wright holds his hands up in the air as if to beg some photographic god for forgiveness. Amaryllis takes another step forward, under his beseeching arm, and pushes into the bedroom. The pillows are still fluffed and the comforter smooth from the headboard to the foot of the bed. No one had slept here last night.

“Where's Garret?” Amaryllis says, feeling the hot churn of concern and misplaced guilt in her gut. Everyone turns to her, and Barney covers his brow with one shaking hand.
They care more for the photos than the man
. Only Barney sees the shame in that.

#

The cops finish without much commentary, taking fingerprints from the only places where they can get good images: the headboard, the nightstand, and the bathroom mirror. The luggage has been wiped clean. Amaryllis figures the prints they found were Garret's anyway, but what the heck. These poor investigators have to come away with something.

The thin kid, who must ride shotgun in the squad car, asks the newspaper people some routine questions and then spends most of his time quizzing Carlos about the lock. The older guy, perspiring like a prize fighter in the close room, jabs his pen at his notebook as he takes down information. He listens to someone squawking on his walkie-talkie and declines any aid. Then he scoops the cameras and bags into a large evidence bin. The cameras, backs open, are empty. The cops let Garret's clothing and personal items lie in heaps on the tidy bed.

“Doesn't measure up as a standard burglary,” the older cop says, half to Amaryllis and half to the rookie. “These cameras themselves could fetch a cool couple thousand on the streets. Passport's still there.” He picks it up and stashes it in the evidence box. “Even his cash is still in his wallet.” The wallet goes into the bin also.

“What kind of a guy goes out without his wallet?” the young buck says. His gaze moves to Amaryllis, his bleary blue eyes radiating the same sort of professional distance one sees in oncologists or funeral directors.
He's learning fast.

“Lady,” he says. “This looks like a targeted job, professional. Not a random break-in. We'll do our best to find him, but we don't have much to work with.”

She tells him about her apartment and the missing tapes and digital photo chips. The older guy takes more notes.

“We'll send a squad car over to your place, too,” he says with a peeved look. “Why didn't you mention this earlier?

“I was too concerned with Garret.” The floor feels as if it's dropping. The cop gets her address and she is dismissed. When they leave, Carlos locks up and Barney, Wright and Amaryllis stand on the slate walk and stare at each other.

The silence is bitter. The heat is absurd for a mid-winter day. She's made a mess of everything. Now the story is gone. It's all her fault for not paying attention. She hears herself breaking the stagnant gloom by offering to resign her job. Before anyone can stop her, she turns and lopes to her car, and soon is lost in traffic with a loud shifting of gears.

Fiona O'Malley leans against her kitchen sink and swallows a long draught of ale while gazing at Amaryllis with blazing blue eyes.

“Are you sure you've thought this through?”

Amaryllis shakes her head and slumps on the counter opposite the sink. Of course, she hasn't. She has been thinking of leaving Los Angeles for a long time, to get away from the cars, the smog, the flashing white teeth, collagen-swollen lips, and liposuctioned thighs. But she always thought she'd do it in a blaze of glory. Win a prize, piss off the
Times,
and then blast out of town. This was like slinking away from a catfight.

“I guess you think I don't have both beaters in the batter, do you?”

Fiona brushes away the wisecrack as it were an errant gnat.

“Well, what did he say when you quit?” Fiona isn't used to having her questions unanswered, and she looks at her friend with concern crossed with outrage.

“Wright?”

“Yes, Wright. He
is
your boss, isn't he?”

“Well, technically, yeah. But I talked to Barney.” Fiona goads her on with her eyes, pressing Amaryllis to finish the thought. “And Barney told me I was crazy. He told me to get back to the office, but I just went home and refused to take any calls. Then I decided to hide out over here.”

Fiona crosses her arms—refreshingly milk-white in this city of bronzed demi-gods. She looks about to explode, her red-topped head slightly vibrating with emotion. Amaryllis hates it when her best friend gets like this. Disapproval is hard to take from
anyone, but from Fiona, her Irish stalwart pal, it hurts like betrayal. Amaryllis knows she made a dumb mistake; Fiona is just driving that thought home.

She still remembers the first time she saw Fiona, all fiery hair and freckles, standing on mat at a yoga class in the Hollywood Hills. Fiona was having trouble with a pose that required her to put pressure on her neck, and she wasn't having any more of it. The teacher, a dancer-like woman in her fifties who still moved like a teenager, was trying to tell Fiona that the posture, called the Plough, was really not dangerous and elementary for beginning yoga students. Fiona explained that she sprained her neck once and wasn't about to cause more harm. She wasn't pleading with the teacher. She was telling her not to mess with her neck. The teacher backed away with delicate steps, unused to ruffled feathers in her studio.

Amaryllis liked her on the spot. The truth was yoga was not agreeing with her, either. She could hardly sit still as the regal teacher lead them through twisting and—to Amaryllis—torturous movements. She turned when the teacher wasn't looking and caught Fiona's eye. Fiona gestured with her chin toward the door. Without a sound, the two of them swept up their mats and escaped. Twenty minutes later, they were in a bar on Sunset Strip enjoying Guinness stout.

Fiona is rock solid. I better listen to her
.

“Okay, okay,” Amaryllis says, letting out a withheld sigh. “I'll talk to Wright about getting out of this quitting business gracefully. It was a stupid idea.”

Fiona nods.

“But it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Fiona sighs with a rush of withheld air and turns to the sink, her back to Amaryllis. She rinses out her ale glass and places it in a neat row of cups and mugs in her dishwasher. Amaryllis can't believe that even the inside of Fiona's appliance is neat.

“Maybe we ought to go over this burglary again and see if there's something you're forgetting,” she says, flipping the dishwasher door closed with care. They move to the living room and flop on the deep, soft cushions of the burgundy velvet couch. Amaryllis spills all she knows, from the wondrous days of exploring the caves and pyramids, to the paranoia when the flood buried the treasures, to the anxious flight home. She natters away right up to the point of leaving Garret at home with his precious bag of film. She leaves out the story of the crystal. That's her own secret, but she reaches into her purse to feel for the silky texture of the dazzling ball. It doesn't leave her side anymore.

“So Lucas said, ‘I'll get these developed right away.' He was pointing to the camera bags of traditional, light-sensitive film. The digital images he was going to e-mail to me as soon as he could.” She remembers him leaving the taxicab, heaving his heavy bags onto his shoulders and scurrying up the empty walk to his bungalow. The owner was chipping away at flaking brick-work. No one else was around.

“After that,” she tells Fiona, “I rushed back to the cab and gave directions to my place in West Hollywood.”

Fiona asks about the cabbie, and Amaryllis sees little chunks of remembered scenes, playing like interrupted film clips in her head. Little dreams, maybe jet-lag hallucinations. The driver was a standard American WASP type, which, now that she thinks of it, is odd. Most cabbies are from some other country, and many cannot speak English at all. But this guy was as whitebread as a Joe in a sitcom. She shifts in the couch as more memories flood in.

“The weird thing is how he didn't have to wait in the taxi queue,” she says, her gaze drifting into space. “He just whipped up there as if we had ordered a private ride. In fact,” Amaryllis presses her brow as she fights for focus, “he seemed to be expecting us.”

“And that didn't seem odd to you at the time?”

“No. We were too preoccupied with keeping the baggage safe. Garret didn't want to let him touch a thing.”