In the Night of the Heat (19 page)

I hurried down to her. Melanie sank against me when I wrapped her in my arms.

 

We spent two hours at T.D.'s house. I checked drawers, garbage cans, and closets. I checked the garage. I filled half my notebook with notes and tidbits, unmarked phone numbers, and details about what was where in case it mattered later. But the only notes I cared about were written in block letters and underlined twice: FIND CARLYLE. MOTHER.

I had taken two hundred digital photos inside the house. But the one I kept flicking back to my camera's screen was the bullet hole, conspicuous even at miniature size.

“This is proof,” Melanie said, looking over my shoulder.

“Not proof,” I corrected her. “But it's evidence. It paints a picture. Definitely a reason not to rush into a suicide theory.”

“Why would LAPD cover it up?”

I shrugged. “Maybe they didn't. They missed it. They didn't know his den like you did. Didn't realize the picture had been moved. T.D. had gunshot residue on his hand, they saw what looked like a suicide. He's about to go to trial again, he's high. He's stressed out. Or, they figure he has a guilty conscience. Human nature does the work of conspiracies just fine.”

Melanie didn't look convinced. “Conspiracy or not, this is now a murder. No doubts.”

“I'll need alibis from everyone in his family,” I said. “Judge Jackson, too.”

“Fine,” she said. She didn't blink.

“I need to see Senator Hankins.”

“Tomorrow. Come hell or high water,” Melanie said.

“And tracking down Carlyle just became my top priority. He was the last person we know of to see T.D. alive, Mel.”

Melanie looked newly stricken. “I don't understand Carlyle being gone. It feels so wrong. Like I don't know him.”

“Maybe you don't, Mel. But there's no proof he had anything to do with this. Not yet.”

“Right now, nothing would surprise me.”

Good thing for that,
I thought. For Melanie, the surprises were just beginning.

I caught a late dinner, so the house was quiet and sleeping when I got home. Before I went upstairs, I cracked open Dad's door, holding my breath to listen for his.

An impossibly long interval passed, and I heard only buzzing. My ear again. Finally, I heard Dad's gentle snore, and my mood improved.

Next, Chela's room. I'd asked her to turn off the TV at midnight, a new rule, so her room was quiet. And dark. I peeked inside, and saw her sleeping where she was supposed to be.

My family was fine. For me, it was a good night.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23

While I drove to Brentwood the next morning, I dialed the telephone numbers I'd found at T.D.'s house, searching for Carlyle Simms. I thought about Chela trying to find her mother after her grandmother died, and I wished I was driving somewhere else. I concentrated on my calls, hoping for a last-minute reprieve.

“Hey, whassup, is C around?”

Same greeting every time. Either they would know him or they wouldn't; they would talk or they wouldn't. Most of the numbers were businesses, so I got nowhere even with his full name. One woman told me she hadn't seen C in a couple of weeks, but she hung up on me before I could explain why I was calling. When I called back, no one picked up the phone. I gave the number a checkmark and dialed the next one.

My phone beeped in the midst of an unanswered call.
SOUTH AFRICA
, the screen said.

“April?”

“Hey, Ten.” Her tone was sober, as if one of us had died.

“Don't sound so down,” I told her. “I'm doing all right.”

“Really?”

No.

“I said ‘all right.' Not great, not fine, but I'm all right. How about you?” “I'm all right sometimes.”

“Well, I know a lot of people who would settle for sometimes.” There was so much to tell her, but I didn't have time, or even the inclination. April had been more than my girlfriend, and I needed help. “April, I'm working another investigation. Freelancing.”

“What about your job?” she said. After Serena's case, I had used phrases like
Never again.

“It's not an issue.”

She paused, but she didn't press. “T.D. Jackson?”

I was surprised at her guess, until I remembered she'd seen Melanie try to hire me once already. “Yes. But that's confidential.”

“That whole suicide thing…” April began, skeptical. I could feel her sudden hunger to be back at home at her newspaper desk. Our investigation of Serena's death had given her career a huge boost—she'd broken the story first. “Got anything interesting?”

I gave her a nibble. “The police missed some evidence.” I didn't have to tell April it was off the record. Everything between us was off the record—until it wasn't.

“Homicide?”

“Looking more like it.”

“What do you need from me?” I heard girlish excitement in her voice.

I wished I could hold her. Instead, I quickly summarized Donald Hankins's alleged involvement with threats and violence against po
litical opponents. I told her that my father remembered an
L.A. Times
reporter calling about the claims.

“That has to be Casey Burnside,” April said. “He's been the senior political reporter forever, and he loves that stuff. He'd know. Mention you're a friend of mine.”

The word
friend
stung, but I was glad to be a team again. I took his email address and the number for the newsroom, which would get me past the menus for subscribers and advertisers. The newspaper was a labyrinth. It was essential to have a name.

“Who will you talk to when it's ready to break?” April said.

“It may never break. It's a private case. No police involvement. But if it does…you know I won't talk to anyone else.”

I could see her dimpled smile. “God, it would be so hard to work it from here!”

“You'll find a way.”

That brought the conversation to a halt. We both remembered what we were losing.

And I had arrived at the house in Brentwood sooner than I expected.

I coasted to the curb about twenty yards from the house, feeling a part of me fold up as soon as I saw the familiar row of orange trees lining the driveway. I wasn't used to guilt, but it could be persistent; and I felt something else bound inside it. I couldn't stand bringing April so close to Mother.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Me too. I just didn't want our last conversation to be…”

“Our last conversation,” I finished. “And this one isn't either. Promise.”

“Good, Ten, because I couldn't stand that.”

“Like I told you, I'm all right. Thanks for the tip on Burnside.”

I love you.
The unspoken phrase hung in the silence before we said good-bye.

I noticed that I felt worse after talking to April, just like last time. I hoped that would go away, or it would be hard to work up enthusiasm for future conversations.

The suburban two-story house with a double garage was painted a bland beige, Mother's cloak of anonymity. Her house was far from the nicest on her street, worth well under a million dollars, but Mother owned a castle in Europe and real estate worldwide. She might well be one of the richest madams in the country. Two newspapers piled by her driveway mailbox gave the house a careless air, when nothing could be further from the truth.

It was only ten in the morning, so I figured Mother would be at home. I'd never visited her house without calling first, but I needed all the leverage I could get. I had to let her know I wasn't the same Tennyson she was used to. I was someone new. Someone unpredictable.

But Mother doesn't like surprises.

As soon as I rang the doorbell, I saw a blur of white fur as her two large attack dogs charged from the backyard, running at me like I was the mechanical rabbit at the track. They charged in disciplined silence. Even if I hadn't been cornered on the porch, there was nowhere I could have outrun them. Their growls sent tremors to my hindbrain. They were standard-size poodles shaved with ridiculous puffs on their legs and tails, but trust me—I noticed their teeth, not their bows.

Moving slowly and steadily, I doffed my jacket and wound it around my arm, creating a target for their jaws. Once a canine has locked on, I had two choices: kick him in the throat, or roll him over backward, breaking his neck.

I hoped neither would be necessary.

They bracketed me, growling. “Don't make me kill your dogs,”
I said to the wireless video camera hidden in the floodlight mounted above Mother's door.

A loud whistle came from the intercom speaker, and the dogs drew back, teeth gone from sight. One of the monsters had the nerve to start wagging her tail at me, as if to say,
Just doing my job. We cool?

Mother said something in Serbian, and the dogs took off running for the back again.

I hate those dogs.

“I remember when your manners were legendary,” Mother's voice crackled over the speaker. I had never heard her sound so angry. Her accent nearly overwhelmed her words.

“Let me in, Mother. We need to talk.”

The door stayed closed. “Is it about our friend?” the speaker said again.

“You'll find out what it's about when you open this door.”

“If you have brought strangers, Tennyson, I will never forget this.”

Cops, she meant. Mother was cagey, with good reason. “I'm alone,” I said.

The door opened. Mother rushed away before I could get a good look at her, slipping toward the back hall. She moved so quickly that she lurched.

“You didn't have to set your dogs on me,” I said.

“You will sit and wait,” she called, not looking back. Her voice was phlegmy. “This is a great disrespect to me.”

“I won't inconvenience you long.”

If I knew Mother, she already had her elegant little .22, which had its own colorful biography of ways it had saved her life in Kosovo. Mother knew how to kill people, and I never forgot that. At the moment, I suspected that she wasn't quite as angry as she seemed: It was just another way of exercising control.

Even with one bad ear, I didn't mistake the sound of nails scrabbling against Mother's tiles as the dogs ran back into the house. Dunja and Dragona sat at their posts, one panting at each end of the living room, bodyguards in pink bows, as deceptive in appearance as their master. While we waited, the dogs and I locked eyes.

Mother's house looked and smelled like any grandmother's house, awash with bric-a-brac and delicacies. One large mirrored display case was dedicated to a large collection of crystal figurines, mostly angelic children. My teeth ground as I thought about Chela living under Mother's roof as her surrogate daughter while Mother primed her as an earner.

I'd let myself be charmed by Mother, too; at one time, I'd been foolish enough to consider us friends. Mother preyed on naïveté.

When she finally came out twenty minutes later, she gave me a look that probably had been the last sight of more than one man before me. Mother wasn't wearing her trademark red wig, the first time I'd seen her without it. But she was wearing a dress instead of a robe, she'd rubbed rouge on her cheeks, and her hair was hidden beneath a scarf. The white hair I saw at her scalp line looked thin and fragile. Her face looked fuller, too. I realized she hadn't had her dentures on when she came to the door. No wonder she was so mad. I didn't know anyone who had ever seen her without them.

“So, speak,” she said. “What is so urgent that you forget all manners?”

“Aren't you going to ask about her?”

“I hear nothing in all this time. Why do I expect to hear anything now?”

“She's fine. She's in school.”

“Here, she was in school, too.” Mother's eyes mocked me. I saw her hand listing comfortably at her waist, within easy reach of her hidden gun.

I decided to sit down, too. Mother might be getting nervous in her old age, and I didn't want to end up dead because she thought I made a sudden move. “I need a favor from you, Mother. Information. Then I'd be happy never to see you again.”

Mother chortled. “A favor? You are deluded. Why would I do this?”

“To feel good about yourself.”

Mother laughed again, this time more freely. “You are still a delight, Tennyson. You say very amusing things. You have that face, yes, but you are so much more. I know a woman from Colombia who would pay you six figures for one weekend. But, ah…” Mother waved her hand in a magician's flourish. “You are selling telephones now. Your face, it seems, has many uses.”

I smiled. Yes, she wanted me angry, off my game. Mother loves to put people off-balance.

“T.D. Jackson,” I said. “He and his friend Carlyle Simms liked to pay for sex. On the night he died, T.D. was with blond twins. They call themselves Luscious and Lovely.”

Mother laughed again.

“Mother, there's this odd thing about memory. If yours gets too fuzzy, mine might snap into focus.”

Mother's laughter stopped, and her green eyes blazed at me. “Why are you here, Tennyson? The truth.”

“I've come to offer you a trade,” I said, in the most soothing tone I could summon.

“And I get what from this trade?” The phlegm in her throat rumbled.

“You get to sleep at night. You get to know that nothing about our friend will ever come out. You took a girl headed for the gutter, and gave her…” I almost choked on it. “A better life. Not everyone would understand.”

Her eyelashes fluttered. I could not read her expression at all. “You think I do not sleep?”

“I'm sure you could sleep better.”

Her lip quivered, ready to unleash something unkind. But she didn't. Either she had a conscience after all, or she wanted me to think she did.

But Mother kept her lips pressed tight, her wrinkles' folds trapping her young-woman eyes. Mother was almost eighty, and looked it. Eighteen months had trampled her. Mother's eyes held the secrets of impending death.

“This subject must never come up again,” Mother said.

“It won't.”

Mother inclined her head:
You've made your point.
Her imitation of a smile quickly soured. “The twins are not mine,” she said. “But those two men…I may know them.”

“And?”

“I never discuss my clients,” Mother said. “I taught you this much, I hope.”

“You taught me plenty.” I suddenly remembered my first visit to her house, feeling lucky and special. Mother could fling bullshit around like pixie dust. She had a gift.

“His friend had a great love of American television,” Mother said.

She'd hardly said anything, but Mother had told me everything I needed. She wouldn't say another word about it.

I stood up. “Chela's in the chess club. Her homecoming dance is next week. Saturday.”

Mother only stared at me, her face as frozen as glass. As if she didn't recall the name.

But deep in her eyes, I saw a flicker of light.

 

I'll call her Jeanine. You know her by another name.

She wanted to meet at Mel's Diner in Hollywood, which surprised me—most actresses would avoid such a public place without hours of makeup and wardrobe at home. But then again, Jeanine had left acting long ago. She said she'd just gotten out of her Pilates class, so she asked to meet in a half hour, at twelve thirty.

I walked past Jeanine twice before I realized she was the silver-haired woman in a black turtleneck and beat-up denim jacket with her hair cut down to a fuzz, wearing funky red horn-rimmed glasses. Jeanine had been a blonde icon when I was in high school and college; she was unrecognizable without her long tresses.

But she looked good. So healthy I couldn't help staring.

“I know. Different,” she said. “Sit down, Ten.”

She'd had some plastic surgery. I didn't see the looser folds at her neck I'd spotted the last time I saw her, and her eyes looked a little severe. But Jeanine hadn't overdone it. Her hair color alone told me that she wasn't the same desperate woman I had taken to Mother's.

“I had chemo,” Jeanine said, too cheerfully. “The hair fell out, so what the hell? This is my hair now. Richard Gere is sexy with gray hair, and women can be, too. Fuck Hollywood.”

I hadn't heard she had cancer. “Are you…?”

“Six months in remission, so we think I'm good,” Jeanine said, knocking on the tabletop. She didn't elaborate, squeezing my hand across the table. “I'm so glad you called.”