L.A. Success (29 page)

I was going to have to check all the
rooms to see if anything had been stolen, but first I definitely needed
something cold to drink. I opened the fridge. What I saw caused me to travel
back through my memories and replace the flawed ones I had formed based on an
incomprehensible act of drunken self-deception with real ones, in which my actions
now seemed almost schizophrenic. There, on the shelves of Dennis' fridge, were
my dad's chocolate sculptures. He had put them in from the top to the bottom
shelf in the order he had sculpted them. There were three of them per shelf,
three shelves in all. They were all of the same man. Starting from the most
recent ones at the bottom, I saw sculptures of the man peeking into the
courtyard, presumably pressing his face against a window, and hiding behind a
shrub. On the middle shelf he was opening the gate of the backyard fence,
reaching through a broken window pane to unlock the kitchen door, and climbing
over the backyard fence. And on the top shelf he was trying to pick the lock of
the front door, sitting in his car, and finally, in the very first sculpture my
dad had done, he was talking to me in the courtyard.

I had only talked with two people in
the courtyard, not counting my dad or Dennis. One was Tommy. The other was
Spieldburt, or so I had believed. The man in the sculptures was not Spieldburt,
and it certainly wasn't Tommy. The sculptures were of the Talking Man, or, more
precisely, the man I had talked to when I had first started taking care of
Dennis' house, the man who had called himself Mr. Stevens.

The guy, in fact, looked nothing
like Spieldburt. He had a thin nose and sunken cheeks. If my dad had got the
proportions right, he was a lot taller than me. Then I noticed a detail that
made me remember something: in one of the sculptures, he was wearing pants that
looked like long shorts. They went down to right above his calves. I had talked
with this man a second time, in Santa Monica. It was the guy who had called the
big poodle by his real name. I couldn't believe it. I had been followed this
whole time.

I pulled my head out of the fridge
and shut the door. As I turned to grab a glass out of the cabinet, I saw the
real Talking Man standing at the entrance to the kitchen. I felt like I had
taken a lightning bolt to the heart. With my blood racing, I turned and bolted
toward the kitchen door, which, because it was still ajar, greeted my head with
a sonorous thwack that rang throughout my body as if I had been a church bell
and the door a hammer. Everything went black.

7

I don't know how long I was out.
When I finally regained consciousness, I found myself lying on the kitchen
floor surrounded by broken glass. As soon as I began to lift myself up, the
Talking Man appeared next to me.

“Don't move,” he said.

“What are you going to do to me if I
do, kill me? What do you want anyway?” I asked with much difficulty, my head
alternating between throbbing and stabbing.

“You, Lonnie Herisson, have been
standing between me and my happiness.”

“How's that? I don't even know you.”

“No, but you've been preventing me
from getting something I need, and that's going to come to an end today.”

“I don't know what you want!”

“Right, of course you don't. Two men
have been guarding this house twenty-four hours a day for no reason at all,” he
said. “I know why you were hired so don't play stupid with me.”

“You can beat me all you want, but I
don't know what you're talking about—wait a minute, I didn't mean that. Don't
beat me all you want.”

“I'm not the violent one in this
situation. I'm a business man, and all I want is to be left alone. Here, let me
help you up, but slowly. We should get you to the hospital.”

“Oh god no, not there. They’ll take
every cent I have. Just help me over to the couch.” I felt a little better
knowing that he was more worried about protecting my health than stomping it
out, but I was sure that would change if he didn't get whatever it was he
wanted.

He held out a hand and lifted me to
my feet, and then stopped me as well as he could from weeble-wobbling all over
the place. We made it to the couch, and I lowered myself onto it like a
spaceship landing on a strange planet.

“I imagine you're being paid quite
well for this, so I won't even try to low-ball you. You give me those pictures,
and I'll give you more money than you've seen in years.”

“What pictures?”

“Damn it! There's no more reason to
lie about anything! I know what you're protecting here, and you know which
pictures I want! The pictures of me and my lover!” he yelled, his hands shaking
as if he wanted to wrap them around someone's neck. He got them under control
and regained his composure. “The pictures you're supposed to give to my wife.”

“So, you're Ignacio?
Ignacio...Reyes?”

“Yes.”

“The pictures aren't here anymore.”

“I know they aren't here. I searched
everywhere while you were taking your little nap on the kitchen floor. I found
and erased the files on his hard drive, but I know he printed hard copies. I
imagine once you told Dennis that Raymond was still living in my West-Hollywood
apartment, he had you take them someplace safer.”

“Actually, he asked me to give them
to your wife. I was going to do it this afternoon. But I never said anything
about this Raymond guy. I told him I ran into a little girl named Amanda.”

“Raymond's daughter,” he said. I
must have had a confused look on my face, because then he said “from his marriage,
when he was still in the closet.”

“So you never broke up with this
guy? No wonder Dennis is angry. Why'd you go and help him become gay if you
never intended to leave the other guy?”

“Ha! I didn't help Dennis do
anything. He's been putting me through hell ever since I brought that poodle to
the animal shelter. I had to get rid of Manolete because he bit Amanda, but I
was worried they would put him down if no one adopted him. Dennis assured me
that someone would take him since he was just a puppy. I didn't think anything
of giving my personal information to Dennis because he worked at the shelter
and seemed nice enough. He said he'd call me if there was a problem.”

“Why was Dennis pretending to work
at the shelter? Was he investigating something?”

“What do you mean? That was his job.
Well, he volunteered. He's never worked a real job as far as I know. He's a
trust-fund baby.”

“He's not a private investigator?
But he's got all that equipment,” I said.

“He bought all of that to follow me
around. He called to tell me he had adopted Manolete himself, and then he kept
calling every couple of days to tell me how he was doing. At first I thought he
was just weird, but then I would spot him following me, or I'd see him parked
on my street. He realized I was cheating on my wife and started blackmailing
me. I thought he wanted money, but what he wanted was to
be
me. The guy
is absolutely nuts. He made me promise to leave Raymond or else he was going to
tell my wife everything.”

“He told me you guys were together.”

“We were, sort of,” he said.

“But that's horrible! You were
gay-doing a guy you hated?”

“Oh no. I told him he was too fat to
have sex with. That kind of backfired because he lost a billion pounds in only
three months. I think he went on an all-liquid diet. Then when he got pretty
thin, I told him his clothes were so ridiculous that I couldn't take him
seriously as a lover. That one worked really well. He started experimenting
with new styles, and then he really did look like an ass and he knew it, so he
didn't feel confident enough to stand up to me. We were supposed to have sex
for the first time in Ibiza, which is why I've stayed away from there. My plan
was to get him out of this place and then find all traces of those pictures and
destroy them. Now that Dennis is probably on his way back, I've got to act
fast. It looks like you've found yourself in the right place at the right
time.”

“So how much money are we talking
about?” I asked, hoping that Spieldburt hadn't already chucked the photos out
the window of his car.

“Fifty grand, in cash.” Normally, I
wouldn't have believed someone was willing to pay so much, but I knew he was
going to be screwed if those photos got back to his wife, and from what Dennis
had told me, this guy was loaded.

“Double that and we've got a deal,”
I said. He didn't even flinch.

“Fine. Where are they?”

“They aren't here. I'll go and get
them. It might take a while, but you've got nothing to worry about. Dennis
doesn't know where they are. He's not getting back until Sunday, just in case
you were wondering.”

“That will give me enough time to
take care of this and to get ready for him. He's going to go nuts once he finds
out he's been had,” he said with a worried look on his face.

He gave me his phone number and took
off.

8

After I was able to stand again I
got out of there. I didn't bother cleaning up the broken glass, because once
Dennis found out I had made a deal with Ignacio, he wasn't going to give me the
last check for the house sitting anyway.

I returned the carpet cleaner but
had to have one of the pimply faced bagboys carry it in. It was embarrassing
standing there in front of everyone while a kid half my size labored to get the
thing out of the trunk. While I was in the store, I picked up a slew of pain
killers and ice packs, and then went home to rest up.

Ballsack greeted me at the door. He
looked all antsy, like he needed to go outside. If my dad had been in the
living room, I'd have made him do it, but he wasn't there. I saw that the door
to my bedroom was shut, so I figured he was sleeping. I grabbed the leash and
took a walk around the neighborhood, each squirrel running by resulting in
stabbing pain for me as the crazy dog tugged to go after it. What really pissed
me off was that I knew the dog was dying to go to the bathroom, but he kept
walking like he was looking for the ultimate spot to ruin. Some guy could make
a fortune if he'd invent a spray that imitated big, angry-dog urine, so that
owners could just spray a few squirts on their lawns and have Fido go crazy
trying to mark his territory all over again. I found myself trying to think
like the big poodle and find spots that would be better than others. I would
get all excited when he started sniffing, and then desperately annoyed when
whatever doggy criteria he had was too exclusive for the spot I had chosen.
Who'd have thought finding a place to take a leak could be such an emotional
roller coaster?

When we finally got back, I sat down
on the couch with a big glass of water and took a stomach full of pills. Then I
strategically arranged the ice packs, the last one going on top of my head.

With the pain finally becoming numb,
I was able to think over everything that had happened that day. There was
something that didn't make sense to me. If I hadn't ever talked to Spieldburt
in the first place, why had he wanted more of my crappy screenplay? The guy had
been willing to meet me in public and had almost been ready to pay me
money—before he flipped out and kicked my ass. What did he think I knew?

Unfortunately, that meant I now had
two reasons to call Grant. I needed those photos back, and I needed to know
exactly how much leverage I was going to have to get them. I suppose this also
meant I was going to have to part ways with my new phone. Screw it; I hated
talking on the phone anyway. I dialed my former number and prepared to grovel.

“I feel like I'm being harassed by
myself,” said Grant.

“Hi Grant. I've been thinking a lot
about what I did, and I have come to see that it was not cool. I understand
that a man in your position really needs to read crucial notes stored in your
phone, notes such as 'Mr. Jenkins' wife has mismatched implants,' and 'Cindy
Turner seems to be scratching herself a lot.' And I've also come to see the
ground sloth as a beautiful creature, whose extinction was a tragedy. Why did
other animals have to be so fast, oh why?”

“Are you going to call and fuck with
me for much longer?” he asked.

“I'm serious this time. I want to
give your phone back.”

“And pay for my paint job?”

“Come on, that piece of crap you
drive is about to hit the junkyard anyway. I'll buy you a couple of tubes of
touch-up paint, but that's it.”

“Fine, I just want my phone back.
I'm in Culver City now. Can I come by and pick it up?”

“I'll text you the address. Be there
in twenty minutes.” I sent him one of the Oldhags' addresses and added that I'd
be waiting outside.

I walked down the street with the
big poodle and waited for Grant. He swerved up in the slothmobile, sloth still
attached, five minutes early. His face was beaming as he got out of the car.
When he stepped over, I held out his phone. He snatched it up and gave me back
the shit phone, which looked like it had been cleaned up.

“So what do you really want? I know
you didn't give this back to me because your conscience was bothering you,” he
said.