Reckless Disregard (40 page)

I ring the doorbell. No answer. I ring again and then a third time. Maybe Harry doesn’t live with Sonja anymore. Maybe she put him in a facility. It’s been four months since I’ve seen him. Could he have deteriorated that much? Or maybe she was simply being proactive. He’s not going to get better, and she’s a young woman. Would she be that cruel?

I turn to leave when the door opens.

“May I help you?” The man looks like he’s in his early thirties, mean-street handsome, with black hair, swarthy skin, and a fitness-center body. The talons of an eagle or falcon tattoo bleed out from under the sleeve of his white medical polo shirt, which he wears tucked into white medical-attendant slacks.

“My name’s Parker Stern. I used to work with Mr. Cherry. I was wondering if I could speak with him.”

“I know who you are, sir. Mr. Cherry is unavailable.”

“Mr. Cherry might be able to help me in a trial I’m handling.”

“He can’t help you, sir. He can’t help anyone.”

“Harmon? Harmon, is that you?” Harry’s voice sounds like a wood rasp scraping a two-by-four. He shuffles up next to his caretaker. The cottony hair has thinned even more since last November, and what remains is flyaway and coarse. His dim eyes have retreated deeper into their sockets. Last time I saw him, he still stood straight, but now he lists to the side with what looks like a scoliotic twist of the spine.

Philip Paulsen would abhor what I’m about to do. “Yeah, it’s me, Pops,” I say. “I just came by for a quickie consult.” Which is how Harmon Cherry always approached his father for advice. But it’s not only words that I’m plagiarizing. Harmon spoke in a clipped cadence and a nasal tenor, making him sound like a laid-back California version of the old movie actor Edward G. Robinson in his gangster days. Clifton Gold encouraged his acting students to mimic, and at the law firm I was renowned among my colleagues for my dead-on Harmon imitation. At one firm party, I was drunk enough to give in to entreaties to do the impression for Harmon. I’m sure the colleagues who encouraged me didn’t have my best interests at heart, but Harmon laughed so hard that he sprayed salivary froth all over my friend Rich Baxter. And now I’ve used that voice with Harry.

The attendant shakes his head. “Harry, you have to come inside.” He starts to shut the door on me, but I push back against it.

“Got a very important question for ya, Pops,” I say. Harmon always described his questions to Harry as important. His career success had surpassed that of his father, and he always seemed to feel some guilt about it.

The young man’s reserve of calm, which must be vast to deal with Alzheimer’s patients, has dissipated. “No way, man, that’s just wrong.”

He’s about to shut the door, but Harry half-elbows his way past him. “What’ya got for me, son?” he says, leaning in with what looks like keen interest. When he puts an arthritic hand on my shoulder and kisses me on the top of the head, I struggle not to flinch. I reach out and pat his shoulder twice, just like Harmon would, even in front of clients. As someone who grew up without a father, I looked at such shows of affection with uncomprehending awe.

The caretaker is glaring at me. But I sense he won’t do anything to upset Harry and so won’t abruptly separate him from his long-dead son. But how long before Harry’s deteriorating brain cuts the cord of this senescent delusion?

“Where’s the scavi, Pops?” I ask. “I’m looking for it.”

Harry tilts his head to the side like a bemused puppy.

“The scavi, Pops?”

Now Harry whimpers like that puppy, and I know I’ve lost him.

“You’ll have to leave or I’m going to call the cops, man,” the caretaker says. “You should be ashamed. What you’re doing is cruel.”

“Beverly Hills River,” Harry says. And then it becomes a whiny, geriatric Aeolian incantation—“Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River, Beverly Hills River . . .” Mucous tears overflow his eyes.

“Forgive me,” I say to the young man. “Tell Sonja I’m sorry. It’s just this lawsuit, it’s made me . . . I’m sorry.”

The young man conveys through aggressive silence that he doesn’t forgive me at all. He takes hold of Harry’s shoulders and firmly but kindly turns him around and shuts the door.

Not until I get into Amber’s car and start the engine do I realize that Harry Cherry gave me exactly the answer I came for.

Normally, the drive from Palm Desert to Beverly Hills takes over two hours, but I make it in eighty-three minutes, thanks to my illegal use of the carpool lane. I park at a meter off Linden Avenue and “Little” Santa Monica Boulevard, get out of my car, and walk the four blocks to Macklin & Cherry’s old office building on Camden, passing the familiar Eddie Dalton’s Hair Salon and VIP Manicures by Antoinique, and a new women’s shoe store that didn’t exist when the firm broke up. I don’t think anyone’s following me. I enter my old building through a side door and hurry to the elevator, which I take down to the archives. The doors open to reveal Roland at his desk. He flinches when he sees me, reaches into his desk, pulls out a handgun, and aims it at me, his hand wavering with a fear-induced palsy. I hold up my hands and take a step back. “Whoa, Roland, it’s me.”

He lowers the gun, as relieved as I am. His fair cheeks splotch neon red, and his oil-drum chest deflates. “Jesus, Parker, you scared me shitless. Ever since those guys showed up people are supposed to call ahead.”

“I never knew you kept a gun down here.”

“I didn’t.” He looks around as if to make sure no one is listening, though I don’t see anyone else in the vicinity, “I’m not supposed to have it. But I’m not going to . . . you know.” He reaches behind his head and massages his neck. “Say, you weren’t followed this time, were you?”

“No. I made sure of it.” Actually, I’m not sure of anything.

“What can I do for you?”

“Do you know about my trial?”

“Can’t say that I do. Is it in the news? You had a lot of cases in the news. You know, the NBA season’s ending, hockey’s in full swing, MLB spring training . . . I don’t much like the news. Sports, talk radio are OK, but . . .” He shrugs his fat, sloping shoulders contritely.

That’s good. If he doesn’t know about the trial, he won’t recognize the danger.

“Roland, I have a favor. I need to get something from inside the M&C archives.”

“Go ahead. Your key should still work. I tried to get building management to change the locks after those assholes attacked me, but they didn’t want to spend the money, claimed it was a one-time thing.”

“I don’t want just to get into the archives. There’s this other room . . . I might need one of your keys.”

“Look, Parker, I’m not supposed to leave my desk.”

“Please, Roland. It’s important.”

He shakes his head.

“I can score some Lakers playoff tickets. They’re yours.”

“Lower level, center court?”

“Absolutely.” I’ll have to pay exorbitant broker’s prices, but I don’t care.

He reaches into his desk and takes out an old-fashioned jailer’s key ring with a dozen keys attached. He makes a labored attempt to stand.

“Do you have a flashlight in there?” I ask.

He slowly lowers himself back into the chair, takes a long aluminum flashlight out of the bottom drawer, and stands up again.

“And bring your weapon,” I say.

He rolls his eyes to the ceiling as if looking for divine guidance, lets out a snuffling belly sigh, and retrieves the gun.

I insist that we walk down the hall side by side. If he’s behind me and gets startled I worry that he’ll shoot me; if he’s ahead of me and gets startled I fear he’ll turn around and shoot me. I open the door to the archives and we go inside. The room smells moldier than ever, like the underside of a freeway bridge after a rain. We pass the massive file shelves and go back toward the alcove that has the computer on which Brenda found the Hildy Gish file with a cast list for
The Boatman
. The dirty industrial curtain still conceals the back wall—and the hidden door that saved Brenda and me from Bishop’s henchman.

“What the . . . ?” Roland says.

“A secret cave.” That’s what Deanna called it that night we had sex in there. “But I’m interested in what’s behind the far door.”

There’s a light switch, but when I flip it on, nothing happens. No surprise—I doubt anyone has come in here in years other than Brenda and me, and we weren’t about to change the light bulb. Roland turns on his flashlight. We walk to the end of the room, where there’s another door. I try it, but as I suspected, it’s locked. I try my office key, but it doesn’t fit.

Roland hands me the flashlight and the gun, which shakes as much in my hand as it did in his. He starts trying different keys. It’s quiet except for the jingling of metal on metal and the rush of flowing water, the same sound I heard when Brenda and I were hiding. This is what Harry Cherry had to mean when he kept repeating “Beverly Hills River.”

The door unlocks on the eighth try. Roland pulls it open gingerly, and I shine the flashlight inside, revealing a decayed, water-stained staircase—undoubtedly riddled with termites—leading downward.

“Those steps aren’t going to hold you, much less a big guy like me,” Roland says.

I hand him his gun. “This might take a while, so don’t wait for me. I’ll need your flashlight and the keys.”

He hands them over and wastes no time leaving the room.

I shine the flashlight down the stairway again. Eleven steps. I will myself to stay feathery on my feet, curse all the scones and muffins and puffed pastries that I’ve sampled at The Barrista over the years. The first three steps creak but hold, but the fourth cracks when I place my left foot down. There’s no railing, so I steady myself by bracing my right hand against the concrete wall. I take a long stride to the next step without testing it and then say “screw it” and skip every other step. They hold—all but the last, which shatters from the rot, injecting sharp splinters into my leg. I shine the flashlight on my shin and pull out the large ones, ignoring the blood that’s running into my shoe.

The flashlight beam reveals a small rectangular room with file cabinets on two sides. The room is damper than the humid main archives. I stop and listen—the sound of flowing water is louder, but I still don’t know if it really comes from underground streams or the building pipes or the city sewer system. It doesn’t matter. This has to be Harry Cherry’s
scavi
—the truth of Paula Felicity McGrath must be entombed here.

Fortunately, the file cabinets are marked alphabetically, the ink fading but still legible. I try the file drawer marked
A–B
, looking for
Bishop
or
Boatman
. I riffle through the files, but there’s nothing I care about, just old original contracts between long-shuttered production companies and former megastars whom few people under sixty-five remember. The only hopeful sign is that all these files involve sensitive transactions that either Harry or Harmon Cherry handled. This room belonged to them. None of us at the law firm had any idea.

I go to the
M
cabinet, looking for McGrath. Again, nothing. The same with
P
for Parapet Studios. Why was I so sure? Harry Cherry’s mind isn’t right. I consider starting with the first cabinet again and going through every file, but that would far exceed the battery life of this flashlight, might take me past Monday’s court hearing—assuming Bishop’s goons didn’t find me here first. Then on impulse, I open the cabinet marked
T–U–V
, and there they are, filed under
T
—two sealed files marked
Highly Confidential—H. Cherry’s Eyes Only
stuffed into a fraying red accordion file labeled
The Boatman.

I leave the office building and go back to my car, carrying the file under my arm like a running back afraid to fumble. People on the street keep staring at me, glancing down, and I’m sure they’re focusing on the files, that Bishop’s goons are following me, biding their time. Then I realize that they’re looking at my torn dress slacks and bloody shin. I make it to my car and drive back to my condo, catching every red light between Beverly Hills and Marina del Rey. The drive in late-afternoon traffic takes thirty minutes, but it feels three times longer.