Shamus In The Green Room (5 page)

and one edge was ragged, as if it had been torn down the mid-

dle. The part that was left showed a towheaded teenager. He

was handsome, with sleepy eyes. Grinning like a fox. Unmis-

takably Rafe. He had his arm around a girl with long hair.

I saw something pass across Rafe’s face.

Smarinsky turned the photo over and tapped it with his fin-

ger. “This is the good part,” he said.

There was an inscription scrawled across the back, and even

though the ink had run, you could still read it: “Rafe and Me,

Summer 1979.”

“Lucky break for us that you’re famous. Couple of gals in

the office are fans. They knew it was you right away.”

Rafe chewed on his lip. Then he looked at Donaldson, who

smiled encouragingly.

“Take your time.”

Rafe swallowed. “I know her.”

Donaldson and Smarinsky exchanged glances.

“I need a name,” said Smarinsky, his voice tense.

“I want to see the body.”

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Donaldson looked unhappy. “We try to discourage that,

Mr. Simic. If you can make a positive ID from the Polaroid, it

would be better for all concerned.”

Rafe stood up. “I need to see the body.”

“Let the man see the body,” said Smarinsky, turning up his

palms.

“Very well,” the captain replied, looking extremely un-

happy now.

Everybody stood. Smarinsky yanked up his pants, which

were also too big.

“Cece,” said Rafe in an unmistakable tone.

Oh, no.

“Will you come with me?” he asked.

I am superstitious. I am afraid of ghosts. I believe in

haunted houses.

“Please,” he said, his voice quavering.

Stricken, I turned to Captain Donaldson. “That’s against

regulations, isn’t it? I mean, it’s not like I’m the next of kin or

anything.”

Donaldson started to say something, but Smarinsky inter-

rupted. “What the hell, am I right, Donaldson? The more the

merrier.”

This was a nightmare, a horrible, terrible day.

Someone buzzed us in. Hand in hand, Rafe and I walked

through a heavy wooden door with a small glass window at the

top, down a long, sterile corridor with low ceilings, and to the

elevator, whose doors closed abruptly, shutting us inside, so

that all we could smell was a horrible smell, sweet and rank,

which was the smell of dead bodies.

The doors opened with a pop.

“Service floor,” the captain said. “This way, please.”

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We followed him down the hall. Smarinsky gestured to-

ward a map of Los Angeles County covered with arrows and

pushpins.

“Crime scenes. We found your girl over here.” He pointed

to someplace in the South Bay. A small red arrow in the big

blue water. “She’d been in there for twenty-four hours, give or

take a few.”

Donaldson moved us along, nodding briskly at someone in

a puffy blue hazmat suit.

“It protects them during autopsies,” Smarinsky explained.

“Don’t know how you do it, Donaldson. The fumes, man.”

The captain ignored him and stopped in front of a

stainless-steel table. The body was loosely wrapped in white

sheets. He put his hand on Rafe’s shoulder.

“Shall we proceed, Mr. Simic?”

Rafe nodded, sticking his hands in his pockets.

The captain pulled back the sheets and stepped away.

I looked at Rafe, who looked at the dead woman. His whole

body went rigid with the effort. Then, when I couldn’t look at

him anymore, I looked at her. All I remember seeing was

white. Lips drained of color. Hair like wintry branches. An

endless expanse of cold, milky, white flesh.

Someone had closed her eyes.

“Maren Levander,” Rafe said, his voice cracking. “Shit. I’ve

got to call Will.”

“Will?” I asked.

“Maren is his sister. Will is—was—her brother.”

“And you?” Smarinsky asked.

Insensitive prick.

“I was her friend.” Rafe put his head in his hands.

“Thank you, Mr. Simic.” The captain pulled the sheet back

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up. “That pretty much does it, for now. If you’ll step into my

office for a moment, we can take care of the paperwork.”

“I’ll escort the young lady to the waiting area,” Smarinsky

volunteered.

My legs felt shaky as we walked back to the elevator. We

passed a dangerously high stack of folding chairs, then an open

door. Two men in white jackets were sitting inside, working.

“You know what those guys in there can do?” Smarinsky

asked me. “Sometimes the body’s so shriveled up they can’t get

a print, so they peel the skin off the hands and put it on, like a

glove. They get a print that way. Gotta have an iron stomach,

though.”

The doors to the elevator closed. I’d planned to hold my

breath until I was in the proximity of fresh air, but Smarinsky

kept asking me questions.

“What do you do for a living?”

“Write books.”

“You and the movie star an item?”

“No.”

“You are a resident of?”

“West Hollywood.”

I couldn’t tell if he was interrogating me or just trying to

keep me company.

It was six in the morning by the time Rafe was done. We

stepped outside. The sun was blaring, but it wasn’t as bright as

the flashbulbs popping in our faces.

“Fucking vultures,” Rafe said. “They never leave me alone.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I used to love her.”

“I figured.”

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“Fuck.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Good idea.”

“I’m driving,” I said, taking the keys out of his hand.

“You’re buying.”

CHAPTER

FIVE

Coffee still costs a nickel at Philippe’s, home of the

French-dip sandwich, invented in 1918 when the orig-

inal Philippe, who was French, was preparing a sandwich for a

policeman and accidentally dropped the sliced roll into the

drippings of a roasting pan.

You couldn’t argue with the prices, not to mention the

clientele, which was the polar opposite of starstruck: Amtrak

riders stopping off on their way to Union Station across the

street; electricians; municipal-court judges; housepainters. I may

have detected a glimmer of recognition from the counterwoman

who took our order, but she was too efficient to indulge in that

kind of speculation. Rafe insisted he wasn’t hungry, but I or-

dered pancakes for him, a hot pink pickled egg for me, and a

coffee for each of us.

We took our trays and walked to the back room, where we

found an empty booth.

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“I can’t eat yet,” he said after sitting down. “What the hell

am I thinking? I have to call Will.” He stood up. “I left my

phone in the car. I’ll call him from out there. Is that okay?”

“Of course. Take your time.”

I watched him go. His T-shirt was hanging off his shoul-

ders. It looked a size bigger than it had the night before. Or

maybe it was Rafe who looked a size smaller.

When he was gone, I pulled out my phone and called Gam-

bino at work. I knew he’d be there. He’s a robbery/homicide

detective who takes his job very seriously. Lately, this has

caused some problems, but that’s another story.

I started crying the minute I heard his voice. When I was

done crying, I was incoherent. When I was done being inco-

herent, the story came out and it was so awful, I started crying

again. Halfway through, Gambino announced that he was

coming to get me, but I put my foot down. We’d had that par-

ticular discussion before. And I wasn’t prepared to go—not

yet. After the experience we’d just shared, Rafe needed me.

And maybe I needed him, too. Gambino said he understood.

I knew those weren’t just words. He didn’t say things he didn’t

mean. There was a moment of silence and then Gambino got a

call. He had to take it. He said he’d see me later at my place

and not to worry, he was cooking, which was a mixed blessing.

He was an excellent cook but not exactly efficient in the

kitchen. I’d be cleaning for days.

After we hung up, I walked across the sawdust-covered

floor and studied the Dodger memorabilia on the wall. Then I

sat back down, cut the pickled egg into quarters, then eighths,

and tried to put the slices back together again. But I couldn’t

make the yolks work.

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Rafe came back with red eyes. “Will took it well.”

“I’m glad.”

“I mean, as well as you could expect.”

“Of course.”

He sat down. “If you love Maren, you get used to surprises,

good ones and bad ones. That’s just the way it is. That’s just

what makes her Maren.”

He was still using the present tense. “I suppose he’ll want to

talk to the police,” I said.

“Yeah, he’s calling Detective Smarinsky right now. I never

even asked the cause of death.”

“And he’ll have to notify the rest of the family.”

“They’re dead. There is no other family. It’s just Will now.”

He cut into his pancakes so hard the knife scraped against the

plate. “Shit,” he said in disgust.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay.” He pushed his plate away and raked his fin-

gers through his hair. “And this whole thing messes up our

plans. It’s not like we have extra time here. The movie starts

shooting soon.”

“You’re going to be brilliant.”

“Maybe we could take just a day off,” he said, “and then get

back to what we were doing.”

“That’s fine.”

“I guess I need to get my head together or something.”

“Tell me more about Maren,” I said.

Rafe became very interested in my empty coffee cup. “Can I

get you a refill? You look like you need a refill. It’s good coffee.”

My face got hot. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You

don’t have to say anything.”

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He shook his head. “It’s just that I can’t believe this. I can’t

fucking believe this.” He slammed his fist on the table, hard.

“Why the hell is this happening?”

I thought of Gambino, always after me to be sensible. “I

think maybe we should go.”

“No!”

I looked at him.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Look, can we

just sit here for a little while longer?” he asked.

“Okay.”

Rafe twisted his lucky hat in his hands. He folded and un-

folded his napkin. Finally, he said, “We were inseparable.”

“You and Maren?”

He tore his napkin into neat strips and arranged them on

the scarred wooden tabletop. “It was me and Maren at first,

when we were just kids. Then it was Will and his girlfriend,

Lisa, too. Of course, I haven’t seen Maren in years and years.

Will’s barely seen her, either. We split up before I made my

first movie. God, it was so long ago. Back then,” he said, shak-

ing his head, “back then, though, we were unstoppable. The

four of us. Nobody could touch us.”

I didn’t quite get it.

He started to smile. “Do you know Maren was the one who

taught me to surf?”

I smiled back. “Really?”

“She wasn’t like other people. She’d be the only girl out

there at Lunada Bay, every single day. That’s on the peninsula,

the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where we grew up. Beautiful half-

moon cut out of limestone? You had to scale these high cliffs,

and brave the rocks just to get there. And deal with the surf

Nazis who thought they owned the place. Maren never so

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much as batted an eye at those guys. She’d be out there, every

storm season, where the waves would be breaking big—four,

five o’clock in the morning and still dark out—and nobody’s

watching the sunrise because they’re all watching her. She

liked to ride the waves that scared the shit out of everybody

else.”

“She sounds amazing.”

He looked at me curiously, then got up and threw the re-

mains of his napkin away. I followed him with both our trays

and dumped the contents into the receptacle. We walked out-

side. It was still early morning, but the sky was already choked

with smog.

“When you come right down to it,” Rafe said, “I don’t

know how amazing Maren was. She used to drive with her eyes

closed sometimes. I think she had a death wish.”

It was a strange thing to say, given the circumstances.

CHAPTER

SIX

Oh, honey, not my Norma Kamali coat from the eight-

ies!” I screamed, grabbing the scissors out of little

Alexander’s hands.

Mondays are hard, even under the best of circumstances.

And my nerves were more than a little frayed from the events

of the previous day.

“Bad tiger,” said Alexander. “Snip, snip.”

“He’s a leopard,” I replied, hanging the coat back up in my

closet. “A fake one.” Not that a three-year-old cared about my

conflicted position vis-à-vis fur.

“Let’s not play with my clothes, okay?” This kid could dec-

imate my wardrobe in no time if I let him. Distraction was the

thing. I’d learned that over the four hours and counting we’d

been together. You don’t want to say no; you want to propose

alternatives.

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I looked at Buster, my teacup poodle, snoring peacefully in

his little wicker bed. “I know! Let’s put makeup on the dog!”