The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (9 page)

“None, really. That’s why I wanted to get together. See if we could come up with something.”

“People get dumped all the time,” I said. “Average person probably gets dumped at least half a dozen times in their life.”

“Where’d you get that figure?”

“Same reliable source that said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

“We get this revenge stuff nailed down, maybe we can go after those fascists in Washington.”

I took a quick count. “I can give you eight times I was unceremoniously dumped before I—”

“Settled down?”

I smiled, nodded. “My experience is, sooner you get thoughts of them out of your head, the better off you are.”

“You ever been betrayed? Not just dumped, but betrayed.”

“Please. I know enough actresses. I don’t need drama from you too.”

“The whole time we were seeing each other he gave me this line about how happy he was that he met me, and he’d never been with anyone like me, and all that crap. And how he’d hardly ever wanted to be with one woman before, but he did with me. And all the while he was seeing other women, and mostly this one named Trixie. Trixie, for God’s sake, and what kind of name is that for a grown woman?”

“And you fell for it.”

“I was such a fucking idiot. Listen to this. He told me he was going to New York for a meeting and came back with a tan. Which of course I commented on, and he told me they moved the meeting to Miami at the last minute. And fucking idiot me believed him.” She shook her head.“I’ve done some checking since Saturday. He was in Cozumel with Trixie the slut.”

The waiter came by with our soup and tea. He heard the last bit. He wanted to stick around for more, but Samantha kept her mouth shut.

I stuck my spoon into the soup, looked at the bits of tofu and scallion swimming around the broth. “Love makes us stupid. Infatuation makes us even stupider. But, if I may be excused a when-you’ve-been-around-as-long-as-I-have moment, sometimes you have to learn stuff about relationships the hard way.”

“You never answered my question.”

“Which was?”

“Have you ever been betrayed?”

Sure I had. The Samoan Boyfriend Episode. “Once.”

“And you didn’t want to get back at her?”

“Of course I did. I even had a plan. This guy I was in a theater company with, he was an Adonis, smart, funny, the whole package. If I were gay I would have totally been in love with him. And I was going to pay him off to seduce this woman, and lead her on, and then crush her.”

“Did you do it?”

“I actually got as far as broaching the subject to him, but he wanted too much money. And I went away from that conversation and went home and realized how out of my mind I was to even think of such a thing.”

“Who gets the Mao’s Hometown?” said the waiter.

“I do,” I said, pushing my soup aside to make room. He left off Samantha’s Long March Camp-Fry, gave us each a quizzical look, marched off.

“Do you have a thing for this Ronnie chick?” Samantha said.

“Not at all. It’s more of a father-daughter thing. Or mentor-mentee, protégor-protégé, whatever you want to call it.”

I dug into the entrée, ate a few bites, said, “This is going to lead nowhere. Number of people he’s done wrong, you have to think if there were a way at him, someone would have found it by now.”

“Maybe they have. Maybe someone found out a deep dark secret about him and he paid them off to keep it quiet.”

I shoveled in another mouthful, followed it with a sip of tea. An oolong I never would have ordered in the pre-Mike days. “Samantha.”

Around a mouthful of vegetables she said, “Hmm?”

“I want you to forget about this.”

“You
want
me?”

“It’s bound to lead to more trouble.”

She poked her food with a chopstick. “Hey, I know. We could get him busted for drugs.”

Drugs? Wait a minute … “Were you at that party at his place, about three weeks ago?”

“No. I was in San Diego. A friend had an opening. But I’ll bet there was lots of coke around. There always is. If we knew a cop, we could set him up.”

“I know a cop. Well, an ex-cop.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“Getting him busted does nothing for Ronnie.”

“Oh. Her.”

“Here’s the problem. What you want to do is hurt Dennis. What I want to do is just threaten him with something that will compel him to give Ronnie her job back. We’re at cross purposes.”

“There’s got to be something we can come up with that’ll do both.”

“If there is, it’s going to take a more Machiavellian mind than mine to come up with it.”

“You think we’re wasting our time.”

“If you consider having a nice talk and a good meal wasting our time, then yeah. Though we’re not really doing justice to the meal. Samantha, this is stupid. We’re good people, you and me. We’re not the kind of people who pull stunts like what we’ve been talking about. So why don’t we just forget about it?”

“Okay. We’ll forget about it.”

A little later. Outside Mao’s. “Guess I’ll get going,” I said.

“And I guess I’ll get back to fooling with my paintings.” We looked at each other. I said, “You’re not really giving up on Dennis, are you?”

“Of course not. You?”

“No,” I said. “But it was a nice little facade while it lasted.”

After dinner—leftover Thai—the phone rang. I stood there.

“Going to answer it?” Gina said. It was the most she’d spoken to me since she got home.

“I suppose.” I stepped over and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Joe?”

“This is him. He.”

“It’s Dennis Lennox.”

“What do you want?”

“To straighten things out.”

“Really.”

“Look, I know some things have gone wrong, and they’re all my fault, and, like I said, I want to straighten them out.”

“Give Ronnie her part back, everything’s straightened, as far as I’m concerned.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “About what you did to her and me at your party?”

“That too. Look, I’d like to see you. Talk face to face. Explain my actions. Can you come to my house tonight at ten?”

“I’ll be there.” I hung up on him.

I told Gina where I was going. She grunted. I told her not to stay up. She said there wasn’t much chance of that.

I reached Dennis’s at ten to ten. I rang the bell. No one answered. Rang it again. Nothing.

“What a schmuck,” I said.

Another car arrived. A Miata. Ronnie stepped out of it. She came closer, cast a glare my way. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s good to see you too.”

She brushed past me, rang the doorbell, waited, pushed the button again.

I came up behind her. “I tried that already.”

She stared at the door.“You think he’s having fun with us?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. He’s probably watching from upstairs with night vision goggles. Hey! Dennis! You in there, you prick?”

Still no response. I banged on the door with my fist. Kicked it. Kicked it again.

“That’s probably not going to help,” Ronnie said.

“Testosterone.”

Another car came up the driveway. A VW Thing. It stopped and someone got out and the door slammed. The driver approached. Samantha. She was wearing a short red dress with trim that reflected the floodlights. It seemed too festive for the occasion. “Joe. And Ronnie, we met once, remember, Dennis had a—”

“I remember,” Ronnie said.

“Why are the two of you standing around out here?”

“Shithead’s not answering,” I said.

“That bastard.” She peered at the door like she was trying to open it through mind power. “He called you?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too,” Ronnie said.

We heard yet another car. In a few seconds a small sedan pulled in behind the Thing. A dome light went on, another door slammed, someone came near.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” Samantha said.

“What?” I said.

“It’s that Trixie bitch.”

That Trixie bitch was pretty, in a girlie-calendar way. Blond hair that, even in the dim light on Dennis Lennox’s front stoop, had clearly suffered from too many dye jobs. Slim, but with oversized breasts overflowing her hoochie-mama dress. She hadn’t mastered the art of walking on four-inch heels. At every step one or the other ankle threatened to buckle and drop her to the ground. The overall effect made me think of Ronnie before I remolded her. Though I’d never seen Ronnie carrying a shih tzu.

Trixie flounced up. “Why doesn’t someone ring the bell?” she said. Her voice was high, piercing, grating.

“We did,” Samantha said, with “you moronic bimbo” clearly implied.

“Oh.” She checked Samantha out. “I bet I know who you are.”

“Do you, now?”

“Uh-huh, and honey, if it makes you feel any better, he gave me the same treatment.”

“What? When?”

“Saturday.”

“That fucker. Same day he dumped me.” She thought a second. “Know what? It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Don’t take it out on me, okay? I had a root canal today and I feel like doggie doo.” She held the dog out in front of her. Its rear legs dangled. It looked bored, like it was used to such treatment. “Not that there’s anything wrong with doggie doo, Snoogums.”

Another car in the driveway. Another engine silenced. Dome light, door slam, footsteps. This time it was a young man. Medium height, thin face, good-looking in a delicate way. Dressed in shirt, sport jacket, jeans.

He came into the dull circle of light, took us all in, seemed about to say something. Then his hands went up in an I-give-up gesture and he shook his head.

“Yeah,” I said. “We all feel pretty much the same way.”

He looked us over, one by one. “He shit on all of you?”

“You got it.”

“What a dick.” He stepped toward the door, stopped, turned around. “You tried it, didn’t you? Which is why you’re all standing around out here.” He came closer, held out a hand. “Sean McKay.”

I shook with him and told him my name. He made the rounds, came back to me. It was clear he’d put me in charge. “So what do we do now?”

“See who else shows up. What’d he do to you?”

“Stole my script. You?”

“Fucked over someone I care about.” I glanced at Ronnie. She turned the other way.

“The bastard,” Sean McKay said.

“Seems to be the conventional wisdom.”

Everyone waited around until ten-fifteen. A consensus was reached: Dennis had staged a prank at our expense. He wasn’t even there.

Trixie and Sean McKay headed for their cars. She laughed too loud at something he said. She was resilient. I had to give her that.

“Everyone,” Ronnie said. “I heard something. Inside the door.”

I went over. Scratching sounds. Like an animal. And something that could have been a voice.

I said, “Somebody go after those two who’re leaving.” Samantha ran to retrieve them.

More noises inside. It sounded like someone was clawing their way up the door. Then the sound of a deadbolt being undone. A doorknob being turned.

The door popped ajar. I heard the muffled thud as whoever was on the other side crumpled back to the floor. I pushed the door, felt the resistance as I slowly shoved them aside. When the opening was wide enough I squeezed in and saw who was lying there. It was Dennis’s housekeeper Lu.

I knew Ronnie had a cell phone. I told her to call 911. I appropriated Sean McKay’s jacket for a pillow. The others made their way inside.

There wasn’t a whole lot of blood. Just enough to scare us. It was mostly on the back of Lu’s head. I found it when I tucked the jacket-pillow beneath it. A glance at the floor showed a trail of spots leading away.

Trixie was treating us all to a freak-out. She kept uttering little theatrical screams, muttering, “She’s all bloody,” over and over. She’d lost one of her shoes and listed dangerously to the left. She dropped Snoogums,and he ran in circles, yapping his head off.

Ronnie knelt beside me. “Got an ambulance on the way,” she said. She took a long look at Lu. “She going to be okay?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is she going into shock?” Sean McKay said.“People always go into shock when they’ve been hit in the head.”

I knew what had happened. Young Mister McKay had done this. He clobbered Lu and drove away and came back to mingle with the rest of us outside. Else how would he know she was hit in the head? I had him arrested, convicted, and executed before I remembered he could see the blood as well as I could.

Lu was breathing. Shallowly, but enough. Her eyes fluttered. “I think she’s coming around,” I said. “Someone get her some water. But don’t touch anything. If you have to, use gloves.”

Ronnie gave me a look. Like, do you see any gloves around here?

Lu’s eyes were open most of the time now. Just the occasional series of blinks. They were directed at the ceiling, though. Not on anything going on around her.

Sean came running up. He had a glass of water. He wore yellow rubber dishwashing gloves. He saw me looking. “Under the sink,” he said. “Seemed like a good place to check.”

“Good job,” I said.

Some spark of awareness came to Lu’s eyes. She said something I couldn’t make out.

“Don’t try to talk,” I said.

More malformed words. “Don’t—”

The word she interrupted me with was clear as a bell. “Dennis.”

“Dennis did this?”

Something that could have been a shake of her head. “In den. Dennis in den.” And she was out again.

Ronnie’s eyes caught mine. Then Sean McKay’s. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Everyone’s mindset was that Dennis was playing a trick on us all. He was out partying with his latest girlfriend while we were standing around like befuddled sheep.

But we were all wrong. He was right there.

I got up, left Lu in Ronnie’s charge. Followed the spots of blood. They went across the big entrance hall, into the rooms beyond. Sean McKay—still wearing his Playtex gloves—was behind me.

The spots continued down the hall. Joe Portugal, ace detective, followed the trail of blood.

One of the doors was open. The drops led right to it. It was a familiar room. The one where I’d met Dennis Lennox. The one with the Golden Globe. The den.