The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (14 page)

“One sec.” There was another voice, someone asking about prints, and Palmisano said,
yeah, check the outside of the window too,
then came back on. “Sorry. I’m on a scene. Guy broke into a building in Studio City, killed a security guard.”
“Okay . . .”
“Reason I’m calling—guess whose office we found the body in?”

Daniel scooped up another forkful of eggs, chewed mechanically. Stared out the Denny’s window to Sepulveda. From a huge billboard, a surly black dude pointed a gun at him, an ad for an upcoming movie called
Die Today.
The guy’s name was Too G. Mom and Pop G must be so proud.

“More coffee?”
He nodded, pushed his mug forward.
“You’re going to vibrate out of here.”
“Huh?”
“From all the coffee.” The waitress was a Latina with a pretty

At first, he’d been furious with the detective, the asshole gaming him. Trying to lure him in, like he was a moron, like he didn’t know that the first moment he set foot in a police station was the last moment he’d have a choice in the matter. But he’d let the guy think he was scripting the conversation, and played for information.

He hadn’t expected to hear about Laney, though. His beautiful girl, drifting in the cold currents of the Pacific. Dark hair waving like seaweed, body tumbling slow—
stop.

But now he had something to live for. Someone had killed his wife. There was a lot he still didn’t understand, but one thing he knew for certain—hell, the cop had all but told him—was that the police weren’t investigating. The sheriffs were so sure they had their man that they were letting everything else slip through the cracks. Well, he could do something about that.

The waitress set his check on the edge of the table, “For whenever,” and breezed away. Daniel slurped his coffee, finished his bacon. He collected his new cell phone—a prepaid he’d bought at a gas station—and hit the bathroom. Splashed cold water on his face and finger-combed his hair, used paper towels to sponge-bathe his armpits. Then he walked out into a bright blue morning, Los Angeles sick with sunlight, same as ever. He unlocked the BMW, got in.

Nine times out of ten, when a wife is murdered, the husband is involved.
Okay. So what about that tenth time? What then?
Think like a writer. Why do people kill?
Love and money, the old song went. It seemed like money was some sort of factor, given the jewelry Laney had bought. But that didn’t help him much, or at least wouldn’t until his memory returned.
Which left love. And on that one, he did have a thought.
He started the car and headed north. Navigating on autopilot, innately knowing how the streets connected, which were the fastest routes. Some of the places he passed seemed familiar—a bar he might have haunted, a café with a patio that he could almost remember the view from. He could feel the pressure of his memories, the way they surged and throbbed behind the levee his unconscious had erected to protect him from himself. Maybe the levee would give on its own; maybe he needed more information. Maybe he needed to find the person who had done this.
A lot of maybes. But that was the way things were for now. And he was tired of reacting. It was time to get proactive.
Then he turned the corner, and saw Laney looking at him.
The studio wall was thirty feet high, not tall enough to hide the enormous soundstages beyond. But it did serve nicely to display enormous billboards of the major FOX shows:
American Idol
,
The Simpsons
,
. . .
and
Candy Girls.
The shot was of Laney with her “sisters,” the redhead smiling and innocent, the blonde with a scheming seductive look, and Laney smiling that head-cocked Emily Sweet Special.
Daniel stared up at his dead wife. Wasn’t there a point where life couldn’t get more surreal?
Apparently not. As he watched, a guy in a spacesuit drove a battered Tercel up to security and rolled down his window, passing something to the guard. A moment later, the gate went up and the spaceman drove through. The guard wiped his brow, hitched his belt, and trundled back to his booth.
Daniel sucked air through his teeth, stared across the street. Cars came and went, pausing at the gate in both directions. He thought of the tabloid lines he’d read last night, all that dirty laundry.
“Laney was a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul. Everyone adored her. Me? I loved her.”
Robert Cameron. Her “hunky costar.” The one that fuck Perez Hilton had said she was rumored to be having an affair with, that
People
magazine had shown pictures of with Laney, the two of them shot in a nightclub, dancing one of those sexy Latin dances.
He didn’t want to believe that she might have strayed. But if nine times out of ten the husband was to blame, maybe on the tenth, it was the lover. It was the kind of obvious angle the cops should have followed up on, but apparently hadn’t, because they were certain Daniel was to blame.
“Laney was a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul. Everyone adored her. Me? I loved her.”
“I bet you did,” Daniel said. The light changed, and he pulled away. His wife’s eyes hung in his rearview mirror.
But how to get to Cameron? The man’s phone number and address would be unlisted. No way Daniel could stake out the studio and watch for him to leave. For one thing, security would notice; for another, the lot was
big
. Who knew how many entrances it had, which one Cameron used, or what he drove. So what then, Star Maps?
Well, he couldn’t risk being himself. Fine. Then he had to be somebody else. He could show up at a cattle call, try to land a part as an extra. The studios always needed bodies. But that could take a long time. Besides, he had to imagine those people were thoroughly handled—no one wanted aspiring writers tracking down Al Pacino to thrust a script into his hand.
No, he needed to have reasonably free access. Who came and went on the lot? Who didn’t work there, but wouldn’t draw attention? Who did they let in, then not look at?
Got it.
Daniel gunned the car.

The uniform supply place was at the south end of downtown, and from the outside looked like a warehouse, blank walls and loading docks. The place was in the shadow of the 10. Traffic was a steady roar, and the air was exhaust.

The showroom took up only a portion of the whole, but even so, it was startling. Racks and racks and racks of outfits, the kind he’d never really thought about. Cops had to get the uniforms somewhere, he supposed. And firemen, and chefs, and maids . . .

He fingered a police uniform, thought about maybe changing his plan. The uniform was incomplete, of course; it didn’t have the flashing or the insignia. But what average citizen would think to look for those things?

No. People look at policemen
. He wanted to be invisible. In a section toward the back, he found a pair of shiny gray slacks. Polyester to avoid ironing, cut in a distinctly unfashionable style, and with a vertical stripe of shiny blue running up the leg. They were hideous. He grabbed them.
Next was a short-sleeve polo: diamond knit, the texture of paper towel, bright yellow with blue stripes ringing the collar and the sleeves. Perfect. He paid, then went looking for a screen printing shop.

He’d gotten everything he needed by eleven, so he killed an hour at a communal table in a Coffee Beanery, between an actor reviewing headshot possibilities and a well-dressed woman sipping a latte and reading a Robert Ludlum novel. Daniel spent the time trying passwords on the laptop, but none worked.

Shortly before noon, he pulled up to the studio gate. The lunch rush had cars going in both directions, and it took a couple of minutes before he reached the security booth.

He left his sunglasses on, rolled down the window. “Hey man. Delivery for,” he paused, grabbed the clipboard from the seat beside him. “Robert Cameron.”

“Name?”
“Cameron, C-A-M—”
“No, your name.”
“Oh, my name’s Jay Dobry, but it should be under Arrow Couriers.” He pointed to the logo on his bright yellow polo shirt. The guy at the screen printing shop had done nice work with it, put the words in italics with little speed trails following them.

The guard hoisted his own clipboard, scanned it, shook his head. “I don’t see—”
“Yeah, it was expedited. They’d have called down.”
“Let me check.” He stepped back into the booth. Daniel fiddled with the radio, trying to look bored. A moment later, the guard returned. “No, no badge for Arrow. You’re going to need to—”
“Look, man, my boss called me, said it was absolutely urgent I pick this up,” he hoisted a plastic bag with the logo of a vitamin store on it, “and rush it down before lunch. Something about Mr. Cameron’s agent threatening to pull him if he didn’t get this?”
“What is it?”
Daniel laughed, pulled the bottle from the bag and read aloud. “A natural probiotic supplement of papaya and garlic from the Colombian Andes that helps metabolize protein, remove toxins, and reduce bloat.” He passed it over, and the man looked at it.
“So what’s the rush?”
“I just drive, man.”
The guard hesitated, and Daniel shrugged. “You want to call my boss, he can call the agent, you guys can figure it out, but I’m going to need you to sign to prove that I was here on time. Cameron’s agent paid for the Urgent Response Package, which means within an hour, and it’s at,” he looked at the dashboard clock, “fifty-seven minutes now, dude, and so if you want to hold it, that’s up to you, but I’m not getting caught in the middle, you know?”
Someone honked, and the guard looked up, made a conciliatory gesture to a Porsche. Then he sighed, passed the diet pills back to Daniel. “Stage sixteen. You know where you’re going?”
“Dude, I’m here all the time.”
“All right. Next time, make sure they call first, okay?” He reached into the guardhouse, pulled out a purple parking pass. Daniel tossed it on his dash, then drove through the open gate, smiling to himself. A courier in a BMW rush-delivering diet pills. Hollywood.
The studio lot unfolded in broad avenues and vast, cream-colored soundstages with art deco façades and an air of competent activity. Crews dressed hipster-chic and flannel-grunge carried lights and cables while suits buzzed about in golf carts. Rows of white trailers lined up like race horses in front of a hundred-foot-tall mural of Marilyn Monroe lounging against some guy. He passed through a section of suburban America, complete with broad grass lawns, a church, and a bandstand in a small park. Looking one direction, he half expected to see kids playing tag; in the other, massive windowless warehouses like the Manhattan Project.
He had the same muscle memory pull of directions, and it took only moments to find the correct stage. Apart from the number at the top, it looked just like the others, a colossal block plunked down from space. He pulled into a parking garage and killed the engine. The shade cooled the afternoon, brought relief to his scrabbling headache.
Nice work. You’re super-fly. Now what?
The engine ticked. He rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and middle finger.
Well, now you get out of the car and ask Robert Cameron if he was sleeping with your wife, and if he killed her.
Or if he was sleeping with your wife, and when you found out,
you
killed her.
As an actress, Laney would have been surrounded by ridiculously attractive men. Glamorous guys, millionaire actors. She would have had to kiss them—hell, he’d seen her kissing Robert Cameron as Emily Sweet on
Candy Girls.
Long shooting schedules, press junkets, time on the road together. An affair was hardly out of the question. Hollywood marriages were a running joke.
A wave of black despair rolled over him. Not so much at the thought of a betrayal—or not only at that—but at the larger situation. Whether she’d cheated, whether she hadn’t, it didn’t change his circumstances. Neither brought her back from the dead. If she and Robert had been sleeping together, that might provide a motive for the man to murder her. Maybe. Which would get the cops off Daniel’s ass, and let him return to . . . what?
A house he didn’t remember?
A job writing for the show his wife used to star in?
What was his life now? What would he make of it?
On his long trip across the belly of America, he had played a game, inventing possible identities: he was a firefighter with a gambling addiction; he was a homosexual insurance salesman with a passion for soccer; he was a songwriter living off royalties from penning “Macarena.” Trying on selves like clothing. If one didn’t fit, if it chafed or was cut wrong, he tossed it aside and reached for the next. But now he was closing in on the hard fact that the options weren’t limitless. He had been
someone
before. That person had been the result of a lifetime of choices, good and bad. And like it or not, he was drawing closer to that identity now. Not the freedom of infinite variety, but the tyranny of a decision made, a path walked, a life lived.
What if he didn’t like the view?
Then you’ll deal with it. You’ll make changes. You’ll take up fucking yoga. Whatever. Right now, stick to the plan. Do what the police won’t.
He climbed out of the car, headed for the stairs.
Find out who killed your wife.
Coming to the studio was a risk. But he quickly discovered that no one really looked at a man carrying a clipboard and wearing gray slacks and a bright yellow shirt. His new haircut and fake tan probably helped, but most people immediately classified him as a member of a different caste, and didn’t spare more than a cursory glance. He adopted a blankly busy expression and walked with purpose. It wouldn’t fly if he bumped into someone who knew him well, but it was as close to invisible as he could manage.
This section of the lot was all concrete and buildings, none of the carefully maintained greenery of faux-America. Stage 16 had a marked entrance, but he figured there would probably be another round of security. Halfway down the enormous building, he found a tall cargo door rolled open, with a semi backed up to unload. Daniel nodded at a black-clad woman smoking a cigarette, dodged around a costume rack, and stepped out of the street—
—into his front yard.
He stopped.
The set in front of him was the truncated exterior of a house. Not just any house, though. His house. The one in Malibu.
This version ended twelve feet off the ground. Above hung a light grid of black pipe, two dozen glowing lamps flooding the porch with soft sunset colors, a sort of hyper-clarity that made the fantasy house seem more real than the world surrounding it: the cavernous height of the soundstage, the dolly track laid on the floor, the craft services table stocked with sandwich meat and protein bars and vitamin water, the people buzzing about
—
the afternoon he and Laney closed on the place in Malibu, they’d driven straight from the lawyer’s office and wandered giggling around their new home. The first either had ever owned, and how lovely that it was the one they’d shot B-roll of in the early days. The one Cindi, the art director, claimed had the perfect
Candy Girls
energy. Malibu instead of Venice, but who would believe aspiring starlets lived in Malibu, so he’d rewritten reality, as he was paid to. A few taps of his fingers on the keyboard had lifted the house and whirled it south, plunked it down ready for the Sisters Sweet to live in. And now, two years later, paychecks from the show provided the deposit to buy the real thing. Reality in a feedback loop. A writer and a once-aspiring actress buying their home with money from a show that used the house as home for an aspiring actress scripted by that writer—
He shook his head. The memory had come strong as a vision, and he wished he were alone, that he could sit and stare at the façade of life and try to peer behind it. But he wasn’t, and it was only a matter of time before someone working at the other end of the soundstage recognized him.
Daniel raised his clipboard at an angle that screened his face, as if he were squinting to make out handwriting. Over the top edge, he scanned the people milling around his house. Though he probably knew them all, none of them were cast members. All crew then, setting up for a sequence.
He turned back the way he’d come and walked around the side of the soundstage until he reached the end, where a handful of trailers were parked. The third one had
_{ROBERT CAMERON}
stenciled on the door. He took a breath, rocked his shoulders back, and knocked. “Arrow Courier. I have a package for you.”
“It’s open.”
With a glance over his shoulder—no one around—Daniel opened the door and stepped inside. The trailer was nicely outfitted: leather couches, a side bar with scotch and glasses, a Bowflex nestled in the corner. Robert Cameron sat at the table, script pages in front of him. He had a stone jaw and dark hair, wore expensive jeans and a thin cashmere sweater. “Need me to sign—” Trailing off as their eyes met. “
Daniel?
”
Daniel closed the door behind him, took in the room, the actor. The guy was preposterously handsome, his features even, a hint of stubble, the kind of eyes you noticed the color of. Daniel imagined him kissing Laney, her rising up on tiptoes, pressing against his muscled body, and the thoughts were bitter.
“My god.” Something washed across the man’s face, a surge of emotion it was hard to read. Surprise? Guilt? Fear? Hard to say. The first character every actor learned to play was himself. The expression was quickly supplanted by a wide grin. “I’m so glad to see you. Where have you been? Everyone has been looking for you.”
“It’s complicated,” Daniel said.
“I bet.” Robert rose, looked him up and down. “What are you wearing?”
“Yeah, I . . .” He gestured at his courier outfit. Daniel tried on a smile, said, “Sorry about this. I needed to talk to you, but I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You could have called. My god, ever since the accident, everyone thinks—I mean . . .”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Of
course
you didn’t.”
Something in Daniel loosened. To hear it from someone else felt wonderful.
“I was just about to order lunch.” The man walking over to a desk. “Let me get you something, you can tell me all about it. Sushi okay?”
“Umm. Fine.” He glanced around, unsure what to do next. The actor picked up the phone, began to dial, his fingers shaking. In Daniel’s fantasies, the man had come at him fists flying, or else had cowered, guilt in his eyes. The last thing he had expected was this affable conversation, an offer of lunch—
Daniel lunged forward, knocking over a chair, and jammed down the button to hang up the phone. Robert looked up, the mask of camaraderie gone.
“Calling security?”
“I . . . Of course not.” The words falling lame. “Just ordering—”
“You thought you’d play nice, keep me busy while they came to get me.”
Slowly, the man hung up. “What do you want?”
“I want to hear about you and Laney.”
“What are you—”
“You’ve been telling the tabloids that you loved her. Tell me.” He knew that the actor wasn’t going to come out and admit to her murder. But Daniel wasn’t a cop. He didn’t need that. He just needed the man to slip, to let out one careless confirmation of impropriety, one hint of an affair. Bluffing was his best option. “I want to hear how much you loved my wife.”
Robert seemed perplexed. “She was my best friend.”
Uh-huh
. “Your costar.”
“Yes.”
“Long hours. Lousy shooting schedule. All that time together. Must have been nice to have such a good friend to help pass the time.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I know about the two of you.”
Blink. Wince the tiniest bit. I’m watching.
“Laney told me before she died.”
“Told you what?”
“About the affair.”
“The affair?”
“You and her.” He stared at the man’s eyes, watching for anything, any hint of hesitation, any sideways dart.
What he didn’t expect was for Robert Cameron to break out laughing. “How much have you had to drink today?”
“Don’t you lie to me, mother—”
“Is this a joke?” Robert shook his head. “I knew you were an asshole, but I never thought you were that kind of asshole.”
“What kind is that,
Bob
?”
“The redneck kind who thinks sexuality is multiple choice. I mean, really. I know you’re from cow country, but this is beneath you.”
“What are you—what?”
Robert sighed, reached for a frame on the desk, handed it to him. “Remember Alan?” The photo showed the actor and a blond guy with surfer hair, his arm slipped around Robert’s lower back, the tips of his fingers resting on the curve of a hip.
Daniel felt a flush come into his face. “You’re saying—”
“Oh for god’s sake. It’s not something to try on a Saturday night. I don’t just browse a little man-on-man porn to spice up my private time. I’m not gay when the wife isn’t looking.” Robert took the picture back, glanced at it before setting it down. “Yes, I loved your wife. Laney was funny and smart and way out of your league. But of
course
I wasn’t sleeping with her, you homophobe.”
It should have been a relief. And on one level, it was. Sure, it assuaged his ego, but more than that, he didn’t want to believe that she had been unhappy. That he had bored her, or hurt her, or driven her away. That the life he’d seen in their house was a lie. He had little enough to believe in. If he couldn’t believe in them, he was done.
So he was glad that she hadn’t been sleeping with Robert. But now the problem was that once again he had no idea what to do. Ever since he’d decided Robert Cameron might have been responsible for Laney’s death, he’d had a purpose, and a reason to believe in his own innocence. Now that was gone.
“I’m sorry. It’s not that at all, I promise. I just . . .” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“You know I’m gay. You used to tease Laney about being a fag hag. You planning to just forget that inconvenient fact so you can write an ending in your head that makes things easier on you? She’s dead, so she must have been cheating on you, because that would make her loss easier to bear?” Robert shook his head. “I’m sorry, Daniel, I really am, but you’re not the only one who’s sad. I loved her too. And I won’t let you mess up her memory just to make yourself feel better.”
“Look, it’s not that. I really didn’t remember. I’ve got—I know this is hard to understand, but I’m . . . I’m . . .” Daniel found he couldn’t say the words. He didn’t want to tell Robert about his amnesia. Maybe it wouldn’t matter, but that secret was all that he had, and he was reluctant to give it up. Plus there was a trace of shame in it too. Shame at not knowing who he was, and at the way he’d come off, as a small-minded homophobe revising history. “Never mind.”