The Crime Writer (aka I See You) (2007) Read online

  As Big Brontell began stitching me with surprising grace and care, I kept my gaze on those six brown hairs, grasping for solutions, options, new avenues. "Why can't you have any brothers who are criminalists?"

  Big Brontell said, "We got plenty who are criminals."

  He finished, and I thanked him and walked them down. At the door Chic set his hands on my shoulders and leaned forward so our foreheads almost touched. "You keep that gun near and call if you need me, hear?"

  "I hear."

  "You're splashing through dangerous waters, Drew-Drew. Might want to slow down for a time, drift with the currents."

  "If I can just get one of those hairs run for DNA, I'm thinking I can close this whole thing up."

  Chic smiled knowingly; I rarely said anything that surprised him. He jerked his head, indicating the sunset that was now my right eye. "Juss remember," he said, "your best thinking got you here."

  Chapter 34

  After Chic and Big Brontell left, I couldn't make progress writing because I didn't know how to make progress on the case. I sat at my desk, staring at the blinking cursor, caught up to my present (1).

  Six hairs ready to be run for DNA, a murder case maybe two at stake, and nary a criminalist in sight. The way I'd attained the hairs breaking and entering, assault and battery had compromised me, leaving me vulnerable to arrest, lawsuits, and psychopath retaliation. I could hardly claim self-defense for the pen stabbing when I'd put myself in a situation where, in any reasonable red state, Mort could have shot me with impunity. Lost in his own private tragedy, Lloyd was unwilling to help. Cal had made clear he could do no more . prying on my behalf. Kaden and Delveckio hadn't -been fond of me before I'd ignored their latest round of warnings by playing incompetent hair burglar, and they'd likely relish the chance to get those black-steel bracelets around my wrists again.

  I clicked through the consultants list in my Palm-Pilot, hoping there was someone I'd overlooked (2). If so, how would that introduction go exactly? I ripped some hairs out of a murder suspect's head and was wondering if you could run them. This is Andrew Danner, by the way. You might remember me from the tabloids.

  .

  Note 1: No one shall be admitted' into the theater during the riveting writer's block sequence.

  Note 2: Think outside the box' Get the hair run some other way. You're a writer. With talented friends and odd experts and bizarre people youve met along the way. Bribe a criminalist in a remote lab. Call a science teacher who heads up the CSI society at Spoiled Brat High. Something.

  .

  Thoughts of Caroline dissolved my sense of isolation. I recalled the way she'd taken my hand briefly last night as I'd walked her out, as if she were practicing. Today's movies and billboards glorified unreasonably beautiful standards, but there was a thin line between perfection and blandness (3). With looks, as with personalities, I'd take striking over standard any day (4).

  .

  Note 3: Right, and the Greeks carved busts of homely Athenians.

  Note 4: Jackie Collins phoned. She wants her sentence back.

  .

  Evening mist had settled through the Valley, turning the northern hills to bruises. It had darkened in a hurry, the sun already lost behind the Santa Susanas. I put my hand on the solid grip of the loaded .22, looking for reassurance. I had promised to bring the pistol in to Parker Center, but now my black eye would raise more questions than I could answer. Plus, in light of my hallway tango with Mort, there was no way I was leaving myself unarmed. He could be belly-down on the hill right now, hidden in the ample slopes of ivy, fixing that diabolical gleam on me and awaiting an opening.

  In the hall Xena snored vigilantly, working off the southwestern sausages I'd fried up for her.

  My cell phone rang, a welcome distraction, and I snapped it open to hear Preston's voice. I'd left him a message encapsulating the latest.

  "What's happening?" he asked eagerly?

  "I don't know."

  "Read ahead."

  "Can you help me. I'm stuck."

  "Of course. I'm coming over."

  "Not sure I'm in the mood for your editorial attention."

  But he'd already hung up (5).

  .

  .

  Note 5: "You may not be in the mood," he said, "but it sounds like you require it."

  The cursor continued to wink at me, awaiting my next move (6).

  .

  Note 6: Your next move, while challenging, is not unclear: You need to get an illegally obtained hair analyzed. Here is your assignment, as doggedd protagonist How can you meet this challenge in a manner unique to you? In a way that draws upon who you are or, better, in a way that only you can?

  .

  "Tell me about it," I said.

  My gaze lifted from the pages, stained with Preston's stereotype red, to his face. "Spoiled Brat High?"

  "I was going for Harvard-Westlake but blanked on the name." He drained his glass and set it down, completing his collection on my coffee table. Now that I'd felt the mood in his condo, I understood better why he dropped by at every opportunity. Stretching, he rose from the couch, not seeming to note the tufts of stuffing clinging to his pants. He turned down the volume on the evening news, which, refreshingly, didn't include me, and gathered his various stacks of papers.

  He paused beside me on his way out and said archly, "I edit you hard because I care."

  "I could warm my hands on your affection."

  "Call if I can be of further assistance."

  "Further?"

  "Of course. 'Farther' is for distance."

  "Never mind."

  He disappeared from the room, leaving behind the bottle of Havana Club, which, down to its last drops, was no longer worth hiding. I sank into my reading chair, which alone had been spared Xena's wrath, and propped my feet on the ottoman. The news jingle gave way to a commercial for Chain of Command a coveted fifteen-second spot my publisher had refused to grant me before I'd been indicted for murder. Marketing had chosen a disturbing publicity still of my face, which looked somewhere between angry and constipated, floating eerily above the cover of my most recent novel.

  Next, adhering to some bizarre karmic logic, the familiar drumbeat opening of the main title sequence of Aiden's War. Here was Johnny Ordean tackling a street hustler, there ducking a roundhouse thrown by an unappealing Arab. Looking noticeably more svelte than he had in his role as Father Derek Chainer, Johnny stopped for a zoom close-up as he did weekly, or nightly if you had a dish.

  I flashed on the scene I'd caught when I was at the bar with Caroline Johnny crouching over a corpse, studying the bullet casing he'd impaled on a paper clip. HUSTLE THIS TO FORENSICS THE CASING NOT THE HOT DOG.

  I shuffled through the pages, finding Preston's final note. Then I tugged my cell phone from my pocket and dialed.

  Over the pulsing beat of club music, a guy with a strong Brooklyn accent: "Johnny Ordean's phone."

  Ever since Aiden's Law had racked up enough episodes for a DVD box set, Johnny had assumed the affectation of unavailability, putting nine layers of entourage between himself and others.

  "Surprisingly," I said, "I'm calling for Johnny. This is Drew Danner."

  "Andrew Danner? The . . . ?"

  "Murderer," I said. "Sure. That's me."

  Animated shouting, then Johnny's voice, hoarse and loud: "Drew? That you? Crazy days, bro. Crazy days. You kill that broad?"

  "Twice."

  "Drastic." Johnny partook vigorously of the bad slang that seemed to sweep through L.A. every other season like a crimson tide.

  "How's it going?"

  "Solid. The show's kickin'. We're doing a spin-off next year."

  "Aiden's Law Omaha?"

  "Very funny, bro. It's called Mary's Rule, and the sister "

  "Listen, I need a favor. You still have criminalists on staff as expert consultants?"

  "Yeah, a handful."

  "I have a hair that I need to get run by a crime lab. It could prove me innocen
t." Of course, it wouldn't prove me innocent, but I was trying to feed him the kind of dialogue to which he was accustomed to responding. "I need to know who it belongs to."

  "Like a clue?" Noticeable excitement in his voice.

  "Yeah, Johnny. Like a clue. Can you have one of your guys do it?"

  "Sure, I'll take it in to them, say I need to see how it works for an episode idea I'm developing. They love walking me through that stuff at the lab. When you need it by?"

  "As soon as possible. It's hard for me to describe how important this is."

  "Bring the hair by Flux. It's a closed party I'll have you put on the list. I'll call one of the consultants, have him check out the hair tonight."

  "You can get that done? Tonight?"

  "I'm Johnny Ordean. I can get anything done."

  Chapter 35

  Flux is the Hollywood club of the minute, trending hot with wheatgrass martinis, bamboo walls, and a bump-and-grind DJ beat ideal for ecstasy humpers, film-industry underlings, and clubbies. I paid twenty bucks to park in a space fit for a lawn mower and legged it down Sunset.

  Beneath every windshield wiper, a glossy postcard hawking bad theater. At every street corner, a woman stomping her boots against the cold. Even at this hour, bodies spilled from gyms, where would-be scribblers and bit players simulated honest work. Bodies so sculpted and chiseled they seem of a different species, bodies that have endless time to devote to themselves, to do that extra six sets of ten on the cable pull that defines the inner prong of the triceps or the outer slab of the quad. I used to have a body like that, a lesser model built from a matching mind-set before both grew too weary to keep up. I walked on, taking in the night, these bits of a past persona I never quite inhabited. The tangy scent of deodorant, candy-colored iPods strapped to glistening arms, steam lifting from overheated Dri-FIT shirts like cartoon sizzle.

  The velvet ropes that in other, more reasonable cities are consigned to museums and musicals sprout from the sidewalk like futuristic shrubs. Massed at the imaginary walls before the bouncers are dime-store vixens and cultivated tough guys. Everyone is in costume; everyone has a getup; it's perennial Halloween. Pearl Jam plaid, skullcap chic, scruff faces and denim vests cut to show off shoulder tats. A girl, for no reason, wears a Gatsby cap and a wide tie snaking into a 1920s vest. Even the firemen shuffling through the bars are done up and done down, T-shirts announcing their stations, blond wisps grown just long enough to curl out the bottoms of their stocking caps, models in search of calendars. They are all children, and yet they are all adults. They unpack from Jettas and Navigators and the occasional Lotus. They cross streets in packs, like wolves, sipping Vitawaters and smoking American Spirits, yammering on cell phones with customized bleats and chimes, the night lit with a psychedelic rainbow of LED screens cotton-candy pink, toilet-bowl blue, horror-show green.

  L.A. is a city of memorable faces. Even the unattractive character actors have that certain something, that exemplification of type. The others, too, lodge in the mind. The near misses. All lacking that extra it that would catapult them, that would mean they're not here at this place with these people, with you and me. Perky girl in a White Sox cap, nose-job-enhanced but not quite there. The wrestler who won best smile at Wichita High. The cheerleading captain who gave great backseat head in Short Hills. They come like pioneers, bringing abdominal six-packs and twenty-two waists and little else, seekers of prepackaged glory without the talent for Broadway or the balls for the service. L.A. is the edge of the American dream, the farthest your hopes can carry you before you topple into the Pacific, Icarus without water wings. And yet still they come. They come out and crowd the cliff edges, penguins above dangerous waters.

  L.A. will devour them. It will crush them into inconsequentiality, grind them into a paste and smear them through the city's forgotten alleys. They will clip coupons and pre-party to save money on bar tabs. They will inhabit dojos and Coffee Beans during working hours sunny L.A.'s businesses thrive with patronage from the idle keeping their empty audition hours open and they'll scour online job sites for graveyard shifts that don't exist. They will get gigs as trainers and waiters and Cuervo girls, and their friends will mumble, That's cool, that's cool. They'll turn into third-rate entrepreneurs, making bamboo purses, designing jewelry in Reseda, marketing a blue-colored vodka in college bars. Their days must be open for auditions that come less and less frequently, but just when they're about to lose hope, they'll land Laura in a small-theater production of The Glass Menagerie and the rush and promise will fuel ungainful employment for another few years. And then, if they haven't wised up and beat a retreat to Billings or Sioux City, someone will offer them a pinch of escapism or a skin flick not porn but tasteful erotica and so the next downward spiral will begin. And new meat arrives by the busload. It pours out of LAX and off the freeways, chattel for the abattoir, oxen groomed for the altar.

  I reached Flux, fighting through a mosh pit of wannabes mobbing the unmarked double doors. No one has a name here. They are all "dawg" and "baby doll." They gain position in the scrum by working in concert, like raptors, with the friends they'll be only too eager to drop once they book their first pilot. They call out to the bouncer using his first name, which they've researched. Their boss's brother knows the bartender, or their brother's boss knows the owner. They swell and shove politely, and a chirpy girl with a clipboard feigns exasperation through her ecstasy of purpose and rank, chiding them and distributing wristbands as if feeding chimps at a zoo. A few older women, indistinguishable from prostitutes by garb and makeup, have ceded bitchiness with their age; they can no longer compete directly. Instead they switch strategies, cooing support at the czarina working the door. That poor girl. Look, she's all alone managing the line. You go, honey. You tell them. Still, they do not curry enough goodwill to pass Go. The girl with the clipboard knows their type, knows that in a different life they've blown smoke in her face at a cattle call or discarded her head shot while working nights filing in a casting office.

  Consigned to club-line purgatory, the crowdlings bicker and pop pills and talk loudly of embellished career developments and pretend not to be where they are, waiting outside in the bitter Hollywood night. That is where they will wait, night after night. And then one day Fame will pluck one of these poor unfortunate souls and elevate her like a priestess to the top of the ziggurat, and thenceforth, she will never know cordon ropes and lines and bouncers named Ricky, and it will make it worth it for everyone else who still does.

  Chic's voice, like warning bells in my head: Always easier to take somebody else's inventory.

  What made me any different? About how I got here? Where I'd wound up?

  A shorter bus ride and a longer stain.

  Then what? Envy? I thought I'd sworn off that with the single-barrel bourbon. Envy for what? The exuberance? The hopefulness? The youth? As Chic had said, life leaves you behind. By Hollywood standards I was long in the tooth, like Morton Frankel. I had a few successes under my belt and access to rooms behind some of the city's locked doors as a writer, as an alleged murderer in a way that others might envy, but I'd have traded it in a stockbroker's minute to be back on the other side, out in the unforgiving night, with all my solutions lying inside. I'd have traded it all to believe in the myth once again.

  But instead I am here to deliver a hair.

  I cut through the crowd, and it yielded to my apathy. Inside, over an ungodly remix beat, some kid covered Bob Seger without the grit or gravitas.

  "Drew Danner," I told the girl at the door. "I'm with Johnny Ordean."

  At both names the frontmost constituents of the throng stilled and the girl dropped the clipboard against her thigh, revealing it for the prop that it was, and wordlessly unhooked the maroon rope.

  Sliced-and-diced Seger had given way to pump-and-hump rhythm. Threesomes were freaking under seizure-inducing lights. I find me bitches left and right. I find me bitches every night. Production-development girls in Chanel grooved in a circle, their obli
vious movement an inadvertently droll endorsement of the lyrics. The club had a kind of magnetic energy that pointed to the rear corner, where indeed I found Johnny Ordean and his franchise face. Fulfilling the no-neck contingency of the entourage, his cousin sat deep in the booth, hammering cigarettes into his face one after another.

  He slid out and I slid in. Johnny wrapped an arm around my shoulders, raised his brows at my vibrant eye, and gave my neck a squeeze like an old-school mobster. Playing the part, I reached inside my jacket pocket, removed the envelope, and dropped it on the table like a payoff. The envelope held a Ziploc containing a single specimen of Morton Frankel's hair. The others I was saving for a rainy day.

  Johnny wound his finger in the air, a let's-get-moving gesture, and his cousin shifted the cig from one end of his mouth to the other and pressed a cell phone to his sweaty cheek.

  "Fast and quiet," I said.

  Johnny squeezed my neck again.

  "And thank you."

  "Of course, bro. What good is celebrity if you can't put it to work?"

  It was, I thought, an excellent question.

  Chapter 36

  Far from the madding crowd, I sat like a tailgater on my little rented rectangle of Hollywood asphalt and dialed my cell phone.

  "I'd like to see you," I said. "I'm in your neck of the woods."

  "Ah, yes," she said, "I can hear the excess in the background."

  The parking-lot attendant gave me a peculiar look as I pulled out. For twenty bucks I should've set up camp for the night.

  Caroline proved to live in a corner unit on the sixth floor of a recently renovated building on Crescent Heights. I tripped over some vestigial scaffolding on my way in, the doorman kindly pretending not to notice. I waited in the freshly carpeted hall while she undid a profusion of dead bolts. She double-checked me through a veil of security chains, and then the door closed on me again. More metallic unhooking and we were face-to-face.