The Crime Writer Read online

  I studied the ceiling, listening for sounds in the house. I tried to sleep, but every time I drifted off, I snapped to, worried what might happen. Or, perhaps, worried about what I might do.

  A little past three, I got a digital camcorder from my office and a tripod from the garage and set them up in the far corner of my room, pointing at the bed. I hit “record” and climbed back under the sheets. Now if I turned into the Incredible Hulk, I’d have documentation. Or if the Hillside Foot Cutter broke in and went for the other pinkie toe. Maybe I should wear galoshes prophylactically. Maybe I should check myself in somewhere. Maybe I should ask Katherine Harriman for a date.

  I stared at the watching lens.

  Where do you hide when you scare yourself?

  6

  Exhausted, I sat at the wobbly kitchen table early the next morning, eating stale Smokehouse Almonds and picking through my mail. I’d failed to sleep, finally dragging out of bed to come downstairs. I’d been unable to shake off last night—the dream memory or the nonintruder. The implications of both continued to haunt me.

  A hospital bill stuck out from the mound of mail, catching my eye, and I opened it to find a twelve-thousand-dollar anesthesia charge. The memo at the bottom informed me that, since I had no insurance, I should have requested a county hospital for my surgery. During my next amnesic psychotic break, I’d be sure to ask for a detour to the ER at Wilshire and Crack Central. Or—here’s an idea—maybe I’d make a decision next crisis go-round before it constituted a calamity for me and a fatality for someone else.

  Through the north-facing bank of windows, the sky looked bruised and wet, the smog dampening twilight. Gus, my fat, arthritic squirrel, hobbled across the back deck. It was a miracle the coyotes hadn’t gotten him yet. He cocked his head, regarding me with something like sympathy, then raised his little paws as if in Jewish complaint.

  “You and me both, bud,” I said.

  I continued flipping through the mail. From my agency a handful of surprisingly robust royalty payments. Three marriage proposals, photos enclosed, one from an attractive housewife in Idaho. Bank statements and medical claims and flyers from tree trimmers.

  The return to the banalities of life was jarring. My reality—crumbs on the kitchen table, mortgage-refinance mailers—was not how I’d imagined it would be. What had I expected? Me with my scarlet M, slinking around colonial New England, disgraced and outcast, subsisting on forest grubs?

  What I wanted was an unromantic drunk, a liquid haze, an alcoholic salve, a wake-up-in-your-own-vomit-beside-the-Jack-in-the-Box-drive-through bender. I was familiar with it, the sublime indulgence of self-destruction. When you’ve got nothing to lose, you’ve got something to gain. Thus the fuck-the-world fix. Thus the meek classmate who surprises you at your ten-year with newfound confidence and fifteen pierces crowding his pale features. Thus my and Charlie Manson’s marriage proposals. Given that the prospect of marrying Mrs. Sue Ann Miller of Coeur d’ Alene was, for the time being, unpalatable, I wondered at my next move.

  I had a pretty significant choice to make. Lie down and die. Or don’t.

  I removed the cell phone from my pocket and dialed. As I waited for Lloyd Wagner to answer, I recalled that little nod he’d given me in court before he’d ripped into the dummy with my boning knife. He’d felt bad, but he’d had a job to do. I didn’t begrudge him that. I’d tagged along with Lloyd at the forensics lab, even to a crime scene or two. He and I had shared a few meals as he’d helped me work through various plot points. He had an elongated face, wavy blond hair, and a kooky grin that he showed rarely. A rum-and-Coke guy. Early riser. He was a little cold, as befits a criminalist, though I’d always thought we had decent chemistry. Most important, he’d bagged Genevieve’s hands and feet, dusted for prints, analyzed the DNA. I got his voice mail on his cell, so I tried him at home. His wife was ill, some kind of late-stage cancer, if she hadn’t already died.

  Answering machine. How old-fashioned.

  After the beep I said, “Hi, Lloyd. Andrew Danner here. I know it probably seems pretty weird, me calling you, but I’m, I guess, free. I’m wondering how I might reconstruct the night I…drove over to Genevieve’s. I figured you’d be the person to ask. We never got to talk, of course, about the evidence, but I’d like to get your unfiltered opinion. I think—I hope…I think I was framed. Unless I’m still temporarily insane, which I might be. I…well, I could use your advice. Please give me a call.”

  I hung up and paced a tight circle around the kitchen. I withdrew the boning knife from the block and studied it as if it had something new to tell me. Then I dialed again.

  The line rang three times before the familiar voice said, “Hello?”

  I said, “I’d like to see you. Just for a few minutes before you leave for work. Can you do that?”

  The pause was so long I thought April had hung up. Then she said, “I can do a few minutes.”

  I realized I was still gripping the knife, so I slotted it home. Then I thanked her and headed out.

  I threaded through the Encino hills. The Ike-’n’-Mamie houses, set behind oval lawns, flashed one after another in my headlights before fading back into the early-morning gloom. Idling across the street from April’s house, I called again. Aside from the dim glow behind her bedroom curtains, the house looked dead.

  When she picked up, I said, “I’m here.”

  The lights clicked on, broadcasting her path as she made her way to the front of the house, then the entry blinds swiveled. “So why don’t you come ring the doorbell?” she said through the phone.

  “I didn’t want to startle you.”

  “Okay. Well, come on.”

  As I stepped onto the porch, the door jerked against the security chain. She laughed self-consciously, freed the chain, and beckoned for me to enter. We sat on opposing plush white couches straight out of a tampon commercial.

  She appraised the scar on my head. “Any rashes from the Dilantin?”

  “Meds have been fine.” I shifted on the cushions, unable to get comfortable. “I wanted to thank you for coming to court for me. I think it made a difference, and even if it didn’t, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad you got acquitted, and I’m sorry you went through what you went through.”

  Despite her impassive expression, she sat rigidly. She was wearing a linen skirt wrinkled at midthigh and a halter with straps that tied at her nape, accenting her throat, splotched red from a nervous blush that refused to fade. She stayed awkwardly on the edge of the cushion as if ready to flee, her eyes darting, uncomfortable. And why not? What was she supposed to say?

  “I miss you,” I said.

  Her gaze dropped to her lap, and I felt suddenly cold, exposed, aware of the notch in my hair. Was she afraid of being alone with me? Or was I projecting?

  It had been hard on her. Press camped on her lawn, helicopters at night. The cops had tossed her house, emptied trash cans on the floor, even come by her office with a warrant. She’d waited five days to visit me in jail, which pretty much told me where things were headed. She’d been concerned for me, apologetic, but that had only made her leaving worse. She’d reminded me that we were just starting out, not even engaged yet. It was a lot to overcome three months into a romance.

  I thought about those bluish gray morning hours when I’d stir and she’d be there beside me, how I’d curl around her form and drift back to sleep. When the road is smooth, how easily we forget that we need people. That we actually require them. I hadn’t touched April since before the murder. I’d viewed her through ballistic glass under the watchful gaze of an armed correctional officer and, now, across a stretch of dated white carpet. All I could think about was the warmth of her body while she slept and how I could no longer take for granted that I’d feel it again. Of course, I couldn’t take it for granted then either. I just did.

  Her stress was palpable, and it struck me hard that I’d brought this to her life.

  “I’m sorry how this ha
s affected you,” I said.

  She wound the hem of her shirt around her finger, then unwound it. “Listen, Drew, I’m—” Her voice wavered, and she stopped.

  “Don’t worry. I understand that you don’t need to have anything more to do with this.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Then you just came by to thank me?”

  “Yes, and…” I realized I was fussing with my hands and set them in my lap. “Can I ask something of you? One thing?”

  She couldn’t hide a touch of wariness.

  “Take me through that night again?”

  “What…why?”

  “Because you’re the only one who can. Coming home, I’m trying to piece together those missing hours, but all I’ve got is this breakfast bowl and a cracked saucer—”

  “Drew, what are you talking about? The trial is over. You’re free. You should see someone, start putting this behind you. At least get some sleep. If you don’t mind me saying so, you looked better in jail.”

  “I’m hoping a few answers will help me sleep.”

  “Or they’ll lead to more questions.”

  “Right,” I said. “But at least this time they’ll be the right questions.” I waited as she studied the wall over my head. “Please, April. I won’t bother you again.”

  She drew a sharp breath. I waited for the sigh, but it didn’t come. Instead she said, “It’s like I told you in jail. You worked that day. I came over around six. We went to dinner. Fabrocini’s.”

  “Did we run into anyone we knew?”

  “No. Then we came home. We made love.”

  “Where?”

  “On the couch. With the view.”

  “Did anyone call?”

  She shook her head. “And then you had another migraine come on. Bad one. Laid down, lights out, the whole thing. I read with a booklight so I could stay beside you. But there was nothing different from any other time it’s gone like that. You went to bed normal…”

  The unspoken part of the sentence dangled. And woke up a killer.

  She uncrossed her legs, crossed them again, tugged at her knee with her laced hands. “I woke up alone in your bed at four A.M. when the cops showed up.”

  She was a deep sleeper, slow to wake. I imagined her confusion at the empty space beside her in the sheets. Maybe she’d called for me in the bathroom. The insistent second chime of the doorbell. Disorientation giving way to concern, concern to fear. Bare feet on the carpet as she felt her way through the darkness into the hall. The police lights shining through the frosted insets of my front door and rising through the open foyer, setting the second-story ceiling awash in blue and red. What a long walk that must have been down the curving stairs.

  “You don’t remember a phone ringing late at night? And I didn’t talk to you after I supposedly listened to Genevieve’s message?”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  “I can empathize,” I said. “Thank you, April. For everything.”

  The words rushed out of her, as if they’d been pent up. “If you’d been more honest with me about the brain tumor, we could have prevented this.”

  I tried to answer, but my throat was dry, and I had to start over. “I was scared.”

  “Right. You were scared. And you chose not to tell me. So that tells you what we didn’t have.”

  I couldn’t convey how badly I wanted to take it all back, so I just nodded once, slowly. She rose, and I took the hint. I thanked her—I had much to thank her for—and she gave me a hug at the door, squeezing me tight, then turning away quickly so I couldn’t see her face. “Take care of yourself, Drew.”

  I said, “I’ll do my best.”

  7

  Desperate for sleep, I lay on my bed, willing myself to doze off into another fragment of lost time. But my internal clock had decided to wake up and pay attention to the fact that it was 11:00 A.M. I went downstairs, sat at the kitchen table with my stale almonds and a glass of pomegranate juice, and took in the view. I was still acclimating to what daytime felt like when it wasn’t filtered through bars.

  After April’s, I’d gone on my first light-of-day outing—down to Whole Foods to get groceries. I’d found people surprisingly warm. An old woman with a tennis visor gave me a surreptitious thumbs-up from Dried Fruits. The clerk, shuttling my groceries into compostable bags, leaned forward as we waited for the receipt to print and said, sotto voce, “I’m glad for you.” I knew I was dealing with a skewed sample—those who didn’t think I was a drooling lunatic were more likely to approach—but these quiet, kind exchanges more than made up for the drubbing I’d received from my favorite morning-talk-show hosts.

  My cell phone rang.

  Chic said, “What are you doing?”

  I picked an almond from a fold in my shirt, popped it into my mouth. “Writing.”

  “How ’ bout some bar-bee-cue? Get your mind off the human fucking condition.”

  “No thanks.”

  “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  “Sure,” I told the dial tone, “that’d be swell.”

  Chic drives a cherry red Chevy pickup, so big that riding in it you feel like a Playskool figurine. I’m officially six feet tall, ever since I fudged the extra inch at the DMV when I turned sixteen, but Chic looms over me. And requires more vehicular headroom.

  Onetime first baseman for the Dodgers, he’d made the All-Star Team two years running, but that was before The Pop-Up. After that, he opened a chain of rib joints, which he’d named Chics Stics. He forgot the apostrophe and went without the k, and it took off from there. Branding genius, homegrown.

  On the Chevy’s tailgate is an elaborate sign, CHIC’S STICS, featuring an apostrophe I added with a Magic Marker one day while he was distracted by a flat tire. That his truck still bears a Dodgers license-plate frame says more about the man than I ever could.

  His driving—slow and steady—matches his personality. Chic has not a smugness but the relaxed, found-his-priorities demeanor of a recovering alcoholic. Someone who’d lived hard and found it not to work, who now knew what mattered and what was a waste of energy. We’d met in those rooms five years ago when I’d hit “reset” on my life, and we’d gravitated to each other immediately. Despite almost running his marriage into the ground a time or twelve, the requisite string of away-game affairs, the massive swings in fortune, he was still with his high-school sweetheart. He wasn’t overwhelmingly handsome, except when he smiled. And he had a sweet, soft laugh, the kind that drove the road girls wild. At least before The Pop-Up.

  He’d played as the nineties rolled in, just before athletes started making tycoon money. And though he was sure of his talents, he’d be quick to tell you that he hadn’t started either All-Star Game in which he’d played, that he’d crumbled with his best years ahead of him. Aside from the infamy, he now led a peaceful life with his family in Mar Vista, a bedroom community tucked between Santa Monica and Venice. Close enough to the beach for the salt erosion but too far for a view, it had, like much Westside real estate, gone from middle class to upper in a hurry over the past decade. When his restaurants had taken off, Chic could’ve upgraded to a place in Brentwood or the Palisades, but instead he’d bought his neighbor’s house, torn it down, and made a giant yard for his eight kids, complete with a mini baseball diamond.

  Angela met us at the door, baby clasped to her side, sobbing toddler clinging to her leg, three or four various-size kids flashing in and out of view behind her as they circled the kitchen table playing chase or death tag. “Drew, Drew, Drew, Drew, Drew, Drew, Drew.” She angled a cooking spoon, wet from baked beans, to the side and offered up a delightfully smooth cheek for me to kiss, which I did gladly. “Boy, we prayed for you till this here floor got tired of our knees.”

  A few of the Baleses spun off from the typhoon and collided with my knees, shouting my name. I rubbed their heads. “Ronnie, you grew.”

  “That’s ’ cuz I’m Jamaal.”

  “Where’s Ronnie?”

  �
��Over here.”

  “I thought you were Keyshawn.”

  “Ain’t no Keyshawn in this house, Drew.”

  And so the game went.

  Somehow juggling three children and a platter of fried boneless chicken thighs—if this were fiction, I’d wimp out and make it something else, but chicken it was—Angela hustled us through to the side door. We sat at the picnic table in the middle of what would have been the neighbor’s front yard. I watched her, as I often did, with awe. To me she was the Great Mother, a beautiful woman with soft curves and a ready grin, always pregnant or nursing or laying cornbread on a just-wiped table. We ate lunch. Buckets of sweet potatoes, trays of corn, sliced sourdough off the cutting board.

  Angela pressed the tops of her breasts, grimacing. “I’m engorged. I need a mouth.”

  I said, “Don’t look at me.”

  Frowning her amusement, she threw a blanket over one shoulder as Jamaal handed off the baby.

  Chic buzzsawed through a plate of baby backs, shrapnel flying. He paused to belch, and Asia, chin level with the table, said, “Don’t forget you can’t do that when you start kindergarten.”

  “Okay, baby.” Chic pointed at Ronnie’s plate. “You gonna eat all that?”

  Ronnie shielded his plate with both arms. “Uh-huh.”

  “All right, then. You don’t finish, I gonna make you clean the toilets with your toothbrush.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Just you wait and see.”

  Ronnie went back to picking at his plate. Finally he slid it over to his father, who crowded him in the crook of his elbow and kissed him, leaving a greasy stain on his forehead that the other kids groaned about. Angela sat the baby in her lap, biting off his fingernails and spitting them into the bougainvillea. It was cool and the air smelled of jasmine, and I looked over at Angela and said, “Thank you.”

  She winked at me and rose, signaling that the clearing phase had begun. The ambulatory children helped, then were dispensed to their rooms for naps or reading or setting fires.