The Perpetual Summer Read online

  After that, I just stopped voting on them entirely.

  “Can you translate for me what this one is about?”

  “What they are all about,” said Claire. “Money.”

  The fight apparently wasn’t over the museum itself but over the land surrounding the museum. Cultural hotspots were all the rage in the downtown revitalization push and a boon to developers of high-end condos.

  “Who owns the land around the museum?” I asked naively. Claire’s smile gave me my answer. “And Gao wants a piece?”

  “It’s a brand thing,” she explained. “He wants to be the go-to man for foreign investors. A development in his backyard without him having a piece is a blow to his image,” she said. “The Chinese are very proud. He doesn’t want to lose face.”

  “Is the proposition going to pass?”

  “That’s the hard part about propositions—the outcomes are almost entirely random.”

  “How nervous is the Valenti camp?”

  “It’s nothing that can’t be overturned at a later date.”

  “But that would take a lot of time and a lot of money,” I added.

  “And Carl isn’t the patient type.”

  Shop talk ended once the food arrived. Career might have been a priority for Claire, but dining out was her real love.

  “You have to try these arrancini,” she gushed and held a plate out for me. “We had it last week and it was amazing.”

  “How is Mr. Teeth?” I asked casually. “Is he still trying to open a regatta on the LA River?”

  Claire humored me with a smile. Her boyfriend was a square-jawed square and product of some English-sounding East Coast prep school. He could boil water and somehow make you feel inferior.

  “Todd and I are just friends.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t know,” I said.

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for me,” she shot back. “I met someone else. He’s got a great mind and a passion for what he does.” The latter was definitely a shot in my direction. “He owns an art gallery down the road and he’s doing really well. He was just featured in a Times piece about Next Gen galleries. He reps some big names and has some pretty amazing stuff.”

  “His family is wealthy?” I asked.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because no one owns a gallery and actually makes money off it.”

  That hurt her more than I intended.

  “You must be alone,” she surmised. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be so interested, and nasty about what I have going on.” That pretty much soured the rest of the lunch. I tried several times to right the ship but all my attempts fell flat.

  “I’m sorry for being a jerk,” I said.

  Claire didn’t acknowledge it right away. She waited until we had finished the meal and drifted out onto the sidewalk crammed with office workers returning from their lunch hour. She gave me a friends-only hug and whispered in my ear:

  “Get yourself a girl, Chuck.”

  When I got back to the office, Ms. Terry was waiting for me by the entrance to our floor. She looked anxious and when I inquired as to why she was hanging by the door, she leaned in to whisper.

  “Mr. Restic, you have a visitor.”

  I looked over her shoulder at the reception area. Hector was sitting on one of the leather couches and impassively watching a video extolling our corporate values that played on loop all day. It drove anyone within earshot to near-insanity but it looked like Hector was hypnotized by it.

  “Don’t worry, he can wait a little longer,” I told her and headed toward my office before Hector saw me.

  “But Mr. Restic, he said it was quite important that he speak to you. He’ll be out of the restroom shortly,” she explained.

  “Restroom? Who are you talking about?”

  “Sorry about that,” a voice boomed behind me. “Bacon hot dog didn’t sit right with me.”

  Detective Ricohr waddled his way toward us. His voice brought Hector out of his hypnotic state, and he too came in my direction. The four of us stood there staring at each other. I spoke first.

  “What brings you here, detective?” I asked.

  Hector pivoted, pulling a banking maneuver straight out of the Blue Angels playbook. He quickly retreated out the glass doors toward the elevators.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Detective Ricohr called out after him.

  “Hector,” the old magician shot back.

  “Hector what?”

  “Just Hector,” he answered and disappeared into the elevator car.

  “Just Hector,” the detective laughed.

  I gestured empathetically to his area of suffering. “I see your feet are still bothering you.”

  “And I thought I was getting better,” he replied and looked around. “Should we go to your office?”

  “We should be good here,” I replied.

  Ms. Terry didn’t want to intrude and excused herself. She wasn’t more than a few feet away when Detective Ricohr threw out his first question.

  “So what do you know about Jeanette Schwartzman?”

  It was a cheap tactic to get a visceral reaction from me. I was familiar enough with the detective to not fall for it.

  “I know of her,” I answered, “but I have never met her.”

  “Carl Valenti’s granddaughter, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “I didn’t think you liked that man,” he said.

  Detective Ricohr was well aware of my feelings toward Valenti. He investigated the murder of my friend, a murder that I believed Valenti was connected to. It turned out not to be true, but that didn’t completely absolve him.

  “I don’t like him,” I answered.

  “But things change,” he finished for me. “Want to fill me in on what that could be?”

  “I’m helping him with a personal matter. With his granddaughter.”

  “When’s the last time you spoke to her?” he asked.

  “I haven’t.”

  “So she’s missing. That’s interesting.” He wrote something in his notepad that took far longer to write than anything I had yet told him. “We found your number on a cell phone belonging to a murder victim—Morgan McIlroy. Young girl, blond?”

  It took a moment for it to register. And when it finally did it was like the oxygen was being pulled from my lungs. I think I might have taken a slight step backward.

  “You’re not going to faint, are you?”

  “I know Morgan. I mean, I met her once,” I felt the need to clarify not because I wanted to avoid suspicion but because there was a sudden distance between me and the young girl that somehow warranted an impersonal tone. Detective Ricohr continued with the theme of detachment.

  “She was strangled, dumped in a car in a parking lot in Chinatown. We’re checking security cameras to see if we can get a shot of the killer,” he added matter-of-factly.

  I recalled my encounter with the precocious girl at the burger stand. Only when I summoned an image of the young girl—sitting there in the booth eating my fries and doing her best to answer my questions—did it finally strike me that she was dead.

  “Jesus,” I breathed. “We just met the other day.”

  “Want to fill me in on what you talked about?”

  I hesitated.

  “It was in reference to the other thing I talked about with Valenti. But I shouldn’t say anything more until I can talk to the family.”

  “It sounds like they could be connected.”

  “I wouldn’t want to speculate,” I said.

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” he responded. As he turned to leave he requested that I call him as soon as I talked to the old man. And he had some unsolicited advice for me.

  “If you didn’t trust him before, I don’t know why you would trust him now.”

  HIGH NOON

  There he is!” he shouted as I entered.

  Badger’s office was half of the ground floor of a three-story apartment building located on a side street in Ech
o Park. The only evidence that it was an actual office was a handwritten sign on poster board pasted in the upper corner of the large picture window facing the sidewalk.

  I got the call from Badger Thursday afternoon, which left me barely enough time to plant the seed of a “tickle” in the back of my throat that invariably would develop into a full-blown sore throat later that night. I heroically answered a few emails on Friday morning and then sent word around that I was going to stay home to rest. “There goes my weekend!” I lamented and successfully cleared the day to meet Badger in person.

  The carpet in his office was a deep gold made deeper by the years of foot traffic from shoes comfortable walking on dusty streets. Its edges didn’t cleanly fit with the wall and was probably a cast-off from another office undergoing an update. There was little furniture outside of a desk, filing cabinet, and a bookcase that looked like surplus from a 1970s schoolroom. I didn’t spot a computer. The only attempt at decoration was a cloudy vase of dried pussy willows and a borrowed frame displaying Badger’s private investigator credentials.

  The one question that sprang to mind as I took in the surroundings, a question that I needed to address as soon as I got back to the office, was who the hell did the background check on the background checker?

  “Chuck,” he said, rising from his desk, “good to finally meet you in person.”

  Badger was one of those guys who tucked his sweater into his jeans and didn’t wear a belt. He had a handshake that could crack walnuts and his skin was about as rough as the broken shells. His hair was the color and texture of dirty straw and I couldn’t tell if all of it was real.

  “Thanks for making this a priority,” I told him and took a seat in a creaky chair. Behind Badger’s desk, a makeshift wall and curtained doorway separated the front of the office from a back room. Over his shoulder and through the slat in the curtain, I spotted an Army cot, mini-fridge, and hotplate. This was what savvy real estate agents would deem a “mixed-use” space.

  “You’ll always be the priority,” he told me. I pitied the utterly unimportant person who wasn’t the recipient of this phrase because, as far as I could tell, he said it to everyone.

  “I found some things,” he stated firmly. “Let us begin.”

  I marveled at the lack of paper in the entire exchange. The only sign of paper anywhere in the office was a yellow newspaper on his desk that looked a decade from being current. If this was a corporate meeting, he’d have a thirty-five-page flipbook with the first third filled with table of contents, title dividers, biographies of the participants, and other such nonsense. There would also be an appendix that you would be instructed to “read at your leisure.” Somewhere in the middle of this mess would be the actual meat of the presentation that could be boiled down to a few, succinct bullets. The only way to hear them was to endure a long presentation by the person who put it together. That was why every meeting in corporate America is at least one hour long. Badger wouldn’t make it in that world.

  “In 1963 Hector Hermosillo was arrested and charged with the stabbing death of a teenager in the Alpine district. He was twenty-two at the time. The police arrested him at the scene without incident.”

  “Knife fight,” I repeated.

  “One of them had a knife, anyway. The police put it down as a racial dispute, perhaps gang related. There was concern that it could boil over to another race riot and put a lot of men on the streets.”

  Los Angeles at that time was a bit of a powder keg as the city was beginning to resemble the ethnically diverse mishmash that it is today. Friction between the various groups—blacks, Mexicans, Japanese, whites, Chinese—jostling for space and jobs and respect sometimes flared up into full-on melees. These resulted in many deaths but never much will to change the things that led to them.

  “Latino was one group. Who was the other?” I asked even though I could have guessed.

  “Chinese,” he confirmed.

  “Where’s the Alpine district? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “It’s those little hills between Chinatown and the south side of Dodger Stadium. Used to be mostly an Italian neighborhood until the Chinese moved in. You still have a few decent Italian delis there left over from the old days.”

  “You mentioned a gang?”

  “This is where it gets complicated. Mr. Hermosillo was one of these pachuco wannabe punks from East LA. White Picket guy, maybe, but never confirmed if he was officially a member.”

  No wonder Hector wore his pants so high. The original Chicano gangs were the zoot-suited playboys of the streets. They wore sports coats to their knees and pants to their chests.

  “He was in a gang, huh?”

  “There’s mention of it in the original police report but, like I said, it was unconfirmed.”

  I wondered how he got access to this level of information. He must have an inside source at the department but I don’t believe he was ever employed by them. I made a second mental note to run a background check on him.

  “Was the victim in a gang?” I asked.

  “Not sure.”

  “Did he have a personal connection to Hector?”

  “You’re asking the wrong questions, guy.”

  Badger was one of the few men to call other men “guy” and not have it come off as an invitation to a fight. There was an excitement in his voice as if he had some bit of information that he wanted me to discover. But it bristled all the same. I prided myself on having a first-rate interviewing skill set, which included asking the right questions at the right time. The direct challenge to my ability to ask pertinent questions was an open-handed slap to my corporate face.

  “Were the Chicano gangs active in the Alpine district at that time?” I asked after giving it more thought.

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  “Did Hector serve time for the murder?”

  “Much warmer.”

  “Was he even convicted?”

  “He was not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because an eyewitness confirmed that his actions were in self-defense.”

  “One of his friends vouched for him and they dropped the charges?” I asked incredulously.

  “A very well-respected, upstanding friend.” He smiled.

  “Valenti?”

  And the smile that was partially concealed during this excruciating game of twenty questions finally emerged in all of its yellowed brilliance.

  My mind raced with the permutations of what this development meant in the already-complex nest of relationships around the disappearance of a young girl. The loyal driver of thirty years owed both his livelihood and his life to the man who employed him. Or was it reversed? Was the job payback for a sordid deed in the Alpine district in the early 1960s?

  “I did a little more digging on the murder. No charge, of course, this is just Badger being Badger. It’s who I am and it’s what I do. I get on something and I can’t let it go until I know everything about it. Must be in my blood—”

  “What did you find out?” I interrupted before he launched into a family tree discussion about being a direct descendent of a long line of Nez Perce Indian trackers.

  “The victim? He wasn’t a nameless punk from the neighborhood. He came from an influential Chinese family with a lot of money. They did most of the developments in the area, including the ones in Alpine.”

  “Last name was Li,” I said for him.

  “With an ‘I.’ How did you know?” he asked, surprised.

  “I had a feeling.”

  “Maybe you have some Cherokee in you, too,” he said, laughing.

  The fun and games were short-lived.

  “We got an issue,” Badger whispered. He slowly moved the folded, yellow newspaper that was on the desk and placed it in front of me. I picked it up and scanned the page.

  “I don’t see it,” I said. “Is there a story about Valenti in here?”

  “Behind you,” Badger said softly.

  I followed Badger’s gaze a
nd spun around in my chair and got a look at what was distressing him. Through the arrangement of dried pussy willows that stood in front of the large picture window, I could make out the face of Hector Hermosillo, his hands cupped on the glass to peer in beyond the glare.

  “Jesus, how did he get here?”

  “Do we have a situation?” Badger asked gravely.

  “No, I don’t think so—”

  Turning back, I noticed the gun in Badger’s hand and realized it had been hidden under the newspaper the entire time. I made a mental note to add the letters “ASAP” next to the background check we needed to run on Badger.

  “What’s the score, guy?”

  “There’s no score,” I said. “Let me handle this.”

  I walked out to the street and faced off with Hector.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “We were supposed to meet this morning,” he answered mechanically.

  “Yeah, well, my plans changed. Why are you following me?”

  “We were supposed to meet this morning,” he repeated.

  “You already said that. Listen, I didn’t sign up for this job to be tailed like a common criminal. That was not part of the bargain. I will let you know when and where I need your help and you will not question me when plans change. You need to understand your place and do as you are instructed.”

  It was a dressing-down straight out of an English manor television series. It was full of indignation and pompous self-righteousness. And it was wholly ignored by my pachuco friend.

  “Who’s he?” he motioned to Badger’s office. Glancing in, I realized Badger himself was no longer in there.

  “This is my personal business.”

  I watched Hector read the sign announcing Badger’s trade. He looked at me like someone who had double-crossed him. Or like someone who caught his spouse cheating. Anger and disappointment were a deadly combination.

  “I’m making progress,” I felt the need to justify. “If your boss wants regular updates, all he has to do ask. I don’t need an intermediary, let alone one who makes me feel like I am the one under investigation.”

  But what I really wanted was to avoid having Hector tell Valenti that I engaged the services of a private investigator. Valenti’s mistrust toward the profession—in this case, seemingly justified—might very well get me dismissed from the job. And when I glanced across the street, my potential termination seemed more likely.