Last Looks_A Novel Read online

  Just outside the cabin he lost his footing and toppled. He rolled in the dirt, taking a defensive fetal curl as his attacker followed him out, giving Waldo his first good look at her face and bewildering him to the core. He blinked the last of the shampoo out of his eye, making sure he had it right, and said, “You’re Savannah Moon.”

  This flustered her again; in the heat of the scuffle, she evidently hadn’t considered the implications of losing her mask. At last she came back with “I am not!” then scurried to her SUV and drove off. Waldo made a mental note of the license plate, not that he needed it.

  He lay on the ground, filthy from rolling wet, his hair a goulash of shampoo and dirt, silently cursing each torturous breath. He stayed there for a while, still, eyes on nothing but the altocumulus drift miles above him, until the throes subsided enough to consider this third discordant puzzle piece.

  The Palisades Posse.

  Gomes and Jamshidi.

  Now Savannah Moon.

  What did they have in common? What could they all have against Alastair?

  He’d have been tempted to stay out here all day, recovering under the cottony clouds, but he had a date in Hollywood with Don Q. He’d rest on the bus. But before that he was facing the mountain trip to Banning—down, at least—and before that, he’d have to haul a fresh bucket of water from the well and begin his shower all over again.

  * * *

  —

  The kid was solipsistic as only a fifteen-year-old can be and he chafed Waldo’s already frayed nerves from the moment he walked into the Banning station. His hair was long and unwashed, his pants so low you could see not only the seat of his impudent American flag boxer shorts but practically the hems. The kid’s Beats Pill speaker, blasted at a volume Waldo associated with Seattle Seahawks games, played a hip-hop song whose lyricist must have felt pretty good about rhyming “smoking grass” with “eating ass” because he celebrated by repeating the couplet two dozen times. The kid bought a ticket to L.A., took a seat across from Waldo in the waiting area and opened a bag of pistachios, the shells of which he idly flung toward the middle of the floor. Waldo decided to let the little shit board first so that he could find a seat as far away as he could.

  The bus was more crowded than on his previous trips, though, and there weren’t many doubles with both seats open. The Little Shit, who’d turned off his music when it came time to board, took an aisle seat about a third of the way from the front. Because Waldo didn’t want to annoy a passenger alone in a two-seater by taking the remaining single, he settled for the lone open double, just two rows behind. From there Waldo had a decent view of the guy across the aisle from the Little Shit, too old and overweight to bring off the tank top he was wearing, but then his bleached hair and white sunglasses on a neck cord sold him as a jackass anyway. The Little Shit began the ride by opening a smelly bag of fast-food chicken and chucking the wrapper onto the floor near the Jackass’s feet, leaving the Jackass a man in perfect proportion, equally annoying and annoyed.

  Waldo reminded himself that the peevishness two rows up wasn’t his problem and let it go. He attended to his breathing, trying to keep his inhales consistent and just deep enough not to trouble his ribs. Immobile in his bus seat and finally untroubled by pain, he closed his eyes and began to doze.

  Then the music came back on. Waldo assumed from the volume that it was coming from the Little Shit’s device, but he couldn’t be sure, as this wasn’t bumptious hip-hop but rather a sweetly crooned R&B number, something about overflowing hearts and everlasting tenderness and souls touching. But it turned out the song only began with two minutes of hearts and tenderness; after that, another artist stepped in with a rap solo about how his bitch got a pussy like a bag of Skittles, whatever that meant. It sounded like the same guy from the eating-ass song, but either way the rapper didn’t have a fan across the aisle, as Waldo could see the Jackass growing more and more agitated.

  “Don’t be churchin’ up no dirty south,” blared the song. “Just siddown bitch and take care’a your mouth.”

  The Jackass was rocking in his seat like he was going to explode.

  “Brush every morning,” continued the Skittles guy, “brush every night, my muthafuckin’ teeth is hella white! Teeth can be shiny, teeth can be gold, you fuck with my teeth bitch you ain’t growin’ old.”

  “Hey, dickhead!” screamed the Jackass when he couldn’t take any more, leaning right into the Little Shit’s face. “Ever heard of headphones?!”

  “I got a right to listen to my music!” screamed the Little Shit over his music.

  “Actually, you don’t!” screamed the bus driver, joining the fracas from behind the wheel at seventy-five miles an hour. “Put on some headphones or turn it off!”

  The kid snapped off the Pill.

  It took Waldo a minute or two to place the lyrics. When he did, he stood and walked the few steps to the Little Shit, who looked up at him, braced for another altercation. But Waldo only said, “Who was that you were listening to?”

  The kid looked at Waldo as if he’d been asked to explain particle physics, but then gave in to the straightforwardness of the question and answered, “Swag Dog.”

  “Swag Dog,” Waldo repeated, and went back to his seat.

  He took out his phone and Googled the name, which turned out to be spelled Swag Doggg. Wikipedia said his real name was Leonard Steven Roberson and that he was a rapper-singer-entrepreneur born in Staten Island. Waldo didn’t recognize his photograph. He watched parts of two of Swag Doggg’s music videos, which were pretty much as expected, then thumbed down through more videos until he got to the obscure interviews and other miscellany. What he was really hoping to find, of course, was a clip that showed off Swag’s house, but he settled for something from the red carpet outside a music awards show, which teased Waldo with the descriptor “Swag Doggg explains spelling.”

  “We’ve seen it spelled D-A-W-G,” said a blonde with a microphone, displaying a lot of cleavage for a journalist. “We’ve seen it spelled D-O-G-G. But, Swaggy, you’re the first artist to spell his name with three G’s: D-O-G-G-G. What’s that about?”

  “The third G is for God,” said Swag Doggg.

  Swag Doggg’s crew—three white kids—crowded into the frame around him and shouted at the camera. The first said, “God! Word!”

  The second said, “God is dope!”

  The third said, “Da Gizzay!”

  Waldo paused the frame. He’d met these guys.

  He kept scrolling through screens of YouTube videos until he found another one that intrigued him: Swag wrestling on the ground with a little boy about Gaby’s age. It was adorable. And familiar. Waldo looked out the window for a moment, thinking.

  His cell buzzed in his hand. He tapped his way to the mail screen with a silent prayer that it would be from Unfinished Business, and the prayer was answered. Her email read only:

  Safe??

  Waldo thought a long time before typing back, simply:

  Working on it

  He hit send, then Googled Savannah Moon and found exactly what he thought he might.

  It was different being a PI, but maybe in some ways it was the same. Lot of noise when you start, nothing but noise, but then you’d begin to find the first faint beats of a signal hiding in there, and that instant, with all its thrill and promise, always gave him a tingle like nothing else. All these years away, he’d forgotten how he used to live for that moment.

  He welcomed it back with a deep sigh of satisfaction and almost passed out from the whammy it put on his ribs.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He got there twenty minutes early, locked up his bike near the Roosevelt Hotel and walked the two blocks to scope the meet point. He was relieved to see that his internet research had gotten it right: Alex Trebek’s star on the Walk of Fame was indeed right in front of the US Armed Forces recruiting center, the closest thi
ng to a safe zone Waldo could conjure without involving the police.

  He ambled west down Hollywood Boulevard, thinking about how to negotiate a face-to-face with Swag Doggg. Without the authority of a badge, simply locating him could be a challenge. He’d heard that stars do almost everything through their publicists, even arranging dates with each other, so maybe he should start by looking for Swag’s. Publicists by definition shouldn’t be hard to find.

  He doubled back on the opposite side of the street, looking among the stores for a vantage on the foot traffic on both sides and from both directions. He wanted to spot Don Q and Nini before they saw him. He found a souvenir store that would work, with a big open entrance to the street and two racks of postcards to obscure him while he waited.

  He was still ten minutes early, so he took a turn around the store and surveyed the cornucopia of shameless junk surrounding him, assaulting him. Having steered clear of the relatively modest kitsch shop at the coroner’s, he hadn’t been inside anything like it since his transformation. Picking up the first piece of crap he saw, a miniature fake Oscar with a tin plaque that read BEST NEPHEW, he felt the same brew of revulsion and fascination that compelled him to watch a man eat a dozen burgers. He surrendered to it now, studying every display, putting his hands on Thing after Thing that served no purpose but to be a Thing, garbage from birth—miniature cars and license plates and plastic animals, miniature currency with pictures of infamous murderers and bad presidents, miniature road signs for the 101 and 66 and Sunset and Wilshire. Hollywood, the store reminded, was hallowed ground, the very Mecca of the Religion of Pointless Waste, its Holy Trinity of Elvis, Marilyn and James Dean available for worship in your own home on matching commemorative plates.

  A framed replica of Marlon Brando’s Walk of Fame star reminded him why he was there and he realized it was already one fifty-nine. He stood behind the postcards, looked both ways down the boulevard, and saw Nini and Don Q approaching from the east, half a block away. Across the street, a soldier in camouflage fatigues was coming out of the recruiting station. The grunt lit a cigarette and leaned on a rail. Perfect.

  Waldo reached the meet point first and traded friendly nods with the soldier. He leaned on a rail opposite and dialed the general phone number of Swag Doggg’s record label. As he listened to the ring, big Nini and little Don Q settled in on either side of him. The soldier checked them both, watchful, without the pleasant nod he’d given Waldo.

  Don Q said, “Army–Navy–Air Force–Marines, I respect the play, Waldo. And Trebek—that’s clever shit. ‘I’ll take Makin’ It through the Day Alive for a hunnerd, Alex.’” He chortled, pleased with himself. “Truth is, though, you didn’t need to sweat it. Gimme my Mem, you were walkin’ away clean anyhow.”

  Waldo had been hoping to multitask, collecting some information from the record company while simultaneously taunting Don Q with his indifference. When all he got was a recorded message saying he could press his party’s extension if he knew it, he settled for the latter and put on a show, ignoring Q and saying into the void, “Hi, my name’s Colin Goldman and I’m writing a piece for Esquire on the new face of hip-hop.”

  “What the fuck,” said Don Q.

  Turning away from him, Waldo said, “I’d like to talk to Swag Doggg—could you put me in touch with his publicist?”

  Don Q circled Waldo and looked up at him, eyes to chin. “You shittin’ me? I’m takin’ hours out of my busy calendar, and you gonna stand here on the phone and chitchat?”

  Waldo ignored him again, turning and taking a couple of steps away. Still into the phone, he said, “I could cold call, but if you gave him a ring first as an icebreaker, that would be a big help—”

  Nini reached out and snatched the phone from Waldo’s hand. Waldo looked Nini in the eye and flicked a cool thumb in the direction of the soldier, who stared at Nini and exhaled smoke through his nostrils. Don Q tipped his head and Nini hit a button, ending the call, but handed the phone back to Waldo.

  The soldier, eyes still on Nini, dropped his cigarette butt on the ground, stubbed it with his boot and went back inside. But he’d established himself as a presence and a witness and Waldo felt safe. Better still, he could see he was getting under Don Q’s skin.

  Don Q said, “Pretty bold to be disrespectin’ me, especially in light of Lorena’s final hours. You shoulda seen her eyes when I lit that match, bro—”

  Waldo cut him off. “I talked to her.” It was a stretch but not a lie. Don Q looked at him like it wasn’t possible; no doubt he’d been told the same things about Lorena’s fiery death that Waldo had, maybe even saw the same photograph. “Uh-huh, she’s alive.”

  “Not what I heard.”

  “Yeah? Well, A, you weren’t the one who killed her, and B, it wasn’t Lorena that got killed. That was someone else in her husband’s car.”

  Almost under his breath, Don Q said, “Shit.”

  Waldo said, “But I do have your flash drive. So how about you put a lid on the gas-o-line talk and tell me why Lorena was messing with you in the first place.”

  “I don’t gotta answer your questions.”

  “You do if you want the Mem.”

  Don Q fell quiet and then said, “Nini, go buy yourself an ice cream cone.”

  Nini threw Waldo a glare but left, heading east on Hollywood toward the Chinese Theatre.

  Don Q said, “When I find that bitch, she is dead. You know that.”

  Waldo didn’t say anything.

  “Lorena was workin’ for me. Not what you think.” Waldo wondered what Q thought he thought. “Marital surveillance, for my sister. Watchin’ my lazy-ass brother-in-law.”

  “Go on.”

  “First my sister don’t like what Lorena drags up. Then she don’t like Lorena. Then she wants me to renegotiate Lorena’s fee.”

  Waldo shook his head.

  “Don’t look at me like that. My sister’s trouble, man. She scares me. She scares Nini.”

  Two beatings, days of grieving over Lorena, plus somebody did get burned to death in Lorena’s husband’s car, whoever and whyever that was. Waldo said, “That’s your problem with Lorena? A billing dispute?”

  “Started that way. Coulda been resolved a lot easier, but your girl had to go and escalate. Came to see me at this chop shop in Pacoima I use for an office. I got my laptop out, bitch sees this Mem stick sittin’ there and palms it. Palms my Mem. Calls me later, tells me it’s collateral on the sum she claims I owe her.”

  “The sum you do owe her.”

  “Waldo. First rule of life in the private sector: you only owe what the owe-ee can collect.”

  Waldo said, “This is bullshit. You want the Mem, it’s simple—let Lorena come back to L.A. Whack out the rest in small claims court.”

  “No deal. Fuck up my rep, I let her get away with that kinda disrespect.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t gotta suggest nothin’. You need to hand that shit over. Time’s on my side. Lorena pops up, I kill her. Mem pops up, I kill you. And before that, I find you alone, without the benefit of half the fuckin’ Pentagon—”

  Before he could finish the thought, Big Jim Cuppy was on them, saying, “Okay, assbags—against the wall. Both of you.” He spun Waldo off the rail and began to pat him down. Don Q assumed the frisk position without assistance.

  The same soldier burst out of the recruiting center, ready to bust it up. “Problem out here?”

  “LAPD,” Cuppy said. “All under control.” The soldier looked Waldo’s way, not sure he was buying it. Cuppy flashed his badge and said, “Back to your tank, GI Joe. I got this.” The soldier took a step toward him but, presumably deciding that punching out an LAPD wasn’t worth the paperwork, sniggered and went back inside.

  Don Q said, “Cuppy, man—you should have more respect for the brave men and women who protect our way of life.”
<
br />   Cuppy found Waldo’s Beretta tucked in the back of his jeans. “Looky, looky. You got a permit for this? ’Cause if not, I could send you to live in a state cabin for a couple years. You’d like it—they let you keep about ten things.”

  Don Q cackled. Waldo scowled at him. “Sorry, Waldo, but that shit is risible. That means it’s funny.”

  Cuppy stuck the Beretta into his own belt and resumed patting Waldo down.

  Waldo said, “If you’re looking for this asshole’s flash drive, you’re out of luck. I didn’t bring it.”

  Don Q flared. “What?! But you brought a piece?! You are one nervy muthafucker.”

  Cuppy turned Waldo back around. “Where is it?”

  Waldo answered with only a shit-eating grin.

  “Okay, then,” Cuppy said, turning to Don Q. “We’ll do it this way: you’re under arrest for the murder of Lorena Nascimento.” He turned back to Waldo. “And you are an accomplice.” He reached for his handcuffs.

  Don Q cackled again and said to Waldo, “Want to read this boy the six o’clock news?”

  Waldo said to Cuppy, “You can’t arrest me for Lorena.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “You didn’t have an ID from the lab when you showed me that picture, did you.”

  “So?”

  “So she’s alive. I’ve heard from her.”

  “You’re lying.” Waldo imagined the mockery and abasement Cuppy would endure when it was discovered that he’d arrested two men for the homicide of a perfectly healthy woman. It must have bubbled into a smug and confident grin, because Cuppy read it and said, “Fuck!”

  Waldo looked from Cuppy to Q and back. “Can I just say? Both of you suck at your jobs.”

  Q took his hands off the wall. “Cuppy wasn’t gonna book us for Lorena anyway. He plays that bullshit with me alla time, reachin’ for any new squeeze he can think of, see if it’ll work. That’s what all this shit’s about, even the Mem: I’m the only businessman in town don’t grease this cocksucker.”