Last Looks_A Novel Read online

  Seething, Cuppy said, “Little man, you ought to watch your mouth on days you don’t have that douchebag Eskimo following you around.”

  Waldo nodded at something over Cuppy’s shoulder.

  Cuppy turned to see Nini standing right behind him, eating a pink ice cream cone, double scoop. He handed the cone to Waldo, crumpled Cuppy with an overhand right, then reclaimed the cone and took another lick.

  Don Q apparently wasn’t considering all this a bonding episode. He said to Waldo, “Next time I see you, you ain’t carryin’ a little present for me, I’m breakin’ a piece offa you instead. C’mon, Nini.”

  Don Q stepped over Cuppy and he and Nini headed back down Hollywood Boulevard.

  Cuppy sat up, blinking like a man who hadn’t been concussed in a while. Waldo said, “‘Eskimo’ is pejorative,” which befuddled the woozy cop even more, as did the hand Waldo offered to help him stand. Cuppy was big and useless and Waldo needed a second arm around his waist to lift him, giving his rib cage a fresh twinge. Cuppy stood on the sidewalk, trying to shake out the cobwebs. Waldo clapped him on the arm and pointed him in the opposite direction from the others, and Cuppy tottered away.

  Waldo took his Beretta, which he’d plucked from the rear of Cuppy’s belt, and discreetly shoved it back into his own. Cuppy’s badge he tossed in a sewer.

  TWENTY-SIX

  His presence still unsettled the Stoddard campus, and when he entered the main office unescorted the receptionists looked skittish. He told them who he was and that he was working for Alastair, but they already knew and hearing it again didn’t soothe them.

  Hexter passed through from an inner office and asked if he needed something. Waldo said he’d like to see a roster of students, ideally by grade, with names of their parents as well. Hexter answered with his eyes that Waldo was about as welcome at the school as a lice outbreak. Waldo remembered the note in the mysterious DVD package urging him to delve into Jayne’s relationship with the headmaster, and also his dark glower when Jayne was helping Waldo into her car. Thinking back on the first day, when Hexter hadn’t even wanted Waldo to talk to Jayne, it was almost as if he’d known something would develop. Still, he now instructed one of the assistants to show Waldo a copy of the directory.

  Waldo thanked him, accepted the wire-bound book, and started to leave. Hexter said curtly that it needed to stay in the office, so Waldo took a seat. Authority reasserted, the headmaster continued out.

  Waldo thumbed through the directory, which opened with the twelfth graders and continued down to the kindergarteners. The elementary school classes were subdivided by room, two per grade. Alphabetically behind the other kindergarten teacher, a Lynne Solis, Jayne White’s pages were the last in the book. Waldo’s eye went first to “Gaby Pinch, parents Monica & Alastair Pinch,” the ampersand giving their marriage a deceptively simple gloss. Other families’ complications were on more open display via clumsy but eloquent punctuation, semicolons of divorce and sometimes a re-ampersand: Gaby’s classmates included “Shannon Cameron, parents Kami Cameron; Cliff Cameron,” and “Max Kemper, parents Leigh Kemper; Douglas & Isabel Kemper,” and “Mariah Weaver, parents Amber Tate & Jacqueline Hough; Gregg Weaver & Pablo Etchevarria,” the last of which surely betokened the most intriguing Thanksgiving.

  More important, Gaby’s classmates also included one “Travaris Roberson, parents Leonard & Elise,” confirming Waldo’s expectations. Little Swaggy Junior had learned “Brush Every Morning” from Ms. White, just like Gaby Pinch had.

  Then there was “Yasmin Jamshidi, parents Soraya Jamshidi; Whitney & Darius Jamshidi.”

  But Waldo had trouble finding the third classmate. He scanned the list twice more and when that failed checked Ms. Solis’s kindergarten roster. It wasn’t until his fourth time through Jayne’s list that his subconscious did a bit of hocus-pocus with “Jared Moskowitz, parents Sarah & Mitch Moskowitz” and he knew he’d found his little man; he began smiling even before Wikipedia confirmed Savannah Moon’s birth name.

  He took pictures of the relevant pages on his phone, gave the directory back to the assistant and went outside to the empty playground. He leaned on a jungle gym and took inventory. There are no accidents. Savannah Moon, Darius Jamshidi and Swag Doggg were all fellow kindergarten parents of the Pinches, and all three had gone to lengths to dissuade Waldo from the case. Assuming they’d all met through their kids, what had these rich people gotten into? Were they culpable for Monica’s death? Or were they just conjoined in their hatred of Alastair and desire to see him punished, guilty or not? And why had Alastair claimed not to know Jamshidi? Or was it plausible that he in fact didn’t?

  As long as Waldo was here, he’d start by checking in with Jayne, who must know them all, probably even the semicolons and re-ampersands. He crossed the playground to her classroom and knocked on her window.

  He’d intended to ask a simple, direct question—What did the Pinches have in common with the Robersons and the Jamshidis and the Moskowitzes?—but when he caught her eye and she smiled at him, the constellation of parents flew from his head and all he could think of was her vulnerable over-the-shoulder look at her well-equipped costar, and when she opened the door what came out of his mouth was “Who is who they are?”

  With only that, she knew that he knew, or that he knew something, and her smile dropped; she looked at him like she was waiting to be struck.

  He said, “The King’s Peach?”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “My guess? One of your coworkers doesn’t like you very much.” Jayne bit her lip and looked away. Waldo said, “Did you think you could keep it a secret?”

  A little girl appeared in the doorway and pulled at her shirt. “Ms. White! Ms. White! I got glue in my shoe!”

  Jayne said to Waldo, “Can we do this later?”

  He realized he hadn’t come near the subject that mattered and said, “I’ve got to ask you about some of the other parents—”

  The girl held up the gluey shoe. “Look!”

  She said to the girl, “I’ll be right with you,” and to Waldo, apologetic, “I have to . . .” He nodded understanding and surrender. She said, “Are you coming to the play tonight?” When he balked, she said, “You have to see Gaby. We can talk afterward.” She closed the door and went back to her charges.

  Waldo kicked himself for having lost focus. But still and always there was something about Jayne that wouldn’t stop knocking him off his game.

  He would come back tonight and try her again after Gaby’s play. Anyway, she wasn’t the one most likely to help him; that was Alastair, who, even if he honestly didn’t know the relatively anonymous Jamshidi, had to be aware that his kid shared a classroom with these other children of the famous. And it was possible that, even through his perpetual haze of booze and self-absorption, he’d picked up on enough around him to offer some light on what this grab barrel of celebrities had to do with the murder of his wife.

  * * *

  —

  An audacious young district attorney, better dressed and squarer jawed than any Waldo had encountered in his years in the criminal justice system, was calling out the secret affair between Judge Johnny and the defense attorney played by Naomi Tompkins-Jones. “Your Honor,” he said to Johnny on the bench, “if an outside personal relationship does exist, I insist you recuse yourself from this case.”

  Judge Johnny narrowed his eyes at the cheeky prosecutor. Silence hung heavy in the courtroom, all present waiting to hear how the imposing jurist would respond to this challenge to his authority and integrity.

  At length, Judge Johnny said, “‘Two loves I have of comfort and despair, / Which like two spirits do suggest me still . . .’”

  The DA’s brow furrowed. The defense attorney deflated. The director started in on a cuticle.

  “‘The better angel is a man right fair, / The worser spirit a woman colour’d ill. / To win m
e soon to hell, my female evil / Tempteth my better angel from my side . . .’” Alastair played the lines alternately to the actors/lawyers before him.

  The director leaned toward the script supervisor and whispered, “What the fuck is he doing now?”

  The script supervisor whispered back, “I think it’s a sonnet.”

  “‘And would corrupt my saint to be a devil . . .’”

  “Are you going to cut?”

  “Yeah,” the director whispered, “I’m going to stop him in the middle of this. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  “‘Wooing his purity with her foul pride . . .’”

  The script supervisor whispered, “We’re not going to make our day.”

  The director, not really whispering anymore, said, “No shit.”

  So the cameras rolled and the other actors more or less held their positions and everybody waited until Alastair finished.

  “‘. . . Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt, / Till my bad angel fire my good one out.’” By way of final punctuation he simpered at Naomi, who raised a lip and walked off the set.

  The director mustered counterfeit good nature, shouted “Bravo, Alastair!” and clapped his hands. He threw encouraging glances at the script supervisor and other crew members, drumming up a full-company round of applause. Alastair basked in the ovation.

  “Now let’s do one where we use the script,” said the director, pleasantly, as if floating a spontaneous new thought. “Just for giggles.”

  “I think not,” said Alastair, definitive.

  Waldo studied the director, whose twitch had returned with a vengeance.

  Alastair said, “I’ve been drinking vodka since this morning. That,” he said, “is wholly inappropriate.”

  Waldo leaned in; he could feel the crew doing the same. Was this something new? Self-awareness?

  Maybe not. Alastair said, “Vodka makes me confrontational.”

  The moment hung there, until the prop man had an idea. “Would you prefer brandy?”

  “No!” shouted Alastair, slapping down the offer. He further explained, in a softer tone, “Brandy makes me cruel; lager makes me sleepy; tequila, sentimental.” He pointed to Naomi, who was sitting in a director’s chair near Waldo with her wardrobe heels off, rubbing her feet. “I just spent a night with this fair creature in glorious, multi-orgasmic splendor . . .”

  “Whatever,” said Naomi under her breath.

  “This scene wants a romantic undertone.” Alastair turned to the director. “Wouldn’t you agree, love?”

  The director, looking like a man with one foot on a land mine, said, “Absolutely.”

  “Therefore,” said the actor, with a triumphant flourish, “ouzo.”

  After a moment, the prop man said, “What’s ouzo?”

  Putting on warmhearted patience, Alastair said, “It’s an aperitif, flavored of anise. Have you any here?”

  “I’ll get some,” said the prop man, knowing the gig, and scurried away.

  “Well,” said the star, “when he does, we shall play the scene properly. Till then, I shall be in my trailer.” With that, he strutted toward the exit.

  Waldo took one more look at the director, the poor bastard, then trotted after Alastair. He caught up with him just outside the door. “Hey.”

  Alastair said, “Detective. I thought I saw you lurking.”

  Waldo cut right to it. “Tell me about Swag Doggg and Savannah Moon.”

  “I don’t know what any of those words mean.” He corrected himself. “Not true: I know what they all mean, just not in that order.”

  “They both happen to be parents in your daughter’s kindergarten class. Darius Jamshidi, too. They all wanted me to stay in my woods and away from your case. Monica was in the middle of something with them, and it may be that one or more wanted her dead. For damn sure they’re happy to let you take the fall. Now, what the hell is going on in that kindergarten class?”

  “Finger painting?” said Alastair, stepping onto the wooden steps to his trailer and opening his screen door. “Show-and-tell?”

  First the lies about the burner and now this. Waldo grabbed him by the arm. “Hey, asshole—I’m trying to save your life.” Alastair, stunned at the temerity, let the door swing closed. “Cut the self-indulgence and self-pity—you’ve got a terrific little girl who’s lost a mother and doesn’t need to lose her father too just because he doesn’t have the stones for a real fight.”

  Alastair shook his arm loose. “Nobody talks to me that way. You know why?”

  “Because they need the money.”

  “Because,” he corrected, “they know they’ll get a thrashing for the ages.” He started rolling up his sleeves. Waldo shook his head and walked away. “Your turn now, love,” the actor said after him.

  “Come on, Alastair, I don’t want to fight you,” he said, turning back. “Seriously. Since this started, all I’ve done is fight—banger wannabes, Eskimos, girls . . .”

  “And now,” Alastair said, “one living legend.” He took three deliberate steps and unfurled a roundhouse right, which Waldo slipped with ease.

  Alastair tried the same but southpaw, again drew nothing but air.

  Alastair charged like a mad bull; Waldo evaded like a cool matador. Alastair lunged again, arms out to the sides this time, sacrificing cover but making this rush impossible to dodge.

  All Waldo wanted was to avoid a hit to the ribs, and the longer he let this go on, the more likely he was to get one. So he unloaded with a right cross to the jaw; Alastair did him the favor of multiplying its force by running straight into it. The actor spun a full one-eighty and landed knees first on the blacktop, then hands and face.

  He lay still long enough for Waldo to worry, then flipped onto his back and shouted, “Well done, sir!” Propping himself on an elbow, he twinkled and said, “Now that we’ve got that out of our systems, let’s the two of us have a drink. Help me up.” Waldo did, flummoxed. “Do you like rugby, Waldo? You’d be right tasty company at the Scotland matches.”

  Steady on his feet again, Alastair cocked his fists, apparently ready for another round. Waldo grudgingly did likewise. But Alastair let loose a guffaw, threw an arm around Waldo and steered him back to the trailer. “Come on, now, Waldo,” he said, “you remember having mates, don’t you?” In truth, Waldo barely could; regardless, he was sure he’d never had a mate like Alastair Pinch.

  Inside, Waldo took a seat at the table while Alastair poured two generous glasses of vodka over ice, downed one and refilled it before handing Waldo the other. “I’m drunk, Waldo.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I mean more than usual. Have been all day. I knew I was in no condition to play that courtroom scene worth a damn. That’s why I behaved so unforgivably on the set. I’m not proud of it. I just want you to understand: it was all because I care so about the work.” He raised his glass in a toast. “To ‘self-indulgence and self-pity’—that’s how you put it just now, wasn’t it?” Alastair drank; Waldo didn’t. The actor unfolded himself on the sofa, setting a pillow under his head. “Powerful observation, coming from the master.”

  “Meaning . . . ?”

  “Meaning you and I are two sides of the same coin, aren’t we.” He yawned and stretched. He’d pass out soon.

  Waldo wanted information before he lost him. “Savannah Moon,” he prompted again. “Swag Doggg.”

  But Alastair was rolling down a different track entirely. “You know what you should have done when your young man Lipps was killed? You should’ve gone on an epic pub crawl—two weeks, at least. Just gotten it all out of your system . . . then gone right back to the job. Instead, you chose to make his tragedy yours. Self-indulgence and self-pity. Killing yourself, without killing yourself.” He raised the glass again, a secondary toast. “But now here you are: back among the living,
in a way you weren’t a week ago.”

  The drunken observations shook him. “You see a difference?”

  “All the difference in the world! The way you confronted me today—you didn’t have that in you when you first shuffled onto my set with that rat’s nest of a beard and those dead eyes. You’ve been brought back to life, mate.” Alastair was slurring now, drifting toward slumber, but he kept muttering. “Brought back to life like so many of us . . . by singular carnal charms.”

  The truth of it abashed Waldo and he stood to leave. There was nothing more to gain from this interview anyway.

  His footsteps obscured what Alastair said next, but it sounded like “Is Jayne keeping the baby?”

  Waldo turned around. “What did you say?”

  Eyes closed, Alastair mumbled, “I do think about her all the time . . . but I haven’t felt I could telephone, given the circumstances . . .” Waldo came closer to better hear Alastair’s rambling as it grew softer. “I was such a cad . . . especially after she told me . . . but I was a married man, after all, and maybe it wasn’t even mine . . . and then, after Monica . . .” Alastair heaved the heaviest sigh Waldo had ever heard. “I’m tired, Waldo,” he said, and finally fell silent, turmoil unmistakable on his face even as he dropped off.

  Waldo was sure he was out so he headed for the door. But before the last stray wisps of consciousness slipped away, Alastair murmured, “Fearing you’re not as good as you’re believed to be . . . that’s common to all . . . but fearing you may actually be a monster . . . that’s a whole different flavor of hell.”

  Waldo lingered to be sure that was really the last of it, then slipped out of the trailer, leaving Alastair to sleep, or maybe damning him to it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  All he wanted now was his solitude back, not to be seen, not to be known. He wanted his woods. The closest thing, literally, was Fryman Canyon Park, a recreation area very near to Alastair’s house with a well-trafficked hiking trail that offered stunning city vistas but also tributaries into forests deep enough for isolation. He had almost five hours to kill anyway: if Alastair had nothing to offer on Swag Doggg or Savannah Moon, then Waldo’s next moves were confrontations with Jayne or the other parents, any of whom he might be able to corner at the school tonight. Nor was there anything he could to do for Lorena until he heard from her again and could ask how she wanted to play it. Besides, the longer Don Q had to wait, the more inclined he might be to cut a deal.