Broken Sleep (55 page)

He recognized the phrases as comments he’d made while teaching at SCCAM and the name of the clinic where he had his sperm tested. Miranda Wright meant nothing to him. A few minutes later, Cherry called on the burner.

“Moses, the Committee on Anti-American Activities has been holding covert investigations, and you and your brother are among those on their hit list.”

Naïvely, he had never fully comprehended the breadth of the CAA’s audacity.

“How do you know? Why are you telling me?”

“Because I’m getting a goddamned subpoena.”

“What the hell? Are you sure? Why?”

“They don’t have to tell you that. But Parnell Palmer, the CAA chief investigator, and his creeps are not nearly as stealthy as they think they are. They started sniffing around me because I’m working for you. I sniffed back. They won’t get shit from me.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t tell me any more. Talk to Alchemy. Toss the phone. I’ll send another one next week.”

The next day, Moses went to Cedars-Sinai to take his required every-six-months blood tests. Then he and Alchemy met for lunch at the Pig ’n’ Whistle.

“Mose, how’d it go? That’s doozie of a bruise on your forearm.”

“Yeah. Happens. No results yet. I’m feeling okay. Lately the void is emptying into a bigger void. And this is why.” He showed him the paper Cherry sent over. “According to Cherry, the CAA is investigating us. Who is Miranda Wright?”

“No one you need to stay awake worrying about. I also talked to Cherry yesterday.”

“Maybe the CAA knows about the Pasadena IVF, the doctor who tested my sperm before, or the doctor who injected the sperm?”

“So what if they do? The Pasadena clinic has no connection to me. And my doc never knew I gave him your sperm. Mose, this is terrific. My—our—approval ratings are through the roof. Those appearances with Louise definitely helped. Cherry is right, we are scaring everyone.”

“They’ve scared me back.”

“Intimidation is their business. I won’t blink first.”

“Should we ask Cherry to do more recon?”

“Hold off. You rest. I’m going to need you more than ever. And don’t worry, I got this.”

Dancing in the Dark, 2018

Me, Lux, Silky, and a few friends been jamming at the Echo, billing ourselves as the Ables ’cause we’re working on touring together in the summer. We asked Laluna. She ain’t into it. I’m hoping she changed her mind when she calls me the Friday before the Super Bowl. I ain’t going to their party, ’cause I don’t want Carlotta to work for Alchy (I want she should quit altogether). It’s real curious when Laluna asks me to meet the next day in Elysian Park at Fix for coffee.

I get my double espresso and stroll to the patio, where Laluna is singing and playing behind a paper sign that reads
NOW PLAYING—MARIA
. This Maria got long blond hair, sunglasses, and no piercings in her lips. Not doing our stuff but some trad Gypsy music. She warns me off with a shake of her head. I sit alone. I give a coupla youngsters an autograph and take a pic with them. Most people in L.A. are cool about leaving you alone after that.

Laluna don’t take off her wig when we walk down Echo Park Boulevard. I ask why the hell she’s in disguise and say if she wants to play we can all jam, with or without Alchy. Again,
no thanks, and she tells me she enjoys the anonymity. She’s done “being a ‘star.’ ”

“Laluna, what’s Alchy say?”

“Call me Maria.” I don’t know if she means just for now or forever. I ain’t going there. “I don’t need his permission.”

Her phone rings and she looks unhappy and declines. It rings again two minutes later. “Jack, I can’t talk now … All is good. I’ll see you at the party.” She shoves the phone back in her pocket. “Ambitious, stop making that face. I’m exploring many new things and kinetic m-edit-ation is one of them.”

“Lal—Maria, I don’t know Crouse and I ain’t as smart as you or Alchemy, but that fucker Barker is a con man supremo. Alchy can blind you with his spieling, but he is genuine. He ain’t no scambooger.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I didn’t ask you here to discuss that. Do you know any woman or women Alchemy was in love with?”

“Nope.”

“Never in all of those years?”

“Nope.” She seems like she don’t believe me. “Only him, best I ever met at keeping secrets.” Except maybe Laluna. “Is Alchemy fuckin’ around on
you
?”

“No.”

I eyed her.

“Ambitious, I am certain he is not.”

I buy that now because he’d never risk losing Perse. She, more than Salome or Laluna, is his kryptonite.

“What do you know about Absurda’s abortion?”

“Just that she had one when she was sixteen and still living in Fond du Lac.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. What’s goin’ on?”

We walk a bit without her answering. I figure she’ll talk when she is ready, which she does. “Nathaniel donated his papers to Magnolia College, and Salome couldn’t bring herself to look at them, so Alchemy and I dug our way through thousands of pages. He never threw anything out.”

She hands me a crumpled piece of paper from the Riverhead Abortion Clinic, dated November 13, 1996, and the name Amanda Akin is typed on the top. I’m guessing Laluna don’t know that is like six weeks after we broke up.

“Look at the emergency contact.”

It’s faded, but it reads goddamn Nathaniel Brockton?! That makes no sense. She never would’ve fucked him. Or him her. “You show this to Alchemy? He say it was his?”

“He was there when I found it. He and Absurda weren’t ready to raise a kid. Because of the publicity, Nathaniel went with her.”

Damn it. After all the time when he finally convinced me the shit between us was my fault, he was fuckin’ lying to my face. I wanna go crush the bastid’s head.

“Why you showin’ this to me now?”

“Just come to the party tomorrow.”

“Where the fuck is he?”

She clamped my wrist. Held it tight. “He’s out of town on
political business for the day. Please, please don’t contact him before.” I’m sizzling and she can see it. “Come late if you can’t control yourself. We’ll talk after everyone else leaves. I need to settle some things once and for all.”

“You ain’t the only one.”

At Close Range

Alchemy’s call interrupted Moses and Jay’s leisurely breakfast at the Saturday morning Venice farmers’ market. He was calling from the Santa Monica Airport before jetting to Arizona for an impromptu meeting with Vulter. He anticipated Moses’s question. “I am not partnering with her.” He needed Moses to meet their lawyer Kim Dooley later that day at his apartment, not the offices or Jay’s apartment. “Things are happening fast and more is going to happen. See you tomorrow.
And don’t be late. Don’t be late.”

While waiting for Dooley, Moses paced in his small living room. He stopped by the mantelpiece that held Hannah’s menorah and his father’s medal, constant reminders of his reconfigured identity. He still called himself a secular Jew, but the changes in his identity manifested themselves in the most unexpected ways—when he heard the subtle anti-Semitic slurs that popped up too often, he rebutted them with the authority of the outsider instead of the defensive stance of the “victim.” He’d always wished he could tell his mom about the meeting with Teumer. She’d be proud. How lucky he felt that she raised him. At least he didn’t have to explain the wild complexities
of Persephone’s birth to Hannah and why she would be, but couldn’t be, a grandmother. Most of all, he hoped he had finally lived up to Hannah’s expectations that he act like a mensch.

Dooley was all business and no questions allowed. The documents she presented named Moses chair of the Nightingale Foundation board—replacing Alchemy—and assigned him, along with Alchemy, as cosignatory of its financial disbursements. He was also named cotrustee on Persephone’s and, astonishingly, Salome’s trusts. He was removed from all official positions with the Nightingale Party. Moses assumed the CAA investigation necessitated the suddenness of these changes.

Louise Urban Vulter, with her sunbaked freckled skin not covered by makeup, hair not in its typical bun but in a ’50s-style pageboy, and dressed “Arizona” in jeans, flannel shirt, and cowboy boots, greeted Alchemy as he deplaned from a private jet at the Scottsdale airport. She seemed a bit taken aback; he was looking less and less like a youthful and fearless Apache warrior and more like a ravage-featured, once proud Indian now confined to the Whiteriver reservation. Nobility and optimism did not guarantee success—in fact, more often the opposite occurred on the political battleground.

On the ride in her Range Rover to the Scottsdale Gun Club, they resumed their friendly barb-tossing rivalry. Vulter chided him because his love of shooting didn’t stamp out his desire to ban so many types of guns. He kidded her back, asking why any true hunter needed a semiautomatic weapon. The talk
turned serious when they arrived at her private parking spot and stood face-to-face outside the car.

“What’s so important you had to fly to Arizona to take target practice for an hour?”

“You took the CAA assignment, right?”

“Can’t tell you anything about it.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you. You received a report saying Miranda Wright and I had sex when she was only fourteen and she got pregnant and I paid oodles of cash to cover up the affair and her abortion.”

The corners of Vulter’s mouth twitched ever so slightly. She tilted almost imperceptibly back on her boot heels, forcing a glacial expression.

“Thank you.”

“Alchemy, for what? I can’t help you.”

“
You can lie but you can’t hide
 …”

“… 
When you’re standing naked at my bedside
 …” Vulter laughed, blushing, as she sang an off-key version of the line from “Eight Is Just Enough,” on which Absurda and Alchemy shared the lead vocals.

“Louise, why’d the IRS and your committee stop looking into Godfrey Barker and his church?”

“Who says we were?”

“Fine, you weren’t. Who most wants to discredit me so I go away?”

She shrugged.

“C’mon, play along.”

“The desperate and strategically shrewd mainstream Democrats. I got the same scared types in my party.”

“Exactly. Barker gets big funding from Hollywood Dems. Louise, I’m going to help you. Next week you will receive some damning information on Mr. Barker and his associates. Use it wisely.”

“To what do I owe this honor?” She leaned forward, coyly provocative.

“I’d like you to quash the upcoming subpoena on my brother. And don’t tell me it’s not happening.”

“It is and I seriously doubt I can stop it. There are people on that committee who don’t trust me because of my relationship with you. Fact, if news of this meeting gets out—not good.”

“For either of us. I don’t understand why you need to subpoena Moses. Or Sidonna Cherry, for that matter.”

“Let me put it this way: You’ve stood naked by many a bedside. And yet, truths remain hidden. And mysteries still abound.”

The Magic Mountain

The party began under a cloudless sky, another ideal seventy-six-degree SoCal January day, the kind that inspires envy in the rest of the world and lures millions, who too often disregard the unwritten warnings of man’s covenant with nature.

Valets took the guests’ cars, and an experimental solar-powered van shuttled everyone up the hill. Thirty tables with ten chairs each, and four outdoor TVs dotted the grounds: two tuned to the game, one playing
Horse Feathers
and the other
North Dallas Forty
. Twenty solar-powered heaters would warm and illuminate the area next to each table if, as the sun set, a slight chill entered the air. This spread qualified as modest in high-end L.A. circles, where $25,000 events were rated bowling alley worthy. The waiters circulated outside offering appetizers, and inside were two banquet tables filled with main courses. Everything was organic and locally grown or raised, except for Twinkies and pigs in a blanket, which were a concession to those with a Mindswallow-style palate.
Apocalypse Now
blared in the small screening room while the game played on a large-screen TV in the living room.

Jay and Moses, among those who were allowed to park up the hill in the driveway, arrived at kickoff. Moses’s transformation from professor to boss did not subdue his feelings of fraudulent outsiderness in any large gathering. He understood that the currencies of the cliques that formed this party were money, fame, and power. Beauty and intelligence were commodities, bought and sold like art or SpaghettiOs. He couldn’t help feeling more like a SpaghettiO in this menagerie of famous faces and heavy hitters, who, on the surface, appeared as an anachronistic mix of old and young, staid and hip, all brought together by the catalytic bond of Alchemy.

With balletic grace, Alchemy glided among the guests: Euge Baltzer, aging metal rocker of the band Samureye; Romy Milton, granddaughter of a major pet food mogul and sex tape “star”; Chipper Ronan, machine tool heir and aspiring screenwriter; riteplay.com founders and Nightingale Party supporters Frieberg and Loo, who donned football jerseys with
DIGITAL DRUID
printed across the back. Laluna—in a low-cut powder blue San Diego Chargers jersey, blue-and-white-striped leggings, orange high-top sneakers, black hair growing longer—locomoted aloofly about as the marginally engaged hostess of the festivities.