Dangerous (34 page)

When lunch rolled around I found myself eating a Caesar salad under an umbrella on the cafeteria patio. I held my phone, poised on the edge of action. Surely no one would answer, and even if they did, they couldn’t
possibly
still have records from a fifteen-year-old photo shoot.

The knowledge that this was a wild goose chase made me brave. I dialed the publisher’s number and began counting the ten rings I’d wait before hanging up.

On the fifth ring, a man picked up.

Amazingly, it was the editor himself, not a secretary. He had a friendly, unusual voice spiced with a hint of James Earl Jones’ warm oboe-vowels and marimba-smooth consonants. Although
Chamber
was defunct, he still had several other magazines going. I got the impression these were small, low-budget affairs where he did a lot of the work himself. Five minutes later, after a little flirting and a few creative lies, I had the model’s name and the phone number of his talent agency: Gabriel Lee, represented (at the time) by Angie Westerling Models right there in San Francisco.

On impulse I asked about the girl who’d posed with Gabriel, as casually as I could.

“Oh, I remember
her
all right,” the editor said. “Name started with a V. Vera? No, that wasn’t it. Anyway, crazy girl. Funny thing about her, though, she wasn’t a model, just a girlfriend who came with him to the audition. She had an interesting look going on, so we asked if she’d be interested in doing the shoot. She signed the releases, and bam.”

His voice took on a strange, almost nostalgic tone. “That girl had a way of handling a gun like it was a part of her. We joked about it afterward, that maybe she was a hitman for the mob, or something. It was just a vibe she had.” He chuckled.

I wanted to ask more but decided not to push it, so I thanked him for his time, and hung up.

My unexpected breakthrough gave me chills, despite the hot, dry noontime air.
I might actually get in touch with this guy
, I realized and felt a stab of…fear? Did I really want to pursue this?

§

I had a first revision of the shot done by four-thirty and decided to take a break. As I paced outside in the shade between sound stages 4 and 5, I dialed the Westerling agency and learned from the woman there that Gabriel Lee hadn’t worked for them in five years, and was considered inactive. But with a little wheedling I managed to get a phone number out of her.

That one was out of service, but the system gave me a new number for Gabriel Lee. With a pounding heart, I took a few deep breaths and tapped it out.

“Hello,” said a man on the other end of the phone. It was a dark, clear voice, like a subdued metal guitar. Deeper than I expected.

I gathered my wits and launched into my rehearsed opening.

“Hi. Is this Gabriel Lee?”

“The one and only.”

“I understand you did a photo shoot for
Chamber
magazine about fifteen years ago, with a woman named Valeria Stregazzi.”

“Val? Yeah. We were dating, actually.” His tone was somewhat amused, but otherwise unreadable. “What’s this about? Are you with the police?”

Police? Good god.

“Oh no…nothing like that,” I blurted, unprepared for the sudden change in direction.

He chuckled wryly. “You’re either the world’s worst detective, or the best. What’s your name?” Not a challenge, but he wasn’t pussyfooting around.

I hesitated, realizing the conversation was getting out of hand. “Uh…” I dithered, then abandoned secrecy. “Koishi. I swear I’m not a detective or anything.”

“Let me guess. You’re a friend of hers. A lover.”

“Yes.” It was a relief to be frank with him.

“And I suppose she sent you to check up on me.”

“Kind of,” I lied, then backtracked. “Well, not exactly.” God, I
sucked
at this.

“Val does enjoy her head games. All right, I’ll play along. What do you want?” Finally, real candor.

“I guess I want to know what she was like back then. She doesn’t talk about herself, and I really care about her. I just want to know if she’s…if there’s anything…”

“You want to know if she’s crazy.”

“Yeah.” It felt like a betrayal.

He gave a quiet sigh. “I loved her. Or thought I did, you know? But it didn’t work out. Maybe she’s mellowed since then. I sure hope so.” There was old pain in his voice, scarred-over desire.

Very likely Gabriel was the young man of Milton’s fairy tale: the spurned lover who lacked the magic gem needed to unlock her heart.

“You probably know this already, but Val’s a very kinky girl,” he said.

“Yeah,” I answered, almost a whisper.

“I mean
really
kinky. Once she handcuffed me to the bed and fucked me holding a loaded gun in my mouth. I thought I was going to die. You know what she said afterward? ‘That was the most erotic thing I’ve ever done.’ I bet she never mentioned that.”

Silence, as I absorbed this new intelligence. Then:

“I figured you’d wanna know. Look, I have to go. Good luck with Val—you sound like a nice girl and you’ll probably be fine. Just don’t ever cross her. She has a real temper, as you probably know already. Goodbye.”

Click.

§

Around six o’clock that evening, Carl and I sat down to review a shot when Shelley buzzed to say two men were here to see him. My boss excused himself, and I went back to working on the shot.

But as I prepared to go home a half hour later, Carl waved me into his office.

“Those men were from Bulldog Security. Seems one of their employees stopped showing up for work last week, and they found he’d been surfing porn on company computers. Nasty stuff. I mentioned it to Shelley when they left, and she says you had some issues with Mr. Deen, too.”

“Tyler? He was a creep, yeah.”

“Well, he’s been terminated. They were here to assure me it wouldn’t happen again, but I think they’re spooked by his disappearance. Worried what else he might have been up to, and doing damage control. Is there anything I should tell them? Or the police?”

“Not really. Shelley thought he was screwing with my security badge on purpose. I never had any issues with it until he started working here. Oh—and he might have touched my ass once in line at the cafeteria.”

“And you didn’t report him?” Carl demanded.

My cheeks felt hot. “It seemed like an accident at the time, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t want to cry wolf.”

“Dammit, K, you should have told me! I would have kicked his ass. At least he’s gone now. Just promise to keep your eyes peeled, okay? I don’t want to lose my star compositor to some nutjob with a machine gun.”

Carl wasn’t the most diplomatic person alive, but his concern would have been a comfort, if his words hadn’t filled me with a sudden sense of peril. Maybe I
should
talk to the police. Better safe than sorry.

But then I recalled mentioning him by name to Val, that night on the pier. She hadn’t seemed to pay attention, but it might have been an act.

Oh Jesus. Had she tracked him down while I was away in Houston? What if he really was just a harmless creep, and my offhand comment had put him in her sights? Given what I’d learned about Val since that day, there were a hundred dooms she could visit upon him, as well as planting incriminating evidence on any computer he touched. If that was so, would the trail lead investigators to my Keeper?

The unknowns were staggering. Maybe he was a psycho, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Val had framed him, or roughed him up, or killed him, and maybe she hadn’t.

Carl noticed my distress, and offered to walk me to my car. I let him.

How safe it was to know Val?

26     
instructions

BLURSDAY (NOUN) 1. A day which cannot be distinguished from any other. 2. The state of profound mental exhaustion producing this confusion, caused by working many twelve-hour days with no time left for anything but eating and sleeping. 3. Koishi Paz’s mental state near the end of the
Pretty Death Machine
project.

§

We were supposed to finish
PDM
on Friday, but like the terminatrix of the title, the project just wouldn’t die. The director added another three shots at the last minute, and we had no choice but to accept the extra work, or risk pissing off the studio and lose out on future projects. Hollywood is very much built on people scratching each others’ asses.

As a result, I ended up working long shifts and well into that weekend, too. In a sense it was a mercy, as there wasn’t time to pursue my sleuthing or dwell on my disquieting conversation with Gabriel, or the unknowns surrounding Tyler. But the endless grind took its toll on me, and by the end I was utterly exhausted, unable to tell one day from another.

On Sunday, when the last shot had been finaled, Carl stood behind my chair and gave me a badly needed shoulder massage. As I melted under his strong hands he said, “Thanks for all your hard work, Miss Paz. We couldn’t have done this job without you.”

Miss Paz.
Was he flirting with me? I imagined the two of us tangled in bed, his body just as craggy and no-nonsense as his face. The idea was so strange it made me chuckle. No, he was simply as tired as the rest of us, and the hard-ass exterior had temporarily softened. And maybe he was still feeling protective, in light of Tyler’s odd disappearance.

“Tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo. Take the day off. In fact, take the whole week off and get some rest. We won’t get plates for
Hammer Fall
until a week from Friday, so there’s not much to do anyway.”

My work-ethic muscle clenched. “The whole week? I can’t—”

“Unless you
really
want to do those shots for
Pony Story
.”
Pony Story
was a dreadful kid’s movie in deep financial trouble, and the completion bond company which had assumed control didn’t care how the shots looked, just so long as they were done and under budget. Bond company work was thankless, unrewarding, poison on your demo reel.

“No, thank you,” I admitted. The fact was, I really needed a week off.

“Rony and Ryan can bang those shots out in a couple of days, so we’re square here. Go home. Relax. You’ll need it for
Hammer Fall
.” I didn’t doubt that.
Hammer Fall
’s director was known for being extremely demanding.

I thanked him and spent a half hour tidying up my files on the server, hands shaking from fatigue and four cups of coffee.

Carl announced he was taking the whole crew out for drinks at the Japanese-Thai sports bar across the street. Several coworkers unsuccessfully tried to guilt me into coming along, but I declined. All I wanted was home-food-sleep.

I grabbed my stuff, said my goodbyes, and stepped out of the dim office into warm afternoon sun. It felt strange to be going home in broad daylight, work all done, reminiscent of the last day of school before summer break. I wearily climbed the three flights of stairs in the studio’s vast parking garage. By the time I reached my car I had begun to sweat. The guard at the gate waved absently as I pulled out of the lot and turned toward the Hollywood Freeway.

It was even hotter, ten minutes later, as I descended into the San Fernando Valley and saw what looked like a war zone. A pall of smoke lay upon the valley, obscuring the far hills. Brush fires had raged in Malibu the last few days, but a strong wind from the south west had stoked them to new furies, causing the loss of dozens of multi-million-dollar homes. When I merged onto the westbound Ventura Freeway, the sun became a baleful red eye glaring through thick, acrid air.

By the time I reached my exit I was bone-tired and melancholy from the apocalyptic tableau, with only enough energy to order a burger and fries from a drive-thru.

Seen in sunlight for the first time in days, the condo felt alien. I found a message on the answering machine. It was Paul just saying hi, in a nice and unstalkerish way.

I turned on the AC, then plopped onto the leather couch and ate in a daze, with the TV turned to a random news channel. Several minutes passed before I rose from my trance to realize I did not share these political analysts’ fascination with McCain’s health records, nor Obama’s chances in the upcoming Indiana and North Carolina primaries. But the other channels were no better, so I shut off the TV and ate in silence.

The clock on the microwave said 5:45pm as I threw away the wrappers and put the unfinished soda in the mostly-empty fridge.

Should I check my email? Screw it, I thought, I’m going to bed.

§

Of course I was wide awake at 3am, my circadian rhythm hopelessly trashed by my crunch time at work.

The heat didn’t help, either. Here in the valley one couldn’t live without
some
cooling, but oh, the cost. I avoided using the AC as much as possible, preferring to suffer rather than pay a big utility bill. I blamed my mom for infecting me with that aversion.

After thirty minutes I rose from my tangled sheets to make iced tea, then powered up the computer. I sat in its pale glow, in my underwear.

To my delight there was an email from Val, about two hours old. It bore no identifying subject line, only her phone number. It had been sent from her cell phone. I clicked on it eagerly.

Forgive my brevity, time presses. Send me a haiku. Wrapping up here soon. Expect instructions. --V

It wasn’t much, but I was thrilled to get even this brief message.

Send her a haiku, hmm? I closed my eyes and sifted through the loam of my subconscious, searching for anything which might resonate with Val. After a few minutes I had it, and sent a short reply:

Val,

I miss you. Here is your haiku.

dirty brown smoke pall
leaping flame consumes the hills
mansions taking flight