The Big Keep: A Lena Dane Mystery (Lena Dane Mysteries) (8 page)

I didn’t have an answer to that, but I did have a new idea on the alias front. I called all the agencies again, and his paydirt with Venture: the office manager found a script listing for a Caleb Hashly. Eureka.

“Did he have an agent there?” I asked the receptionist.

“No,” she responded, suddenly bored. “We keep a record of all the submissions that come through the office, so we can keep them from submitting over and over. That’s where your guy is.”

“Do you have any contact information for him? Phone number, email, address?”

“Let’s see.” I heard a keyboard clicking. “We just have a phone number. You want it?”

“Absolutely.”

I called the number, but it was predictably disconnected. I could have gone online and done reverse directory, but I had something even better: a guy on the inside. Or, as it were, a woman. I pulled out my cell and found Cristina’s number.

I had met Cristina Gutierrez eight years earlier in San Diego at a convention for law enforcement officers. It’s not easy being a woman in the LAPD, period, but Cristina had managed to make detective at 32, the youngest Hispanic woman to ever do so. We’d both sat in on a panel called “Women in Vice”—me as a 23-year-old rookie, and her as a 36-year-old old vet. The panel was worthless—a lot of talk about not complaining about your period—but I found Cristina to be hilarious, snorting and checking her watch pointedly until the female speaker grew so nervous she ended the whole thing early. Kind of a rude thing to do, but that was Cristina – running a mile a minute on all cylinders, efficient and determined with no tolerance for wasted time. We’d gotten coffee after the panel, and she’d taken me under her wing a bit. We still emailed once or twice a month, and at 44 she was as ruthless and energetic as ever. If my father had taught me that girls had every right to compete with the boys, it was Cristina who’d taught me to play in their world.
 

True to form, she answered on the first ring. “Lena! Where have you been, what have you been doing?” Her voice was smooth velvet with just a hint of an accent, a souvenir from her native Puerto Rico. In the eight years I’d known Cristina, I’d never found her to be any less hyper than a five-year-old on crack. She made me feel perpetually lazy.

“I’m good. How are you? Are you still with the younger man, what was it, Esteban?”

She laughed, a full-throated cackle. “A younger man, yes. Esteban, no. The new one is called Miguel, and Baby Girl, I am in love.”
 

“Wow, I’m impressed.” And I was. Cristina’s always been a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of girl.

“You have no idea.” Her voice lowered. “But, Baby Girl, you do not call me on a Thursday afternoon to hear about my many romantic triumphs.”

I told her, as briefly as I could, about Nate’s father and the phone number in LA. “It’s kind of a long shot, Cristina, but it’s all I have. This guy is a phantom. He’s been through more identities in the last ten years than you’ve been through twenty-somethings.”

She laughed again. “Give me the number.”

I read it off to her, and waited while she typed it in.

“Okay, let’s see. The number was assigned to an apartment in Studio City. Disconnected last year. The name on the account is James Jacob Tyler.”
 

I fist-pumped in my empty office. Finally, I had real evidence that Jason Anderson had gone to LA. It felt great to have something to dig my nails into. “Can I have the address?”

She gave it to me. “And does this mean you are coming to see me?”

“You know, Cristina, I think it probably does.”

I promised to call her back soon, and hung up the phone. As soon as I put the receiver down, the black office phone flashed the time: 3:45. Hmm. It looked like I was going to Los Angeles, but I needed to run it by my client first. So I picked up my jacket and bag and headed for the car.

9. Typical Teenager Stuff

Nate’s school looked like every other high school in the country—a collection of large, connected brick boxes with a giant fiberglass mascot—in this case, a cardinal—nailed haphazardly above the entrance. I smiled at the oversized bird. When I was in high school, across town, some deadbeat students had decided it would be a brilliant idea to kidnap our own mascot, a husky dog. Unfortunately, they’d unscrewed the back of the statue first, not realizing that the damn thing was lightweight and hollow. The Chicago wind tipped the whole thing forward, and when everyone came to school the next morning the dog was flipped all the way over, displaying his ass to the student parking lot.
 

I was a suspect in the great Husky vandalism case, but only because I was so frequently a suspect for one thing or another, being known throughout the school as Not a Team Player. I told the principal that if it had been me, I would have gotten the whole dog off the roof and into a nearby dog park before the first bell, and she actually conceded that that sounded much more like me.

On the left side of the building was a student parking lot, and on the right a long line of buses snaked past a big yard with picnic tables that were littered with cigarette butts. I parked the Jeep illegally at the front of the bus line, careful not to block in the lead vehicle, and stepped out, leaning against the Jeep to wait for Nate.

It was a beautiful day for early spring: about 50 degrees with a wary stream of sunlight breaking through the overcast skies. I turned my face to the sun and sighed, trying to ignore the churning that had begun in my stomach again. Did pregnant women always feel sick? Because that was getting old really fast. I realized with a guilty stab that I still hadn’t made a doctor’s appointment or bought my mandatory copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” I hadn’t done anything, really, except cut out caffeine and alcohol. But hey, the kid wasn’t going anywhere for a while, right? I pushed the thought aside.

A tone echoed across the parking lot – why do they still call that a bell? – and a few moments later a flood of students rushed the door in a chaotic escape attempt. A couple of the older boys whistled at me, attention that I found sort of quaint and adorable, considering the rather large handgun that was locked up in the Jeep at that very moment. Shading my eyes, I finally spotted Nate as he headed toward the bus line. He saw me at the same time, and jogged over. Today he was sporting faded jeans – probably the same ones –and a dark green windbreaker. His face brightened when he saw me.

“Hey,” I said brightly. “You want a ride home? I can give you some progress on your case.”

“Sure.” He headed towards the car.

Whoa, it wasn’t actually that easy to snatch a minor, was it? “Won’t someone miss you? I mean, do the teachers watch to see if you ride off with strangers?”

Nate shrugged. “Maybe with the other kids, the bus drivers will notice if they’re not there. But I take the city bus sometimes, ‘cause the route is shorter, so they’re used to me not showing up.”

“Okay.” I walked around the drivers-side door, and we buckled ourselves in. We had to wait in a line of traffic to exit the parking lot, and Nate was the first to speak.

“So, um, not that I don’t appreciate the ride, but how come you picked me up instead of calling?”

“Well, you don’t have a cell phone, and I felt kind of weird calling your house while your stepfather is trying to rest.” And I didn’t want to go home. Again. “Plus I was running around town anyway, so I thought I’d just swing by the school. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s great.” He bounced a little in his seat. “To be honest, I kind of hate the bus.”

I grinned at him. “Yeah, but it’ll be all the sweeter when you finally get your driver’s license, right?”

His face closed down. “Yeah, I guess.”

I mentally berated myself. We didn’t know where Nate would be in two years, much less if he’d have a car to drive. Nice one, Selena. We finally pulled out of the bus line and were on our way.

“So anyway, I think I’ve got a lead on your biological father.”

“Yeah?” Nate perked up.

“Yeah. I tracked him down through some talent agencies. His last known address in in Los Angeles. I think he went out there to try to be a screenwriter.”

“So, is that it? Do you know how to reach him now?” His voice was eager, with a thin edge of desperation that I tried not to feel.

“Not quite yet. Nate, I think I’m going to have to fly to LA. I need to interview the agent he worked with, his neighbors, that kind of thing.”

“Okay. That’s totally cool, I mean with the money and whatever. Do what you gotta do.” I glanced over. His shoulders had slumped again, head turned to face the window, and my heart sputtered a little. This kid couldn’t get a break.

“Nate, do you have anywhere you need to be right now? I mean, do you need to get home to your stepdad?”

He shook his head. “Not really. He has trouble sleeping at night because of his meds schedule, so he’s usually napping now. Why?”

I turned, pointing the car’s nose downtown, and grinned at him. “I think we should make a quick detour. Do you like comic books?”

We stopped at a little sub shop on 18th street, and a half-hour later I lugged a bulging grocery bag into Great Dane. Nate trailed behind me with a four-pack of fountain drinks. It wasn’t quite five, but the crowd had thinned out for the dinner hour: I saw a handful of teenagers in the Marvel section, and several grown men scattered around D.C. and the trade paperback shelves. My dad grinned at me as we walked in, and I headed over to the counter and leaned across to kiss him on the cheek, surrendering the food.

“Hi, Daddy. We come bearing early dinner.”

“Hey, Firecracker,” he responded, his pet name for me. “Thank you – but who’s ‘we?’”

I moved aside so he could see Nate behind me, and the boy shyly stepped forward, offering the drinks like an apology. “Hi, Mr. Dane,” he said quietly.

“Dad, this is Nate. He’s a client.”

“I see, I see.” He took off his reading glasses to inspect Nate. My dad is a thin, reedy man, with white hair and a neat matching white mustache. He was wearing his standard uniform of khaki pants and red suspenders– over an Incredible Hulk T-shirt. I think I get my sense of appropriate professional dress from him. “Well, Nate, Mr. Dane is my father. You should call me Peter.”

“Okay.”

“Anybody else around?” I asked casually. I didn’t really want to see my sister. She was going to bug me about the baby. “We brought enough food for everybody.” I grabbed an extra stool for Nate, who was standing awkwardly by the counter, and then walked around the counter to start setting up the subs on the table behind my dad.
 

“Aaron is in the back room stocking the new shipment. And your sister took a deposit to the bank.”

“Cool,” I said, trying not to sound relieved. I took an enormous bite of a turkey sub, and spent several minutes trying to chew. “More for us,” I mumbled.
 

My dad rolled his eyes and looked over to Nate. “Tell me, Nate, what kind of comics do you read?”

“Actually, I haven’t really read any, sir,” Nate said apologetically.

My dad gave a little snort. “‘Sir,’ he says. Call me Peter. And that’s okay, nobody’s perfect. Finish that sandwich, and we’ll get you going with some graphic novels, which my younger daughter loves. Selena, what’s in your car right now?”

“Uh-” I paused, trying to think. “
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume II
and the third
Sin City
book.”
 

Dad shook his head sadly and said to Nate, “Young man, please don’t use my daughter as a role model. I tried to raise her right, but I’m afraid her personal compass doesn’t always face north. All she reads is the violent stuff.”

“Hey,” I protested. “I don’t have to take this. I’m going to go give Aaron a sandwich.” I hopped off the back countertop and started towards the back of the store. “Nate, you okay?” He nodded, looking interestedly at my dad. I smiled and headed into the storeroom, where I found Aaron, a skinny black teen in a T-shirt that said “Who Watches the Watchmen,” digging through a stack of comics that were still in their shiny plastic shrink-wrap. I chatted with him for a few minutes about school – Aaron was studying mythology at the U – and then returned to rescue Nate.

And not a moment too soon. Back at the counter, my father had finished eating and was stacking books in front of Nate like the boy had just learned to read.
 

“Whoa, Dad,” I said, walking up. “You’re going to overwhelm the poor kid. What’ve you got? I reached over and picked up the short stack. “
Kingdom Come, Watchmen
, and
Fables
? Nice, but I think
Watchmen’s
a little intense for a newbie.” I walked the Moore novel back and picked up Frank Miller’s
Batman: Year One
instead. My dad nodded approvingly.

“When you’re right, you’re right, Selena Kyle.”
 

I sent Nate a big confident stage wink and turned back to my father. “Put these on my tab, okay?”

Nate began to protest, but my dad held up a firm hand. “Not a chance. It’s the man’s first comic books, and I am honored to present them to him as a gift.” He turned to wink at Nate. “Just tell all your friends to stop by the store, eh?” Nate nodded seriously, and I grinned, then felt a stab of pain for Nate. From what I understood, the boy didn’t have many friends. If any.

“And you,” he said to me, making his severe dad face, “You’re way too skinny, Firecracker. Eat something.”

I rolled my eyes. Had he not seen me annihilate the sub? But he was just being a dad, so I said I would. After all, I wasn’t going to be thin much longer.

As we headed back to the car, Nate swung his Great Dane bag and said softly, “Your dad’s really nice.”

“Yeah, he is.” I started the Jeep and pulled carefully into traffic, conscious that technically I had two kids in the car.

“Why does he call you Firecracker?”

I smiled into the rearview mirror. “It’s from when I was a kid. I was eleven, and Rory, my big sister, was fourteen, and she had her first boy over for dinner. And afterwards they were watching TV in the living room while my dad and I did the dishes, and I was maybe eavesdropping a little bit, and I heard him saying mean stuff to her.”