“WHY ARE YOU STILL here?” I snarled to my father. He stood in the middle of my living room, the exact spot he wasn’t supposed to be in. He should’ve been in his car or, better yet, back in Vegas. Anywhere else but right in front of me.
“I felt we had some unfinished business,” he declared, puffing his chest.
“Oh, you did, did you?”
“There’s a lot to talk about,” he countered.
I was baffled. After more than a decade, suddenly he thought we had a lot to talk about.
“So, you know, I thought I should stay,” he finished lamely, his chest beginning to deflate.
I put my foot down. “I can’t have you here, Paul. I’m in the middle of a case.”
“Oh, I don’t mind.”
He didn’t mind?
“When you’re not working ‘the case,’ we can — ”
“Why did you say it like that? It’s an actual case. I am actually a detective.” I turned and headed to my refrigerator. Feeling things made me thirsty.
“Sure,” he offered.
Daggers. From my eyes.
Paul put up his hands in defense. “OK, OK. You’re a detective with a case. Better?”
“No,” I said, cracking a water bottle open. “Because you’re still here.” I drank. “Why are you still here?”
“I’ve made some calls — ”
“More calls? You made more? Why would you do that?”
“Because, Jimmy, as I said before, there’s an opportunity here.”
“I don’t need an opportunity, Paul. I’m in a really good place.”
He shifted his feet and slipped his hands in his pockets. He sort of groaned and sniffed, then grunted, “I’m not. In a good place.”
That knocked me back on my heels. From past experience, I knew Paul had a hard time admitting that.
“OK,” I mumbled, unsure where this confession was leading.
With a half-smile he said, “I could really use an opportunity. Just to kinda get back on stable ground.” He looked at me with his puppy-dog eyes.
And, dammit, if I didn’t feel something for him. This could not stand. Shaking my head, I stormed past him and out of my place. I crossed the way and started pounding on Moe’s door, shouting his name. I kept at it until he opened. “You had one job,” I accused him by way of greeting.
He stood there, arms folded, in a white T and blue jeans, his lips twisted in annoyance. Behind him, on the couch, was a guy I had seen leaving his place about two weeks ago. Handsome, quite a catch, and I guess not the one night stand I thought he had been. He looked annoyed too.
I had interrupted something.
I charged ahead. “Moe — ”
He put a finger to my chest and pushed. I took a couple of steps back. Over his shoulder, he said, “I’ll be right back. Help yourself to more cookies.”
I saw the guy reach for the plate as Moe closed the door.
“First,” he began, “do not pound on my door. You’re a human being; you can knock.”
“Moe — ”
“Not done, honey. Second, I get that you’re upset, but that doesn’t mean you disrespect me.” He put his hand down.
“Are you done?” I ventured, some of the wind knocked out of my sails.
“I am. Now, what is it that you want to discuss?”
I pointed at my place. “He was supposed to be gone. I asked you to make sure he left. He’s still there.”
Moe agreed. “He didn’t want to go.”
“Right. I get that. But it’s my place. You’re the manager. Manage him.”
Moe put a hand back up, and I shut up.
“Unless you want me to call the cops, there’s very little I can do. I know he triggers you,” he said. “I can see that. I see the state you’re in.”
“I’m not in a state.”
Moe crossed his arms and tetched. “Oh, honey.”
OK. Yeah. I was totally in a state.
“Think of this as an opportunity,” said Moe.
“I’m a little full on opportunities right now,” I mumbled. Everyone kept telling me I was missing out on an opportunity for this or for that. It was all making me wonder if I really was missing out on something better when, in fact, I had it pretty good. Didn’t I?
“You have an opportunity,” Moe emphasized, “to really wrap up the past. How often does that come along?”
“Too often.”
Moe raised an eyebrow, not appreciating my bon mot. He was right, though. Ugh.
He glanced over at my place and then down at his feet. “I don’t know what to tell you. The man is a weight around your neck.”
“Because he’s here. In my face.”
Moe shook his head. “It’s not just that he’s here now. He’s always been a weight around your neck. He hung it on you the moment he walked out the door.”
I fought the urge to run screaming into traffic. “He’s here now and he wants help.”
“Sounds like you’re both on a journey.”
Sometimes I hated conversations with Moe. It was like he could reach into my psyche with a fork and pluck out the juiciest, most insightful thing and wave it around.
“So, what, he and I go to therapy together?”
“Or go to a meeting.”
Moe and I both chuckled at the idea of Paul Cooper at an AA meeting. He would probably roll up and wonder which bar everyone was going to meet up at after.
“I get it,” Moe said. “If it was my father...” He looked up and away, his head wobbling. He bit his lip, lost in thought. A quick breath brought him back to me. “I don’t know if I could do what I’m asking you to do. But the story of our lives is to become better people.”
I wondered if he meant me being a better person or me helping Paul become a better person.
“And if this means reconciling” — he put up a hand, anticipating my objection — “or at least making peace with your father, that’s a journey worth going on.”
So, me. He meant me becoming a better person. Shit.
“Sorry about” — I waved my hand toward his door — “interrupting.”
His eyes twinkled. “Nothing was interrupted that can’t be restarted. You have a good night.”
“You too.”
Moe grinned, turned, and headed back inside, offering his date an apology in Spanish.
I looked back at my place. A surge of hot guilt flooded my body. To be clear, it wasn’t because I suddenly felt bad for my father. I felt bad for how I had behaved. This moment, along with all the others, was on him being a lousy father, a lousier manager, and on him walking out, leaving me with so many questions.
And there it was: the weight around my neck.
I carried it across the way, back to my place. Inside, Paul was in the kitchen, staring into the fridge. Hearing me come in, he turned. “You have no food in here.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, what are we going to eat for dinner?” he said, assuming he was staying.
And I guess he was.
“We’ll order out.” Look at me, solving the big problems.
“Pizza?” he asked with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old.
Thirty minutes later, a pepperoni pizza arrived, and after convincing Paul that he could have water with his dinner or nothing, I put on Commando for him to watch while I worked and ate.
Frankly, I was relieved that I could punt being a “better person” to maybe tomorrow.
Paul sprawled on the couch, bare feet on the coffee table. He ate while watching Ah-nold work his screen magic as I sat in my recliner, cracking open on my tablet the files that Nora had emailed about the Beverlys.
“Are you reading?” asked Paul. “You’re missing the movie.”
“I’ve seen it,” I sighed, not looking up from Nora’s meticulously outlined memo.
He pointed at the screen with a slice of pizza. “You’re gonna miss the dead tired line. It’s the best line in the movie.”
I looked up at the screen just in time to see Arnold snap the neck of his would-be hostage taker just before takeoff on a flight bound for South America. He covered him with a hat and blanket before asking a stewardess not to disturb his friend because he’s, you know...”Dead tired.” Paul chuckled at the line. I smiled. It was so dumbly iconic.
And you gotta love a movie where Schwarzenegger plays a guy named Matrix. Oh, the 1980s.
I turned my attention back to the file.
Nora was thorough in her background on the Beverly family. She even included a rumor about the source of Ivan Beverly’s fortune. The rumor had it that during World War II, when Japanese Angelinos were being rounded up and sent to internment camps, he swooped in and bought up their homes, later reselling them for quite a profit.
Pretty sure that tidbit wasn’t in the L.A. Times obit when Ivan died. Of course, that wouldn’t be the first ugly beginning to a family fortune in this town.
Meanwhile, Paul was throwing jabs and taking the punches right along with Arnold during a fight scene. I respected how deeply he felt when he watched his action movies. He wanted to be right in on the action just as much as he was watching it.
I pulled my attention away from the movie and back to my homework. While his father had made a fortune in real estate, Robert Beverly had made his by being on the forefront of the digital one. He had been at the right place at the right time when the internet exploded. It wasn’t luck or savvy that made his fortune, but rather having a fortune to begin with. This helped him to spread out his bets. Robert Beverly only needed a few wins to cover the losses of the others.
Ultimately, the son outshone the father, becoming a multibillionaire.
Robert had met his first wife, Ryane, a good Irish girl, in college. Things didn’t work out, and she took her healthy divorce settlement back east. She had remarried with kids, and worked in the C-suites of corporate America. Sounded like things had worked out for her.
Eva came into the picture a little more than twenty years ago, having been set up on a date with Robert.
My eyes kept drifting back to the movie.
I was probably ten, maaaaaaaaybe eleven the first time Paul showed me Commando. I was home from school, having left early to go on a commercial audition. Commando is not a movie for kids. It’s not Kindergarten Cop or Jingle All the Way. It is a hyper-violent, super-masculine action flick that Mom would never have approved of me watching. But she was at work, and I was at home with my ne’er-do-well father. I don’t remember where Erika was. Maybe she was at a friend’s house after school. As we watched, I quickly realized two things. One: I was going to be the coolest kid at school when I described every moment of this movie, and two: at no time could I ever tell my mom that I had seen it.
I hit the section of Nora’s notes about Patrick. Good grades, good kid, blah, blah, blah. I closed the folder and watched the rest of the movie.
Once Arnold had killed the last bad guy in the most cinematic way possible — death by steam pipe — my father turned to me and asked, “Another? Raw Deal? We should watch Raw Deal.” He reached for the remote.
“Tempting.” I pushed myself out of my recliner. “But it’s late and I have work.”
“Come on, Jimmy.” He gestured to the TV. “We always do a double feature.”
We did. That’s true.
But I was feeling the past few days catching up with me and Patrick was out there, somewhere, needing my help. “I really can’t. Maybe tomorrow.”
He nodded, disappointed.
“You need anything?” I said.
He shook his head no.
I nodded. “Listen. About the calls and the meetings and stuff...”
“Yeah?” he said, hopefully.
“If it’s...” I couldn’t believe I was even saying it. “If it’s something interesting — ”
“Something interesting. Of course.”
He was getting ahead of himself.
I held up a cautionary hand. “I’ll think about it.”
He grinned. He had won. At least for the moment. “I promise you, I will only bring interesting things to you. I’ve been running a comedy club in Vegas. I know what’s interesting.”
“You run a comedy club?”
He shrugged. “It’s something I fell into. It’s a long story.”
Of course he was going to leave out the important details.
“The thing is,” he went on, “I was pretty good at it. For awhile, anyway, but... it’s on the shit end of the Strip.”
“It’s Vegas. How can you tell?”
He laughed, nodded. “That’s good, that’s good. Maybe I should book you.”
“I work hourly now.”
“So does a lot of entertainment in Vegas.”
It was my turn to laugh. I could see the relief on my father’s face. Someone thought he was funny. “So, Jimmy, I’m not asking for a handout or anything. I just... I’m asking for a chance for you and me to work together, you know? I want to earn my keep.”
That was his whole pitch. And he was telling me the truth.
I gave a one shoulder-shrug. “OK.”
He brightened. “This is great. You’ll see. We’ll see if we can make each other rich.”
“Sure.” My lips smushed together as I nodded. I turned and headed down the hall to my bedroom, saying over my shoulder, “Night, Dad.”