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TIM CURRY BELTED “I’M Going Home” while I lounged on my couch, alone. I didn’t know where my dad was, and I kept pushing the mounting worry away that question caused. Instead, I focused on Patrick.
I had already found who I was looking for. It had taken me thirty minutes to put a name to Sayles’s bodyguard. His name was Richard Johnson. Ricky to his friends — he couldn’t exactly walk around being called Dick Johnson.
Turns out Ricky was a former Marine who had been discharged under Other Than Honorable conditions. Now, that didn’t mean he was a criminal or that he had done anything wrong, but he had done something not very right to get that sort of dismissal from the military.
The important thing: Ricky might have been the willing participant who could turn Derrick’s idea into reality. He would have the skills and the mindset to snatch a twenty-year-old like Patrick right off his stoop. And splitting $25 million could be a hell of a motivator.
I texted Blake pictures of Derrick and Ricky to see if they were the two men he had seen at Patrick’s party. If he said yes, then we were really onto something. After staring at my phone for a while — why wasn’t he texting me back? — I gave up and got off the couch to make some coffee. I groaned as the coffee drizzled into the glass carafe.
It wasn’t about the coffee: it was about the waiting. It’s a frustrating aspect of this job, the part that truly eats at me. Waiting for someone else to come through with information. Waiting for someone else to do something. All of these moments are cut out of movies and TV shows. Why? Because they’re boring.
“After a lifetime of seeing some shit, I like the boring parts,” Gordon Bixby would tell me as we sat, bored out of our minds in the parking lot of a motel where this married guy liked to meet his favorite sex workers. “It’s nice to just sit and enjoy that I’m still walking and breathing, you know?”
I did not. And I still don’t. It’s what makes being a private detective the worst job ever. As I tried to warn Matty.
Though, yes, if I took a step back, I would probably realize that it’s the same for everyone in every job. OK, maybe not Buddhist Monks.
I get worried, though, because of the lizard in my brain.
Metaphorically speaking.
When I get bored, especially late at night, the lizard starts sending me bad ideas from its part of my brain, bad ideas masquerading as good ones. No. As great ones. And it’s taken me a few laps around in Recovery Land to be able to pull the Scooby-Doo villain’s mask off of the bad idea.
The lizard is always coming up with new disguises and tricks, so I remain vigilant.
Maybe it was this whole story, a kid being swept up in events outside of his control, that had me on a bit of an edge. Let’s just say it resonated with my own personal history.
As I poured my coffee, I heard my phone ding. Careful not to spill my full coffee mug all over my hand, I fast-walked to the couch and my phone.
No text, but an email.
Sitting in my inbox was a file from Edward Stratton. He had finally gotten me the list of all the threatening emails and phone calls the Beverlys had received in the last year. There were over a thousand entries. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but the sheer volume and vitriol knocked the wind out of me.
It seemed the people behind these threats didn’t like the Beverlys for a multitude of reasons. Because they were billionaires. Because he was a venture capitalist. Because she was in charge of a family foundation that was “basically a tax haven.”
I didn’t think any of the critiques were necessarily wrong, just perhaps a little more colorful and violent than I would have made them. The Beverlys wealth was hard to imagine. And, to be frank, how much of a lifestyle difference was there between someone who had $100 million dollars and someone who had $4 billion? I could imagine losing my shit if someone tried to justify the difference as real.
Then again, we also have a habit of rewarding the wealthy with the pixie dust of legitimacy and authority, as if they made all the right choices to get where they got and we should look up to them for it.
As I scrolled through the list, I remembered another thing Gordon Bixby told me: We weren’t there to judge the clients. We weren’t even there to fix the clients — I had learned that one the hard way. We were there to do a job. Nothing more.
But me, not judging? A waste of a talent.
An idea ran through my mind. I could send the whole list to Matty. After all, he wanted to be a private detective, and I had warned him that it wasn’t all glamour and fun. Maybe going through the list looking for suspects would show him what this job was really like.
I sighed and closed the file with a grunt.
What the hell was wrong with me? I’m the one who had asked him to be my partner and now I wanted to give him the shit work. Had I made a mistake? The thing was, I was having a hard time taking him seriously.
I was doing to him what so many assholes had done to —
Ding. Another email. Nora had compiled the list of properties owned by Derrick Sayles. She’s the best and I texted her a quick, Thanks, you’re the best.
I then messaged Matty, filling him in on Ricky and then asked, You want the list or the threat list?
Threat list? he replied.
I sent back: The list of all the emails and phone calls the Beverlys got in the last year.
Another reply: Property list. You can handle the crazies. He ended it with a thumbs-up emoji.
All right then. I settled back into the couch and started sorting through them.
It was almost six o’clock when Dad came home. Something great must’ve happened because he floated in with the biggest grin. And a box of donuts. As he passed by me on the couch, I could hear his humming. “I have news,” he announced as he dropped the box on my kitchenette’s counter. He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and tossed me one.
I caught it with two hands.
Dad cracked his open and toasted me.
“What’s the news?”
He licked his lips and opened the donut box. Snatching a chocolate frosted with sprinkles, he said, “We have a meeting.” He took a bite and closed his eyes, enjoying every minute of it.
“A meeting? With who?”
He swallowed. “This is great. Oh my God. They don’t have any good donuts in Vegas. Not like L.A.”
“Dad.”
“A couple of producers. They want to meet with you. They want to pitch you a project.”
I groaned. “I don’t have time for this kind of thing.”
He wagged a finger at me, taking another bite of the donut. “No, no.” He shook his head, chewing. “You said you would meet with people. You agreed.”
I rolled my eyes. “OK, fine, yes, I agreed. If it’s interesting — ”
“Which it is.”
“I’m in the middle of a case,” I explained. “Right? In the middle. There’s a kid out there, and I’m supposed to be finding him.”
Stuffing the rest of the donut in his mouth, he mumbled something.
I shook my head at this fool. “What are you trying to say?”
He swallowed. “I said, if he’s out there, why aren’t you looking for him?”
I cracked open my bottle of water. “I should be driving around L.A. looking for him? Shouting his name out the window? ‘Patrick! Patrriiiiiick!’” I took a drink. “That’s not how it works.”
His shoulders went to his ears. “How would I know how it works? I’m just saying, you say you got to find this kid and I see you here. So, in my mind” — he leaned against the counter — “you got time for a meeting.”
“I’m narrowing things down.”
He nodded. “Well, in between narrowing things, you can take a meeting. They want to meet this week. I told them Thursday.”
The day before the exchange.
“Dad.”
“It’s lunch. You eat lunch while you’re working a case, right?”
I rubbed my head. I could feel my case slipping away. “Yes,” I acknowledged.
He spread his arms. “There you go. You take your lunch break Thursday afternoon, El Carmen on Third Street.”
I closed my eyes. “Fine.”
“It’s going to be great,” Dad said, stuffing another donut in his mouth. “But the big question is: What are we going to do for dinner?”
And with that, I forgot to even ask who I was meeting with and why. Paul Cooper always knew how to razzle dazzle me.