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MATTY WAS DEAD.
Red and blue lights flickered in the night. Ten minutes after I called them, eleven minutes after Matty had stopped moving, cop cars had roared into the parking lot, followed by an ambulance. I sat on the trunk of my car, my back to it all. Behind me, the cops collected evidence under the bright lights they had set up. Matty was in the center of it all, covered with a white sheet.
My sticky hands shook as I held on to my phone. I had just called the Beverlys and explained how it all became a clusterfuck and that the police were now involved whether they liked it or not. Robert hung up on me without so much as a thank you for the heads-up. I didn’t blame him, but it would’ve been nice.
A car pulled up outside the yellow tape, two familiar faces peering through the windshield. I had dreaded this more than calling the Beverlys. Detective Kemble, thick-bodied and with a high and tight haircut that was more salt than pepper, lumbered out of the car. I could see in his eyes that he wasn’t thrilled to see me. His partner, though, looked disappointed.
Ito was in a leather jacket, T-shirt, jeans and combats boots; her badge hung down from her neck. The way she looked at me... I instantly regretted every lie I had told her on our coffee date and every moment she wagged her finger at me was going to be terrible, but the way she looked at me still made my heart skip a little. Even though it was all shit around me, I was glad she was the one assigned to the call.
“Every time you’re around,” rumbled Kemble as he got closer, “I get the worst heartburn.”
I nodded. “Same. And I can only imagine what your ex-wives went through.”
Kemble squeezed his lips together and huffed through his nose. Deciding not to punch me, he asked, “Who’s your friend?”
“He isn’t — wasn’t a friend.”
“Coworker?” asked Kemble.
I looked over at Ito, wondering why she hadn’t said anything yet.
“Hey, idiot, I asked you — ”
“Sure, Kemble. A coworker.” I shook my head. “Matty shouldn’t have been here. He was just an actor.”
“Matty?” said Kemble.
“Matty Goodman, yeah.”
“Oh, shit,” Ito murmured. “My little sister loved him.”
Kemble looked at her for a second and then asked me, “What happened?”
I shifted on the trunk and thought about putting my phone away, looking at my suit for the first time. The blood was all over my shirt and coat and turning brown as it dried. I wasn’t excited to answer Kemble. Not just because that meant going over watching someone die, but because I had to tell him... and her... everything. It didn’t take a lawyer to know that client confidentiality didn’t cover failure to report a crime.
I told them both everything. I told them about the Beverlys. Liza Borden, the girlfriend. Blake, the best friend. Derrick Sayles, a possible suspect. And all of the dead ends that I had bumped into. I would glance at Ito, trying to figure out how mad she was going to be, but I couldn’t read her. Which made it all the more frustrating.
When I was done, Kemble’s head bent to the side. “Crap. A kidnapping. This means I gotta call the feds.” A head shake. “I hate the fucking feds. They always treat us like we’re fucking idiots.”
I chose not to pluck that low-hanging fruit.
Kemble kept going. “Did you notice anything we can use to ID them? Narrow it down? License plate? Make of the car?”
I described the car as best as I could — another dead end. I hadn’t seen the plate in the dark, and there were a million cars that looked the same in L.A.
“It just happened so fast. Matty... he was...” I didn’t want to tell them about the Adderall. They’d find out soon enough. “He tackled the guy. He fucked up.”
“That’s generally what gets people killed,” said Kemble.
“I was trying to get the two separated. I took my eye off the car. One of them knocked me to the ground; I got disorientated for a few moments.” Seconds? “The other guy must’ve come out of the back of the car. I didn’t see.”
“You know,” said Kemble, “none of this needed to happen. If the Beverlys... or you... had called us.” He raised his eyebrows, and I got a whole lot of vice principal energy.
I glanced over at Ito and mumbled, “Yeah.” That choice was weighing heavily on me.
Kemble told Ito he was going to take a look at the scene. She watched him trudge over for a moment and then turned to me.
“When I said another time, I didn’t mean so soon,” she said.
“I was desperate to get your attention.” I felt terrible making that joke, but I couldn’t help myself.
I was rewarded with a lip curl. “How are you?” she asked, nodding toward Matty.
I looked over my shoulder. The crime scene techs were done with Matty’s body; they were putting him into the ambulance, zipped into a bag. In the end, that’s how all of us will get carried out.
“I’ve never seen anyone die before,” I replied.
“Came close a few times,” she said. “I’m usually there after the fact.”
“He got so quiet. He looked so scared.”
Ito stepped up onto the bumper and sat next to me.
I asked her, “What am I supposed to do with my clothes?”
“Your clothes?”
I pointed to my suit. “I’m covered with evidence, aren’t I?” Oh, God. Matty was all over me. I thought about throwing up.
She shook her head slowly. “It’s not... it’s not evidence we need. You can...” She thought about what to say next. “You can do whatever you want with the suit.”
I imagined what my dry cleaner would say when he saw it. Uncomfortable, he’d probably try to make a joke. “Hey, what happened? You in a horror movie or something?” Yeah, Francisco, I was. And then he’d feel bad and I’d feel bad.
I couldn’t throw it away. Someone would find it and wonder and then call the cops and it would be a whole thing.
I wondered if I could burn it without setting Los Angeles on fire. It had been 35 days since the last one.
Ito said something to me.
“What?” I said, coming back to reality.
“Are you OK to drive home?” she repeated.
“I can go home?”
She nodded. “We’ll have more question, but...” She put a hand on my leg. “Do you have anyone to talk to about this? Because this is fucked-up. It will fuck with you.”
I chuckled. “I have a lot of people to talk to.” I pointed to myself. “I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with trauma.” Some of it in healthy ways. “I’ll be... well, not fine. No one is fine. But. Yeah. I hear you.” I paused. “I thought you were going to yell at me.”
“Thought about it.”
I couldn’t help cracking a grin. “It was going to be epic, wasn’t it?”
She agreed. “It was going to be a barn burner.”
I could imagine.
Shit, were we having a moment? Is a crime scene the place to do that? I felt like a teenager, sitting out at night on the trunk of my car with the girl that I liked and...
Kemble shouted, “Ito!”
She looked back toward her partner and the moment passed.
“You got work to do, Violet,” I said, letting it go. “I can take care of myself.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. Besides, Kemble is gonna start getting all jealous, you spending time with me.”
“Fuck him,” she said with a smile.
I mustered a shaky smile in return. She patted me on the thigh and hopped off the car. “See you around, Cooper.” And she headed to meet up with her partner.
I slid off my trunk and got in my car. I glanced in the rear view mirror at the collection of men and women still working the scene, then plugged my bloody phone in and started Ani DiFanco’s “Pulse” as I left the parking lot.
Heading east on the 101, traffic was the same. The usual slow motion with everyone hoping to just zip in and out, but with no place to go but straight. There were red lights in front of me, white lights heading in the opposite direction, but it felt flat and intangible, like in those old movies where the hero and the femme fatale ride in a car that’s actually in the studio, traffic rear-projected behind them. I had to concentrate so I didn’t crash into someone.
Back on Sunset, now heading a little west, a car pulled up next to me at a stoplight. Inside, were two young women dressed for a night on the town. Both of them were in sparkles, and the red light bounced off them like they were disco balls. They moved to a song. Smiling. About to have the time of their lives.
The passenger, a black-haired Latina, glanced over at me. She saw the blood on my shirt and suit. Did I have some on my face? Maybe. I didn’t know. I could see her eyes faltering, thinking that her night was about to get strange. I smiled back in a reassuring way, and she decided that the blood wasn’t blood but had to be something else, and her mind went right back to the good night that she and her friend were planning.
The power of the mind, y’all.
The light turned green, and I peeled out, as much as my Toyota could peel.
Twenty minutes later, at almost eleven o’clock, I was home, parked, and stepping out of my car. I looked at my place. Through the shades of my own bungalow, I could see Dad sitting on the couch, watching something on the TV.
I couldn’t deal with him right now, I didn’t want to explain, and I doubted whether I’d get what I really needed from that man. I turned and headed to Moe’s place instead. I quietly knocked on the door. “Moe?”
I hoped he wasn’t entertaining because I had already interrupted once before and, quite frankly, there’s no reestablishing a mood when a man in bloody clothes shows up at your door.
But he wasn’t and he opened the door. He gasped and his eyes went all over me. “Honey! Are you OK?”
“Not a scratch on me,” I said dully.
He took me by the hand and pulled me in, closing the door behind.
“I’ll get some bags. We’ll throw all of this away.” Moe was on it.
I started stripping off the suit, which felt like a banana peel as the blood had coagulated. He was there with a trash bag. I dropped in the suit and shirt. “Go take a shower,” Moe said. “I’ll get you something to wear.”
I did as I was told — it was great not having to answer any questions — and took a long, hot shower. After I had gotten the bloodstains off my chest, I stood there under the showerhead a little longer.
I thought about who was going to call Matty’s parents. I wondered if he still had parents. Would the cops call his agent? Should I call his agent? It would be in the paper in the morning.
Moe knocked on the bathroom door and opened it just enough to slip some clothes onto the counter. Then he was gone. Another ten minutes in the shower, and I was turning pink. I turned off the water, dried off, and slipped on the shorts and T-shirt Moe had provided. The T-shirt featured a buff man; the words above his flexed biceps announced he was a “Mali-dude.”
I padded down the hall into his living room, where he handed me a cup of herbal tea.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
I took a sip and sat down, pushing my hand through my still wet hair. I felt the tea warm my chest, and I told him everything.