The next morning I woke at dawn. I was in a funk. My daughter was ruining her life and I had a date with a convicted murderer. Perhaps it was time for a run. People keep telling me exercise is beneficial. It gets the something flowing. Pheromones? Adrenaline? Something.
I pulled on my ratty blue leggings and a Testament T-shirt Annie had given me featuring the star of the show, the lion-hearted Fleet Commander Gow. My sneakers, however, were nowhere to be found. I thought they might be in the car, so I traipsed across the sopping wet lawn and soaked my socks, only to remember that I had taken them off at my desk the day before yesterday.
I tromped back through the house and out the back door, into the garage that, in a moment of madness, I’d had a couple of Lael’s handyman buddies convert into my office. The guys didn’t exactly get the glitter garden theme—Lucite desk, floors painted apple green and walls hot pink, old Pucci pillows on my whopper of an easy chair—but they pulled it off in seven weeks, built-in bookshelves and all. Still, I wouldn’t want to be back there during an earthquake. Which meant that working at my computer always felt vaguely life-threatening. Maybe that was a good thing, I don’t know.
The shoes were there. So was Mimi the cat, draped across the keyboard like an odalisque. I shooed her off, surely to suffer for it later, and checked my e-mail. There was a message from my editor, Sally, inquiring about my progress. Sly, but not that sly. The woman was obviously starting to shake in her boots. What was she, clairvoyant? For all Sally knew, everything was going fine, just fine. A month ago, she’d read the first twelve chapters and hadn’t had any complaints. In fact, she’d raved about the section on Temecula.
Gardner had bought a ranch and settled in Temecula after selling his Hollywood residence in 1936. It was a hunting, fishing, and animals-everywhere kind of place, an outdoorsman’s paradise. There was even a pet coyote named Bravo that ESG’s buddy Raymond Chandler had been especially fond of. But my editor was allergic to furry things. I think the part that riveted her was Gardner’s story about how whenever fellow writers down on their luck showed up in Temecula to borrow money the animals were delighted, but editors, well, when they showed up, the dogs knew to bite them.
I suppose a lot can change in a month. I put Sally’s e-mail in my drafts folder, which is where I put everything I don’t want to deal with. I keep hoping those messages will simply disappear. Or succumb to bit rot, which sounds so slow and painful.
In my neighborhood, you don’t need a Walkman when you go running. A clean outfit is good. A business card, better. In the course of pursuing the ever-elusive goal of physical fitness, I have made the acquaintance of decorators, podiatrists, portrait photographers, and other potentially serviceable types conveniently located within a five-mile radius of my house. But today I kept my head down. And besides, it was barely six A.M. West Hollywood is not a town of early risers. Everyone is either retired, an aspiring actor/singer/model working the dinner shift, or self-employed. No one emerges until around ten, when the streets become clogged with people heading gamely to the gym, or on their cell phones, cleaning up after their dogs.
I started perspiring after half a mile. Not a good sign. Twenty minutes more and I was sweating like a pig. I turned down a tree-lined street. Rapture. It was shady, almost dark. There was no one around, so I did the unthinkable. I stopped to catch my breath. A lone car cruised down the other side of the street, witness to my shame. The guy inside gave me the eye. I didn’t think much of it until he swung a U-turn at the corner and started driving slowly alongside me. Unnerved, I started running again. He stayed with me. I turned at the next corner. He turned, too. Great. Where was everyone? Man, these people were lazy. Home was only two blocks away, but I didn’t want him to see where I lived. Alone. And I had left the door unlocked, as usual.
I kept running. Past my house, past my neighbor’s house, onto King’s Road. He kept following. This was crazy. I was seriously out of breath now. I had a stitch in my side. He was just trying to scare me, I knew that. But it was working. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea. I was afraid to glance his way. Maybe he’d take it as encouragement. There were no alleys to duck into, and all the underground garages along King’s had electronic gates that were shut, shut, shut. Finally, I couldn’t stop myself. I turned my head. He didn’t say a thing. He just gave me a long, lazy smile.
Screw him. There was a minimall half a block away with a Starbucks in it. They’d be open by now. I ran up to Santa Monica, clutching my sides, then crossed against the light. He was stuck on red, but as soon as the light changed, he followed, pulling his beat-up blue Camaro into the parking lot just behind me. I sat down at a table in the corner and watched him get out of the car and come inside. This wasn’t happening. He walked right up to me.
“I’m calling the police,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He went up to the counter and ordered a small cup of coffee. When the girl handed it to him, he mumbled something about changing his mind. He turned to leave, bumping his arm against me on the way out. Hard. That spot would be black and blue by tonight. And no one had noticed a thing. Just another morning in the city of the angels. Nothing out of the ordinary.
I sat there for a while, thinking how easy it is to feel safe when you’ve never been hurt. Then I picked up a paper someone had left behind and read the comics until I felt a little better, or at least too tired to think anymore, which amounted to the same thing.
I went home and showered until the hot water ran out. I wanted to stay in there, but I had an appointment to keep. It had to be today. Well, it was going to be fine. No one had promised me a walk in the park, but it would be fine.
I considered my wardrobe. According to the visitor handbook I’d downloaded from the Web, conservative attire was recommended. No clothing that in any combination of shades resembled California-issue inmate garb. No law-enforcement or military-type forest green or camouflage-patterned items. No spaghetti straps. No sheer garments. No hats, wigs, or hairpieces, except with prior written approval of the visiting sergeant. No clothing that exposed the chest, genitals, or buttocks. Party poopers.
I wondered what Joseph Albacco would be wearing. Prison blues aren’t necessarily blue. I knew. I’d read up on it. They come in orange, red, or white, according to the unit in which the particular prisoner is housed. It helps correctional officers determine if a serial killer, say, isn’t where he’s supposed to be. That was the principle behind stripes as well, which were worn by convicts well into the first half of the twentieth century. The types of stripes (vertical or horizontal) and their combinations (horizontal on pants, vertical on shirts) likewise signified things like crime committed or time served. It was kind of the reverse of the old saying that clothes make the man.
After mulling it over for a while, I dropped my towel on the floor and put on something that made me feel strong—a brown velvet Chanel suit with lots of white braid trim. I had snagged it from my mother’s cousin Drena, who’d bought it at a rummage sale, only to decide it made her look like a three-star general.
She had underestimated the genius of Coco Chanel. That made two of us. I looked less like Patton than a Hostess cupcake, something a convicted felon could polish off in a single bite. Thinking about the creep in the Camaro, I squeezed some gelatinous goo into my hands and slicked my hair into a sadistic ballet-mistress updo. Better. Forbidding. You wouldn’t want to mangle a plié within ten yards of me.
Enough with the metaphors. Joseph Albacco, Prisoner #C-36789, currently serving thirty-five to life for murder in the first degree, was waiting. For me.