32

KARISSA

Karissa and Marcello received welcome news the next day from Tony Davenport. The attorney had managed to completely reverse the fraudulent pilfering of their bank accounts and received an “all clear” from their financial institution. New security measures were put in place so that it would be very difficult for something like that to happen again. Davenport also said that his firm was carefully looking into Azules Oscuros S.A., but they were hitting a brick wall. It was definitely a shell company, which meant it was masking the true proprietors.

Now back to square one, the producers set out to continue approaching studios to finance what they were calling Femme Fatale—The Blair Kendrick Story. It was time to initiate the hiring of a screenwriter who could put something on paper. They met with Miranda Jenkins, the talented scribe who had penned Second Chance for Stormglove. Another candidate was Jules Franken, an older writer whose work with several independent production companies was well received. Both were black, which would highlight Stormglove’s aim for diversification. After all-day interview sessions with both candidates, they went with Jenkins, having enjoyed working with her before. She wanted thirty thousand dollars to develop a spec script.

“Do we have that kind of money in the Stormglove account?” Marcello asked Karissa after the writer had left the meeting at their office. “I mean, I know we do, but can we afford to do without it right now?”

“I know what you’re saying,” Karissa answered. “We need the capital for expenses, the rent, and paying our attorney, among other things. But this is important.”

“Normally, we’d make a deal with a studio first, and they would pay the writer.”

“I know, but in this case, we need to be going out with a script, don’t you think? Hirsch and Ultimate are probably putting out the word against us to other studios, just like William Randolph Hearst did to Orson Welles. We need to show whoever we talk to that we’ve got something worthwhile.”

“Funny how the name Hirsch sounds a lot like Hearst. So how do we get the extra thirty grand?”

“I think I have a solution. You may remember I was given some found funds that we can use for development.”

Karissa revisited Seymour at the gold and rare coin collector shop on Wilshire. After the familiar playful haggling with the sweet old man, Karissa sold him the D Indian Head Gold Eagle ten-dollar coin from 1911 and walked out of the place with a check for fifty thousand dollars. After depositing the check at the bank, Karissa drove home. For the first time in several days, she felt confident and reasonably happy. The incident at Musso & Frank’s with Justin Hirsch had reenergized her. While the situation between Stormglove and Ultimate Pictures was by no means resolved, she felt good enough about the confrontation that they were probably safe to proceed with the picture.

Did she feel any guilt about selling coins that were possibly stolen from Eldon Hirsch?

Not really. She couldn’t say she did.

Karissa drove south in the left lane on Western Avenue toward the I-10, taking the most direct route to her house. Traffic was starting to build, as the rush hour usually began by 4:00 p.m. Cars were going slow, and both lanes were full.

Out of the corner of her eye, Karissa noticed a black sedan pull up beside her in the right lane as she waited for a light at Washington Boulevard. She casually turned to look—and froze.

Barry Doon was behind the wheel of his black BMW, and he was staring at her.

Oh, Christ, she thought. Is he going to pull out a gun and shoot at me?

The light turned green up ahead. As the cars began to move, she swerved over into the left turn lane. The oncoming traffic was heavy, but a guy driving a pickup truck was looking at his phone and didn’t move up with the cars in front. A space opened, and Karissa sped through it onto Washington.

Her nerves shattered, she drove along, cursing to herself. Was Doon heading for her house? What should she do?

She came to a right turn onto Harvard Boulevard, so she took it. Karissa wasn’t familiar with much of the street geography in the part of West Adams Heights north of the freeway; it would be easy to get lost. The section of Harvard she was on, however, curved back to the west and became W. 21st Street, before circling back up to Washington. She thought that perhaps Harvard may have been a through street before the interstate was built. I-10 cut across it directly to the south, and her home was on the other side of the freeway.

Karissa took a left onto Washington and made her way back to Western Avenue. She turned and went south again, crossing the interstate on the overpass. Normally, she would turn left onto W. Adams Boulevard, make another left onto Hobart, make a quick right on W. 25th Street, go around the traffic circle to Harvard, and she’d be home. But the BMW was there on Adams, in the opposite lane, pulled over to the curb. Doon spotted her, shot out into traffic, and made a screeching U-turn to come back up behind her. Karissa kept going east on Adams, for once wishing she could move faster. She was not one to be a daredevil behind the wheel of a car, but she was prepared to attempt a Fast and Furious maneuver if she had to.

Traffic moved along for several blocks. She could see the BMW in her rearview mirror, three cars behind her. The only thing she could do was try to lose him. But then what? He knew where she lived.

She reached for her purse on the passenger seat, opened it with her right hand while keeping the left on the wheel, and dug for her cell phone. She attempted to pull it out, but it got caught on the edge of the purse and slipped out of her hand, falling on the floor of the passenger side of the car where she couldn’t reach it without unbuckling her seat belt and leaning way over.

There was another opening in oncoming traffic, so she recklessly made a left turn onto S. Congress Avenue, heading north. The BMW tried to follow her, but Doon was stuck waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic before he could make the turn. In the meantime, Karissa pulled a fast right onto S. 24th Street, going east again. She sped along as fast as she dared, barely halting at the stop sign at Normandie, and zipping through another miraculous break in the heavy traffic on that avenue to reach the other side. Continuing to travel on 24th, she didn’t see the BMW in the rearview mirror. Perhaps she had lost him. She could stop, pull over, and get her phone. But then what? Call the police again? Hello, there’s a car following me, and I think the driver wants to shoot me. Would they think she was nuts? Maybe not—they already had a case on file that she was the victim of a drive-by shooting. The problem was that the cops didn’t seem to believe that a Hollywood studio executive was the one who had done it.

Eventually Karissa made a right turn to go south on S. Catalina Street, heading back to W. Adams Boulevard. Just to be safe, she made another left on 25th to lose herself further in the grid-maze of side streets of Sugar Hill. She crossed Vermont Avenue, continued east on 25th, and finally headed south again on Ellendale Place. She meant to turn right and head back west on Adams, but she was confused and went east instead.

And then she saw it.

The little house. The tiny house that was in the old photograph, the one she knew she’d seen before. The one with the pianist from Ray Webster’s funeral, taken when she was a young woman.

Karissa saw an empty space at the curb on the right and managed to swing over. She parallel parked the Nissan and sat there for a moment, catching her breath. She checked all her mirrors for the BMW—no sign of Doon. She unbuckled the belt, reached over, and grabbed her phone—but then stopped. At this point she felt silly about calling the police. What the hell would she say? Instead, she put the phone back in her purse and exited the car.

Karissa approached the house. It looked like a garden shed compared to the large structures on either side of it. She wondered if the owner had been solicited to sell the property numerous times over the years and refused; hence, its incongruous appearance on the boulevard. It hadn’t changed much since the old photo had been taken, but recent paint jobs, more modern landscaping, and better window frames had given it a facelift. A wire fence surrounded the yard. She opened the gate and walked to the front door.

Was she crazy? It was entirely possible that the pianist never lived there. She may have been posing in front of a friend’s house. Or she may have had moved away a long time ago.

Karissa rang the bell. The worst that could happen was an awkward exchange—“Oops, wrong house”—and she’d leave.

To her surprise, the door was opened by James Trundy. Her landlord.

For a second, she was speechless.

“Ms. Glover?”

“Mr. Trundy! What are you doing here?”

“My mother lives here. What are you doing here?”

“I—well, maybe I’m here to see your mother. Is she, by chance, a pianist?”

He looked up and down the street and then held the door open wider. “You had better come in before someone sees you.”

As she stepped inside the small entryway, Karissa thought, What did he mean by that?

“Please come this way,” he said.

They didn’t have to go far. Trundy led her into a small living room that contained a couch, coffee table, another chair, and a television. Through an arch was a kitchen and eating area. Another arch must have led to one, maybe two bedrooms.

The white-haired African American woman sat on the couch.

“Momma, you have a visitor,” Trundy said.

The woman’s jaw dropped. She said, “Oh, Lord, she can’t be here!”

“She is, so we might as well talk to her.” He turned to Karissa and said, “Ms. Glover, please meet my mother, Regina Trundy. Her big brother was a man named Hank Marley.”