Dead West Read online

  A woman approached. Early thirties with long, wavy black hair parted down the middle, olive skin, a black turtleneck, faded jeans, stop-sign-red lips, a black Converse All Star on her left foot and a boot cast on her right. She sipped from a glass of red wine. She had dark eyes and a tiny square jaw which she used to say, “And I know you from where?”

  I said, “Here, I think. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

  “But I know you. You’re an actor, right?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Director?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Agent?”

  “Of chaos, maybe, but no.”

  “Okay, this is weird. I don’t think I know people and not know them,” she said, burying the assumption that if I were famous, she knew me. She extended her hand. “Brit.”

  I shook it. “Nils.”

  “What do you do, Nils?”

  “I’m a private detective.”

  Brit laughed. “Fuck! I love that!”

  “And you?”

  “Writer. Ebben is producing my movie. For the People.” She talked fast like the nasty side-effect disclaimers at the end of a pharmaceutical commercial. “Maybe you’ve heard of it? It was in Deadline on Monday. Small budget, indie. Six mil. It’s about this young idealistic political campaign staffer who gets kidnapped by one of the politician’s major donors. He takes her to his rape chamber. It’s totally fucked up and decorated like a little girl’s room with a white, wrought-iron bed. He rapes her then binds her to the bed, but before he can return for another round, she frees her hands enough to twist one of the bed’s iron metal balls off the bedpost. He comes back, and when he’s going at her, she brings the iron ball down on his head and kills him. Then she drives his body up to her family cottage and rows it out to the middle of the lake and drops him with the anchor wrapped around his body.”

  I said, “Sounds empowering.”

  “Yeah,” said Brit, “and that’s just the first ten minutes of the movie. Turns out the politician she’s working for used to be a defense attorney and he got all these scumbags off on technicalities. So she breaks into his files and finds all the rapists and starts killing them one by one, all while pretending to be an innocent young staffer.”

  “And let me guess—the fish in the lake her cottage is on start getting really big.”

  “Ha ha. We’re still trying to lock down an A-list director and will have to take it to the festivals to get distribution but we’ll get it because Kate Lennon is attached as the lead role.”

  I didn’t know what most of that meant, but I knew who Kate Lennon was. I’d seen her in dramas and comedies—she’s one of those rare actors who can do anything and you believe they’re the character while simultaneously knowing they’re a big movie star. It’s quite a trick. I also just got confirmation of Beverly Mayer’s suspicion. Ebben was investing in show business. I was free to leave. If there was a red-eye to Minneapolis, I could make it home by breakfast. But I had the hotel for the night, and Jameson was visiting his friend, and I wanted to meet the man who had earned the love of Juliana’s wise, innocent eyes.

  I said, “What?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what’?”

  “Well, for one, Brit, what is Deadline?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. This is my first visit to Los Angeles. I know nothing.”

  “Deadline Hollywood Daily is a website. That’s where everyone goes for show business news.” I could barely understand her—she talked auctioneer fast. “Too bad you didn’t see the article. My picture was in there and I’m one of those people who photographs better than I look. Even though half my head was shaved in the picture. I was going through a phase. I have to get new headshots but it’s so fucking boring, all the Sativa in the bong can’t get me to do it. Who does your headshots?”

  “JCPenney.”

  “Oh, I fucking love it. Love it.” Her expression didn’t change when she said, “Were you close with Juliana?”

  “No,” I said. “I never met her. I’m a family friend of the Mayers. Came to pay my respects.” I looked down at her boot cast. “Your shoes don’t match.”

  “Yeah. I had to get bunion surgery. No more high heels for me.”

  “Just as well. High heels don’t fool anyone.”

  “Guys like them.”

  “Not me. I see heels and I think there’s a woman with short legs trying to make them look long. I wonder what else she’s hiding. Have you seen Ebben?”

  “He’s out back. I think he’s about to make a speech.”

  “Thanks. Are you in here because you don’t want to hear it?”

  Bunion Brit took a deep breath to fill her bellows and rapid fired: “Ebben loved Juliana so much. Waiting for him to talk about her feels like waiting for a car crash. No way I’m joining the crowd of ghouls out there for that.” She held her wineglass to the light and used her thumb to wipe the lip print off the rim. “Like you know it’s going to be devastating and you want a front-row seat to see every molecule of pain on Ebben’s face. I hate that side of human nature. Loathe it. I mean, where the fuck does that come from? Sometimes I hate people so much. Here we are, the dominant species. No real threat to our existence so we’re hell-bent on destroying ourselves. I mean, I’ll go out there to hear Ebben, but not until he starts and I will stand in the back. And I took an Ativan fifteen minutes ago to get through it. Want one?”

  “No, I’m good. Thanks.”

  “Hey, I’ve been kicking around a TV idea about a woman P.I. set in L.A. She’s a struggling actress. Just can’t catch a break. But she’s got mad chops. Hollywood won’t give her a chance but we see how fucking brilliant she is on her cases because she’s always transforming herself into different characters for her investigations. One second she’s a hooker, the next she’s a soccer mom. I’m thinking she has a roommate who works as a costumer and maybe a neighbor who works in hair and makeup. So she’s got all the tools of transformation right there. Kind of like Fletch meets Alias because she can kick ass. She’s a fucking star, but she won’t play the game. She’s like, too principled.”

  So much for writers being quiet and opaque. Maybe Hollywood writers are different. Maybe they’re always trying to sell their next project, even if they’re talking to a private investigator from Minnesota. I said, “I might watch that TV show.”

  “I know, right? Maybe we could grab coffee so I can pick your brain about private investigation. What it’s really like and all that. If I get it on the air, you’d get a consulting fee. Six figures and all you’d have to do is—”

  “Brit,” said a man, “we should head into the backyard.” His hair was impossibly black, so dense it could suck a planet out of its orbit. And it was too full—I hoped it was a wig because if it wasn’t, who knew what kind of medical hocus-pocus he’d endured. “We should be out there when Ebben starts.”

  Bunion Brit said, “Thom Burke, this is Nils. Nils is a family friend of the Mayers. Thom is Ebben’s line producer.”

  I nodded as if I knew what that was. Thom Burke and I shook hands and exchanged nice-to-meet-yous. He looked fifty-five trying to pass for thirty-five. His efforts succeeded like new paint on a two-hundred-year-old house. One side of the foundation had sunk, the windows hung askew, and the roofline sagged. But when he looked in the mirror, he must have only seen the new paint and thought, I look fantastic. I’m fooling them all. Otherwise, how the hell do you go out in public like that?

  We exchanged greetings and Bunion Brit said, “Nils is a private investigator.”

  “Really?” said Thom. “Are you here because the game is afoot?” He laughed at his stupid joke.

  I said, “Nope. Just a family friend from Minnesota. Paying my respects.”

  “Nils and I are going to have coffee and chat about my Morgan Who? project.” She turned to me and said, “Morgan Who? is the title I’m thinking of because Hollywood is like, Who the hell is she? And when she’s in disguise it’s like, Who is that? And
her name is Morgan so—”

  “But there was that show Samantha Who?” said Thom. “They might bump on that.”

  “Fuck,” said Bunion Brit. “That stupid amnesia show? Who gives a shit about that? Want to go out back with us, Nils?”

  I said, “Yes, please,” and followed Bunion Brit and The Picture of Dorian Gray into the backyard. The patio was crowded and loud. A jazz trio—piano, bass, and drums—performed on a portable stage. The marijuana cloud overhead was so big it probably showed up on Doppler radar. Some people were bundled up as if it were thirty degrees, not sixty. One woman wore a full-length, down Patagonia frock you wouldn’t see in Minnesota unless the temperature had dipped below zero. She sat on sleek patio furniture near a blazing firepit.

  Brit introduced me to Sebastiano and Debra. Sebastiano, I learned, was Ebben’s agent and set himself apart from the crowd by wearing a suit. He was tall, maybe six foot three, dark-skinned with short-cropped hair and the chiseled face of a model in one of those cologne ads you see in magazines at the doctor’s office. His cheekbones looked painted-on. He said a quick hello without smiling. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  Debra, I learned, was Ebben’s manager. She was about forty years old and heavyset but also tall. At least six feet. A round face, classically pretty, with blue eyes behind octagonal eyeglasses made of bright pink plastic. I guessed they had some big designer’s name on them and ran four figures. Although if you had told me Walmart sold them in the toy department, I would have believed you. Debra wore dangly earrings of green jade. They must have hypnotized me because I never saw Ebben walk onto the stage and take the mic. I just heard:

  “Thank you, everyone, for coming.”

  I broke free from my earring-induced trance to see Ebben Mayer standing at the microphone. He was tall and thin with sandy, windswept hair. Old Levi’s and a moss-colored quarter-zip sweater. He appeared casual, confident, and kind. It’s hard for someone to make that impression without opening his mouth but he did. He took a deep breath and said, “Oh boy, this is the hardest part of the evening.” He took a moment to gather himself. No one in the backyard said a word. “I … I, uh…” He cried a bit.

  Sebastiano the agent looked at Debra the manager. She responded with a slight head nod then worked her way through the crowd, stepped up on stage, and squeezed Ebben’s left hand. Then he raised his right hand, which clutched a twenty-four-ounce energy drink. The can looked like an outfit the band Metallica would wear. Ebben took a gulp then said, “Okay. I can do this. I need to do this. We need to do this.”

  A few words of encouragement from the crowd. Ebben started to say something about Juliana, and a torrent of emotion overwhelmed me. I felt light-headed. My vision blurred. I sat down on the brick wall of a planting bed. Bunion Brit limped over to me, put a hand on my back, and said, “Are you all right?”

  I nodded. But I wasn’t all right because I’d just realized that Juliana Marquez had been murdered.

  6

  That’s how it happens. I feel it before I understand it. The inaccessible part of my brain makes calculations but it can only communicate the results with emotion. Then I have to wait for my conscious brain to catch up, to understand what part of me already knows. It’s like I’ve been given a sealed envelope. I received the envelope because what’s inside is important. It just takes me a while to figure out how to open it.

  That’s what happened when Ebben began to talk. An emotional beacon told me Juliana Marquez was murdered. But I had no idea why.

  Ebben said, “What gives me the most comfort, I suppose, is that everyone who knew Juliana loved her. I’m not going through this alone. And my suffering can’t compare to that of the Marquez family.” Ebben indicated a Latino family who occupied half of the backyard. Two or three dozen people. You could see the progression of the American Dream in the generations. The oldest weathered and worn from sun and manual labor. The younger generations standing erect in expensive clothing and with less fatigue in their eyes. “On Monday we all attended a funeral at Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church. And there we mourned our loss of Juliana. But tonight, I want to celebrate her most beautiful soul.”

  Ebben shut his eyes to gather himself. He took another sip from his oil drum of energy drink. “It’s hard to celebrate while feeling such terrible loss. To know Juliana won’t be a wife, a mother. That she won’t continue to spread her love. To know we will no longer be the beneficiaries of her beauty, inside and out.”

  I glanced at my newfound friends. Bunion Brit the writer, Thom the line producer, Sebastiano the agent, Debra the manager. All filled with reverence. None filled with emotion.

  “I was so looking forward to Juliana meeting my family. My mother and father would have loved her. My grandparents, too. It is possible my grandmother, the self-appointed matriarch of our family, some might say the Don of our family even though we have no Italian blood in our veins … It is possible that the great and powerful and outspoken Beverly Mayer would not have said one nice thing about Juliana—it simply isn’t in her nature. But … but nor would she have said one negative thing about Juliana because that was not within the realm of possibility. For anyone.

  “A lot of my business associates are here tonight. It’s important that you know something. Juliana begged me not to mention this before, and I honored her wish. But I can no longer do that. The Creative Collective was Juliana’s idea. She inspired me to fund and foster exceptional films and television shows by letting the creators work unencumbered…”

  There it was again. This time, straight from Ebben’s mouth. He’d invested in show business by founding The Creative Collective, whatever that was. I’d Google “The Creative Collective” later, then I’d have plenty of information for Beverly Mayer.

  Ebben continued speaking. I drifted away from my newfound acquaintances and made my way behind the stage to see the faces who had come to celebrate Juliana Marquez. I didn’t know who or what I was looking for other than something or someone who didn’t seem to fit. That’s hard in a city you don’t know, where people work in an industry you don’t understand.

  The faces looked more diverse than what you’d typically see in Minnesota. Still, no one looked out of place. All of the eyes conveyed similar expressions of sorrow, empathy, and solemnity.

  Except for one.

  The owner of the eye stood over a long table filled with platters of finger foods. Shaved head, barrel chested, ample bellied, and wearing an eye patch. He piled his plate high while Ebben recounted the story of how he and Juliana met. His eye on the food. Even the caterers had stopped working out of respect for Ebben’s speech. But this guy acted as if he’d arrived at an all-you-can-eat buffet fifteen minutes before closing time.

  Ebben said, “Tomorrow, Juliana’s family and I will start the process of spreading Juliana’s ashes.” He set down his big energy drink and picked up a rectangular wooden box that looked like what would house an expensive bottle of whiskey. “She loved to kayak the Channel Islands, so we’ll take some there. She loved to hike Runyon Canyon, so some will go there. She said Dodger Stadium had the greatest feel of community anywhere in Los Angeles, so come April, we’ll sit in the bleachers and drop a little over the outfield wall and onto the field. A good portion of her ashes will stay in the Marquez home so she can be with the family she loved and who loved her.

  “She was so excited to visit Minnesota. We had planned on going in the spring to canoe the Boundary Waters. She would have loved it, so I’ll take some of Juliana’s ashes there.” Ebben paused and pushed the hair out of his eyes. He gathered himself and said, “For everyone who’s come tonight, please celebrate Juliana and never, ever forget her. I know you won’t. It’s impossible.”

  Ebben nodded to indicate he’d finished, stepped off the stage, and disappeared into the family Marquez. They huddled around and swallowed him up. I found Bunion Brit the red-lipped writer and said I’d meet her for coffee tomorrow to discuss the realities of being
a private investigator. I gave her my card and told her I was staying at The Line Hotel. She promised to text me the when and where. I looked around the gathering of celebrants one last time and walked back through the house and into the front foyer.

  Juliana Marquez had not moved. She rested on her easel and looked at me with omniscient, innocent eyes. I looked back hard for thirty seconds or ten minutes. I had no idea. I stared back until my conscious brain told me what the unreachable part of my brain already knew—how Juliana was killed.

  7

  I about-faced it back into the house, found the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. There they were, a couple dozen cans, double stacked in neat rows. I returned to the backyard. Ebben was surrounded. I waited for an opportunity and, when one presented itself, I approached.

  I said, “I’m sorry, Ebben. What a terrible loss.”

  “Thank you.” He looked at me for a moment, waiting for recognition, but it didn’t come. “Are you a friend of Juliana’s?”

  “No.” I handed him my card.

  He nodded. “Who sent you?”

  “You know.”

  He almost smiled. “My grandmother is a proactive person who lets nothing fall through the cracks.”

  I shrugged. “You are kind to put it that way. She sent me because she wanted to know if you’re investing your trust fund in show business. It took me five seconds to learn that you are. But there’s something else I’d like to discuss with you. I know it’s a bad time, but it’s urgent.”

  Ebben smiled. “You’re not going to pitch me a project, are you?”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  We walked into the house and upstairs to his office. He shut the door. I said, “I know this may sound insane, but Juliana’s death may not have been an accident.”

  Ebben didn’t look surprised. He said, “I’m listening.…”

  The bookshelves were filled with what I assumed were scripts, their titles written in Sharpie on their spines. Deep Harbor, Fucking Forty, The Bennetts, Lake Lundquist, The Archers of Omaha, Bunk Bed Brothers. A big iMac sat on a walnut desk and a sixty-inch TV clung to the wall. A couch faced the TV. A walnut coffee table matched the desk, which had a chair for Ebben and a couple chairs on the opposite side for guests. That’s where we sat.