“She’s still in there,” I said. “She doesn’t believe anything good about herself, but she’s still in there.”
Lissa Wellman put a hand on my wrist. “Listen. In your life, there must have been one horrible, unforgettable, humiliating moment, maybe when you were ten or eleven, at the most sensitive time in your life, there must have been one moment when you wished you could disappear forever. More than that, not only wanting to disappear, but wishing you’d never existed at all. A moment that can still make you cringe, twenty or twenty-five years later.”
“There was,” I said.
“Well, multiply that moment by a million, imagine it happening to you on national television, and make it last for four years.” She put the sunglasses back on and looked away from me, toward the life and color of the roses, rooted in people’s dead loved ones. “That’s what happened to Thistle Downing.”
34
By the time I was back in my own car, making the long climb out of Hidden Valley, the sun was close to the day’s finish line. The expensive homes in the basin beneath me were being swallowed up in the mountains’ shadows, the rooftops just darker rectangles against the darkness of the earth, but the sky was still a thinly scattered blue, and high above me the tops of the Santa Monica mountains gleamed in the last of the sunlight. I had the windows down, feeling a new cooling in the air. Sometimes, in the middle of the hottest summer, the Los Angeles nights will suddenly turn cold, as though to remind us that this place was the next thing to a desert before the old men stole all that water and piped it down here to the thirsty city.
6:10 by my watch. Almost six hours since anyone had seen Thistle. And I still had no idea where she was.
Something Lissa Wellman had said to me was picking at a corner of my mind, something about the relationship between Thistle and Edith, but try as I would, I couldn’t focus on it. There was an answer there somewhere, if I could get a clear view of it. And I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with my own position. No matter how ridiculous they were at times, Hacker and Wattles were not comic figures, and Rabbits Stennet was undiluted murder. And yet I was finding it difficult to see myself actually doing anything that would put Thistle Downing in front of the cameras with those five gym rats.
With nothing else to do, I decided to head back to the Camelot Arms. It was possible she’d finally made it home, that she was there alone now, bewildered by the destruction of the few things she’d called her own. She’d need someone with her. She’d probably need someone to hide her, at least for the time being.
I replayed what I’d just thought. I was going to hide Thistle? I wasn’t taking Rabbits seriously enough.
Well, first, see if she’s home. So I made the left on Coldwater and joined the long line of cars that headed over the mountains to the Valley at the end of every business day. I’d pick up the Hollywood Freeway and go back to Thistle’s apartment.
And then something else popped into my mind. A question I should have asked hours ago.
Since I was barely moving anyway, I looked at the touchpad on my cell phone rather than trying to punch in the number by feel. One ring, then two, and I was saying, “Come on” when Tatiana picked it up and said, “Have you found her?”
“No. Is Craig-Robert around?”
“Why would I know? He may have left. Hold on, I’m walking down there now. Where have you looked?”
“At her apartment, which somebody trashed. At her father’s grave. In her past.”
“Nothing?”
The car in front of me came to a complete stop. “Something in her past, and it’s kind of tickling me. But am I any closer to knowing where she is physically? No.”
“Hang on, I’m at the costume lab. Here’s the dramatic part, I’m opening the door now. Oh, well, you are in luck. By now Craig-Robert is usually at home trying to figure out which Supreme he’ll be for the evening. Craig-Robert, talk to Junior for a second.”
“With barely suppressed pleasure at any time of day or night. Hello, hello.”
“Hello, hello yourself. Listen, are you missing any costumes? It wouldn’t be anything fancy, just-”
“How did you know? I was just writing it up.”
“What was it?” We were moving again, a tire-screeching three or four miles per hour up the hill.
“Strictly Ross Dress for Less, but with Miss Trey, the balance sheets are expected to balance. So here we are, on paper, in my finest cover your precious ass style: Missing: One pair of jeans, one long-sleeved blue cotton blouse, one pair of sneakers.”
“Women’s clothes, right?”
“Mein Gott, I should have put that in, shouldn’t I? Yes, for the fairer sex, as they like to style themselves.”
“Thanks.” Traffic started moving again, and the car behind me gave me a discreet toot.
“Is this important?” Craig-Robert asked. “Should I feel the plot thickening or something?”
“It answers some questions.” Now I knew why I’d been picking at the thing Thistle told Lissa.
My phone beeped to tell me I had an incoming call. I took a look at the caller ID and saw it was Kathy. My ex-wife rarely calls to chew the fat, unless the fat she wants to chew is still attached to my body. I told Craig-Robert I had another call, took a deep breath, punched the button, and said, “Hello.”
“Junior,” Kathy said, and she sounded like it was taking most of her energy to keep her voice level. “I might as well come right to the point. You are this far from having me challenge your visitation rights. And I mean a total ban, no contact with Rina whatsoever. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you’re severely pissed off,” I said. “It’s a little hard to respond when I have no idea what the context is.”
“You don’t?”
The cars ahead of me, which had been at full stop, started to move, and I followed along. “I just said I don’t.”
“Burglary was bad enough. But pornography-”
“Stop. Stop right there.”
“We saw the news, Junior. We saw it together, Rina and I. I had to watch Rina’s face as she saw it. You and that poor girl. And you even talked to Rina about her, yesterday. You know perfectly well that she’s one of Rina’s heroes, and here you are, practically carrying her into the studio where she’s going to film, I don’t know what you’d call it, probably something fancy, but in my father’s day, it was a stag movie.”
“I don’t have anything to do with the movie,” I said. And I listened to my own lie echo down the phone line. Of course, I had something to do with the movie.
“That’s not what it looked like to us. I’m telling you, Junior, if Rina weren’t fighting me tooth and nail on this right now, I’d be on the phone with my lawyer, not you, and you wouldn’t see your daughter until she’s of legal age to make these decisions for herself.”
“Kathy,” I said. “It’s really not what it looks like.”
“That poor baby. She looked so lost, all that bravado and those terrible people.”
“She is lost,” I said.
“The only good thing you did was knock that bitch on her ass.”
“Listen, Kathy, this is more complicated than it seems-”
“It’s always complicated with you, Junior. Because you don’t understand that the only thing that’s not complicated is doing the right thing. Telling the truth and doing the right thing.”