I kept thinking about Olivia’s tearful reaction when I had called her mother a murderer and a monster. I had begun to wonder if maybe Olivia’s reason for getting hired as Doña Elena’s personal assistant was simply to make contact with her mother. After all, the usual avenues for contacting Alejandra Delarosa would be closed to Olivia. She couldn’t expect help from the police. She couldn’t take out an advertisement. She couldn’t even hire someone like me without the risk that her mother would be turned in to the authorities. How would you look for someone under those conditions? Where would you begin?
I supposed it made some kind of sense to start with Doña Elena, because she was the last person known to have seen Olivia’s mother. But Olivia couldn’t very well expect Doña Elena to help. So maybe Olivia had adopted her alias and gotten herself hired as Doña Elena’s personal assistant simply to be nearby in case Delarosa was still interested in Doña Elena. Maybe Olivia was hoping her mother would see her at Doña Elena’s side. Maybe she was just that desperate to find a mother who had hidden herself far too well.
But although I wanted to believe the best about Olivia, there was still the fact that Medallion and his partner had tried to beat something out of her. Although I had given Olivia several chances to come clean about that, she had refused to do it. She was obviously hiding something more than just her identity, something a couple of very bad guys wanted. Whatever that thing was, if it was innocent, why wouldn’t Olivia tell me about it?
I watched the lights out on the ocean, and thought and thought, but in the end I just didn’t have enough information. Instead, I had two choices, neither of which had much appeal. I could hang around and watch while Olivia kept doing whatever it was she was doing and very possibly got herself killed. Or I could go back to the plan I’d had before. Tell her I knew her real identity and hope she reacted by admitting the real reason for her actions, whatever that might be.
The first strategy was probably the smartest, since the second required me to give up the only strategic advantage I seemed to have at the moment—knowing a little more about Olivia than she realized. But what if Olivia was innocent, and I let her get herself killed while the two of us played this game of cat and mouse? After Haley, I didn’t think I would survive that. Instead, it seemed I was probably going to give up the one thing I had going for me and let Olivia know I was onto her. Then at least there was a chance she’d tell me what she was really up against, and I could use that information to protect her.
I sighed, laid my head back against the seat, crossed my arms over my chest, and shut my eyes. I slept fitfully, fading in and out of consciousness. I dreamed of trailers teetering on cliff tops and Haley walking in midair and the deathly stench of millions of bloated fish floating on the ocean from horizon to horizon. The sunset’s afterglow was long gone when my cell phone’s ringtone roused me from the nightmare. It was Sid Gold calling for his pickup.
Sid was waiting on the sidewalk when I pulled up to the curb. He was alone. I started to get out to open the door for him, but he waved me away and got into the back on his own. I merged into the PCH traffic, heading toward El Nido.
“So,” he said, slurring the “s” a little bit. “That was a disaster.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I go in, and there’s no room at the bar and only one high top available, so I sit there and I order a manhattan, and I’m drinking it and looking around, watching all the action. There’s some pros in there, if you want my opinion, wearing nothing but shirts and calling them dresses, but I saw a couple of girls who looked like they were maybe normal people from the neighborhood. So I call the waitress over and tell her I want to buy their next round. Which they seem to appreciate, giving me nice smiles and all, but I can’t tell if they want me to come over, you know? I mean, it’s been a real long time, Malcolm. I can’t remember all the signals. So I’m sitting there, trying to decide, and I guess I waited too long, because they stopped looking my way, and then it was kind of like they were avoiding eye contact. So I order another manhattan, and I’m drinking it alone and feeling pretty stupid, and who should come up to the table but Morty Stern, you know, the agent? Represents Tom Selleck and Julia Dreyfus? And he’s all ‘What are you doing here alone?’ And ‘Hey, everybody, you know who this is?’
“So Morty sort of shouts my filmography to the whole room—he’s drunk see—and he’s rattling off all my pictures, and suddenly I notice those two girls are watching me again, only this time they get up and come over to my table and they thank me for the drinks, the drinks I bought them what, half an hour earlier? Naturally I know what’s on their mind, but at this point I don’t care. I just don’t want to sit there like a wallflower anymore, so I pretend I like Morty just fine, which I do not, and I pretend I don’t know what these women want, which I do, and I order another round for everyone. And after that I start to kind of forget about these people’s motivation, and there’s another round, and I don’t know, but I think maybe another round after that, and this one girl, she’s maybe thirty and frankly pretty hot, she’s rubbing up against me accidentally on purpose and talking about how much she admires my work, and I’m actually starting to think maybe we’re connecting on some kind of level. And then she puts her face right there in front of mine, I mean right there, and she looks deep into my eyes, and I’m thinking this is a very soulful moment, and she says to me, with these luscious pouty lips, she says, ‘Could you introduce me to Brad Pitt?’ So I say ‘Excuse me,’ and I go to the men’s room and call you.”
“I’m sorry, Sid.”
“Well, hey, at least I tried.”
“That’s right.”
“Yeah, at least I got that out of my system. Now I know what I’ve been missing, and it’s not much, let me tell you. So, change the subject. Seen any good films lately?”
“I don’t go to the movies much.”
“No? But you drive for people in the business. That’s funny. You drive for people like me and Haley Lane, but you’re not a movie fan. Pretty perfect, actually. Now that I think about it. Very interesting.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“I do think it’s interesting, and I should know. I’m up to my eyeballs in boredom, Malcolm. You know how I spend my days? I sit around reading boring treatments, that’s how. People send us these yawners, these homages to monotony, and they expect to get a picture made.”
“This is why I don’t watch movies. Mostly they just put me to sleep.”
“Yeah, well, don’t quote me, but lately I’ve been feeling the same. It’s hard to find a script worth filming. Give you an example. Just this morning my assistant brings me this script somebody sent us. It’s about money laundering, okay? Money laundering. People love pictures about stealing money or spending money or losing money. They do not want to watch a film about making fake investments, which is basically what money laundering is.”