When I rang the doorbell, it took a while for someone to garble through the intercom. I said, “It’s Dante.”
Another long pause. “Let yourself in?”
“Sure.” I tapped the code.
Inside, I walked back to the main room. “Hello?” Hearing no response, I stepped farther in and looked around. Everything seemed in order. In the kitchen, a few dishes were stacked near the sink, but the tenants clearly appreciated tidy surroundings. Although the print racks near the dining table had been rearranged, the David Hockney was still prominently displayed. On the table, boxes and bulging portfolios contained more inventory.
I turned as one of the glass doors on a side wall slid open, and in from the pool deck strolled Clarence Kwon with a towel slung over one shoulder. He was otherwise naked, far more buff than I had imagined, and still aroused from whatever merrymaking had transpired outdoors. He carried an empty Tupperware container of raspberry trifle, smeared pink. Unless I was mistaken, there was also a creamy lick of it on his inner thigh.
“Morning, Dante,” he said, crossing the room toward the kitchen. “Sorry to call you back. Edison got frustrated with the TV last night. He started punching buttons, and by the time he gave up, the Wi-Fi was fritzed out.” Clark set the towel on the kitchen counter and rinsed the Tupperware in the sink.
“Happens all the time,” I said. “No two setups are alike. I’ll restore the settings, then show him how to work the video.”
“Fair warning: he’ll never catch on.” Clark stepped over to me while wiping his hands. “Can you tackle the Wi-Fi first?”
“Uh-huh.” I paused to look him up and down, which got a rise out of both of us. A jolt of waist-level attraction nudged us closer. I managed to say, “Seems you had no trouble with the pool controls.”
“Worked like a charm. But Edison was griping last night about the landscape lighting — said it was totally screwed up. I thought it looked fine.”
“I’ll check it out.”
Clark wrapped the towel around his waist. “Gotta throw myself together. Someone’s coming over from the convention center. Security — to help transport some of the good stuff. So, go ahead and do your thing.” He traipsed off toward the bedroom.
I gathered the remote controls and took them to a former linen closet, now overtaken by electronics. Resetting the Wi-Fi was easy but rebooting the cable and restoring the streaming services was tedious. About ten minutes into it, I heard the doorbell ring. I also heard the spray of the shower from down the hall. Stepping out to the main room, I saw that Edison had not yet come in from the pool. The doorbell rang again, so I went to answer it.
When I opened the door, our eyes locked in disbelief.
“What the fuck?” she said.
And I relived the scene — a shattering scene from a year earlier — when I had first encountered this woman.
After Dr. Anthony Gascogne, ophthalmologist, had fired me, thrown me out of the house, and changed the locks, he was then catty enough to give me one of his new keys — in case anyone needed access during his travels, which had grown more frequent.
A few months later, after leaving the bartending job, I was going through several days of training with Sunny Junket. On a Wednesday morning, while touring some of our properties with Ed, my supervisor, I started receiving messages from my ex’s office, concerned that he had not shown up that day. He’d already missed two appointments and could not be reached. Could I check at the house?
Later, maybe — I was in the middle of something important, at the far end of the valley.
By late afternoon, after work, after a continued spate of texting, I drove to the house I had once shared with Anthony. Letting myself in, I called to him, but all was quiet. At a glance, there were no signs of trouble, and I thought he had simply taken off for a while. Spontaneity, though, was not one of his hallmarks, so I decided to do a walk-through.
When I entered his study, my knees went weak. I grabbed the doorjamb to steady myself as the room seemed to spin beneath me. Anthony had dropped face-first from the chair behind his desk, landing on the white shag carpet, puddled with the blackening ooze of his blood. His skull was bashed in. A lamp with a heavy crystal base, streaked red, had been thrown violently aside, cracking a cabinet door below the bookcase.
I kneeled in the mess to check on Anthony, who was beyond helping. Stupidly, I picked up the lamp and set it upright. Then I phoned 911.
Among the first responders was a hotshot cop, a black woman in her thirties with a street mouth and a chip on her shoulder. I assumed she was a dyke. Her name badge identified her, dubiously, as Officer Friendly. I would later learn that her surname was indeed Friendly, that she was not a dyke, and that she was bucking for a promotion to detective.
That day at the crime scene, she must’ve figured she could grease the path to her promotion by arresting me on the spot. It sort of made sense: I literally had blood on my hands, there were no signs of intrusion, I had a key, and most important, I had a plausible motive for revenge against the victim. It was front-page news in Thursday morning’s Desert Sun, though I never saw it, waking up behind bars.
On Thursday evening, the medical examiner released his finding that Anthony had died Wednesday around noon. My salvation turned out to be Ed at Sunny Junket, who had spent most of Wednesday with me, providing a solid alibi. I was freed within the hour. Officer Friendly, however, was screwed.
And now, there she was, in a rent-a-cop costume, reduced to running security errands for the convention center. She sported a gun, a badge, and handcuffs, looking plenty pissed.
I smiled. “What happened? Lose your job?”
“None of your motherfucking business.”
“Couth it up, Friendly. Our clients wouldn’t approve.”
“Go to hell, asshole.”
“Aha,” said Clark, strolling out from the bedroom, dressed for the day. “It seems you two have met. Morning, Jazz.”
“Jazz?” I said.
She looked aside, mumbling, “Beats the shit out of Jasmine.”
Nodding, I agreed. “Not quite your style.”
Clark asked, “Get everything fixed, Dante?”
“Hold on,” said Friendly. With a low chortle, she said, “Dante? This asswipe lowlife? He’s Danny O’Donnell.”
We were interrupted by the rattle of the sliding glass door to the pool deck as Edison struggled to open it from his wheelchair. I rushed over and helped him inside.
“Dante, dah-ling,” he said, “too good of you.”
“I’ve got the video up and running again. Can we take a few minutes to go over it?”
He heaved a weary sigh. “If we must. Later — when you come back to fix the lighting.”
“I can take a look at that right now.”
“Not in the daylight,” he scoffed. “It has to be tonight.”
Hesitating, I said, “I’ll drop by around six.” Not wanting to be stuck alone with Edison, I turned to ask Clark, “Will you be here?”
“Depends. I’ll try.” Clark was at the dining table, checking the inventory of prints against a list. As if he’d just thought of something, he looked up to tell Friendly, “I need a few minutes before we go. Make yourself at home. Check out the view.”
Edison gave the black woman a haughty, disapproving look as she sauntered out to the pool deck. I followed.
A mockingbird warbled as it swooped from the fronds of a palm to the scrub of an embankment that opened to the city below. Friendly stood at the railing, looking out. I approached from behind. With her back to me, she said, “You fucked up my life.”