Dark Debts (6 page)

“I just can't believe it,” he said for the dozenth time. He looked ill; but then, Roger was a man who, under the best of circumstances, looked like he was on his way to a CAT scan. “This must be awful for you,” he said to Randa.

She nodded, a bit embarrassed. Since Keith considered her grief to be psychotic, it wasn't a topic she wanted brought up for discussion.

Keith looked at Roger as if Randa weren't in the room. “I must have left him ten messages this week. I should have gone over there. I just never would have thought . . .”

“No one would have,” Roger assured him.

“I don't get it.” Keith shook his head. “Why now? His career was taking off, he had finally gotten into a decent relationship—”

“Excuse me?” Randa interjected.

Keith shrugged. “His words, not mine.”

Randa winced.
You vindictive ass.

Roger jumped in to help. “Do you have any idea why he would have called Randa out of the blue?” Randa appreciated the diplomatic acknowledgment of her existence.

“No.” Keith looked at her, finally. “He hadn't mentioned you in a long time.”

It was another shot. Roger didn't notice this time. He was lost in his own thoughts. “This whole liquor store thing is from Jupiter.”

Keith nodded. “The cops had some candy-ass case they wanted off the books, they found out a little about Cam and they just used him.”

“They said they found the gun in his apartment,” Randa offered. She wasn't trying to incriminate Cam, but an explanation would be a nice thing to live with.

“They did?” Keith's tone was mocking. “Well, that clinches it. The LAPD certainly wouldn't lie.”

Randa told herself that Keith was extremely upset about Cam and held her tongue.

George Maynard appeared in the doorway. George was the paper's insufferably conceited music critic, whom Cam had always described as “the most obnoxious person I know whom I like anyway.” Randa agreed with the first half of that.

“What the
hell
is going on? Is it true?”

Roger nodded glumly. “Yeah.”

“Christ. I don't believe it.” George removed his wire-rimmed glasses in a gesture that seemed calculated. He and Cam had never been particularly close, but there was no way he was going to miss the melodrama. It fascinated Randa, the way people vied for custody of the friendship of anyone who died young or tragically. George, putting in his bid, came into the office and pulled up a chair. “So . . . what? Does anybody believe this?”

“No one believes he robbed a liquor store,” Roger answered. “I mean, come on.”

“Well, maybe he did.” George had an endearing habit of switching positions the minute anyone agreed with him. “Maybe it was, like, Attack of the Runaway Gene Pool.”

“George.” Roger gave him a look of contempt. George ignored it and turned to Randa. “Somebody said you were there.”

“No. I mean, I was, but . . . I got there right after . . .” She didn't know how to finish, so she didn't.

“What were you doing there?” George asked, as if he were conducting a Senate hearing.

“She says he called her,” Keith answered.

“He
did
call me,” Randa said, trying to stay calm.

Keith shrugged. “Maybe it was someone else, you were half-asleep and you thought it was Cam.”

“Dammit!” She picked up a binder from her desk and hurled it at the wall, where it crashed and sent paper flying. The guys were all too stunned to move.

“He called me! I'm sorry you don't like the narrative, but that's what happened!”

Roger was motioning for her to calm down. “Randa, everybody is just—”

“Don't!” Randa stopped him. “Whatever happened last night, none of you were in it! And how I felt about Cam and why I felt it was nobody's damned business a year ago and it's nobody's damned business now!” She left, slamming the door behind her as hard as she could.

She sat in her car and took deep breaths. Now she'd done it. It might have felt good for five minutes, but those five minutes were not going to come cheaply. Keith was already after her scalp. Well, to hell with it. If she got fired she could go find herself a job with a salary she could tell someone with a straight face.

Truth be told, she had no idea what the fallout from this was going to be. She had no history of outbursts. To the contrary, she usually chewed her nails and internalized and planted the seeds of future ulcers.

Randa didn't know what to do with herself. She didn't want to go home and be alone, but being around other people had certainly not turned out well. She decided to drive. Driving always made her feel better. It was a way to have a connection to the world without having to participate. She especially loved to drive in LA, where the landscapes changed vividly from one neighborhood to the next. The lost souls wandering down Hollywood Boulevard. Overdressed agents lunching with disgruntled clients at the outdoor cafés on Sunset Plaza, all of them happy enough to see and be seen; breathing carbon monoxide was a small price to pay. Tanned, muscular guys in tight jeans strolling down Santa Monica Boulevard with their arms around each other. Beverly Hills housewives dressed in their Chanel suits, on their way to lunch at the Beverly Wilshire before the Ferragamo trunk show at Saks. The Santa Monica promenade, with its bizarre mix: yuppies; beach bums; panhandlers; an occasional schizophrenic preaching fervently to a nonexistent congregation.

She drove aimlessly for about an hour, then paid a guy in a red vest three dollars for the privilege of parking at the Santa Monica pier, where she could stare out at the ocean. She did that until she was bored, then leaned her head back on the headrest, closed her eyes, and made a conscious decision to let herself remember.

Cam had come into her life eight years ago. More precisely, she had come into his. She had happened upon a book he'd written during one of her book-buying sprees. She had seen it on the “Staff Picks” shelf at Book Soup and had been intrigued by his name.
Cameron Landry
seemed far too poetic for a mystery writer. When she read on the jacket flap that he was also from Georgia, she decided to give it a shot. The book had startled her with its complexity and insight. She was also drawn to its darkness—its bleak themes and haunted characters. Randa had been attracted to darkness from an early age. Maybe it was just from having grown up in the South, where people clung to morbid fascinations and superstitions as if they were consolation prizes from the Civil War. (A just God would never have tolerated Sherman's rampage, so there had to be powerful dark forces at work that protected Yankees and other agents of evil.) Or maybe it was growing up in her family, where everyone practically worshiped at the altars of depression and morbidity. (The only song Randa could ever remember her mother singing to her was “Put My Little Shoes Away”—a song about a child who knew he was dying.) Whatever the reason, something about the darkness soothed her like a lullaby, and she sought refuge in it by whatever safe means she could find.

The darkness in Randa's soul had been quick to respond to the darkness in Cameron Landry's prose. She immediately bought his other three books and read them, then pestered everyone at the paper until they let her write an article about him. She scheduled an interview through his literary agent, then ferreted out every article ever written about him and every interview he'd ever done. The reviews of his books were consistently effusive. People who cared about such things compared him to Ross Macdonald, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett. A reviewer in one of the magazines for mystery buffs swore that Landry would leave them all in the dust before it was over.

Very little had been written about the man himself. He'd grown up in several small towns in rural Georgia, the youngest of four brothers in a working-class family. He'd read a lot, he was good in English, a teacher had encouraged him, he'd decided to become a writer, and so on. No indication of where that dark vision had been born.

As she continued to search the computer indexes for anything more enlightening, she came across another Landry, one whose name had an even more poetic lilt: Tallen Landry. She didn't know if the name belonged to a man or a woman, but she loved the sound of it. When she saw it the second time, she decided to detour and find out. She typed the name into the computer and brought up the first citation. It was an article from
Texas Monthly
entitled “The Impact of Capital Punishment on the Families of Death Row Inmates.” It had been written by an SMU sociology professor, a Dr. Karl Wiedergott, who had interviewed fifty families of condemned men and women and compiled a study about their emotional and physiological reactions. Near the end of the article, Tallen Landry was identified as a convicted murderer who had been executed in Alabama. (What an irony, she thought, for a murderer to have such a lovely name.) The professor had interviewed some family friends, but said that members of the immediate family had refused to talk with anyone. Randa was about to exit the article when something in the next paragraph caught her eye. Tallen Landry was more specifically identified as the second of four sons from a working-class family in rural Georgia. Randa stared at the paper, amazed. Surely it was a coincidence?
Landry
wasn't a particularly unusual name, and Georgia was not a small state. Still, if there was any connection at all, it would certainly shed some light on the workings of Cameron Landry's mind.

A week later, at the appointed time, she sat at a table at Musso & Frank Grill, poring over her notes and nervously chewing the ice from her water glass. She was surprised to see the maître d' showing a tall guy in a brown leather jacket and black Ray-Bans over to her table. She had certainly not expected him to be on time. He smiled warmly and offered his hand (
“Hi, I'm Cam Landry. I'm not late, am I?” 
), then slid into the booth across from her. He didn't look anything like she'd expected, although she didn't know what she had expected. His hair was very dark brown, almost black, just long enough to look artistically unkempt. It had a lot of gray in it for a man his age (which, from the articles she'd read, she knew to be thirty-one). His face was perfectly shaped, with sharp features, and his skin looked as if it had never seen the light of day. And then he took off his sunglasses and she saw those eyes, and all other physical attributes were rendered unimportant.

When they started to talk, she was amazed at how they found an instant rhythm, and it seemed to have nothing to do with their common heritage. By the time the food came, they were finishing each other's sentences.

The one thing he didn't want to talk about was the content of his work. Whenever Randa tried to get into the material in any depth, Cam would quickly and adroitly change the subject. No wonder the articles she'd found had not gone beneath the surface.

After dinner they ordered margaritas and swapped war stories from their careers. When it started to get late and he still hadn't mentioned his family, she finally asked about them. He shrugged. “They're all dead.”

“Well, who were they when they were alive?”

He shook his head. “A sorry bunch of people. Don't waste your time.”

“A lot of great writers have come from sorry bunches of people.”

“Yeah, well . . .” He looked away. “Actually, my mother was okay.” He seemed to be saying it to himself. “She just . . .”

“What?”

“She thought she was very selfless, and maybe she was . . . but she put all her effort into maintaining her dignity in a horrible situation instead of trying to get
out
of the horrible situation, you know?” He looked away again. The energy had definitely shifted. Randa decided to go for it.

“By any chance, are you related to Tallen Landry?”

He didn't move, but she could see the muscles in his jaw go tense. Finally, without turning back to her, he said, “How did you know that?”

“I came across an article. I saw that you were both from Georgia and both had three brothers, so I thought there might be a chance . . .”

After a long moment he turned and looked at her again. He didn't appear angry. Maybe a little defeated. “I don't suppose it would do any good to ask you not to mention it.”

Randa didn't answer. God, this stroke of luck, this great angle, and he wanted her to just ignore it. She didn't know him. She didn't owe him anything. So why did she feel she couldn't betray an unspoken loyalty?

He picked up his sunglasses. “I know, it's a ridiculous thing for me to ask. You're obviously very good at your job.” Before she could figure out what to say, he was gone. She watched him go, knowing it would do no good to call him back.

For days after that she'd found herself missing him. How she could miss someone she didn't know was a mystery to her, but she did. She'd almost managed to clear it from her mind when, about a month after their dinner, she was surprised to get a phone call from him at her office.

“What happened to the article?” he asked, without any preamble.

“I scrapped it.”

“Why?”

“I didn't think I could write it honestly if I didn't go into your background, and I didn't think I could sleep well if I did.” He didn't say anything, so she added, “I'm sure you've been through enough.”

“You don't even know me.” He sounded incredulous, and impressed.

She thought about it and decided to risk him thinking she was nuts. “I know, but I feel like I do. I know it sounds crazy, but the minute you sat in that booth, I thought, ‘Oh yeah, there's Cam.' I can't explain it, it was weird.”

“I know. I felt the same way. It wasn't like we just met, it was like we were . . . reunited. I almost said something about it, but I was afraid you'd think I was coming on to you.”