Fallen Angels (37 page)

Dirty dishes had been left in the sink, empty takeout containers in the garbage. David had eaten and gone to bed, and as usual expected her to clean up his mess. Josie filled the dishwasher, made coffee and started chopping onions for omelettes. She usually added mushrooms and avocados, but she hadn’t been to the market in a couple of weeks so the food supply was running low. The half loaf of bread had transformed into a Petri dish experiment so she unfroze a batch of biscuits, grated parmesan cheese into the omelette and put bacon on the grill.

By the time Jake arrived, the odor of sizzling bacon filled all the rooms. The kitchen was warm and cozy. He hadn’t bothered to shave and wore his old jeans, tennis shoes, and a black pullover sweater Josie had given him ten years ago. His salt and pepper hair was greying more around the temples these days, but he’d lost a few pounds and despite her irritation with him, she noticed he looked handsome and better than she’d seen him in a long time.

“You look terrible,” were his first words to her as he filled his coffee mug and took a piece of bacon from the greasy paper towel on the counter.

She put two plates with the omelettes, a bowl of biscuits, and the rest of the bacon on the breakfast table.

“Sit down,” she ordered, and realized the frenzied cooking had been pent-up anger. First David and now Jake—were they actually scheming to ruin her career and reputation or did their asinine bumbling just come naturally?

Jake smiled faintly and gave her a sloppy salute. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Anything you say.”

“Offhand I’d say you’re a moron.”

He stopped smiling and said, “Okay that’s a start. Did you get me out of bed in the middle of the night because you needed somebody to yell at? It’s a nice breakfast but . . .”

“What’s your business card doing in Hillary Dennis’s date book?”

Jake shook his head, but his expression didn’t change. “I don’t know,” he said with his mouth full of biscuit.

Josie put the card on the table in front of him. When she turned it over, there were numbers written in ink. “Looks like your private business number to me, with some kind of extension.”

“You try calling the number?”

“It’s disconnected.”

He took a long drink of coffee, wiped his hands on his sweater and picked up the card, examining the numbers.

“Hillary Dennis had this?” he asked, looking puzzled.

“Why is your card in a dead teenage prostitute’s date book?”

Jake sat back and repeatedly tapped the card on the table. He seemed to be struggling to remember something, until he glanced up and saw her expression. The insinuation in her words apparently penetrated his thought process, and he sighed.

“Give me some credit, honey. I’ve got higher standards than a kiddie movie star,” he said, but probably read in her face she didn’t believe him and slowly emphasized each word, “I did not give Hillary Dennis the damn card.” He pointed at the written numbers. “You’re right these first ten digits are a phone number. It was the safe line for the D.A.’s witness protection program. That particular program doesn’t exist anymore, that’s why it’s disconnected. These last three digits are a code we used. It was the only way to identify the person. The card belonged to somebody, but not Hillary Dennis.”

“Why not?”

“The program was phased out nine or ten years ago. She would’ve been . . . what, about six years old?”

“Is there a way to identify the person from that code?”

“We didn’t have that many in the program; some stayed longer than others, but it was quite a while ago. All the files might’ve been destroyed by now or transferred to the feds when they took it over.”

“Is there a way to ID the person who belonged to this number?” she repeated.

“Can I finish my breakfast first?”

“Eat faster,” she said, relaxing a little. This might actually turn out to be a good thing. The tough part would be explaining to Behan why she “borrowed” the card without telling him. There wasn’t much time to contemplate how that conversation might go because a disheveled David wearing pajama bottoms and a faded, stretched-out UCLA t-shirt quietly shuffled into the kitchen and zeroed in on the coffeepot.

Josie’s stomach tightened. Her great breakfast instantly turned to indigestion at the thought of the inevitable confrontation. She and Jake sat at the table and watched him pour his coffee, drag his bare feet to the refrigerator and add cream to the mug, not speaking or acknowledging them in any way.

“You hungry?” she asked. She hated mimes, especially in her kitchen.

“No,” he said, curtly.

The immediate smartass remark that came to Josie’s mind was, “There’s a miracle,” but she caught herself.

“Is there something I should know?” Jake asked, glancing from Josie to David and sensing the tension. He’d lived through enough wife-son skirmishes to know when a battle was imminent.

“She didn’t tell you?” David asked, not able to hold the coffee mug steady in his shaky hand. He was on edge and primed for this argument.

“There was no reason to tell him.” Josie knew she was tense from lack of sleep, and defensive. It wouldn’t take much to push her to the point of showing her son a side of herself she usually reserved for the job. He wouldn’t like it. “Cory Goldman killed himself after Red Behan and I interviewed him.”

“Oh,” Jake said and seemed relieved, as if he were expecting something much worse and much closer to home. “Can’t say I’m that surprised, David. Cory had . . . issues.”

“But you’d agree badgering a . . . a fragile guy like him wouldn’t be a decent thing to do . . . maybe even cruel.”

“Give me a break,” Josie said, immediately ignoring her vow not to be sarcastic. “Nobody badgered him, and he’s the one who threw his father and lawyer out of the room.” David started to say something, but she interrupted. “I don’t know what this guy was to you, but I do know he was so seriously messed up, this would’ve happened someday even if he’d never met me.”

“He tried suicide at least three times,” Jake said.

David shook his head and corrected him. “No, once . . . and that was just to get his father’s attention. He wasn’t really trying to kill himself. Everybody knows that.”

“Eli told me his son attempted suicide twice while he was in high school and once after he graduated . . . again when he studied in Italy. They pumped his stomach and had to put him in a mental facility a few years ago after he swallowed a whole bottle of sleeping pills. I used to play tennis with Eli Goldman every week. I’m positive that’s what he told me,” Jake said, shrugging at Josie.

“It’s such a waste,” David moaned, sitting at the table. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”

Josie was quiet. She knew the wrong word now would set off another flurry of recriminations. The young man’s death was sad, but she wouldn’t accept blame just to make her son feel better.

David was quiet for several seconds, peering into the mug as if he were praying or expecting some message to suddenly appear in the coffee grinds. “Sorry, Mom,” he mumbled without looking at her.

There should’ve been something she could say to make him feel better but nothing came to mind, mostly because it had become increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that not only Cory, but Hillary and Misty might’ve been a consequential part of his life.

“How well did you really know Hillary Dennis?” she asked, hoping that, caught up in the moment, he might let his guard down and finally tell her the truth.

He looked up but didn’t speak. His expression said it all—I’m distraught and you’re interrogating me.

“Honey, he’s upset. Do this later,” Jake said, reaching over and touching David’s arm.

Disgusted, she pushed away from the table. “I’m tired. I gotta get some sleep. Clean up when you’re done,” she said, but only got as far as the kitchen door before returning to the table and confronting them.

“I’m done. If either of you were involved with Hillary or her whoring business, tell me now or you’re on your own and don’t expect me to protect you anymore. And you,” she said pointing at Jake, “if you really wanna help, stop treating him like a baby.”

She turned and walked away from the silence permeating the room. Suddenly, fatigue had sapped all her energy and resolve. The investigation didn’t matter. If she couldn’t bring order or sanity to her own house, what difference did the rest of it make?

Several bottles of wine were sitting on the dining room credenza. Without thinking or looking, Josie snatched one on her way to the stairs. Instead of going up to her bedroom, she stopped at the second floor den where she found a corkscrew on the small wet bar and opened the bottle. The cabinet above the sink had all their best glassware, so she took one of the biggest Waterford goblets and filled it with the expensive Pinot Noir she’d been saving for a special occasion. What the hell, she thought. This is special. It’s the day my family officially disintegrated.

Early morning sunlight made the room unbearably bright and warm. She closed the shades, kicked off her boots, and lay on the couch with her glass and the bottle resting on her stomach. Josie intended to drink until her consciousness drowned in alcohol and she passed out. When she woke up—with any luck—the two most important and exasperating people in her life would be out of the house and she could think clearly again.

The first glassful was gone, but she lay on the couch staring at the clock on the wall and understood why people took drugs. Normally, she’d fall asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow, but for the first time in her life she couldn’t rationalize or drink enough to shut down her brain.

She heard a light tapping on the open door and sat up, filled the glass again before cocking her head just enough to see David standing sheepishly outside the room, staring at his bare feet. His long hair was uncombed. When he was a boy, he’d developed the habit of twisting the ends of his hair when he was stressed. He started doing that after she made him stop biting his nails. Standing out there like that, he almost looked like her little boy again . . . a very tall, skinny version of her little boy.

“Can we talk?” he asked.

“I’m tired.”

He sat on the couch beside Josie, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her son’s simplicity was disarming and he had a way of making her forget how angry she was with him. This time she didn’t want to forget. She needed to hold onto that anger until there weren’t any more secrets.

“Cory was like a little brother to me,” he said, softly. “He didn’t have anyone else, so I protected him.”

“From what?”

“Can I have some of that?” he said, nodding at the bottle and getting up for a glass.

“Protected him from what?” she repeated, pouring a little wine in his glass.

“Himself mostly.”

She felt a piercing pain building between her eyes. “No more riddles . . . if you’re gonna tell me something do it, or let me get some sleep so I can go back to work.”

David exhaled and sat back, took a sip of wine. “You really don’t give an inch, do you? You look and talk like other mothers, but you’ve got the heart of a gunnery sergeant.”

He’d probably intended that description to be insulting, but Josie had been called worse, and she thoroughly admired gunnery sergeants a lot more than most mothers. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to let the remark pass without countering with a dose of reality.

“Giving birth to you was the most excruciatingly painful thing I’ve ever done in my life, but when the nurse put you in my arms, when I smelled your hair, touched your tiny fingers, I instantly forgot the torture of labor and loved you completely. I vowed at that moment nothing would ever hurt you, and even now when I think you’ve been harmed in any way, it makes me angry and physically sick.”

“Look, I didn’t mean . . .” David said contritely, trying to interrupt her, but she wouldn’t allow him to apologize. That wasn’t what she wanted.

“When you were a child I treated you like one, but I can’t live your life for you. You’ve got to skin your knees and get your heart broken. I hate it, but it’s supposed to make you a better man, so stop bullshitting me and tell me what’s going on before this gets to the point where I can’t keep you out of it anymore.”

David groaned as if he were in pain and pulled at strands of his hair. She knew he had a flair for the melodramatic so she waited.

Finally he sighed and blurted out, “Cory told me Hillary was whoring, doing drugs for years. Word got out about her heroin habit so no legitimate studio would hire her after her second or third movie . . . all her other films were soft porn crap. Cory told me his dad was her regular customer. One day she needs money and threatens to tell the media about their sex life unless he gives her a lot of cash. He refused, and a week later she’s dead.”

“Did Cory think his father killed her?”

“It’s weird. Cory always swore he hated his father, but he was terrified when he thought something bad might happen to him.”

Josie got up and stretched. She was so tired her joints were beginning to ache. “Do you know if either Goldman killed her?” she asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Cory was frantic that his dad might’ve done it and Mr. Goldman, he asked me if I thought Cory could’ve done it. Misty Skylar was the only one I knew who was really pissed-off at Hillary,” David said.

“Her agent, why?”

“Cory said he thought Hillary got so good at the blackmailing business she didn’t need Misty anymore because they’d had a hellacious falling-out.”

Josie rubbed her temples in an attempt to thwart the growing headache. “Why the hell did you get mixed up with these people?”

“I didn’t. I just tried to help my friend. He told me stuff in confidence. He’s dead now, so I figured it’s okay to talk about it.”

She put her glass on the floor and held her head with both hands. “Did he tell you who he thought killed Hillary?” she mumbled, not expecting an answer.

“He said it must’ve been the cop.”

Josie sat up and instantly forgot the pain. “Which cop?”

“He told me Hillary’s blackmail partner and lover was a cop, and they were setting up some huge score. He figured maybe they had an argument over the money, or the cop got pissed about all the guys she slept with and shot her.”