Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (33 page)

"I've got a lot of irons in the fire," I said, a lie.

"I may have a job for you, Carl."

"Me? Why?"

After a moment of silence: "Maybe I feel a little guilty
about the way it went down with you, Carl."

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't.

What the hell did I have to lose?

We met the next morning at a Carl's Jr. across the street
from the main library on Harbor Boulevard and Broadway, three miles north and a world away from the park. He chose
the place. Fast food didn't seem like much of a gesture toward
reconciliation. Was the Carl's Jr. a play on my name? There
were plenty of tourist joints around the park that served better breakfasts. And there were restaurants near the stadium
and diners and cafes farther east in Orange or Tustin where
park employees often went to escape the crowds and to enjoy food that was less generic than tourist fare. I asked myself
what Sherlock Holmes would have made of Jeffrey's wanting
to meet here and I arrived at this: the Carl's Jr. at Harbor
and Broadway was a place we'd likely not be seen by anybody
who knew either of us (most of the patrons and some of the
employees didn't even speak English). Only three miles from
the park, we were virtually guaranteed of being strangers to
anyone we might meet.

In this, I was right.

But it was the last time I'd be right for a long while.

I parked my Camry next to Jeffrey's SUV.

He sat at an inside booth, nursing a coffee and browsing
the morning paper. He grinned when he saw me and extended
his hand to shake without sliding out of the booth to stand.
"Morning, Carl." He was dressed "resort casual," khakis, loafers, monogrammed golf shirt. The face of his expensive wristwatch was black and of a width and diameter about half that
of a hockey puck. I'd come in my suit and tie, which felt ridiculous in a Carl's Jr. But this was a job interview, wasn't it?
And my Aunt Janice always said that one can never be overdressed, either for church or for a business meeting.

I slid into the booth across from Jeffrey. "So what's this all
about?"

"Maybe you want to get yourself a coffee and a roll before
we get started," he said, folding away his newspaper.

I was hungry (after all, this was supposed to be breakfast)
so I did as he suggested.

"Well, that ought to fill you up," Jeffrey said when I returned with my tray.

A coffee, orange juice, jumbo breakfast burrito, and side
of hash browns . . . Why not? This wasn't a Weight Watchers meeting! But Jeffrey looked at my tray like it was piled
with fresh, steaming shit. He couldn't resist putting on superior airs. I'd seen it in my days at the park. Fine, he was
Ivy League. Then Quantico. Good for him. But what kind of
former undercover agent is constitutionally unable to conceal
his smugness at least some of the time?

"I'd like to engage your assistance," he said.

"What?"

"It's about my wife."

I put down my breakfast burrito.

Jeffrey leaned toward me over the Formica tabletop. He
smelled of expensive cologne, which mixed strangely with the
greasy odors from the breakfast foods. He pushed my tray toward the napkin dispenser against the wall and tapped his fist
on my forearm, a "man's man" gesture of intimacy. I fought the
impulse to pull away.

"You're a good man, Carl," he said. "I knew it even when
I was letting you go, but I had no choice."

"Yeah?"

"Look, I know damn well that corporate policy and fear
of litigation should never trump a man's twenty years of good
service," he continued. "But you'll have to trust me that I had
no choice. Do you trust me, Carl?"

It was actually twenty-three years, but I didn't correct
him. "Would I be here otherwise, Jeffrey?"

"Good." He leaned back into his side of the booth.

I picked up the breakfast burrito and took a bite, unsure
of what else to do.

"I want to employ you as a private detective," he said.

Once again I put the burrito down. "Me?"

He nodded.

"Why?" I asked.

"I need you to shadow my wife."

"Oh? I see. But still ... why me?"

"It's a delicate job, Carl." He lowered his voice. "Look,
I'm well known in law-enforcement circles. You understand
that. Every city in this county has its own little chief of police,
but just as there's only one park, one citadel, there's only one
me. So I can't go to a regular agency. You know that the park
expects only the most respectable behavior from its top employees. And also from their wives . . ." He looked to me for
some kind of response.

"Oh, right."

"I need to know the truth about her. But I can't allow anything unsavory to ever get out. Understand, Carl?"

"Sure."

He looked around the Carl's Jr. When he was sure nobody was paying us any attention, he removed from his front
trousers pocket a roll of cash held together with two rubber
bands. He set it on the tabletop and then slid it across like a
shuffleboard disc into my lap. "It's two grand, all in twenties,"
he said. "It'll get you started on the job."

I hadn't held so much cash in my hand at one time since
my vacation in Bangkok (where cash passes out of your hand
instead of into it).

"I need your help, Carl," he said, his expression suddenly
strained.

They sure as hell didn't teach this at Quantico, I thought. It turns out the bastard was as pathetic a human being as the
rest of us. (Or so I believed at the time.) Anyway, I admit I
enjoyed his muted anguish. But I was clever enough not to
show it. "Okay, Jeffrey. I'll help you."

He removed a reporter's notebook from his back pocket
and gave it to me. "You got a pen?"

I patted my shirt pocket. No pen.

He gave me a Bic.

"You might want to note down what I'm about to tell
you," he said.

"Right." I flipped the pad open. Just like that I was a private eye.

Jeffrey's wife Melinda was thirteen years his junior. They had
no children together, though on weekends Jeffrey's four young
daughters from two previous marriages occasionally visited
their home, which was located near the golf course on a quiet
cul-de-sac in Anaheim Hills. It was a million-and-a-half-dollar
property. Melinda held no job, but kept busy with volunteer
work at the children's hospital in Orange. She worked out on
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at a Pilates studio on Imperial Highway and on Tuesdays and Thursdays with a private
trainer (female) at the twenty-four-hour fitness club. Her
body was well toned. She drove a two-year-old, leased Mercedes E-class and her blond hair was just the right shade for
her skin color, just the right length for her bone structure.
She got her manicures, pedicures, and facials at a salon on
Lakeview that was run by a Vietnamese woman named Tran,
and she shopped for groceries at the Vons Pavilions in the
Target shopping center on Weir Canyon Road. She rarely ventured off the hill to the flats of Anaheim, which were generally
too seedy for one of her refined sensibilities. In conversation at the tennis club she poked fun at the park and all it stood
for, assuming a position of cultural superiority, even though
it was the park that provided her husband with the means to
keep her in luxury. She seemed a predictable third wife for a
man like Jeffrey. No surprise there. What's funny is that you
might not suspect a woman like her would also appeal to a
man like me, but after shadowing her for just a day or two, I
found myself becoming very fond of her, despite her superficialities, her arrogance, and the fact that, quite literally, she
didn't know I existed.

"She's seeing another man," Jeffrey had told me at Carl's
Jr. that first morning.

But I discovered nothing that suggested infidelity. Not in
the first week, nor in the second, nor the third. I faithfully kept
at it, every day and every night. Melinda took conversational
French classes at Fullerton College on Tuesday and Thursday
nights from 7 to 10 and enjoyed a few happy hour margaritas
every Wednesday with her girlfriends, some of whom were actually as well groomed and physically fit as she was.

Otherwise, she was rarely out of the house after dark.
Further, I can say with certainty-because I'd snuck into the
backyard to peek through a window-that there was nothing illicit about the two consecutive afternoon visits from
the plumber; also, the Latino gardeners and the Polynesian
pool boy merely did their jobs, unlike the stereotypical shirtless lotharios you find filling their professions in porno films.
Melinda wasn't seeing anybody and nobody was seeing her
(except me, of course). Even Jeffrey saw little of her, working
long days that often stretched past midnight. I thought Melinda must be the loneliest woman in the world, poor thing.
But I kept my notes and my increasing faith in her goodness to
myself. Jeffrey had instructed me never to contact him, which was just as well as I'd lost my cell phone a few days before he
hired me as a PI and hadn't had time to replace it since I'd
started shadowing his wife.

Actually, I was glad to be rid of my cell phone.

It felt good to be cut off from everyone in the worldexcept Melinda.

Of course, I did speak in person to some of those in her
life. For example, I used one of the hours when Melinda was
in the Pilates studio to visit her dry cleaner, who occupied the
same strip mall. I initiated conversation with him by pretending to be one of her neighbors. He agreed with me that she was
always very friendly. Unfortunately, I couldn't get details from
him about the particulars of her cleaning and laundering needs
(such as whether he'd ever been asked to work out unusual
or incriminating stains on either her outer- or underwear).
Believe me, I took the job seriously. I was thorough. Melinda's
French teacher at Fullerton College, a sixtyish woman called
Madame Juliette, who I'm not sure believed that I was a visiting professor from Cypress College, told me only that Melinda
had exceptional pronunciation and above-average vocabulary
skills. When I met Melinda's supervisor at the children's hospital in Orange, a small man in a wheelchair, I claimed to
be a reporter for the O.C. Weekly who wrote the "Volunteers
Among Us" column. He told me Melinda had a wonderful
way with children and lamented the fact that she and Jeffrey
were childless. The receptionist at the Anaheim Hills Tennis
Club told me, after I'd slipped her a series of twenty-dollar bills,
that half of their married members cheated on their spouses,
often hooking up with their mixed-doubles partners, but that
Melinda was in the faithful 50 percent, a paragon of marital
constancy.

The woman was an angel.

Why would I ever want to murder her?

But wait, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

Approximately three and a half weeks into my surveillance,
Jeffrey called me at my apartment at 2:30 in the morning. The
lateness of the hour was not as distressing as it might seem;
after all, I was only ever home between midnight and 5 a.m.,
otherwise always shadowing Melinda, and so the middle of the
night was the only time I was available for communication.

"You're a hard man to reach, Carl."

This was the first I'd spoken to Jeffrey since Carl's Jr. Now,
in the background of his call, I could make out the sound of
light traffic, as if he were phoning from the side of a freeway.
"I've been on the job, Jeffrey." My answering machine was
empty so he obviously hadn't tried that hard to reach me.

"Good man," he said.

I liked being called that. "I've compiled copious notes
about your wife's every move these past few weeks," I said.
"That notebook you gave me is just about full. And I'm pleased
to report that, to date, my observations indicate-"

"That's fine, Carl," he interrupted. "We'll discuss your observations later. Now, I want you to just listen to me."

"Oh, okay."

"Tomorrow I want you to take the day off. Get a haircut, go
to a movie, wash your car, whatever. Just stay away from Melinda. It's critical that she not suspect she's being watched."

"Oh, I've been very careful about that, Jeffrey." Or had I
left more of a footprint that I thought? Maybe talking to a few
of her neighbors the day before hadn't been such a good idea.

Jeffrey continued: "Now get this part right, Carl. At 11
o'clock tomorrow night, not a moment later, not a moment
sooner, I want you to park your car in front of my house. Bring your camera. I'll see that the front door is unlocked and the
silent alarm turned off. Just quietly walk in."

"Now wait a minute," I said. "I'm not so sure about breaking and entering and-"

Again, he cut me off. "It's my goddamn house, Carl. You
won't be `breaking and entering' because I'm inviting you to
enter, understand?"

"Oh, right. But why?"

"Because tomorrow night the other man will be there, in
bed with my wife."

What other man? I thought. "How do you know, Jeffrey?"

"Trust me, I know."

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"Take a picture of them together. That's all. Then get out.
The master bedroom is at the back of the house."

This was an ugly business. But it was a little exciting
too. And while I still privately doubted that the Melinda
I'd observed these past weeks was actually having an affair,
the prospect of seeing her naked and in flagrante delicto
(and photographing it!) held an undeniable appeal. I didn't
know if I wanted to be right or wrong about her. I'm sure you
understand.

"Any questions, Carl?"

"Where will you be during all this, Jeffrey?"

"Don't worry about me, buddy. I'll be all right."

I hadn't been worried about him.

"I'll call you at this same time tomorrow," he said.

I slept little that night and the following day passed at a
snail's pace despite the fact that I followed Jeffrey's advice by
getting a haircut, washing my car, and seeing a matinee. After
eating a hamburger for dinner at the Carl's Jr. where Jeffrey
and I had breakfasted (call me sentimental), I returned to my apartment to watch jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and three CBS
sitcoms. I left my apartment only after the fireworks ended at
the park. I cruised up and down Harbor Boulevard for forty
minutes, casually observing the tourists on the sidewalks outside the motels. They were all shapes and sizes, though I'd
guess they tended a little more toward fat than the national
average. At 10:30 I turned off Harbor and headed east on
Katella Avenue past the Angels' stadium to the 57 freeway,
then I took the 91 to Imperial Highway and headed up Anaheim Hills Road almost as far as the golf club. I parked in
front of the darkened house at 10:56 p.m. (I know the exact
time because I jotted it on the last page of my reporter's
notebook.)