Dateline: Atlantis (6 page)

Fiona bobs her sandal on the pedicured toes of her crossed foot. “What did you talk about in the cab?”

Amaryllis leans back on the couch in exasperation.

“I don't think we spoke at all. Directions, mainly. Garret asked the chauffeur about the weather while we were gone—as if there were ever any weather in L.A. The cabbie seemed to perk up. He mentioned Garrett's dark crimson sunburn, and, yes, Garret told the guy we'd been to Mexico.”

Fiona winces.

The words are pouring out now, as Amaryllis remembers the entire scene with Garret complaining about the Mexican sun, the cabbie wondering if we'd been in Cancún. Did we miss the tropical storm that had been raging through the area? Did we do all the touristy stuff? He just was far too interested in our trip, Amaryllis thought, when he should have been jaded after picking up hundreds of vacationers in his job.

“So, I cut him off,” Amaryllis says, feeling a bit astonished at her own action. “I gave Garret a little kick and told the cabbie it was a business trip, and we weren't supposed to discuss it.”

“Well, I bet
that
got his radar up,” Fiona answers. She's still bouncing the sandal.

“Instead of being offended, the cab driver seemed extremely pleased, as if I had confirmed something.”

“Oh, Lord. Did the bloke have a little radio in his ear, black suit…?” This is Fiona's idea of a joke, but her eyes emit no sparkle. She still looks worried.

“No, no. He looked like, like anybody. But his bearing, the questions, it was all out of context.” She ponders the situation a little more and remembers the cabbie taking special note of which bungalow Garret lived in. “He even asked if he lived alone.” And, then, there was a minivan behind them. It stopped a few streets back from Garret's bungalow, then pulled out again when the cab started for her home in West Hollywood. Amaryllis gives herself a start as another memory comes pouring out.

“The driver wanted to help me with my bags and asked what apartment to bring them to.” She covers her hand with her mouth after blurting this out, realizing how she was being stalked. She never caught on at the time.

“Well, did you tell him?”

“No, no, I told him to leave it all alone. But my name was all over the baggage, as easy to read as a neon sign. I'm sure he read it, right along with my apartment number. I told him not to take the bags and went off on my own.”

“Did he know you were going to work afterward?”

Amaryllis thunks herself on the head. “Garret said to me that he was going to get the photos processed. He said it quietly in the back seat. And I replied that I was going right to work. I don't think anyone could have heard.”

“Unless the cab was bugged.”

Amaryllis' stomach drops. “Unless it was bugged.” She has never felt like such a bungler in her entire career. “Or if the driver was using one of those hearing enhancers.”

“You two were like goldfish in a shark tank,” Fiona says, nodding her head with certainty. She leans forward and pats Amaryllis on the knee with her freckled hand. “Listen, lovey, I wouldn't quit my job over this. I'd stick around and see what becomes of the missing-person case. But, for Lord's sake, be more careful of who you talk to.”

“
I'm talking and I can't shut up,” Amaryllis says, throwing up her hands. Then Fiona rockets to her feet, grabs some sheets from the hall closet and makes up a bed on her spare futon. All the while, her Irish accent lulls her friend into a sleepy state of mind.

“I'd worry about you if you went home with all those bad blokes lurking about,” Fiona says as she tucks in the last, hospital-neat corner of the futon.

“Well, I might as well put a Welcome mat outside the front door,” Amaryllis says. “It looks so easy to pick my locks, they might as well tote away all my boxes of junk, too.” Amaryllis is not eager to go home tonight. Not after the burglary and Garret being snatched away in the night.

As she snuggles into the floral-scented sheets, Amaryllis thinks of how much nicer Fiona's apartment is than her own. But as comfortable as the surroundings are, she fidgets. Instead, her mind is speeding from subject to subject, first focusing on herself in Mexico, then imagining scenes of Garret tied up in a mobster's trunk, then alighting on thoughts of faceless villains burglarizing her apartment. Her poor apartment. Newspapers pile high on the dining room table. A file cabinet bulges with folders full of useless paper—receipts and insurance forms she should have tossed with her last move.

She rolls over and tries to change the mental channel, but it's stuck on domestic dowdiness and she can't turn it off. The apartment, she decides, is just a reflection of her life in LA: spare, unfocused, and undernourished. She spends nearly every waking moment at work. She goes to the gym a couple times a week with Fiona, mainly to look at guys. She never dates. Well, hardly ever.

She flops onto her back and rearranges the pillow so that it cradles her neck.
And what's the deal with the men in this town? Don't they want to talk about anything but films and acting?
She groans in her chest as she remembers the last party Barney and his wife dragged her to. She dressed to the nines, fluffing up her luxurious fall of wavy brown hair, outlined her hazel eyes in kohl, and wore a silver miniskirt that showed off her long legs. The only man in the entire room who talked to her was a beach-blond pretty boy who asked what she did for a living. When she told him she was a reporter at the
Star
, he said, ‘Well, I hope you're making it
better,
” and stomped off.

How do you talk to men like that?
When was her last date? The pillow is poking into a cervical disc, so she pounds it flat.

What had she been covering before the Mexico story? Oh, yes, grandparents who had become parents all over again when their own sons of daughters were in jail or halfway houses. She'd spent a lot of time in South Central and Compton researching the story. The women would call at midnight with their stories and the whole experience was bringing Amaryllis to her knees emotionally. A rough story and no guy to share her tears or triumphs. Only plenty of praise from Wright. Big deal.

Deep down, she knows why she can't find a man. To enter into a solid relationship will bind her to this city. And that she cannot bear. L.A., L.A. It just isn't home and never will be. She's a Chicago girl to her the marrow of her bones. She longs for it, a real city with neighborhoods filled with people who stick together, massive skyscrapers, Wrigley Field, and a landscaped lakefront. But she hasn't been home in six years, not for a Christmas, not for a birthday. But she can't go back now. Not now….

Somehow, between listening to sirens on the street and thinking of Aunt Freya's homemade fudge, Amaryllis falls into deep dreams.

#

After a croissant and a friendly chat with Fiona in the morning, Amaryllis stumbles into her subcompact and drives up West Hollywood to her one-bedroom apartment. The
Times
sits on her doorstep side by side with the
Star.
Pulling the plastic wrap off the newspaper, she rips open the
Times
before she even sees the
Star's
front section. On page three, Garret's face peers out under a story headlined “Local freelance photog out of focus
.”

The
Times
has every fact that the police had furnished—pretty much the sketchy truth—but at the end is a curious sentence: “Lucas was last working with a
Star
reporter on a touchy political story in Mexico.”

Where had that come from?
Amaryllis opens the front door, and after a cursory check of the rooms, sits at her kitchen table, pushing aside enough clutter to spread the paper out flat. She thinks of calling Sandy Starr, whose name floats over the story. Sandy once worked in Metro news with her at the
Star
. They still get together for a quick burrito for lunch now and then. She goes halfway to her phone when she realizes her near blunder. Sandy knows something, and she is
Times
property now. It is the sad truth that if you cross the block, or the valley, your loyalties change. Amaryllis will tell Sandy plenty about a routine cop story—but not about her Mexican discovery.

Those damn Mexican rags. That's what Sandy's been reading. The tabloids. The international news on the Internet. All that junk about finding Atlantis.
She stomps off toward the bathroom for a shower.
Atlantis, my ass.

After dressing in a simple pair of khakis and fine-gauge silk sweater, she fluffs up her disobedient hair, opting for the wild and natural look, and walks over to the phone. She dials the
Star
and asks for Wright and then encounters the usual cat-and-mouse game with Sonia, who's busy guarding her fortress. So, she switches gears and asks for Barney's secretary Bernice, a sweet-tempered old woman who should be teaching needlepoint rather than taming raging bulls at newspaper offices. Bernice does the trick. The connection switches over, and with a click, Wright is on the other line.

“Are you serious about quitting?” he blares.

“I guess not. I'm on staff if you want me. But I'm calling about something else.”

“What else, for God's sake? I can't take anymore
else.
We're sitting on the hottest story of the year—of the millennium.”

“The
Times
knows something.”

The static softens the air, as Amaryllis imagines Wright combing his luxurious gray hair back into place with one hand.

“How did you figure that out?” he says finally, a gentle lilt in his voice. This was his confidential tone, designed to bring secrets into the open.

“Did you read Lucas' missing-person story?”

“Sure.”

“Read the final line.”

A slight sound of newsprint rustles in the background. Then with a thump of a newspaper hitting on a desk, Wright is back on the line.

“So?”

“So, Sandy would not finish a routine cop-shop story like that. Heck, that story wouldn't make page three if Lucas hadn't done some work for them, too. They're trying to smoke us out. Find out what we know. And you better believe they've seen those Mexican papers. They've seen the international news about the water-diversion project's bombing.”

Wright resets into commander mode and orders her to come in and have a conference with Phil Hagren, the guy handling the paper's police beat.

#

“This case is going nowhere, Amy. They know someone higher up planned this thing.” Hagren had been a private investigator for twelve years before deciding to hang up his gun and try something less life-threatening. But one look at Hagren's puffy eyes tells the story—there isn't any “less stress” at the
Star.
There are behind-the-scenes crime stories people still can't extract from him. He knows the cops the way Linux buffs know Microsoft—with care and from a cordial distance.

“So are we on a watch list, Garret and I?” She knows plenty of journalists who were deemed threatening enough to be put on the FBI's list of suspicious persons. She never thought she'd do anything to deserve this dubious honor, but there never is a way of knowing who's being watched and who they don't think is worth the trouble.

Hagren shoots a baleful gaze across his overflowing desk and shrugs. “Who knows? The spooks,” he gestures toward downtown. “They don't like reporters, period. Snooping in other countries? They don't like that a lot.”

“But what we found would hardly affect foreign policy,” she protests.

“Maybe they don't know that yet—the Feds, intelligence. But I'll tell you what,” he pulls her around the desk with one gentle hand. “They don't make American citizens disappear over stuff like this.” A shot of adrenaline shoots through her nervous system as he continues. “So the missing-person case, that presents a problem for the P.D. They're supposed to keep a lid on it, but this doesn't fit the usual criminal pattern. People are asking questions. And Wright's putting on pressure.”

Amaryllis takes in Hagren's hangdog eyes and rumpled shirt.

“On you, too?” she murmurs.

“Of course, on me. And with you trying to quit, for God's sake, Amy, the pressure cooker nearly exploded. I had to go over and double-check everything. If the cops don't hate me by now…”

He lightly drops a fist onto his desk. Files, startled, slip out of place. Amaryllis pats his sinking shoulder and promises she owes him one. Hagren nods and slides down into his chair. He looks as if he'll be shuffling over to Fitzgerald's after work for a good belt of scotch.

Wright can be a ball breaker if he wants something with enough intensity. Because of Amaryllis, Hagren got the worst of it.

“So what are we supposed to do?” she asks, ashamed but still in need of information.

“The cops have nothing for us. Nothing. We just have to sit tight. If it's a standard kidnapping, someone will contact us for ransom. If it's just random violence, well…” He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to.