L.A. Mental (5 page)

Eight

I
finally made it back full circle to my own place. When I walked in the door I kept right on going to the shower, pulling off my grungy clothes on the way. My outer body had warmed up, but the ocean cold was still in my bones. The hot water felt so good I almost groaned, and I stayed right there while I shaved.

Technically, this was my office. I'd rented it during the interlude after I'd quit my job at Napa State Hospital and before I'd started my current teaching and counseling gig. It wasn't the kind of place you'd expect a psychologist to hang his shingle; it was in the top floor of an old three-story brick warehouse a couple of blocks off Pico north of Culver City. It had gone vacant when the wholesale-furniture business it housed fell victim to outsourcing, and while gentrification was edging close, that hadn't hit here yet. I knew somebody at the company that owned it, and they'd offered me the space with a screaming deal on the rent; they were glad to be getting at least some return, and also just to have somebody there.

Then, about a year ago, my girlfriend and I had parted ways. The breakup itself hadn't been too bad as those things went, but it had slammed me with a realization that had been hard to face. In the course of my training and career, I'd developed an unconscious confidence that I could see into people with an unusual degree of perception. But this time I'd been dense as a rock, and even more about myself than about her.

She'd stayed in our apartment—and I came here to the office to crash until I found another place, sleeping on a foam pad on the floor. Pretty soon, I'd realized that it suited me as well for living as for working. It wasn't zoned residential, so full-time occupancy was technically illegal, but nobody seemed to notice or care, so I figured what the hell and bootlegged in the shower and other basics. I kept a low profile, using the back loading dock entrance in the alley and parking inside. There wasn't much coming and going, just friends occasionally dropping by, and so far, my luck had held.

When I got out of the shower, I was starving. I hadn't felt hungry through most of the day because of my jacked-up nerves, but on my way here from Nick's some internal switch had flipped, and I'd stopped at Barney's in Brentwood to pick up a half-pound bacon-avocado cheeseburger with fries. I tore into them while I was still drying off. By the time I was dressed, they were gone. I spent a minute doctoring up my feet and put on thick cushioned socks; the soles were still a little tender, but now I hardly noticed it.

With the cleanup and food, I was starting to feel like part of the real world again—calmer and not so grim. Nick's situation was worrisome, sure, but I'd been exaggerating the whole thing. His life was permeated with weird elements that I mostly knew nothing about; I'd stumbled onto a few of them that probably weren't even related, and I was weaving that into a sinister tapestry, like a conspiracy theorist. This was sleazy but mundane, and it would all come down to money. If the cash I'd taken from his house belonged to someone else, I'd be glad to hand it over.

I still had a little time left before calling my mother, and I decided to take a look at the DVD that my sister had given me. It had been on my mind all along, feeding my paranoia because she'd been so wrought up and seemed convinced that Nick had something to do with it. But Erica was not a reliable witness, and it would be good to check this off the list. I punched the disk into my player.

The video footage started abruptly and was obviously amateur, shot with a camcorder. A man and woman were frolicking in an indoor Jacuzzi, making out and groping each other. A window behind the tub gave a glimpse outside; it was nighttime, with the lights of nearby houses visible but no indication of where this was. All in all, it looked like a parody of soft porn; the only thing missing was the elevator music.

Except that the woman was Erica, the guy was
not
her prospective fiancé, and although their bodies were mostly submerged, it was clear that they weren't wearing anything but their skins. And it sure didn't look like the action was going to stay soft-core for long.

I clicked off the remote and thought seriously about pouring myself a drink. For most men, confronting a naughty video of their sister would be startling enough, let alone when it was the sister herself who gave it to them.

Well, she had good reason to be alarmed. Other copies could surface; it could even be posted on the Internet—and Erica was about to marry into the kind of old-guard, upper-crust society where people put up an ironclad front of respectability to cover what went on behind it. If this went public, they'd slam the door in her face like she'd come down with the plague.

The obvious questions appeared in my mind like computer pop-ups—but first and foremost was whether Nick was really involved, or Erica was just so freaked-out that she was clutching at somebody to blame.

I picked up a phone and called her. She answered, sounding wary.

“Rikki, that DVD—why didn't you just tell me what was on it?” I said in exasperation.

“I
told
you not to watch more than a minute,” she said anxiously. “You didn't, did you?”

“Don't worry. A few seconds were plenty. You didn't know you were being filmed, right?”

“Of course not, are you kidding? I'd never do something like that.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed them with my thumb and forefinger, reminding myself that she had an unusual sense of boundaries.

“Okay, give me the story,” I said.

The rundown was that she'd gone out clubbing a few weeks ago, ended up at a party with people she didn't know, and met a guy who was cute, persuasive, and happy to share his Ecstasy. That had been enough to tempt her into one last romp before she tied the knot. No one else seemed to notice anything about it; the Jacuzzi was in a private area of the house, and the two of them were alone behind a locked door.

Several days later, the video turned up in her mailbox.

Erica panicked, of course. The obvious first assumption was that she'd been set up for blackmail—maneuvered to the party and lured into the Jacuzzi escapade with the hidden camera placed in advance. But nobody ever contacted her with a demand. She was too scared to go to the police or to confront anyone herself, even if she could have; she didn't know the people who'd hosted the party or anything about the guy except the first name he'd given her, and she had only a vague notion of where the house was. So she'd waited in dread for the bomb to explode, searching her memory for any hint to explain this.

That brought her around to Nick. The day before she'd gotten the DVD, he'd called her—curious timing, especially since he hadn't contacted her in years. It was also strange that he didn't seem to have any real reason for calling; he'd just rambled cryptically until she'd gotten impatient and cut him off. She didn't remember the conversation in detail, but she was sure he hadn't said anything directly connected to the setup.

But he did say something like, “Everybody will get along fine if they stay on their own side of the street,” and obliquely hit on that same point a couple of other times.

Erica started wondering if the call was a veiled warning—if Nick was the one who'd set up the video and was letting her know that it would stay secret as long as she didn't cross him. That suspicion got stronger as the days passed without trouble, and while she was still furious and frightened, she felt an odd touch of relief. She had no idea as to what the warning might be
about
, but she hoped it was something she could agree to and head off disaster.

Then came Nick's meltdown, and her panic level shot up again—people would be probing into his activities, and this seamy business might come to light. She finally worked up her nerve and confessed to her eldest brother, imploring me to find a way to keep the lid on.

“It'll be okay, sis,” I said, without really meaning it. “Take it easy. I'll be in touch.”

I stood there tapping the phone against my thigh and staring at nothing, trying to add this new card to the deck. I wasn't completely convinced about Nick's involvement. A money demand might still come, or maybe someone hated her and intended to publicize the video to damage her life; it could even be a creepy game the party hosts got off on. But that phone call did look bad, and Nick sure seemed to be in full-speed scam mode.

In fact, I'd never known him to be so industrious.

If he was behind the setup, he'd gone to a lot of trouble. Obviously, he expected a payoff. Together with what he'd said to her, that pointed at an ugly new low for him—blackmailing his own sister. I hated to face the thought, but he was probably capable of it. Still, the smoke screen just got thicker. His “Stay on your own side of the street” riff suggested that he wasn't after money—he wanted her not to interfere with something. But she didn't have a clue as to what, and neither did I.

I knew damned well he wouldn't just come out and tell me, and he was an accomplished liar. Prying any reliable information out of him was going to take some doing.

I pushed it all around in my head a little longer but got nowhere except more confused, and I realized I was falling into the rut my mother had predicted—too edgy to sleep but too burned-out to think clearly. I decided to follow through on what she and I had agreed earlier.

If nobody needed me here, I'd drive up to our mountain property this afternoon and meet with the Parallax film people—set this aside for a few hours, then come home to a couple of drinks, a civilized dinner, and a long hard sleep. Tomorrow I'd hit it fresh, figure out how to approach Nick, and try to start putting the pieces together.

But when I called Audrey at the UCLA Medical Center to check on his condition, another wrinkle appeared.

The doctors were cautiously optimistic, she told me. He had a couple of cracked ribs and a fractured elbow, but overall he was still improving and they hadn't found any signs of major damage.

Then she said, “There is one thing. They're not sure, but they think he might have retrograde amnesia. I've never heard of it before—you probably know about it.”

I did. Retrograde amnesia was a type of memory loss that sometimes came with brain trauma. Typically, it caused a total blackout about the injury and the time period beforehand, varying from a few hours to much longer.

Nick seemed to fit that pattern. Apparently, he didn't remember anything about what had happened at Malibu—falling over the cliff or even being there—and early indications suggested that his lapse might be on the severe side, extending back for weeks before that.

In itself, retrograde amnesia wasn't usually serious and didn't imply brain damage that would otherwise impair the victim. Often, they recovered some or most of those memories. But not always, and that tended to come slowly over months or even years.

In other words, my chances of getting any useful information out of Nick, at least any time soon, had just taken another dive.

Don't even think about it, I told myself. Time to get out of town.

Part Two

Nine

T
raffic on I-5 north was as thick as this morning's coastal fog, but moving well. Within an hour I was on the gravel Forest Service road that led to our mountain place. I had early memories of making this drive with my parents, back when there was a clear point where the city ended and we'd pass through miles of orange orchards. Now those were mostly gone, eaten up by L.A. sprawl.

But as I got deeper into the forest, that feeling started coming back. The constant urban noise, grinding as a low-level toothache, fell away to silence graced by birdsong. The sky lost its grayish tinge and brightened to a blue that was almost shocking against the green of the mountaintop conifers. Summer's harsh dry heat wasn't yet in full force, and the alpine meadows were sweet with blooms and scent. Above all, you could be alone here in a way that wasn't possible in the city. Of course my head was buzzing about Nick and that situation—there was no way I could stop it—but the peace and quiet were lovely.

That got me thinking about how special the Lodge was and how I wanted to get the Parallax film company out of there—but that would infuriate Paul. Even though he was on my shit list right now, I didn't want another family feud. There was plenty of that going on already.

Beyond all that, I had to admit that I was intrigued by the movie angle—who wouldn't be? I didn't know any specifics about the project itself except a little that I'd gleaned from Paul, but apparently it was a psychological thriller titled
The Velvet Glove
. That added spice, and there was another intriguing kicker.

The head of Parallax Productions—a native Swede named Gunnar Kelso—had been a world-class physicist earlier in his life.

Going from that to filming a thriller seemed like a hell of a career move.

It took another fifteen minutes over the gravel road to reach the turnoff to the Lodge. We kept that unmarked and almost invisible to discourage intruders—just a faint track that seemed to peter out in the pine duff at the nearby tree line. I'd been bracing myself, expecting it to be torn up by the set construction, with constant traffic, heavy equipment, trucks hauling materials and supplies. But I got a pleasant surprise; they'd taken care to groom the terrain and literally cover their tracks. If I hadn't known where to look, I wouldn't even have noticed the extra usage.

Then, as I was making the turn, my gaze jerked upward at a flock of vultures circling overhead. One of them had wheeled sharply and lunged at another, hitting the second bird hard enough to knock it into a dive.

I was so familiar with those vultures, I barely paid attention to them anymore. They were as much a part of the scenery as the cliffs they nested in—ugly snake-necked scavengers with six-foot wingspans, sometimes filling the sky in their search for an easy meal. I'd spent thousands of hours under their hovering presence while I played and daydreamed through long childhood afternoons. Never once had I seen aggressive behavior like that. They might squabble over a carcass on the ground, but in flight they didn't even flap their wings if they could help it. They were gliders, catching rides on the thermal currents until they got where they wanted to go.

I slowed the Cruiser and kept watching them, thinking the collision must have been a fluke caused by misjudgment or a gust of wind. But within a minute, I saw another swooping attack. No doubt about it, the aggression was deliberate.

Maybe this happened with mating or with newcomers trying to move in on the turf, and I'd just never noticed.

By now I was on the last stretch of the drive, a steep climb up a ridge with our property lying on the other side—several hundred acres of cliff-ringed valley that was like a private Shangri-La, a mix of forest and alpine meadow with a clear granite-lined stream flowing along the north border. My great-great-grandfather Tom the First had acquired it under the Homestead Act, a prime example of the rule-bending he excelled at. The government had expressly designated such land for ranching use, but he'd never raised a single head of livestock or grown so much as a stalk of hay there. Instead, he'd promptly built himself a personal hunting lodge, and the place had never been used for anything but recreation.

When I topped the ridge crest, I stopped and got out to take a look around, a habit I'd developed long ago. It was an excellent vantage point, and there'd been a couple of occasions when I'd gotten forewarning of people down there who didn't belong.

What I saw this time set me back with almost physical force. The Parallax footprint here was about as subtle as a sonic boom. The floor of our little valley looked like a FEMA encampment in the wake of a natural disaster. A security-fenced compound the size of a football field was crammed with a dozen big trailers, a couple of semis, boom trucks, cranes, bulldozers, and backhoes. The glare of sunlight off all that metal made my eyes smart. Still, as I looked it over, I had to admit that it was all neat, clean, and organized—and it
was
what I'd agreed to let them use the property for.

Beyond the compound, and also surrounded by the security fence, was the set they'd built. It was harder to see, veiled by trees and darkened by the shadow of the cliffs, but it looked at least as big and very bizarre—like a surreal city with clashing architecture and the streets laid out in a twisting maze. The pattern of convolutions seemed to suggest something familiar, and after a few seconds, it came to me—a human brain.

But the single most striking factor was that I was looking at a hell of a lot of money. This was no low-budget project. The construction cost alone must have been staggering, not counting cast and crew, production, and other expenses.

It said a lot about Gunnar Kelso that he was able to put this together, and without major studio backing.

The compound looked deserted; this was Saturday, and filming hadn't yet started. But a dozen expensive vehicles and a few chauffeured limos were parked outside the old log lodge building itself, with several people wandering around nearby. The party was under way.

Then my attention was caught by a man standing alone in the open meadow, a fair-haired, lanky guy wearing a light-colored tunic and loose pants. He seemed to be watching the sky, and while I couldn't quite tell—he was a good quarter mile away—I thought he was holding some kind of small device, maybe a camera. It occurred to me that he might also have noticed the vultures' strange behavior and was filming it.

Even at that distance, just standing there quietly, he gave off a powerful sense of presence. I had a feeling that I was looking at the Parallax head honcho, physicist turned filmmaker Gunnar Kelso.

As if I'd called his name aloud, he swung his gaze in my direction, then raised a hand in greeting. They were expecting me, and he probably realized who I was because Paul would have told them, or more accurately warned them, about the embarrassing old beater I'd be driving.

I raised my hand in return, although it felt a little strange—almost like he was the owner of this place and he was inviting me in.

I climbed back into my ride and started down there. My curiosity about Dr. Kelso and this project was on the rise. I wanted to meet him and try to get a sense of what he was creating here.