The Manipulated (Joe Portugal Mysteries) (8 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I met her. I met the woman.” Nothing.

“It’s not her. It’s a woman named Alma Rodriguez. She looks a little like Donna. Across Staples, yeah, you could have thought it was her.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

A sigh, loud enough to hear over the phone.“It was worth a shot.”

“Sure it was.”

Another sigh.

“Mike?”

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“Sure. Hey, thanks, Joe. Thanks for checking it out for me. You’re a hell of a friend. If I can ever do anything for you—”

“Then you will. That’s what friends do. It doesn’t need to be said.” Unless the person saying it was, quite possibly, a gangster.
And you can help me sometime.
“Hey, you got plans for Thanksgiving?”

“Huh? No. I was just gonna rent a couple videos and watch football.”

“You want to come to my father’s?”

“Thanks, Joe, but—”

“Plenty of room, plenty of food. My dad’s a kick. You’ll like him.”

“Some other time. I’m just going to hang by myself, okay?”

“Okay. If you change your mind, call me. Or even later, in the afternoon, give a call at his place. Harold Portugal. He’s in the book.”

“Yeah. Cool. Listen, I got things to do, so I’ll be going. See you.”The phone went dead.

I spotted Ronnie a couple of times over the weekend. She had a nice tan. I supposed that with her back from Hawaii, sooner or later we’d have to talk over what happened at Dennis’s. I hoped I could avoid it. Like I’d avoided talking to Gina.

Monday night. After eight. Rain outside. The doorbell rang.

It was Ronnie. She had red splotches on her face and her eyes were a mess. She saw me and burst into tears. I shuffled us inside and kicked the door closed. Gina was in the kitchen, watching with a what-the-hell expression. I let Ronnie wail for a while, then maneuvered her to the couch.

Gina brought her a glass of water. Ronnie reached for it. It slipped through her fingers, bounced off my knee, fell to the carpet. No breakage, water everywhere.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“They fired me.”

“They what?”

“They
fired
me. They said they’re not gonna renew my contract for next year, assuming the show’s picked up, which it sure as hell is gonna be with our ratings and everything.”

She rubbed her eyes. A bubble grew from one nostril and burst. Gina handed her a tissue. Then another. Then the whole box.

“They said they’d decided to go in another direction.”

“Who said?”

“Joanie Phillips.”

“Who’s she?”

“One of the producers. But it didn’t come from her. It came from Dennis.”

“You know this for sure?”

“I asked Joanie, and she said it was a hard decision but one everyone’d agreed was for the best, but I asked her was it from Dennis and she didn’t answer me and I knew it was.”

Fresh tears, fresh snot, fresh tissues.

“I think I must have done something, and I don’t know what it is. And I don’t know how to make it right.”

“Everyone loves you, Ronnie,” Gina said.“Everyone thinks you’re adorable. If these idiots are dumb enough to drop you, someone will pick you up for something else.”

“I don’t
want
something else. I want my job back.” She drew back far enough to look me in the eye. “What could I have done?”

“You didn’t do anything,” I said.

“I must have. I—”

“No.
I
did something.”

“What? What are you talking about? How could you have—”

“That son of a bitch.”

“Who? You’re not making any sense, Joe.” She looked at Gina. “What’s he talking about?”

“Tell her,” Gina said.

“Tell me what?” Ronnie said. She stood, looked down at me. There was anger mixed into the dejection. “Will you please tell me what the fuck you two are talking about?”

She was pissed, all right. That “hell” a minute ago was as far as her profanity generally went.

My turn to look at Gina. She shook her head. I had to do it.

“You know about his mother,” I said to Ronnie.

“How she disappeared? Sure. What’s that got to do with me?”

“Dennis’s father asked me to track down a woman he saw who looked like her. Like Dennis’s mother. Dennis found out about this and told me not to do it. He tried to bribe me at first, and when that didn’t work he threatened you. Threatened to do exactly what he just did.”

“That’s crazy? What’s one thing got to do with the other?”

“Nothing.”

“But you kept looking for her? Why?”

“I guess I didn’t think he’d go through with it.”

“This is your fault, then?”

“No, it’s Dennis’s fault, but—”

“What, you’re getting back at me for what happened at the party?”

“Why would I do that? I don’t even know what happened at the …”

I didn’t have to turn around. I knew Gina was looking at me in a way she’d seldom, if ever, done before. I knew I’d fucked up royally, and that she knew it and was just waiting for Ronnie to get her cute little ass out of there to find out what I’d been covering up all this time.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Ronnie said, “You
bastard
.” She ran to the door, flung it open, slammed it shut behind her. I followed, opened it again, ran outside in time to see her disappear into her Miata and peel away into the rain. She’d gotten the muffler fixed.

I stood there getting soaked until it was time to face the music.

“You’ve been off since I came back from San Francisco.”

“I have?”

“Don’t act dumb,” Gina said. “I hate when you act dumb. Tell me what happened.”

“I kept meaning to tell you. I just never found the right—”

“Tell me what happened, please.”

How to put it? As simply as possible. “The morning after that party—and I have to preface this by saying I have absolutely no memory of what happened after I blacked out on the lawn—I woke up in bed with Ronnie.”

I could see her processing the information. Trying to fit it into her reality. Deciding she needed more.

“We were naked,” I said.

“You shithead.”

I almost added “except for a sock.” Decided we could do without that detail.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Like I said, I was going to, but I was afraid to, and then I thought I’d wait until I figured out what really happened, and Ronnie was in Hawaii …” It sounded feeble even to me.

“I don’t care what happened,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“Oh, on some level I do, I mean, yeah, I’d like to know if my husband is screwing our next-door neighbor, but you know what? I know if you did that, there’d be a decent enough reason. Like you were under the influence of some kind of drug. Which you clearly were, since you don’t remember anything. Unless you’re lying about that. And I don’t think you are. Are you?”

“No. I don’t remember a thing.”

She pulled out one of the dining room chairs and sat in it and stared at the vase full of tired flowers sitting on the table. She got up again, picked up the vase, dumped the flowers, ran water in the vase. Then she leaned against the sink. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”

“I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of what it might do to our marriage.”

“You think a roll in the hay with Ronnie’s worse for our marriage then you not telling me about it?”

“I never thought about it that way.”

“Before we got involved—when we were just friends—would you have told me?”

“Of course. We told each other everything.”

“So why is now different?”

“Because it might change things.”

“Jesus.” She looked in the sink, at the vase, then at me.“Go away.”

“You want me to leave? You want to split up?”

“I want you out of my sight.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just go.”

I watched her, some part of me clinging to the hope that she’d take pity, hold out her arms, say all was forgiven.

There wasn’t a chance.

I went outside.

Next door at the Clement house, the sprinklers were going. They came on every night, rain or shine, a little after midnight. They’d run for twenty minutes and shut themselves off. Depending on the wind they’d sometimes get my truck or Gina’s Volvo wet. Bill Clement would apologize profusely and swear he was going to get them fixed. I didn’t think he ever would, and I didn’t care.

On the other side, at the house occupied by Ronnie and her cousin Theta, there were two cars in the driveway. Ronnie’d come back after an hour and run inside. I didn’t think she saw me lurking in the shadows on my front porch. The rain was still coming down hard then, though it had stopped since.

Lights were on in there. I could go over and try to make things right. Or at least see if she could come up with a clue or two about what had happened that night.

Instead I sat in one of the wicker chairs and thought about Dennis Lennox. And once I started thinking about him, I realized what I should have realized the minute he tried to bribe me into dropping the search for the woman at Staples. And if not then, the second he threatened to reveal what he knew about Ronnie and me.

He’d done something to the two of us that morning. Dropped a roofie in our drinks, maybe. If I’d even had a drink. I couldn’t remember.

I had to get back at him. Everything was his fault.

Except you not telling your wife what you should have told her the minute you saw her.

I wouldn’t have had to if it weren’t for him.

Right. Blame your moral failings on a virtual stranger.

Thoughts collided, combined, escaped. One thing was clear. I didn’t know where to start with Gina. I’d have to give it a little time, let her cool off, work my way back into her good graces. Just like any sitcom dad would do.

Meanwhile, I initiated a vendetta against Dennis Lennox.

It was stupid. I knew it from the onset. Me trying to bring him down for what I’d wrought through my own cowardice was like … it was sort of like the war in Iraq. Osama blew up the Twin Towers, can’t find him, let’s knock the shit out of Iraq. Worked for the president, might work for me.

I could put some private eye to work. “Dig up the dirt,” I would tell him, and he’d sit on a park bench somewhere and watch Dennis selling crack to middle-school kids or going down on a priest or taking a meeting with the aforesaid Osama. And I would calmly saunter up to Dennis’s office with photos and tape recordings. “Give my surrogate daughter back her job, creep,” I would cry, and he would capitulate immediately, and as a bonus would reveal to Gina that he’d given me a drug that not only blanked me out, but also broke some connection in my brain, making me incapable of admitting what little I knew about what had happened.

Or, there was my new friend. John Santini. “John, baby, I know you’re retired from the kneecap-breaking game, but there’s this guy who’s pissed me off, and would you be so kind as to take care of it?” And one day Dennis would wake up with a horse’s head in his bed, and after he finished his screaming and weeping he would capitulate immediately, et cetera, et cetera.

Or I could slip us all off to one of those alternate universes, one where whatever had turned Dennis into such a slimeball had never happened, and we all lived happily ever after.

Next door, the sprinklers flicked off. A few final droplets fell and the night was silent. I sat a couple of minutes more and went in to sleep on the couch.

Gina and I acted coldly civil in the morning. There was a big dead moose in our lives, and we were carefully avoiding talking about it. She got out of the house as soon as she could.

Noonish.
Rinnnnng
.

“Hello?”

“Joe?”

“Uh-huh. Who’s this?”

“It’s Samantha Szydlo.”

“The woman with the paint on her nose.”

“That’s me.”

“What’s up?”

“I heard what happened to your friend Ronnie.”

“News travels fast.”

“I got my oil changed. They had a copy of
Variety
at the garage.”

“Very L.A.”

“Dennis was responsible, wasn’t he? It has his stink all over it. There’s no way in hell that chick should have been let go. Look, I think we should get together.”

“What for?”

“To plot our revenge,” she said.

“
Our
revenge?” I said.

“The fucker dumped me.”

“What? When?”

“Saturday.”

“Sorry to hear it. No, I’m not. You’re better off. He’s a real asshole.”

“I know I’m better off. I still want revenge.”

I met her at Mao’s Kitchen for lunch. Brick walls covered in Chinese propaganda posters. Chairman Mao and various loyal communists staring proudly out at whatever it is people in those posters always find so fascinating off in the distance. A long communal table in the middle of the floor, surrounded by young men in wool hats and young women in piercings.

The waiter brought crispy noodles and dipping sauce. He went away, he came back, we placed our orders, he went away again.

“Okay,” I said. “What kind of revenge were you thinking of ?”

“Something involving honey and an anthill.”

“Pretty traditional.”

“And a feather. How about you?”

“I don’t want revenge. I just want to get Ronnie her job back. It was my fault she lost it.”

“It’s that fuckhead Dennis’s fault.”

“I was the catalyst. Tell me what you really have in mind.”

She’d unwrapped and split a pair of chopsticks. Rubbed them together to remove the splinters. “I was thinking we could shoot someone and make it look like he did it. His father, maybe. Or the housekeeper.”

“You don’t like Mike.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Suggesting shooting him for one thing, plus what you said the first time I spoke to you on the phone. That he was only seeing Carrie for sex.”

“I was being dramatic. He’s okay. As far as shooting him … can you see the headlines?
Young TV Genius Guns Down Father
. It’s perfect. Like Marvin Gaye in reverse.”

I dipped a noodle in sauce, wolfed it down. “What about serious ideas?”