They're Watching (2010) (23 page)

"I guess . . ." I stopped, studied my loafers.

"Yeah?"

"I guess people want the comfort of knowing that things can be bad everywhere. That it's not just them. That no one's got the magic answers."

His empathetic gaze made me feel naked. "When I was growing up, I thought the movies were magic. And then I got around them." He gave a wistful chuckle, his hand rasping over his beard. "Guys in rooms. Guys on sets. Guys at computer monitors. That's it. There's a loss there. I suppose everyone feels it. When you catch up to whatever you're chasing and get a close-up, warts and all. Then what do you do?" He made a popping sound with his lips, turned back to the console brusquely, and resumed adjusting the mix on the student film. The footage reversed, the diver unsplashing from the pool, the water vacuuming itself back into a flat sheet. How easily all that chaos was undone.

"Marcello." My voice was a bit hoarse. "This has turned into a lot more than voyeurism."

"I know." He didn't look over. "Gimme the phone. I'm done ranting."

I set it down next to him on the desk. "You sure?"

"I think so. I was gonna throw in something about Britney Spears and her lack of underwear, but I sort of lost the thread."

A few students started to trickle in, and I had to whisper. "No one can know you're doing this. It could put you at risk. You okay with that?"

He waved me off. "Don't you have a class you're late for?"

Though no light shone in Doug Beeman's apartment, I knocked again on the peeling front door. And again there was no response. No eye hiding behind that old-fashioned keyhole this time, only blackness. Resting my forehead against the jamb, I stood helplessly, the neighborhood sounds and smells washing over me. The pump of a tricked-out car stereo. The scent of spicy cooking, maybe Indian. A static-fuzzed Lakers game coming through economy walls.

I was impatient for answers. Absent those, I was desperate for contact, eager to mull over the bits and pieces of what had happened, to rub them to a high polish. On my way to Doug Beeman's, I'd detoured by the alley near campus and had not been surprised to find the Honda Civic gone. Once I'd cleared the cash from the trunk, they'd cleared the car from the alley. And now silence at Beeman's door, darkness at the curtains. As I turned away, I realized just how much that concerned me.

Ariana's words were there like an echo in my head, warning of all the consequences I hadn't considered. I wished I'd found something here to assuage her concerns. I'd come back tomorrow first thing to make sure Beeman was all right; I'd already decided to go to Indio after morning classes to check on Elisabeta.

I turned away from the door. The complex--and the surrounding streets--was alive with life and movement, music and engines, the crack of beer cans opening, the giggle of children, a woman yelling into a telephone. So many people. How many were on the verge of catastrophe? An aneurysm, a lurking blood clot, a heart valve a beat away from giving out? How many of these apartments had a gas leak, a compromised roof, lethal mold growing beneath the drywall?

Which name in my address book faced a similar deadline?

At the intersection my discomfort revved into high gear. Knee bouncing, fingernails strumming, squirming in my seat like a kid before recess. The clock on my dashboard read 6:53 P.M. Seven minutes until their next e-mail hit my in-box. It occurred to me yet again that though it was Tuesday and the workday over, I had yet to hear from my lawyer with the studio's terms for the legal resolution. Were they waiting to see if I played good little soldier? I was still a rat in their box--push the lever, get a pellet.

The red light was taking forever. I rolled down my window, tapped my foot, hummed along to the Top 40 tune I was pretending to listen to. But no matter how hard I tried to ignore it, it remained at the edge of my peripheral vision, rising into view from behind the church billboard. Finally I looked over at that Kinko's sign, beckoning like neon to a drunk. In the foreground rose that redoubtable lettering--WITHOUT WOOD, A FIRE GOES OUT--and for the first time in a long time, I felt like the universe was talking to me, even if it was telling me something I didn't want to hear. It was easy enough to heed the Word; I was in the left-turn lane, Kinko's was across three lanes of traffic and up the street the opposite way. Not a temptation at all.

The only way to beat them is not to play.

Forcing my gaze ahead, waiting for the light, I listened to the click-click-click of my turn signal.

Hotel Angeleno, a cylindrical white rise a stone's throw off the 405 where Brentwood meets Bel Air. The crisp photo, perfectly framing the seventeen stories, looked like an advertising shot. The place was a Holiday Inn that had gotten a face lift a few years back, but it didn't take much to qualify as a landmark in Los Angeles.

Hunched over a computer in my corner cubicle at Kinko's, I took in the image, holding my cell-phone camera at the ready. My thumb pressed "record," and the Sanyo camera whirred into action. I'd acquainted my thumb with the cell-phone buttons so I could record however long, back-to-back in ten-second chunks, without moving my eyes from the monitor.

The picture on-screen faded, replaced by a close-up of a hotel-room number: 1407.

Next was a service door, sturdy and metal, the edge of a Dumpster peeking into view. The parking-lot lines and concrete exterior showed it still to be the hotel.

The next slide put a charge into my chest: my silver key chain, placed on our kitchen counter. A daytime shot, but there was no way to tell when it had been taken.

The close-up photo that followed showed one key angled free and clear of the others. Sturdy, brass. Not one of my own.

Numbly, I reached into my pocket. Lifted my key chain, flat on my palm, up before my eyes. There it was like a Christmas present, hidden in the jumble. A new key. Riding along with me all this time.

The PowerPoint presentation had moved on. Inside my Camry now, the angle from the passenger seat; the photographer must have been sitting. My glove box had been laid open and a hotel key card set on top of my tin of Altoids.

A message appeared and faded: 2AM. TONIGHT. COME ALONE. DO NOT GET SPOTTED.

Followed by another: YOU NEED TO SEE HIM.

Him. Him?

My Sanyo stopped recording a moment before the top browser window closed, leaving me to stare at the e-mail with the hyperlink they'd sent to my Gmail account. My fingers ached from being clenched around the phone. I released my fist and watched the pink creep slowly back into my skin.

I clicked "reply" on the e-mail, and to my surprise an address appeared. A long string of seemingly random numbers, ending with gmail.com.

The digital clock on the desktop said I was late for dinner, a walk with Ariana, my life. I thought of my briefcase, bulging with unread student scripts. Our walls, torn down in spots to the studs and pipes. The house I had to get in order, with all that implied. I owed the people in my life more than this. Except the one whose neck was on the line.

I typed, I won't do this anymore. Not without knowing who you are and why you're doing this to me, and sent it off before the second thoughts gnashing at my heels could overtake me.

I sat and stared at the screen, wondering what the hell I had just done.

A comic pop sounded from the computer speakers, breaking through my black thoughts. An instant message had flashed up on the screen in its cheery little AOL cartoon bubble.

TONIGHT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING.

I hadn't even logged in to an IM program, but there it was.

Grinding my teeth, I stared at the smug little sentence. I was sick of being manipulated, toyed with, led down the gallows path one blindfolded step at a time. Something inside me had shifted, whether because of Ari's persistent reasoning or the ominous silence I'd just encountered at Beeman's front door. But my resolve had been chipped away, one assumption at a time, leaving me far from convinced that the course I'd been taking was the right one.

Breathing hard, summoning courage, I stared at the screen.

My fingers hammered the keyboard, asking the question I was afraid to know the answer to: What if I say no?

I rocked back in the chair. Across the store, the cash register jangled and copy machines whirred and clicked like futuristic life-forms. The air conditioner blew cool air down my collar.

Another popping sound, another message. This time it could just as easily have been my own thought bubble; the words seemed to look right through the windows of my eyes and read my mind.

THEN YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.

Chapter
32

Midnight.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

Ariana asleep beside me, I lay and watched the clock. She'd taken an Ambien to help her doze off, but I was fairly certain that no sleeping pill would get me down tonight. Whatever this thing was, I had it by the tail or it had me by the neck. When I didn't show up, would they come after me, renewed? If they didn't, could I stand never knowing? Could I go back to student papers and faculty-room joking and neighborhood walks? I would have to. As Ari had said, I was tampering with other people's lives. And if I kept following instructions, when would it end? By no-showing, I was taking my fate into my own hands. And if they reacted with wrath, I would be ready for them. If the lawsuit returned, I was no worse off than I'd been two days ago. In the quiet dark, I began listing the precautions I'd start taking at first light.

12:27 A.M.12:28 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

TONIGHT YOU WILL UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING. Who was waiting in Room 1407? A face from the past, a wronged friend, a man in a dark suit, legs crossed, silenced pistol in his lap? Or a stranger with a gift, nothing more to me than I was to Doug Beeman? How long would the person wait before figuring out that I wasn't coming through that door?

12:48 A.M.12:49 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

I pictured Doug Beeman on his knees, his face up against the TV, how he'd sat back on his heels and swayed and how I hadn't known he'd been weeping until I heard the sobs choke out of him. The school photo on Elisabeta's table, the missing-teeth grin. Those heaps of banana peels. The despair, thick as a scent in that cramped living room. The duffel of cash that I prayed would lift that despair as the DVD had lifted Beeman's, that might just buy a wink of light at the end of the tunnel.

1:06 A.M.1:07 A.M.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

Snippets of text floated in the darkness. SOMEONE YOU KNOW. A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH. What was I going to do? Lie here miserably unasleep until I was awakened by a ringing phone? Or would the death notice come later? A day, a week, three months. Could I live like that, waiting, knowing I could have prevented whatever was coming?

1:17 A.M.1:18 A.M.

The only way to beat them is not to play.

I wasn't going to that hotel room.

1:23 A.M.

I kissed Ari on the sleep-warm neck. Regarded her sleeping face. Lips fat and luscious, popped open just slightly, giving off the faintest whistle.

Whispered, "I'm sorry."

Slid from bed, guilty, miserable, and racked with fear.

It wasn't that I had to go.

It was that I couldn't not.

Having parked at the curb up Sepulveda beyond eyeshot of the valets, having retrieved the key card from my glove box and snugged it in my back pocket, having pocketed my Sanyo and the prepaid cell phone to cover any recording or calling contingency, having waited for a break in traffic and threaded through the rear parking lot in my jeans and black T-shirt, I stood at the base of Hotel Angeleno, key in hand, confronting the service door from the photo.

Crinkling in my pocket was the note I'd jotted hastily under the dome light of my car: I received an anonymous message telling me to come to Room 1407, and that it was a matter of life and death. I don't know who's in the room. I don't know where this will lead. If something bad happens, please contact Detective Sally Richards of the West L.A. station.

Past the concrete freeway wall to my left, invisible cars swooped by, rushing smooth and soporific, an endless wave. The cylindrical building loomed overhead, a cool green glow uplighting the penthouse soffit.

A car approached from the curving drive, a valet closing my brief time window, but before the headlights swept into view, I zippered the key into the lock and twisted. A satisfying clunk. I slipped inside, breathed the heated air, and tried to shake the tingling from my fingertips.

Immediately I heard a squeak of a wheel, but before I could move, a worker turned the corner, pushing a room-service cart. In the frozen instant before our eyes met, I put a hand up on the door nearest me and noted with great relief that it led to the stairwell. Hoping he wouldn't catch a glimpse of my face, I swiveled quickly and stepped through.

"Excuse me, sir--?" The closing door severed his voice.

I huffed my way up, the tapping of my Nikes coming back at me off the hard walls. The fourteenth floor was blissfully quiet. Ariana would've liked the L.A.-hip deco--sleek, slate, stone, earth. Dark wood trimmings, amber glows from wall sconces, silent carpet underfoot. A clock showed 1:58. Passing the elevator, I felt a jolt of panic as a woman dressed for the gym stepped from her room, but, busy on her cell phone, she didn't bother with eye contact.