Wrong City (15 page)

Vish was
tempted to just flee, walk out of the building and catch the next bus home, but
he went back into the botanica anyway. Mariposa stood behind the cash register;
he handed her the paper from Isabella. “Hey. She said you’d be able to get me
this?”

Mariposa
glanced down at Isabella’s notes. “Yeah, sure.” She pointed at a jewelry rack
propped up on the counter. An array of bracelets dangled from it, colorful
wooden beads strung on elastic string. “Pick your favorite color.”

“Does it make
any difference?” Vish asked.

Mariposa shrugged.
“It’s not like they do anything,” she said. “They’re just supposed to help
people feel safe.”

Vish picked out
one with gray beads. It cost two dollars. Mariposa rang up the sale and handed
it to him. “Here you go.” She frowned. “Why’d Isabella want you to get one?”

“I couldn’t
really tell you.” He slipped the bracelet around his wrist. With a wave goodbye
to Mariposa, he left the store, feeling like an idiot.

I
t was the newspaper delivery guy who
spotted the dead man in the swimming pool and called 911 just after sunrise.
Awakened by the noise of the ambulance at the front gate, Vish stepped out of
his front door, looked down at the courtyard, and saw the body floating
facedown in the water.

Mariposa came
out of her apartment, clad in her nightclothes and her fuzzy pink slippers, and
wordlessly joined him. They propped their elbows against the railing and
watched the paramedics. One waded right into the water to check the drowned
man’s pulse. The dead man had blond hair, darkened by the water, and he wore
shorts and a red shirt patterned with yellow hibiscus flowers.

“Wow,” Mariposa
said. “That’s really awful. He doesn’t live here, does he?”

Vish shook his
head. His mouth was dry. He had to swallow before answering. That Hawaiian
shirt… “I don’t know. I can’t tell who it is.”

Police arrived
immediately thereafter, two squad cars and a medical examiner in a white
coroner’s van. They photographed the body from all angles, then fished it out
of the pool and laid it on a gurney. Vish and Mariposa remained standing at the
second-floor railing, out of the way but observing the action. Mariposa seemed
simply curious, neither upset nor ghoulishly intrigued.

A uniformed
officer climbed up the stairs. “You live here?” she asked.

“I’m in this
apartment right here, Mariposa’s next door,” Vish said. He looked at the
officer. A familiar face, lovely and grim, wearing a short-sleeved uniform,
legs bare and smooth beneath her shorts, on a clammy morning. Mirrored
sunglasses on, even though the sun was still hidden behind the heavy marine
layer. “Officer Guerrero?”

She looked
startled, then slowly nodded. “You’re the guy who got mugged at the beach last
week. Sure. You had a strange name.”

“Viswanathan.
Well, Vish,” he said.

“That’s it.
Either of you know who was in the pool?”

“I don’t think
he lives in the building. This place is pretty empty right now,” Mariposa said.

Officer
Guerrero turned her attention to Vish. Vish hesitated. “I don’t know. Without
seeing his face…”

Another nod.
“You want to follow me?” she asked.

“Should I come
too?” Mariposa asked.

Officer
Guerrero shook her head. “Sit tight. I just want to check with Vish about
something.”

Vish trailed
her down the stairs and over to the gurney, where the dead man’s blanket-draped
corpse lay. At a gesture from Guerrero, the medical examiner pulled back the
blanket.

Death and
submersion had turned the man’s face gray and mottled. Vish stared at him for a
moment. His eyes were open and sightless; rigor mortis had pulled the skin back
from his purpling mouth, revealing long teeth and white-gray gums. Not young—in
his forties maybe, with graying stubble across his chin.

“He look
familiar?” Guerrero asked.

Vish hesitated.
“I don’t think so. But his clothes…”

“His clothes
make you think he could be one of the guys who jumped you?” Officer Guerrero
regarded him. Vish wished she didn’t have the sunglasses on. If he could see
her eyes, maybe he’d have a better idea what she was thinking. “You mentioned
the Hawaiian shirts in your report.”

“Yeah. I mean,
I can’t say either way. He’s dressed like how they were dressed, but I don’t
recognize him specifically. But I didn’t really get a chance to look at them
closely.” he said.

“If it’s him,
and if he wound up dead in your swimming pool, it seems like the sort of thing that’d
have some connection to you.”

“I agree. It
does, though I have no idea what that connection could be.”

She kept
staring at him. At long last, she spoke. “You know, I talked to your
girlfriend. Troy Van Whatever.”

His heart
stuttered a bit. “Oh?”

Officer
Guerrero nodded. “Yeah. Stopped by her place. Nice girl. She served me tea and
everything. She said she didn’t know the guys you’d seen on the beach. Seemed
pretty sincere. She said she didn’t think you’d be involved in anything weird,
either. Said you weren’t the type.” The corner of her mouth twitched. “Her
roommate said you were square.”

Vish didn’t
answer. At least Troy hadn’t called him evil.

“I guess she’s
on a television show or something?”

“
Interstellar
Boys
. I’m one of the writers.”

“Never watched
it. I think my brother’s mentioned it.” She smiled. “He’s got a crush on one of
the actresses. Probably your girlfriend.”

She seemed to
have unbent some. Maybe his connection to the glamour of Hollywood, tenuous as
it was, made him seem respectable in her eyes. She considered.

“Okay,” she
said. “Until we ID this guy, I don’t know how else you can help us. You think
of anything important, don’t be shy about giving us a call, okay?”

“Can I ask you
something? Do you know if the guy just drowned, or if…?” He trailed off.

She took off
the glasses at that. She had gorgeous eyes, huge and brown and limpid, like
they belonged to a cartoon doe. “Or if something happened to him before he went
in the pool?” she asked. “Got any reason to think that might be the case?”

“No. It just
seems like a lot of police showed up here, if it was just a simple drowning.”

She shook her
head. “Call us,” she said again. She nodded at the medical examiner, who pulled
the blanket over the corpse, then walked over to the edge of the pool and
stared down into the water. Vish returned to his apartment and drew the
curtains so he couldn’t see the activity outside. His phone was lying on the
floor under his window. Huh. Not sure why it was there. He plugged it into the
recharger in his bedroom and forgot about it.

The police
stayed around into early afternoon. After they left, Silas stopped by. Vish
heard him banging on each of his tenants’ doors in turn, heard his muffled
conversation with Mariposa and her mother, before he moved on to Vish’s
apartment.

“I suppose you
heard about the body,” Silas said.

“Yeah, I saw
it. Pretty awful,” Vish said.

Silas looked
glum. Not surprising. A death in the building, even an accidental drowning,
could bring trouble in the form of lawsuits or negligence charges or loss of
income from renters reluctant to stay there any longer. “Just wanted everyone
to know, it looks like someone’s been squatting in apartment four. It’s vacant,
but cops noticed the lock looked funny, so I let them in, and they found some blankets
and empty cans there. Could be whoever ended up in the pool.”

Apartment four
was on the ground level, the unit directly beneath his. “Kind of scary,” Vish
said.

“Yeah.” Silas
shrugged. “You’re not leaving the gate unlocked or letting strangers into the
complex, are you? The security fence exists for a reason, you know.”

“I haven’t. I
haven’t noticed anyone around who doesn’t belong here,” Vish said.

Silas looked
mournfully over the railing at the pool. “Shouldn’t have filled that damn
thing,” he said. “Knew it’d be more trouble than it was worth.”

He moved on to
the next unit. Vish closed the door behind him, then stood in his living room,
lost in thought.

It was hard to
know what was connected and what was coincidence. One of the surfers who jumped
him on the beach had maybe ended up dead in his pool. Maybe it’d been an
accident, or maybe something more. And the guy had maybe been squatting in his
apartment building before that. Maybe he’d been here to keep an eye on Vish.

A sudden,
unwanted thought. His phone had been someplace he hadn’t left it… Vish went
into his bedroom, picked up his phone, and browsed through his history of
recent calls. Since Troy had dumped him, he hadn’t used it all that much. There
shouldn’t be anything new.

No. Apparently
he’d made a call last night shortly after one. A local number, 310 area code.

He hadn’t
called anyone. He’d gone to bed early…

Fingers started
to feel a little thick and numb. A landslide of dread slid over him. If someone
else had made that call, had used his phone, had been in his apartment while he
was asleep…

He scrolled
through the features of his phone in search of clues. No recent text messages,
either sent or received. He flipped through recent photos…

Vish’s mouth
went dry, because there was a photo of a dark room. His bedroom, to be
specific. This was a photo of himself lying asleep in his bed, his comforter
pulled up to his shoulders, his profile identifiable against his white
pillowcase.

He almost
dropped the phone. Someone broke into his apartment last night, used his phone
to make a call, and took a picture of him while he was asleep.

And someone,
maybe the same person, had ended up dead in the pool.

It was a
violation, plain and simple. More, it was a message to him. Someone had
expected him to find the photo; someone had wanted to provoke a response.
Whoever snapped that photo would expect him to… what? Freak out? Hide? Go to
the police?

He stared at
the number someone had dialed from his phone. He didn’t dare dial it himself,
but maybe there was another way to figure out to whom it belonged. He went
online and typed it into a search engine.

Success. The
number came up in an online directory of payphones. Payphones were a dying
breed, but there were still some out there, and someone had used his phone to
place a call to one located at a restaurant called Mulgrew’s in El Segundo.
Mulgrew’s, Vish discovered through a quick online search, was located close to
the ocean on Vista Del Mar. Its website described it as a roadhouse; the menu
offerings included fried clams and fish tacos and pitchers of beer.

He grabbed his
keys and his wallet and headed out the door. Adrenaline kicked in; his knees
felt shaky. The urge to move, to flee, was strong.

It wasn’t any
better being outside. The exposed, panicky feeling intensified. Being on the
sidewalk was almost unbearable. Without quite understanding why he was doing
this, he hopped on a bus. Heading south, heading toward El Segundo.

V
ish expected something seedy, but
Mulgrew’s was clean and comfortable. It was a ramshackle wooden structure with
a wide, sprawling patio that faced the ocean. A row of shiny motorcycles were
lined up in the crowded parking lot near the entrance; they might belong to
customers, but they looked like props. Mulgrew’s was a sanitized Hollywood
version of a roadhouse, one geared more toward college kids and beachgoing
tourists than legitimate tough characters.

He walked
inside and was assailed by loud music. The interior was huge and airy, with
exposed wooden beams plastered with bumper stickers. A glass case by the front
register displayed tshirts for sale. A waitress with a lot of curly blonde
hair and a pink crop top edged past him on her way to the patio, balancing a
tray of food on one shoulder. Baskets of onion rings and gigantic hamburgers.
Vish’s stomach growled. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten to eat today.

Vish looked
around, uncertain. The payphone was located against the back wall, next to a
sign pointing toward the restrooms. He could ask the waitress if she had worked
last night, if she remembered anyone receiving a call at the payphone. Seemed
like a long shot, but there wasn’t much else he could do.

Except… Ah. At
a booth in the far corner, sitting by himself, a bottle of beer on the table in
front of him. Longish dark hair, an aristocratic nose, a black Hawaiian shirt.
One of the surfers who attacked him on the beach, the ringleader. Vish was
certain of it.

He should go.
Duck out of the restaurant before he was spotted, call the police, tell them
whatever he could.

He didn’t. He
navigated his way through the maze of tables and bodies and slid into the booth
across from the surfer.

The surfer
looked up. He was several years older than Vish, with a tanned face and very
dark eyes. His hair was pulled off his face in a loose ponytail; dark wisps of
hair fell in his eyes.

His expression
didn’t change at the sight of Vish. Then, finally, he smiled and settled back
into the high wooden booth. “Balls,” he said.

“Who are you?”
Vish asked. He was pleased with how calm and confident he sounded. No
hesitation, no nerves.

The surfer just
stared at him for a moment. “Call me Tommy,” he said at last. “I already know
who you are.”

“You attacked
me on the beach the other day,” Vish said. “I’d like to know why.”

“Maybe I don’t
like you,” the surfer—Tommy—replied. He took a swallow of his beer and smiled
again.

“Yes, I got
that,” Vish said. “You broke into my apartment last night, didn’t you?”

The smile
morphed into a smirk. “Couldn’t say. But it sounds like the sort of thing I’d
do.”

“Kind of stupid
to use my phone, wasn’t it? It led me right to you,” Vish said.

“Yeah. Because
that wasn’t intentional at all,” Tommy said. “I guess that was carelessness on
my part. That sure wasn’t me leaving you a trail of breadcrumbs so you could
find your way here.”

Vish felt a
thrill of fear. “You couldn’t have known I’d come. I could have called the
police,” he said. “I could have told them all about you.”

“Probably
should have,” Tommy said. “Kind of dumb that you didn’t, actually.”

Vish glanced
around. “We’re in a public place,” he said.

Tommy shrugged.
“I got friends. Lots of friends. And people disappear in this city all the
time.” He locked eyes with Vish. “You’re going to disappear, you know. Not
today, probably, but just as soon as I get the word to go for it. Nobody’s ever
going to hear from you again.” Another smile. “Maybe you should spend some time
thinking about what I’m going to do to you. We’ll have fun, you and me.”

“Who’s the dead
guy in my pool?” Vish asked. “One of those friends of yours?”

A flicker of
irritation crossed Tommy’s face. He curled his upper lip. “Yeah. Joey. So
you’ve got some friends too. So maybe Joey getting offed wasn’t really your
doing, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to take it out on you.”

“Who killed
him?” Vish asked.

Tommy looked
like he was about to reply. His glance shifted to just behind Vish, and he
froze. “Well, hell,” he said.

Vish turned and
saw Poppy standing beside him. “Vish. I thought that was you. What a surprise.”

Vish stared at
her, unable to reconcile her presence in this setting. She was overdressed for
the place in another tailored suit, this one in a deep violet. “Poppy,” he said
at last. “Why are you here?”

She held up a
Styrofoam takeout container. “This place has the best loaded potato skins in
the city. It’s worth going out of my way.”

She placed her
free hand on his shoulder. “Come on. If you’re done here, I’ll give you a ride
home.”

Tommy glared at
her. “We were talking,” he said.

“Not anymore,
Tom.” The hand squeezed Vish’s shoulder once, kind of hard. “Ready, Vish?” Her
tone was brisk and cheerful.

Vish slid out
of the booth. Poppy dropped her hand to his upper arm and closed it around it.

“See you soon,
Vish,” Tommy said. He gestured with his chin toward Poppy. “Maybe you too,
sugar. Kind of interesting to think how your boss would react if you
disappeared on him.” He settled back, draping one long arm over the top of the
booth, and smiled at her.

A corner of
Poppy’s mouth quirked up. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to find out.”

She
half-marched Vish out of the restaurant. She didn’t speak until they were out
in the parking lot. “Really, Vish? That struck you as a good idea?” She shook
her head. “And you seem so bright, too.”

“He broke into
my apartment last night,” Vish said. “He took pictures of me with my phone.”

“All of which
was designed to scare you, or provoke you into a confrontation, and you took
the bait.” She stopped beside her sleek black car, all elegant lines and shiny
detailing. “Hop in.”

Vish obeyed.
Poppy slipped behind the wheel. She handed her Styrofoam container to him.
“Hang on to these,” she said. Vish could smell bacon and onions and grease.

She slipped out
of the parking lot and started heading north. “Why’d you go there?” she asked
without looking at Vish. “You had to know that was dumber than hell.”

“Because I’m
tired of everyone knowing more about whatever is happening in my life than I
do,” he said. “Nobody answers my questions, and everyone seems to know what’s
going on, and I want it to stop.”

“It’s confusing,
I know,” she said. “That still doesn’t give you carte blanche to be reckless.”

“You told me I
wasn’t in any danger,” he said.

“No. I told you
not to worry about any danger, the implication being that I’d be around to bail
you out in case you muddled into something you couldn’t handle.” Poppy smiled.
“Hence my sudden need for loaded potato skins.”

Vish stared at
her. “You’ve been following me.”

“No kidding.”
Poppy drove north on Vista Del Mar, heading up the coast. “And you’re welcome.”

“Did Sparky tell
you to watch me?” he asked.

“Nope. This was
on my own initiative. Mind you, he’d probably think it was a pretty swell idea.
Turns out you’re in desperate need of babysitting.”

Vish stared at
the passing scenery, at the oil refinery and the sewage treatment plant, great
monolithic structures that rose up next to the ocean, monstrosities of shiny
pipes and tall towers and vast metal tanks. Still keeping her hand on the
steering wheel, Poppy pointed a finger at the refinery.

“Sparky loves
El Segundo,” she said. “All the refineries and crap. He goes crazy about that
kind of thing. If it looks uninhabitable and apocalyptic, that’s where he wants
to live. I once had to talk him out of moving our offices to an oil platform
off the coast. He tried to convince me the commute wouldn’t be too bad.”

“Who’s Tommy?”
Vish asked.

“Hired muscle.
He works for someone who doesn’t like Sparky very much.” Poppy glanced at him.
“Sparky’s got a lot of enemies, and you’re getting caught in the crossfire,
which is totally his own damn fault. Sparky is maybe a little less concerned
about it than he should be, which is why you’ve got me running interference for
you.”

“You know they
found a dead body in the pool in my apartment complex this morning?” Vish
asked. “Tommy called him Joey. He implied that someone got rid of him to
protect me.” When Poppy didn’t answer, he swallowed hard and continued. “You
didn’t do anything to him, did you? You or Sparky or… anyone else?”

She snorted.
“Wait for the medical report. It’ll show you that no one did anything to
anyone. The guy in your pool decided to dive in the shallow end in the middle
of the night and, not surprisingly, broke his neck in the process. Autopsy’ll
show he had a bunch of illicit substances in his system.”

“How do you
know that?” Vish asked.

“I’m good at
guessing. Just like I’m good at knowing what changes need to be made to a book
to get it published, or to a screenplay to get it optioned.”

They’d reached
Marina Del Rey now, the usual tangle of docks and sloops and boats. “You’re not
going to tell me anything I want to know, are you?” Vish said.

She smiled.
“Not directly, no. But surely you must be used to that by now.” She turned onto
Venice. “Try not to worry so much. Things will wrap up pretty soon. I can’t say
you’ll get all the answers you’re looking for, but…” She shrugged. “Odds are
pretty good you’ll get out of this alive, so there’s that.”

She pulled up
in front of his apartment building, then reached over and took her food out of
his hands. “I believe this is you.”

“It is,” Vish
said. He glanced at her. “I haven’t thanked you. I know I should.”

“I get it. I
won’t feel snubbed if you’re more frustrated than grateful.” She smiled at him.
“Take care of yourself, Vish. It’s a scary world out there.”

He climbed out
of her car. She waved at him once and drove away.