news sink in, her face matching what I was feeling. She continued, 'I was on with the bank, and we can max out the home-equity line, which with our income--'
I said quietly, 'I got fired.'
She blinked. Then blinked again.
'I don't know what to do but keep apologizing,' I said.
I braced for anger or resentment, but she just said, 'Maybe I can sell my share of the business. I've had buyers sniffing around in the past.'
I was speechless, humbled. 'I don't want you to do that.'
'Then we'll have to sell the house.'
When our down payment was sitting in escrow, Ariana and I used to drive up here and park across the street just to look at the place. The trips felt charged and vaguely illicit, like sneaking out at night to loiter beneath the window of your high-school sweetheart. When we'd moved in, with Ari's eye, my back, and our sweat, we'd dressed it up, planing out the cottage-cheese ceilings, switching the brass hinges for brushed nickel, replacing rust carpet with slate tile. I watched her eyes moving around our walls, our art, the countertops and cabinets, and I knew she was taking stock of the same sentiments.
'No,' she said. 'I won't sell this house. I'll go in tomorrow and see what I can figure out. Maybe a loan against the business. I don't . . . I don't know.'
For a moment I was too moved to respond. 'I don't want you to--' I caught myself, rephrased. 'Do you think it's safe for you to go in to work?'
'Who knows what's safe anymore? Certainly not you prying around. But we no longer have any options.'
I said, 'You do.'
Her mouth opened a little.
I said, 'This is hell. And it's going to get worse from here. It makes me sick to think about you having to . . . Maybe we should think about putting you on a flight--'
'You're my husband.'
'I haven't been much good on that front lately.'
She was angry, indignant. 'And, if you want to keep score, I've been a shitty wife in a few obvious ways. But either the vows mean something or they don't. This is a wake-up call, Patrick. For both of us.'
I reached for her hand. She squeezed once, impatiently, and let go. I said, 'No matter how many years it takes, I will figure out some way to make this up to you.'
She managed a faint smile. 'Let's just worry about making sure we have those years.' She shoved a fall of hair out of her eyes, then looked at the notes around her, as if needing to take refuge in details. 'Julianne called. She said she looked into the names you gave her, to no avail. I guess between the cops, the agents, and the press, everything around The Deep End went into information lockdown, so there's nothing on Trista Koan. And Julianne had no more luck than Detective Valentine finding out about Elisabeta--or Deborah Vance or whoever. She was very apologetic, Julianne. She's desperate to be helpful. Did you check out that prefab house in Indio?'
I told her what I'd learned--or hadn't learned--on the trip. 'What was so amazing is the level of detail that woman saw to. I mean, the accent, the banana peels. Her performance was amazing.'
'Where would you find people to play those roles? I mean, how would you even locate talent like that? Let alone talent willing to work a con?'
As usual, she'd jumped into my stream of thought. 'Exactly. Exactly. You'd need an agent. A sleazy agent willing to plug his clients in to cons.'
'Would an agent do that?' she asked.
'Not any I've heard of. So I'd imagine if you found one willing to play ball, you'd probably stick with him.'
She got it immediately. 'Doug Beeman's agent,' she said. 'That message. On Beeman's cell phone. Asking him why he missed his call time on the set for the shaving-cream commercial.'
'Deodorant,' I said. 'But yes. Roman LaRusso.'
Already she was typing. 'And what was Doug Beeman's real name?'
'Mikey Peralta.'
She paired them, and the search engine threw back its results. Sure enough, a Web site. The LaRusso Agency, in an average neighborhood that the site announced as 'Beverly Hills-adjacent.' Head shots of various clients formed a row, the photos spinning like slot-machine reels, replacing themselves. From the looks of it, LaRusso repped character actors. Barrel-chested Italian, cigar wedged between stubby fingers. Scowly black woman, curling red nails pronounced against a yellow muumuu. Mikey Peralta, grinning his offset grin. We watched with held breath as the little square head shots flipped and flipped, replenishing themselves. All those cheekbones, all those dimples, all that promise. The precious slideshow seemed an inadvertent commentary on Hollywood itself--dreamers and wannabes tethered to a gambling machine, their faces replaceable, interchangeable. And, as Mikey Peralta had learned, expendable.
I tensed with excitement and pointed. There she was. Her photo flashed up only for a few seconds, but there was no mistaking those doleful eyes, that profound nose.
Ariana said, 'That's exactly how I pictured her.'
The deck of photos shuffled Elisabeta back into obscurity.
I sat in the dark of the living room, peering out at the street. The front lawn gleamed with sprinkler water. I couldn't make out any vans or photographers or telescopes in the apartment windows across the street. They were still there, hidden in the night, but for a moment I could pretend that everything was as it had always been. I had come down to sit in the armchair and sip a cup of tea, to think about a lesson plan or what I wanted to write next, my wife upstairs in a plumeria bubble bath, on the phone with her mom or reviewing sketches, and I would go up, soon, and make love to her, and then we'd slumber, her arm thrown across my chest, cool beneath the lackluster heating vent, and I'd awaken, find her in the kitchen with bacon on the griddle and a lavender mariposa in her hair.
But then Gable and his compatriots came crashing through the fantasy. I pictured them laboring even at this late hour in the detective bullpen, charts and timelines and photographs spread on desks and pinned to walls, piecing together a story that had already mostly been written. Or maybe they were already speeding up Roscomare with renewed determination and a signed warrant. Those headlights there, touching the artless block of boxwood framing the steps of the apartment across. But no, just a 4Runner, slowing to rubberneck, gaping college faces at the window, taking in The House.
My tea had gone cold. I dumped it in the kitchen sink, walked past the spilled trash, and trudged upstairs. A car backfired, and I actually left the floor; I'd been braced for RHD to kick down the front door. How would we live, waiting, knowing that that moment could come at any time, and probably the instant we let down our guard?
The TV was on, Ariana curled in bed, watching a candlelight vigil taking place in Hollywood. Teddy bears and photo montages. A weepy teenager held up a fan picture of Keith as a young boy. Even as a child, he was astonishing to look at. Perfect features, pug nose, that well-proportioned jaw. His hair was sandy blond, lighter than it had become. He held the end of a garden hose and wore a bathing suit and cowboy six-shooters in double hip holsters, and his smile was pure delight.
The news cut away to the Conners' house in Kansas. Keith's father, a fireplug of a man, had a rough-hewn, almost ugly face. I remembered he was a sheet-metal worker. His wife, a stocky woman, had the pretty cheekbones and singer's mouth that Keith had inherited. The sisters also took after their mother--small-town pretty dressed up with new money. Mom was crying silently, comforted by the daughters.
Mr. Conner was saying, '--bought us this house right here after his first deal. Put both the girls through college. Most generous soul I've ever known. Cared about the world around him. And he knew what he was doing up there on the screen. Got his mother's looks, lucky for him.' A tearful smile from his wife, and he caught her eye and looked away quickly, and then the creases in his wind-chapped face deepened and his bottom lip rose, clamping over the top, trying to hold it still. 'He was a good kid.'
Ariana turned off the TV. Her face was heavy.
I asked, 'What?'
She said, 'He was real.'
Chapter 41
There was no receptionist, just a desk with a bell. When I rang, a familiar wheezy voice called, 'Just a
