“Yeah,” he says, very quietly, and I’m thinking, Oh no, does he like that even better, did I just make a big mistake?
She turns and looks at him and for a second I think of running for it, but then her face is back right in front of mine and I don’t know why I think this, but the way she looks, she could be a teacher, someone’s mother or grandma, it’s not my fault “So?” she asks him.
“Um… not today.”
“Okay, trash,” she tells me. “Go ahead and do your thing-use your shirt to wipe your ass, then you’re gonna show us your good side.”
I pull down my pants, and even though it’s a warm day, a beautiful day, a lemonade and corn day, my legs feel like stone.
“So white,” he says.
“C’mon, go, go.” Her voice is thick, and I understand: His sickness is doing it to kids; hers is being in charge. Watching.
“Undies off, goddamn you-off, off, come on, finish up.”
I pull down my shorts. Bending down, I manage to move a little farther away from her, but only inches. All around it’s so quiet, so green, even the leaves don’t move. It’s like the three of us are part of one big photograph or maybe this is the last moment before God destroys the world, and why shouldn’t He?
“Get going or I’ll kill you!” The gun and the camera are aimed at me. She’s going to take pictures of everything. I’m her souvenir.
The problem is, before I had to really badly but now I can’t; it’s like my organs are blocks of ice jammed up against each other.
“Do it or I’ll shoot it out of you!”
The sound of her voice, the thought of being shot, gets my stomach going again and I do it.
Then I reach behind with one hand to catch it.
Gross, I hate doing it, but I tell myself it’s just digested food, stuff that was already inside me “Look at that,” she says. “You disgusting little animal.”
“Disgusting,” he says. But he means something else.
I look up at her and nod. And smile. She’s surprised, wasn’t expecting a smile, and for a second she looks away.
I reach back, and even though I was never good at sports, I aim and throw.
Bam! Right in her face and all over her camera, over her blouse.
She’s screaming and stumbling back and slapping at herself and he’s tripping over his shorts, confused. He straightens up and charges me, but she’s the one to watch, because she’s got the gun. She’s still screaming and slapping. I yank up my shorts and pants, and even before they’re completely in place, I’m runrunrunning, through branches that scratch my face, through space, through green, green that never stops, time that never stops, running, tripping, flying.
Floating.
I hear a loud hand clap, don’t stop, nothing hurts, I’m okay or maybe I’m not I don’t feel it, can’t feel anymore, that wouldn’t be bad, that wouldn’t be bad at all.
I throw myself through green.
Thank you, gorilla. If I could breathe, I’d laugh.
CHAPTER
22
Just as Petra was about to call Empty Nest Productions for Darrell/Darren, another fax came through: Lisa’s last phone bill.
Patsy K. was right-the woman really had hated the instrument. Fifteen calls the whole month, one long- distance, on the first, to Chagrin Falls, three minutes long. Brief chat with Mom? Just once a month. Not a close relationship?
Three toll calls, all to Alhambra. The number matched one in Petra’s notes: one of Patsy K.’s friends. The rest were all locals: three to Jacopo’s in Beverly Hills for takeout pizza; two to the Shanghai Garden, same city, for Chinese; one each to Neiman-Marcus and Saks.
The last four calls were to a Culver City exchange that turned out to be Empty Nest. Petra phoned it and asked for Darrell in editing. The receptionist said, “Darrell Breshear?”
“Yes.”
“One moment, I’ll connect you.”
Breshear had no receptionist, just a machine. His voice was pleasant. Patsy K. had said he was forty, but he sounded like a young man. Rather than leave a message, Petra decided to call back later and ran Breshear through a superficial NCIC check. Clean. Laughing to herself, because they hadn’t run Ramsey.
She phoned the county assessor and, after hassling with a snotty clerk, managed to learn that H. Carter Ramsey owned more than a dozen pieces of property in L.A., all in the Valley: the house in Calabasas, commercial buildings on Ventura Boulevard and on busy Encino, Sherman Oaks, North Hollywood, and Studio City cross streets. One in Studio City matched the address she had for Greg Balch’s office at Player’s Management.
Nothing in Malibu or Santa Monica, nothing that sounded like a romantic hideaway, but maybe when Ramsey got away, he really wanted distance. Go north, young woman, and if that didn’t work, the eastern mountain resorts.
At the Ventura assessor’s, she got a more cooperative clerk but nothing. Next came Santa Barbara-even more hassles than L.A., but bingo: H. Carter Ramsey-what did the H. stand for anyway? — was the deed holder on a house in Montecito.
Copying down the address, she ran his name through DMV.
Full name, here: Herbert.
Herb. Herbie C. Ramsey-that just wouldn’t do for The Adjustor.
Tracing vehicle ownerships, she came across all the vintage cars she’d seen in the little museum, plus a Mercedes 500, personalized license plate PLYR 1.
Plus a two-year-old Jeep Wrangler: PLYR 0. That one was registered to the Montecito address.
Player’s Management: PLYR. The fact that Ramsey used vanity plates was interesting. Most celebrities craved anonymity. Maybe he sensed his fame was fading, felt he needed to advertise.
PLYR… fancying himself quite the stud?
Something else: He’d mentioned the Mercedes but not the Jeep. Because the Jeep was stashed in Montecito, or was the omission deliberate?
Was the four-wheel-drive the murder vehicle; the Mercedes, a red herring?
Could the guy be that devious? Devious but stupid, because that kind of ruse wouldn’t work long. He’d have to know they’d run a DMV early on.
But if Petra’s last-date scenario was correct, the crime had been impulsive up to a point-the instant where Ramsey packed a knife as he got into the car. So maybe he’d acted out overwhelming rage, was now scrambling to do what he could.
Montecito… The neighborhood was ultra-tony; multiacre estates like Calabasas, older, classier. No cozy little pied-a-terre for Ramsey; he craved space. Lord of two manors.
Greedy guy in more ways than one? If I can’t have her, no one can?
It brought to mind a Thomas Hart Benton in an art book she’d pored over as a child. The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley. A rawboned, Stetsoned hick with psychopath eyes stabbing a woman in the breast, country musicians playing a sad score in the foreground, verdant earth dipping and swooping, evoking the victim’s vertigo. It had scared the hell out of her, for all she knew had colored her view of men and romance, maybe even her career choice.
The jealous lover of Calabasas/Montecito.
