Guilt

CHAPTER 41

Obsessiveness and anxiety are traits that can clog up your life.

But the way I figure, they’ve got plenty of evolutionary value.

Think of cave-people surrounded by predators. Jumpy, annoyingly picky Oog sleeps fitfully because he’s mindful of creatures that roar in the night. More often than not, he wakes up with a dry mouth and a pounding heart.

Easygoing Moog, in contrast, sinks easily into beautiful dreams. One morning he fails to wake up at all because his heart’s been chewed to hamburger and the rest of his innards have been served up as steaming mounds of carnivore candy.

The blessing-curse of an overly developed attention span helped me escape a family situation that would’ve continued to damage me and might’ve ended up killing me. Since then, over-the-shoulder vigilance has saved my life more than once.

So I’ll sacrifice a bit of serenity.

Milo was right; denial could be the right way to go but this morning it felt wrong and I got home itching to focus.

An hour on the computer gave way to double that time on the phone. My pitch grew better with repeated use but it proved useless. Then I switched gears and everything fell into place.

By four p.m. I was dressed in a steel-gray Italian suit, open-necked white shirt, brown loafers, and hanging near the southwest corner of Linden Drive and Wilshire.

Busy stretch of impeccable Beverly Hills sidewalk, easy to blend in with a light pedestrian parade as I repeated a two-block circuit while pretending to window-shop.

The Seville was parked in a B.H. city lot. Two hours gratis, so shoppers could concentrate on consumer goods and cuisine.

I wasn’t planning to buy anything; I had something to sell. Or trade, depending on how things worked out.

Apex Management was headquartered in a forties-era three-story brick building that looked as if it had once housed doctors and dentists. A few months ago, I’d read about the Beverly Hills city council wanting to clamp down on medical offices because health care attracted hordes of-surprise! — sick people who took up too many parking spaces and failed to spend like tourists.

Entertainment ancillaries like Apex, on the other hand, churned expense accounts at the city’s truffled-up eateries and attracted publicity magnets and the paparazzi and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

I was facing a collection of psychotically priced cashmere sweaters and wondering if the goats who’d donated their hair were having a rough winter when the first human outflow emerged from behind Apex’s carved oak doors.

Three men in their twenties and thirties, then four more, all wearing Italian suits, open-necked dress shirts, and loafers. Industry-ancillary uniform. Which was the point.

Next came a man and two women in tailored pantsuits, followed by a pair of younger women similarly but less expensively attired. Those two let the door close on the next person out: a tired-looking older man in a green janitor’s uniform.

Three minutes later the prey came into view.

Tall, late twenties, crowned by a thick mop of blond-streaked, light brown hair, he wore black-framed geek eyeglasses that stretched wider than his pasty, bony face. In the firm’s Christmas party photos he’d worn wire rims.

He’d also tended to pose standing slightly apart from his co-workers, which had led me to hope he was a loner.

Wish fulfilled: all by himself and looking worn out and distracted.

The perfect quarry.

I watched him stop and fidget. His suit was black with a pink pinstripe, narrow-lapelled, snugly fitted. Cheaply cut when you got close, as much hot glue as stitching in play. A Level Two Service Assistant’s salary wouldn’t cover high-end threads.

I walked toward him, noticed a loose thread curling from one shirt collar. Tsk tsk.

We were face-to-face. He was concentrating on the sidewalk, didn’t notice. When my shadow intruded on his, his head rose and he gave a start and tried to move past me.

I blocked him. “Kevin?”

“Do I know you?”

“No, but you do know JayMar Laboratory Supplies.”

“Huh?”

I held my LAPD consultant I.D. badge close to my thigh, raised it just enough so he had to strain to read the part I wasn’t covering with my thumb.

Showcasing the always-impressive department seal while concealing my name and ambiguous title.

“Police?”

I said, “Could I have a moment of your time, Kevin?”

His mouth opened wide. So did the carved oak door, ejecting more suits, male and female, a large group buoyant with liberation, headed our way, laughing raucously.

Someone said, “Hey, Kev.”

The quarry waved.

I said, “I can show them the badge, too.”

His jaws clenched. “Don’t.”

“Your call, Kev.” Walking back to Wilshire, I returned to the sweater display, kept my eye on him while pretending to study my cell phone.

Co-workers coalesced around him. A woman said something and pointed across Wilshire. Smiling painfully, he shook his head. The group continued on, merry as carolers. Crossing the boulevard, they continued toward a restaurant on the ground floor of a black-glass office building.

El Bandito Grill.

A banner proclaimed Happy Hour!!!

Not for Kevin Dubinsky.

As I waited for him, he kicked one heel with the other. Contemplating an alternative. Failing to come up with one, he removed his glasses and swung them at his side as pipe-stem legs propelled him toward me.

When he got close, he mumbled, “What’s going on?”

I said, “How ’bout we walk while we chat?”

“Chat about what?”

“Or we could talk right here, Kevin.” I pulled out the photocopied order form.

JayMar Laboratory Supplies, Chula Vista, California

Five hundred dermestid beetles and a set of surgical tools, including a bone saw, purchased four months ago.

It had taken me a while to get the info. Call after futile call using the address of the compound off Coldwater Canyon.

The pitch: “I’m calling to renew an order for dermestid beetles …”

No one knew what I was talking about. Then I realized I’d goofed big-time. People like that didn’t do things for themselves. After substituting Apex Management’s shipping address-a warehouse in Culver City-I had confirmation by the seventh call, a nice clean fax of the form.

Kevin Dubinsky’s name at the bottom as “purchaser.”

Facebook and LinkedIn supplied all I needed to know about him. Let’s hear it for cyber-truth.

He turned away from the order form. “So? It’s my job.”

“Exactly, Kev. Your job’s what we need to discuss.”

“Why?”

“You buy flesh-eating insects and scalpels regularly?”

“I figured it was …” He shut his mouth.

“It was what?”

“Nothing.” Flash of bitter smile. “I’m not paid to think.”

“Are you paid not to think?”

No answer.

“What you take home, Kev, you might want to reconsider your priorities.”

“There’s a problem?”

“Only if you don’t cooperate.”

“With what?”

“Better I ask the questions.”

“Something bad happened?”

“I don’t visit people to talk about jaywalking, Kev.”

“Oh, shit-what’s going on?”

“Like I said, Kev, the less you know the better.”

“Shit.” He licked his lips, began walking east on Wilshire. I kept up with his long stride. All those years with Milo, great practice.

I said, “Tell me about it.”

“I don’t remember specifics.”

“You buy what you’re told, all part of the job.”

“That is the job. Period.”

“Service assistant.”

“Yeah, it’s stupid, I know. I need to eat, okay?”

“You get a call to-”

“Never a call, always email.”

“Buy me bugs.”

“I order all kinds of things. That’s what I’m paid to do.”

“You do all the purchasing for the Premadonny compound?”

“No, just …” Head shake.

“Just things they don’t want their name on?”

Silence. Wrong guess. I’d try the same question later.

“So how many times have you ordered beetles and knives?”

“Just that once.”

“You didn’t find it weird?”

“Wondering wastes time.”

“Busy guy,” I said. “They work you hard.”

“Like I said, I like to eat.”

“Don’t we all.”

He stopped. “You don’t get it. I don’t ask questions and I’m not allowed to answer any.”

“About …”

“Anything. Ever. That’s Rule Number One. Numbers Two through Ten say refer back to One.”

“That sounds like something your boss told you.”

No reply.

I said, “Privacy’s a big deal for Premadonny.”

“They’re all like that.”

“Stars?”

“You can call ’em that.”

“What do you call ’em?”

“The gods.” His lips turned down. A sneer full of reflexive disdain. The same flavor of contempt I’d heard in Len Coates’s voice.

Perfect opening for me.

“Funny, Kev, you’d think they’d want nothing but attention.”

“They want it, all right. On their terms.” Long slow intake of breath. “Now I’m fucked, I already said too much.”

I said, “Service assistant. That could mean anything.”

Kevin Dubinsky emitted a high, coarse sound that didn’t approach laughter. “It means fucking gopher. Know what they actually pay me?”

“Not much.”

“Less than that.” He laughed.

Resisting the urge to pluck the loose thread from his collar, I said, “That’s the way the Industry works. The gods perch on Olympus, the peasants grovel.”

“Better believe it.”

“So no sense getting screwed on their account, Kevin.”

“I like to eat, man.”

“I’m discreet. Tell me about the job.”

“What’s to tell? I order stuff.”

More eye movement. Time to revisit his first evasion. I said, “Not for the entire compound.”

He gnawed his lip.

“Eventually we’re going to find out, Kevin, no sense complicating your life by getting tagged as uncooperative.”

“Please. I can’t help you.”

“Who’d you buy that crap for?”

Silence.

I said, “Or maybe we should assume you bought it for your own personal use, that could get really interesting.”

“Her, okay? I only buy for her, he’s got his own slave.”

“Who’s that?”

“Like I know? I do what I’m told.”

“You buy stuff she doesn’t want traced back to her.”

“I buy for her because she can’t dirty her hands being a real person.” He laughed, patted a trouser pocket. “I use a Centurion-a black card-just for her swag. Get to pretend every day.”

“Must get interesting.”

“Nah, it sucks.”

“Boring purchases?”

“Boring expensive purchases.” He mimed gagging himself with a finger.

I said, “You buy, the stuff ships to Culver City, the paperwork gets filed somewhere else, so if someone goes through her garbage they can’t figure out what she’s into.”

“Maybe that’s part of it,” he said. “I always figure, it’s God forbid they do anything for themselves.”

“Do you handle groceries and stuff like that?”

“Nah, that goes through her staff at the compound.”

“What do you buy?”

“ ‘Special purchases.’ ”

“Meaning?”

“Whatever she feels like.”

We walked half a block before he stopped again, drew me to another display window. Manikins who’d have to plump up to be anorexic were draped in black crepe garments that might be coats. Blank white faces projected grief. Nothing like a funeral for selling product.

He said, “I’m going to tell you this so you’ll understand, okay? One time-I don’t know this personally, I was told it-they actually set up a scene so she could fill her car up and look like a regular person. They picked a gas station in Brentwood, Apex paid to clear the place out for a day, masked it off with those silver sheets photographers use so no one could see what was going on. They gave her a car that wasn’t hers, something normal, and she pretended to fill it up.”

I said, “For one of those stars-are-just-like-us deals.”

Another contemptuous look. “Five takes for her to get the hang of putting gas in a fucking car. She had no fucking clue.”

“Unreal.”

“Her life is unreal, man. So what’d she need those bugs for?”

I smiled.

“Okay, I get it, shut up and cooperate.”

“Do your purchases get audited?”

“Every month a prick from accounting goes over every damn thing. I charge a pencil that can’t be explained, my ass is grass. A girl who used to work in the next cubicle, she bought for-I can’t tell you who-she got busted for a bottle of nail polish.”

I said, “Sucks. So what’s the most expensive item you’ve ever bought for her?”

“Easy,” he said. “Last year, time share on a Gulfstream Five. Seven figures up front plus serious monthly maintenance. She never uses it.”

I whistled.

“That’s the point, dude. Doing stuff no one else can do, to show you’re God. One day I’m going to find a real job.”

“How long have you been at Apex?”

“Little over three years,” he said. “Started out doing messenger shit. Which was basically bringing envelopes from one schmuck boss to another, picking up lunch, all kinds of scut. When I signed up, I figured it would be temporary. So I could save up enough and go back to school.”

“What were you studying?”

“What do you think?”

“Acting.”

He chuckled. “They taught you to detect pretty good. Yeah, I was like every fool comes to L.A., thought because I was Stanley in high school and my drama teacher loved me I could live … atop Olympus.” He shook his head. “My crib’s a barf-hole in Reseda, I’m barely getting by, and now I got cops talking to me. Maybe it’s time to go back and study something real. Like real estate. Or online poker.”

He reached for my sleeve, retracted his hand before making contact. “Please don’t screw me, dude. All I did was what I was told.”

“If that’s true, I don’t see you as having any liability, Kevin.”

“I don’t mean problems with you, I mean the job. Rule One.”

“I’ll do my best to keep you out of it.”

“The way you said that scares me.”

“Why?”

“It could mean anything.”

“What it means, Kev, is that we need each other.”

“How?”

“You don’t want me talking about you and my bosses can’t afford you telling anyone about this meeting because there’s an ongoing investigation.”

“No prob, I won’t say a word.”

“Then we’re cool.”

I held out my hand. We shook. His skin was clammy.

“Thanks for talking to me, Kev.”

“Believe me, my yap is permanently shut. But can I ask one thing? Just for my own sake?”

“What?”

“Did she do something bad with that shit? I figured it was for the kids, some sort of science project, you know? She’s always getting stuff for the kids.”

I said, “Ever hear of the Lacey Act?”

“No, what’s that?”

“Protection for endangered species.”

“That’s what this is about? Those stupid bugs were illegal?”

“Protected.” I ran a finger across my lips. “Like this communication. Have a nice day, Kevin.”

“I’ll try,” he said. “Getting harder, but I’ll try.”