Chapter 19
19
I stepped out of the Gallery Bar and Cognac Room after the accusation of being a mama’s girl. Everyone who really knew me was well aware that nothing could be further from the truth. I was very much a daddy’s girl.
“Thanks for always having my back,” I told my friend Amelia as I answered her phone call. Her incoming communication had given me the perfect excuse to leave the room where Gary Firth was treating the Troubelmakr way too nicely.
“Not sure if you’ll say the same after I tell you why I’m calling,” Amelia said. “Also, are you okay? You sound flustered.”
“It’s been—a day,” I said, not quite sure how to phrase what had happened to me. “I’ll tell you all about it, but I think I need to get drunker for that.”
“Drunk er ? Elena, you know I don’t like to judge, but it’s not even noon. Well, I guess it’s Friday and the internet is buzzing about you and your sex habits...”
“Is it really? Buzzing?” I walked through the Beaux Arts, paneled-ceilinged galleria outside of the bar and made a right at a random corner.
“A bit yes, haven’t you checked it out? Do you want me to lend you my publicist?”
“No need,” I said. I preferred not to know what the internet had been regurgitating. “I’m sure it’ll die down by tomorrow.”
“Keeping my fingers crossed.” I knew she was physically crossing her fingers when she said that. Even her toes. She was that nice and that much of a good, superstitious friend. “Listen, that’s not why I called. I have bad news.”
“Did something happen? Are you okay? Is Brenda okay? Are Bimbo and Troglodita okay?”
“We’re okay and the dogs are as dumb and cute as usual. Everyone is healthy and happy—ish,” Amelia said. “My dad decided to surprise us with a visit though.”
“Lucky you!” Sarcasm rang through my tone.
One thing I had managed to leave out of my conversation with Detective Clooney when I told him about the many things that I had in common with LA Misconducts alumna Amelia Sanchez: we both have difficult relationships with one of our parents. For me, it’s my mother-turned-political-animal. For her, it’s a father who keeps pushing her toward a more ambitious career and still doesn’t understand why she’d decided to slow down a bit for the past two years and be more choosy about her projects.
“My dad is adamant, and he wants to be my plus one tomorrow for the SAG Awards,” Amelia continued. “And I really don’t know how to tell him no.”
“Is it that bad? Going with him, I mean? At least the SAG are one of the short-ish ceremonies. Of course, you still have to do the damn red carpet...”
“So is it okay if I go with him?”
“Yes, of course. I mean, if you feel comfortable.”
“Please don’t think that I don’t want to be seen with you because of that stupid article! In fact, since my dad has a strict eight-thirty bedtime, you could come to the afterparty with me instead,” Amelia said. She sounded a bit anxious, and I was starting to understand why. “Brenda, of course, doesn’t want to hear about changing out of her pajama pants or separating herself from the dogs to come either to the ceremony or the party and being repeatedly photographed, but I’d like to have some support there. You know those things are all work and no fun, and that way they can take lots of pictures of us together. The press loves it when the lesbian actress leaves her wife at home and takes her friend instead.”
“Don’t forget the part where the friend is the mayor’s daughter,” I said, joining in on the joke and stopping my random walking through narrow halls, brimming with old memorabilia, before I got completely lost.
“It’s difficult to forget it. So do you mind terribly that I won’t be able to take you to the awards, and would you like to come with me to the party instead?”
I jolted. “To be completely honest, I had forgotten I was supposed to be your plus one for this. I’m not even sure I have a dress,” I told her because it was true, but mainly because I wanted her to stop feeling bad about it. I knew she wasn’t telling me she had to go to the ceremony with her dad because I was publicly toxic. She couldn’t care less about that. She just couldn’t say no to her demanding father.
“Elena, carino, eres lo peor,” she said, and I knew that, at least, I had managed to appease her.
“That’s why you like me,” I joked. “I have a question for you, actually. A professional one.”
“Dale.”
“Fred Appleton has been pestering me to take this job that I know I don’t want.”
“Is it the LA Misconducts sequel? He’s also tried signing me. I told him no,” Amelia said. “Even if I enjoyed working with him in the movie we did together, I think it’s only because of Archie.”
“Archie Eisenberg?”
“Yes. He’s Fred’s producing partner and knows how to keep Fred on his toes. Nice guy.”
I narrowed my eyes in thought. “Really? I’ve been told he tried shutting down David’s story about Dashing Henry.”
“Did David tell you that?”
“Beatrice did actually,” I admitted, and there was no need for me to add a last name as both Amelia and I shared the same agent. “I haven’t had the chance to ask David about it yet.”
“I’m sure you’ve been very busy with David and all.” I could hear the laughter in her voice. “But don’t believe everything Beatrice tells you. The woman is a well-known rumor spreader. So ask him about it.”
“Okay. Any advice on how to politely tell Fred that I don’t want to work with him but I may want him to introduce me to other people in the industry?”
“Oh, just be open and straightforward and adamant in your love and adoration for his extremely exceptional writing,” Amelia said.
“So lie.”
“It’s not lying, just a bit of creative deception and career self-preservation.”
I thanked Amelia for her precise Hollywood insight analysis and hung up. And almost as if he’d known I’d been talking about him, I got another one of those annoying text messages from Fred Appleton that I was going to keep ignoring.
Fred Appleton
I wanted to ask you how everything is at home. I’d hate for you to be uncomfortable.
What the hell did that mean? A regular person would read that and think he was inquiring about my mental wellbeing after being talked about so publicly in the press. But my former showrunner was big on playing mind games—and pranks. He’d once broken into an actor’s house to leave a prosthetic horse head in his bed because he was playing a gangster in the show. And the last season I was there, he’d tampered with the food at craft services, making it so inedible no one touched it. He wanted to see if having a hungry team would make the production run faster. It didn’t.
My paranoid side wanted to believe there was something hidden in his text message. Could he be behind my lack of hot water at home? Because I sure as hell wasn’t comfortable .
I was still musing about Appleton’s implausible but on-character involvement in the failure of my water heater when I refocused on the big black-and-white picture hanging in one of the hidden halls of the hotel. It captured the tuxedo- and gown-clad attendees to the Academy Awards ceremony of 1939 that had taken place inside those walls. It was because of moments like that, when you suddenly found yourself confronted by so many decades of moviemaking history, that I loved Los Angeles.
The image made me realize I’d been living in Hollywood for so long, I was starting to have problems telling fact from far-fetched fiction. Of course, Fred Appleton wasn’t implying anything about my lack of hot water while he sent me that last text!
···
“What did I miss?” I asked five minutes later when I rejoined the bar.
“Apparently, Fitzsimmons wasn’t stalking Dashing Henry but working for him,” David stated. I rolled my eyes because from that moment on, Marky/Troubelmakr would be known to David simply as Fitzsimmons , given that’s the proper way to refer to a source on second reference and beyond. “Remember you found a bunch of emails from Fitzsimmons repeatedly reaching out to Henry? The actor called Fitzsimmons and asked to meet.”
“They met? And what do you mean Marky worked for Henry?”
“They met in person. I think Henry didn’t want a digital trace of the encounter. He had me followed for days by Fitzsimmons,” David explained. “That’s why I thought I had seen him around the neighborhood. It turns out he’s not good at following people and not being seen.”
“Why did Henry have you followed?” I asked David, but then I thought better and turned to the Troubelmakr. “Why did you follow David?!” I was worried and tired—but mostly pissed.
“Is she gonna hit me?” Marky/Troubelmakr asked Gary Firth. He covered his face with his hands. “She’s angry!”
“What? Of course I’m not gonna hit you! But tell me why the hell you were following my partner!” Even if he looked quite harmless now, I’d been terrified when Marky had been chasing me and David. The idea of him following David when he was alone sent a chill down my spine.
“I thought your partner was the blondie who always wears expensive suits,” Marky/Troubelmakr said. I registered only then that he was younger than I’d assumed, barely in his midtwenties. Yet he’d sent menacing emails to David. Had that quasi post-pubescent creep been following me around as well? He had to, if he knew about Victor.
“Can we please leave my personal life out of this! Tell me why you’ve been following David,” I said in frustration.
“Don’t bother,” Gary Firth said, waving a hand. “David and I have tried everything . I even offered to host Marky at my place if he ever travels to New York. He’s agreed not to bother you guys again, but he doesn’t want to tell us anything else. We should call his lawyer.”
“Has everyone lost their minds?” I said. “Why should we call his lawyer? He’s not even been arrested! Those were fake cops! He’s wearing fake handcuffs! And you’re a fake private investigator who’s offered to help me but has gone too far and invited a possible stalker to your home.”
I leave for five minutes.
“Marky, the offer is off the table. Gary has been nice enough already. He may give you an autograph, but he won’t be taking any fucking selfies with you and he won’t be inviting you to his home!” The Troubelmakr pouted. “And now you’re gonna tell us what exactly you were doing for Dashing Henry, or I’ll get my mother to ban you for life from all the studio lots, premiere red carpets, shooting locations—and Disneyland.”
“Can she do that?” the Troubelmakr asked the two men in the room, horror written on his face.
Of course not.
“Do you doubt it?” I raised an eyebrow.
“You are a bad woman!” He looked like he was going to start crying.
“One hundred percent pure evil feminist of the worst kind. If you spend half an hour more with me, you may even become infected and stop being scared of confident women. Now tell me why the hell you were following David!”
“Is feminism really infectious?” Marky/Troubelmakr asked the men again.
“You bet, Marky. But it’s not a bad thing,” Gary Firth said, and I may have beamed at him in awe. And swooned.
It’s just reassuring when some of your early crushes become adorable and sexy fifty-something-year-olds like him, Keanu Reeves, or Winona Ryder.
“Henry wanted to know about the journo’s movements before the trial,” Marky/Troubelmakr finally said. He looked unconvinced by Gary’s words, but he was talking nonetheless. “See if he could use some garbage against him.”
“Garbage?” David protested. He would only play the objective observer who was merely taking notes to a point. “What garbage?”
“He was hoping for something big like corruption or links to a gang, since you are, you know, Latino and all that. I kept telling him you were way too boring for any of that.” Marky/Troubelmakr’s smile was creepy, and I was breathing deeply to prevent myself from killing the bigoted prowler. “You’re a total snoozefest and the most predictable and dull person I’ve ever watched. I didn’t even see you litter or go over the speed limit.”
“Thanks, I guess,” David said.
“Man, I totally missed that you were boning the mayor’s daughter. Dashing would have liked to know that.” Marky/Troubelmakr was apparently feeling more loquacious now that he’d started telling us what we wanted to know. “He’d have used that as ammo against you.”
While I was happy that Dashing Henry had been unsuccessful in his attempt to find something damaging against David, and I was relieved that he was no longer able to hurt him, that last statement from the Troubelmakr made me shiver. David and I had been careful and discreet, but I still didn’t like the idea that whatever we had could be used against him.
“What happened the night of Henry’s death? Were you also following me?” David asked.
“Yes. I had been learning your schedule and routine the past few days. I followed you until you got home a bit after nine that night.”
“What did you do next?”
“I called Henry and told him you were there.”
“Had he asked you to do that?” David had shamelessly hijacked my interrogation. But, in his defense, the man-child seemed to respond better to men than women. And Gary looked happy not to play a starring role in the questioning anymore.
“Yes.” The Troubelmakr looked at me with fear.
“What happened then?”
“I was hanging out on the street, right across from the building’s entrance. Five minutes later, I saw Dashing’s Mercedes-Benz pulling onto the parking ramp.”
“How do you know it was his car? Did you see him driving it?” asked David.
“He has an AMG G63 in bronze,” Marky/Troubelmakr said.
David frowned. “A what?”
“A very big, very expensive, somewhat distinct car,” I translated, and I spelled the name of the model so David could jot that down.
“He couldn’t have been happy with the Prius tailgating him,” Marky/Troubelmakr added.
“What Prius?” David and I asked in unison, possibly too eagerly.
“A Prius tailing Dashing’s car, way too close for my liking—and I’m sure Dashing wasn’t feeling it either. That bronze paint scratches easily, you know. The Prius followed Dashing right into your building,” Marky explained.
David looked at me then back to Marky. “Did you see who was driving it?”
“Dunno. A dude?”
“Age? Race? Ethnicity? Hair color? Any other remarkable characteristics?”
“A regular dude? It was dark, I didn’t see much,” Marky said, and I could see David’s exasperation.
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I kept hanging around because I was curious to see if the mayor would show up to visit you,” he said, pointing to me. He had a clear case of Celebrity Worship Syndrome if I’ve ever seen one.
“My mother doesn’t do call visits,” I told him. If Aurora Valls wanted to see me, she summoned me.
“So anyway, Dashing hits me up all upset because he’s been knocking on the reporter’s door and the guy isn’t there. I told him I saw him go into the building and I didn’t see him come out.”
David and I looked at each other. We both knew why Dashing Henry hadn’t found David at his place that night. He was already with me.
“Why did he want to see me?” David asked.
“Dunno, to beat your ass probably.” Marky/Troubelmakr laughed, and I was getting tired of him. And the idea of what could have happened to David if he hadn’t been at my place that night made me uneasy. What did Henry want with him?
“Did you see anything else? Did Henry’s car leave or the Prius that went behind it?” David asked.
“Nah, I left. Chris Evans was going to be on Kimmel that night, and I needed to take the Metro to Hollywood and Highland to see if I could catch him and ask for a selfie when he left. They shoot at El Capitan,” Marky/Troubelmakr said, as if the whereabouts of Jimmy Kimmel’s production company were a big secret.
Before our minor stalker could grab his cell phone and produce the pictures he’d taken with Captain America himself, I gestured at David that we should leave. Fortunately, we’d been perfecting the art of communicating without words for the last half a year.