Chapter 7 The 101 Is Never Pretty
One of the first things I did when I moved to Los Angeles—and set up my new studio—was put in cameras.
I installed security cameras at Bailey’s apartment and my Santa Monica home and throughout my work studio: monitoring the perimeter of the properties, especially surrounding my studio.
While Bailey drives, I open my backpack. I pull out a new burner phone and a new tablet. I power up the tablet and the sole application, which links to the camera feeds.
I pull up all fifteen feeds—the videos of all three properties springing to life.
Bailey’s apartment is quiet, empty. That is the least surprising. The security measures to even get into the building (locked keypad, day doorman, live-in super) make it harder to organically infiltrate. My house is empty too. No one milling around.
But my work studio is a different story. There are two men walking around in the backyard. One of them is peering into the back window.
Both of them are in SoCalGas uniforms. The guy peering in the window looks a little like the guy who was at my door earlier this morning, but I’m not sure.
I zoom in and take screenshots of their faces, screenshots of their movement.
Then I forward the photographs to my only neighbor in that small, isolated cul-de-sac. I forward her the photographs with nothing written in the text.
My neighbor knows what to do if she ever gets photographs of my property from a number she doesn’t recognize. She knows to call the police and tell them that people are trespassing. She knows to lock her doors.
“So are you going to say it or not?” Bailey asks.
I turn and look at her, the Pacific Coast Highway floating by outside the driver-side window, the ocean in the distance, the late-morning traffic going mostly toward Los Angeles as opposed to farther away.
“Say what?”
“Dad shows up on the same night that Grandpa dies?” she says. “That’s so fucking weird.”
“I know,” I say. “It’s weird. I won’t try to convince you that it isn’t.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better, Mom.”
Bailey purses her lips, starts nervously biting her nails. Her eyes wide with sadness. It squeezes something deep inside me, how much it makes her look like the younger version of herself—the guarded, unapproachable teenager who wanted nothing to do with me, who I could never seem to do right by.
It took me a long time to understand that Bailey wasn’t being snarky or difficult, back then.
(How easy and wrongheaded to name her fears in that way.) Bailey had just been scared—for different reasons than she is scared now—but scared all the same.
She’d been scared to trust anyone who wasn’t her father, especially someone coming in as hot as I did.
She’d been scared that she didn’t even know how to trust someone who wasn’t her father. We’d had that in common.
I reach over and gently move Bailey’s hand away from her mouth, give it a squeeze, grateful for how far we’ve come since then. Grateful that, even though I fail at times, I’m now much better at knowing how to ease her.
“Bails,” I say. “This is all a lot to process, for me too. But, for what it’s worth, I am certain that Owen had nothing to do with Nicholas’s death.
Grady didn’t give me any indications that foul play was involved.
And your grandpa has had a serious heart condition for a while now.
You know that. And you know your father.
You know that he would never hurt your grandfather. ”
I say it emphatically. Because I know that’s what she needs to hear—and I know that it’s true. Owen wouldn’t hurt Nicholas. He’s not built that way.
Bailey takes that in, and I can see her start to relax, the fear dropping out of her eyes.
“Yeah… I guess that’s true.”
I nod. “Good.”
“But how do you explain it then?” she asks. “You know, all of this happening at the same time?”
“If I’m being honest? I’m still figuring that out…”
She nods. And I leave out the other part. The part I do know, the part left unspoken between us. That even if Owen didn’t have anything to do with Nicholas’s death, it’s connected. Losing Nicholas, Owen coming back. It’s all connected.
Get out of the house. Now.
“Where are we going anyway?” Bailey asks.
“North,” I say.
“Care to be more specific?”
“Well, right now, we just need to get some distance between us and the places where they have been tracking us.”
“They’ve been tracking us?”
I don’t answer her. She knows that answer.
“How much distance?” she asks.
I have two answers for her, and they both start the same way.
They start with us avoiding the major highways (no 101 or I-5, except when absolutely necessary) and taking surface roads whenever possible.
We are avoiding tolls and cameras. We are going to hug the coast and take side streets and avoid any surveillance that we can.
Without the flash drive, this trip north would take us to Santa Cruz, a beachside town situated on the northern edge of Monterey Bay—home to the Mission Santa Cruz and surf shops, and (most importantly) UC Santa Cruz, where Jules spent a year teaching.
And where she has a wealthy friend from graduate school who owns a boat.
A forty-foot boat that is the same make and model of a yacht in Marina del Rey that over the last five years (over weekends and workdays) I learned how to operate.
A French-manufactured forty-foot boat that I studied intensively: learning how to handle the lines and operate the engines and work the thrusters.
Spending my weekends navigating to Catalina Island and the Channel Islands and San Diego.
First, with my very patient instructor. Then, eventually, on my own.
If we follow my original plan, we will stop for the night in the hills above Scotts Valley at the house of Jules’s friend, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and not too far from the marina.
As soon as there is sunrise, we will drive the last eight miles to the marina and get on that forty-foot boat—and we’ll pull up anchor and head to the Sea of Cortez.
We’ll swim in that sea and get too much sun and talk about Nicholas.
We’ll process that loss. We’ll process the stress of all of this.
And, most importantly, I’ll keep Bailey safe until we navigate a way to permanently keep Bailey safe.
The flash drive changes things. I just need to find out how much.
I reach for the laptop, pulling it onto my lap. The marine compass staring at me when I click open the screen.
I tap on the album Owen created most recently, the album labeled Hannah’s Work. There are several photographs of my furniture and larger pieces, a selfie that Owen took of the two of us at one of the first exhibitions of mine that he ever went to, in Los Alamos—a small town north of Santa Barbara.
That photo of the first exhibition, bringing me back to the last exhibition.
Last night’s exhibition.
What Owen said to me there. The could have been boys still love you. This morning’s text. Get out of the house.
All of it is obscure. Why is he being so obscure? I know the answer is wrapped up in keeping us safe. And, maybe, keeping himself safe too.
Which is when I start to wonder how those two things are tied together now.
I click Hannah’s Work shut and turn back to the Sausalito photo album, the first album he created, like a small clue of where to look first. Where to focus most.
All those photographs on our docks, with Carl and his family, Bailey’s astute question about them. Why all those photos?
I power up the new phone. I have no numbers saved in there. The only numbers I need, I have long ago learned by heart.
And I call the first number I’ve memorized.
Patty. Carl’s wife. She curates an art gallery in downtown Sausalito. I don’t call Carl directly. That feels too risky. That feels like a call that someone could be watching for at this point. So it’s Patty I call. Patty at her work.
“The Sausalito Collective,” she answers. “This is Patty.”
“Hi, it’s me,” I say. As though it has been five minutes, not five years.
She doesn’t say anything. But she doesn’t hang up. Which lets me know she may have been waiting for this call.
“I think I need to speak to your husband,” I say.
“No, you don’t,” she says. “This has nothing to do with Carl.”
I start to get off the phone. I start to let it go.
“Daniel is who you want.”
“Daniel?”
It takes me a moment. Daniel is Carl’s brother. Daniel who is in the photograph with Owen and Carl.
What do I know about Daniel? He lives in Morro Bay with his partner and their dogs.
A beautiful house on the beach that they renovated themselves, all glass and steel.
They have no kids, but a bunch of dogs, in part because of Daniel’s work schedule.
Which is when I remember the rest, my heart starting to race.
Daniel is a pilot.
“Give me ninety minutes,” she says. “But you should head north.”
“I already am,” I say.
“Keep going,” she says.
Then she hangs up.
We pull over to get gas.
While the tank fills up, we head into the convenience store to get some food. A cable news station is playing on the convenience store television. The small television over the checkout counter.
I am already thinking of Charlie, which makes it feel like I’ve conjured him up, because when we go to pay, the main story has shifted to Nicholas again.
And it’s Charlie who is staring back at me on the television screen. Charlie and his twins, hustling into their car, Charlie trying to shield them from the cameras and the microphones.
I can feel Bailey’s anxiety kicking back up—her eyes glued to the screen despite knowing she should look away. I can’t look away either, not when I see their faces, so scared and upset. The cameras making it all worse.
This shouldn’t be surprising to me—the sheer amount of coverage. The media (especially cable media) will take any opportunity to talk about the history of organized crime, particularly a crime family as storied as the organization.