Silent Partner Read online

  On both sides of the driveway were plantings of fan palm, bird of paradise, yucca, and giant banana. Classic fifties California landscaping. Nothing had changed.

  I climbed on, unmolested, surprised at the absence of any kind of police presence. Officially, the L.A.P.D. treated suicides as if they were homicides, and the departmental bureaucracy moved slothfully. This soon after the death, the file would certainly be open, the paperwork barely begun.

  There should have been warning posters, a crime-scene cordon, some kind of marker.

  Nothing.

  Then I heard a burst of ignition and the rumble of a high-performance car engine. Louder. I ducked behind one of the palms and pressed myself into the vegetation.

  A white Porsche Carrera appeared from around the top of the drive and rolled slowly down in low gear with its headlights off. The car passed within inches, and I made out the face of the driver: hatchet-shaped, fortyish, with slit eyes and oddly mottled skin. A wide black mustache spread above thin lips, forming a stark contrast with blow-dried snow-white hair and thick white eyebrows.

  Not a face easily forgotten.

  Cyril Trapp. Captain Cyril Trapp, West L.A. Homicide. Milo's boss, a one-time hard-boozing high-lifer with flexible ethics, now born again into religious sanctimony and gut hatred of anything irregular.

  For the past year Trapp had done his best to wear down Milo—a gay cop was as irregular as they come. Closed-minded but not stupid, he went about his persecution with subtlety, avoiding deliberate gay-bashing. Choosing instead to designate Milo a “sex crimes specialist” and assign him to every homosexual murder that came up in West L.A. Exclusively.

  It isolated my friend, narrowed his life, and plunged him into a roiling bath of blood and gore: boy hookers, destroyed and destroying. Corpses moldering because the morgue drivers didn't show to pick them up, for fear of catching AIDS.

  When Milo complained, Trapp insisted he was simply making use of Milo's specialized knowledge of “the deviant subculture.” The second complaint brought him an insubordination report in his file.

  Pushing the issue would have meant going up before hearing boards and hiring a lawyer—the Police Benevolent Association wouldn't go to bat on this one. And unremitting media attention that would turn Milo into The Crusading Gay Cop. That was something he wasn't—probably never would be—ready for. So he pushed his oars through the muck, working compulsively and starting to drink again.

  The Porsche disappeared down the drive but I could still hear its engine pulsate in a chugging idle. Then the creak of the car door opening, padded footsteps, the scrape of the gate. Finally Trapp drove away—so quietly I knew he was coasting.

  I waited a few minutes and stepped out of the foliage, thought about what I'd seen.

  A captain checking out a routine suicide? A West L.A. captain, checking out a Hollywood Division suicide? It made no sense at all.

  Or was the visit something personal? The use of the Porsche instead of an unmarked suggested just that.

  Trapp and Sharon involved? Too grotesque to contemplate.

  Too logical to dismiss.

  I resumed my walk, climbed up to the house, and tried not to think about it.

  Nothing had changed. The same high banks of ivy, so tall they seemed to engulf the structure. The same circular slab of concrete in lieu of a lawn. At the center of the slab, a raised circular bed rimmed with lava rock housed a pair of towering cocoa palms.

  Beyond the palms a low-slung one-story house—gray stucco, the front windowless and flat-faced, shielded by a façade of vertically slatted wood and marked with over-sized address numerals. The roof was pitched almost flat and coated with white pebbles. Off to one side was a detached carport. No car, no signs of habitation.

  At first glance, an ugly piece of work. One of those “moderne” structures that spread over postwar L.A., aging poorly. But I knew there was beauty within. A free-form cliff-top pool that wrapped itself around the north side of the house and gave the illusion of bleeding off into space. Walls of glass that afforded a breathtakingly uninterrupted canyon view.

  The house had made a big impression on me, though I didn't realize it until years later, when the time came to buy a home of my own and I found myself gravitating toward a similar ecology: hilltop remoteness, wood and glass, the indoor-outdoor blend and geologic impermanence that characterize canyon living in L.A.

  The front door was unobtrusive—just another section of the slatted façade. I tried it. Locked. Looked around some more and noticed something different—a sign attached to the trunk of one of the palms.

  I went over for a closer look and squinted. Just enough starlight to make out the letters:

  FOR SALE.

  A real estate company with an office on North Vermont, in the Los Feliz district. Below it another sign, smaller. The name and number of the salesperson. Mickey Mehrabian.

  On the market before the body was cold.

  Routine suicide notwithstanding, it had to be the fastest probate in California history.

  Unless the house hadn't belonged to her. But she'd told me it did.

  She'd told me lots of things.

  I memorized Mickey Mehrabian's number. When I got back to the Seville, I wrote it down.

  Chapter

  8

  The following morning, I called the real estate office. Mickey Mehrabian was a woman with a Lauren Bacall voice, slightly accented. I made an appointment to see the house at eleven, spent the next hour thinking about the first time I'd seen it.

  Something to show you, Alex.

  Surprise, surprise. She'd been full of them.

  I expected her to be flooded with suitors. But she was always available when I asked her out, even on the shortest notice. And when a patient crisis caused me to break a date, she never complained. Never pushed or pressured me for commitment of any sort—the least demanding human being I'd ever known.

  We made love nearly every time we were together, though we never spent the night together.

  At first she begged off going to my place, wanted to do it in the backseat of the car. After we'd known each other for several months she relented, but even when she did share my bed, she treated it as if it were a backseat—never completely disrobing, never falling asleep. After waking up several times from my own postcoital torpor to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, fully dressed, tugging her ear, I asked her what was bothering her.

  “Nothing. I'm just restless—always have been. I have trouble sleeping anywhere but my own bed. Are you angry?”

  “No, of course not. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Take me home. When you're ready.”

  I accommodated myself to her needs: rut and run. Some of the edge was taken off my pleasure, but enough remained to keep me coming back for more.

  Her pleasure—the lack of it—preyed on my mind. She went through passionate motions, moving energetically, fueled by an energy that I wasn't sure was erotic, but she never came.

  It wasn't that she was unresponsive—she was easily moistened, always willing, seemed to enjoy the act. But climax wasn't part of her agenda. When I was finished, she was, having given something to me, but not her self.

  I knew damn well that it wasn't right, but her sweetness and beauty—the thrill of possessing this creature I was sure everyone wanted—sustained me. An adolescent fantasy, to be sure, but a part of me wasn't that far past adolescence.

  Her arm around my waist was enough to make me hard. Thoughts of her trickled into idle moments and filled my senses. I put my doubts aside.

  But eventually it started to nag at me. I wanted to give as much as I was getting, because I really cared for her.

  On top of that, of course, my male ego was crying out for reassurance. Was I too quick? I worked at endurance. She rode me out, tireless, as if we were engaged in some sort of athletic competition. I tried being gentle, got nowhere, switched and did the caveman bit. Experimented with positions, strummed her like a guitar, worked
over her and under her until I dripped with sweat and my body ached, went down on her with blind devotion.

  Nothing worked.

  I remembered the sexual inhibitions she'd projected in practicum. The case that had stymied her: communications breakdown. Dr. Kruse says we have to confront our own defense systems before being able to help others.

  The attack upon her defenses had brought her to tears. I struggled to find a way to communicate without breaking her. Mentally composed and discarded several speeches before finally coming up with a monologue that seemed minimally hurtful.

  I chose to deliver it as we lay sprawled in the back of the Rambler, still connected, my head on her sweatered breast, her hands stroking my hair. She kept stroking as she listened, then kissed me and said, “Don't worry about me, Alex. I'm just fine.”

  “I want you to enjoy it too.”

  “Oh, I do, Alex. I love it.”

  She began rocking her hips, enlarging me, then wrapping her arms around me as I continued to swell inside of her. She forced my head down, smothered my mouth with hers, tightening the pressure of her pelvis and her arms, taking charge, imprisoning me. Arcing and swallowing, rotating and releasing, heightening the pace until the pleasure was squeezed out of me in long, convulsive waves. I cried out, gloriously helpless, felt my spine shatter, my joints come loose from their sockets. When I was still, she began stroking my hair, again.

  I was still erect, began to move again. She rolled out from under me, smoothed her skirt, took out a compact and fixed her makeup.

  “Sharon—”

  She placed a finger on my lips. “You're so good to me,” she said. “Wonderful.”

  I closed my eyes, drifted away for several moments. When I opened them she was gazing off in the distance, as if I weren't there.

  From that night on, I gave up hope of perfect love and took her selfishly. She rewarded my compliance with devotion, subservience, though I was the one being molded.

  The therapist in me knew it was wrong. I employed the therapist's rationalization to quell my doubts:

  It did no good to push; she'd change when she was ready.

  Summer came and my fellowship ended. Sharon had completed the first year of grad school with top grades in all her qualifying exams. I'd just passed my licensing exam and had a job lined up at Western Pediatric come autumn. Time to celebrate, but no income until autumn. The tone of the creditors' letters had turned threatening. When the opportunity to earn some real money presented itself I grabbed it: an eight-week dance-band gig back up in San Francisco, playing three sets a night, six nights a week at the Mark Hopkins. Four grand, plus room and board at a Lombard Street motel.

  I asked her to come north with me, spun visions of breakfast in Sausalito, good theater, the Palace of Fine Arts, hiking on Mt. Tamalpais.

  She said, “I'd love to, Alex, but I've some things to take care of.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Family business.”

  “Problems back home?”

  She answered quickly: “Oh, no, just the usual.”

  “That doesn't tell me a thing,” I said. “I have no idea what the usual is, because you never talk about your family.”

  Soft kiss. Shrug. “They're just a family like any other.”

  “Let me guess: They want to haul you back to civilization so they can fix you up with the local scions.”

  She laughed, kissed me again. “Scions? Hardly.”

  I put my arm around her waist, nuzzled her. “Oh, yeah, I can see it now. In a few weeks I'll pick up the paper and see your picture in the society pages, engaged to one of those guys with three last names and a career in investment banking.”

  That made her giggle. “I don't think so, my dear.”

  “And why's that?”

  “Because my heart belongs to you.”

  I took her face in my hands, looked into her eyes. “Does it, Sharon?”

  “Of course, Alex. What do you think?”

  “I think after all this time I don't know you very well.”

  “You know me better than anyone.”

  “That's still not very well.”

  She tugged her ear. “I really care about you, Alex.”

  “Then live with me when we get back. I'll get a bigger place, a better one.”

  She kissed me, so deeply I thought it signaled agreement. Then she pulled away and said, “It's not that simple.”

  “Why not?”

  “Things are just . . . complicated. Please, let's not talk about this right now.”

  “All right,” I said. “But consider it.”

  She licked the underside of my chin, said, “Yum. Consider this.”

  We began necking. I pressed her to me, buried myself in her hair, her flesh. It was like diving into a vat of sweet cream.

  I unbuttoned her blouse, said, “I'm really going to miss you. I miss you already.”

  “That's sweet,” she said. “We'll have fun in September.”

  Then she began unzipping my fly.

  At ten-forty, I left to meet the real estate agent. The mild summer had finally begun to wilt, surrendering to high eighties' temperatures and air that smelled like oven exhaust. But Nichols Canyon still looked fresh—sun-washed, filled with country sounds. Hard to believe Hollywood—the grifters and geeks—was only yards away.

  When I got to the house the lattice gate was open. Driving the Seville up to the house, I parked it next to a big burgundy Fleetwood Brougham with chrome wire wheels, a phone antenna on the rear deck, and plates that said SELHOUS.

  A tall dark brunette got out of the car. Mid-forties, aerobics-firm and shapely in tight acid-washed jeans, high-heeled boots, and a blousy, scoop-necked black suede top decorated with rhinestones. She carried a snakeskin purse, wore large onyx and glass costume jewelry and hexagonal, blue-tinted sunglasses.

  “Doctor? I'm Mickey.” A wide, automatic smile spread under the glasses.

  “Alex Delaware.”

  “It is Dr. Delaware?”

  “Yes.”

  She pushed the glasses up her forehead, eyed the coat of dirt on the Seville, then my clothes—old cords, faded workshirt, huaraches.

  Running a mental Dun and Bradstreet on me: Says he's a doctor, but the city's full of bullshit artists. Drives a Caddy, but it's eight years old. Another phony putting on the dog? Or someone who once had it and lost it?

  “Beautiful day,” she said, one hand on the door handle, still scrutinizing, still wary. Meeting strange men up in the hills had to give a woman frequent pause.

  I smiled, tried to look harmless, said, “Beautiful,” and looked at the house. In the daylight, the déjà vu was even stronger. My personal patch of ghost town. Spooky.

  She mistook my silent appraisal for displeasure, said, “There's a fabulous view from the inside. It's really a charmer, great bones—I think it was designed by one of Neutra's students.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It just came on the market, Doctor. We haven't even run ads—in fact, how did you find out about it?”

  “I've always liked Nichols Canyon,” I said. “A friend who lives nearby told me it was available.”

  “Oh. What kind of a doctor are you?”

  “Psychologist.”

  “Taking a day off?”

  “Half day. One of the few.”

  I checked my watch and tried to look busy. That seemed to reassure her. Her smile reappeared. “My niece wants to be a psychologist. She's a very smart little girl.”

  “That's terrific. Good luck to her.”

  “Oh, I think we make our own luck, don't we, Doctor?”

  She pulled keys out of her handbag and we walked to the slatted front door. It opened to a small courtyard—a few potted plants, glass wind chimes that I remembered, dangling over the lintel, silent in the hot, static air.

  We went inside and she began her spiel, all well-rehearsed pep.

  I pretended to listen, nodded and said “Uh huh” at the right times,
forced myself to follow, rather than lead; I knew the place better than she did.

  The interior smelled of carpet cleaning fluid and pine disinfectant. Sparkly clean, expunged of death and disorder. But to me it seemed mournful and forbidding—a black museum.

  The front of the house was a single open area encompassing living room, dining area, study, and kitchen. The kitchen was early deco-massacre: avocado-green cabinetry, round-edged coral-colored Formica tops, and a coral vinyl-covered breakfast nook tucked into one corner. The furniture was blond wood, synthetic pastel fabrics, and spidery black iron legs—the kind of postwar jet-streamed stuff that looks poised for takeoff. Walls, of textured beige plaster, were hung with portraits of harlequins and serene seascapes. Bracket bookshelves were crowded with volumes on psychology. The same books.

  A bland, listless room, but the blandness projected the eye toward the east, toward a wall of glass so clean it seemed invisible. Panels of sheet glass, segmented by sliding glass doors.

  On the other side was a narrow, terrazzo-tiled terrace rimmed with white iron railing; beyond the railing an eyeful—a mindful—of canyons, peaks, blue skies, summer foliage. “Isn't it something,” said Mickey Mehrabian, spreading one arm, as if the panorama were a picture she'd painted.

  “Really something.”

  We walked out on the terrace. I felt dizzy, remembered an evening of dancing, Brazilian guitars.

  Something to show you, Alex.

  Late September. I got back to L.A. before Sharon did, $4,000 more solvent, and lonely as hell. She'd left without leaving an address or number; we hadn't exchanged as much as a postcard. I should have been angry, yet she was all I thought about as I drove down the coast.

  I headed straight for Curtis Hall. The floor counselor told me she'd checked out of the dorm, wouldn't be returning this semester. No forwarding address, no number.

  I drove away, enraged and miserable, certain I'd been right: She'd been seduced back to the Good Life, plied with rich boys, new toys. She was never coming back.