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The next line, delivered in Moe's voice: You're not?
When Aaron arrived at Once Again Books, Manuel was selling a stack of bruised Elmore Leonards to a stout, bearded guy in an aloha shirt, who'd brought his own plastic covers and took a long time to slip them on. After that, Manuel attended to a kid who paid with crumpled bills and rolls of coins for a Robert Crumb.
No other customers; Aaron drifted forward from the tumbledown plywood stacks. Manuel placed a bookmark in his own reading material. Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon.
Manuel said, “Amigo! Whad chaykin! Ro
“How much to borrow one of your brothers’ trucks?”
“You jest.”
“I jest not.”
“How would I know? And frankly, I'm injured. Usually, you want my thespian skills, not hardware.”
If you only knew.
Aaron said, “I need both.”
“Me in the truck?”
“Exactly.”
“Ah,” said Manuel. “Where de azalea go, Meester Patron? Onder de weelow or behind de-”
“Could you call now and ask them?” said Aaron. “I'll pay seriously.” He looked around the empty store. “How soon can you abandon this hub of commerce?”
“To go where?”
“Hollywood Hills.”
“To do what?”
“Sit around looking Mexican.”
Manuel laughed. “Dude, you don't even try to be politically correct.”
“Neither does the world,” said Aaron. “That's why I need you.” Touching his own face.
“There are black folk in the hills, Aaron.”
“I loiter too long, there'll be one less.”
“Same for me,” said Manuel.
“The truck'll buy you time. Make sure there's lots of gear in the bed.”
“Churning up sod,” said Manuel. “Another invisible man. Should we toss in a few bags of manure for authenticity? On the other hand, who needs that shit?”
When they both stopped laughing, Manuel said, “What's the pay scale?”
“The usual.”
“Thirty-five an hour.”
“The usual's twenty-five.”
“Maybe the usual should change, amigo”
“Thirty,” said Aaron, touching the Pynchon. “But don't bring that.”
“You don't like literature?”
“Today you don't.”
“Jus’ a iggorant cholo churning chayote for chump change.”
One of the trucks was working on Hillcrest Drive in Beverly Hills and just finishing up. For an additional hundred bucks, eldest brother Albert Lujon ordered his men to transfer the keys to Manuel and return home on the bus.
Clear family hierarchy, thought Aaron. Must be nice…
He checked his phone. The only thing he'd received were prerecorded scam texts for cheap phone service and Internet hookup. When the case was over, he'd have to switch his cell number yet again.
When.
If ever.
By three p.m., Manuel, wearing grubby work clothes, nails dirtied by scraping soil, was stationed in the perfect watch-spot Aaron had found after cruising the neighborhood: a construction zone half a block north of Swallowsong, no one working today.
The project was a sharp-edged contempo house, months away from landscaping. Lawn and parkway had turned to weed-strewn meadow. When Manuel began mowing, a woman walking by muttered, “Finally.”
Talking to the air, not to the man pushing the machine.
When she was gone, Manuel phoned Aaron. “I really should be getting thirty-five.”
“Why?”
“I could develop an allergy.”
“To grass?”
“To being a nonentity.”
Aaron drove around the Hollywood Hills, passing Manuel's truck time after time, liking the ruse he'd set up but knowing it had to end by sunset. Manuel was raking lawn trimmings into neat little piles. Maybe that deserved thirty-five.
At four p.m., Aaron took a break for coffee and a sandwich at Mel's Diner on Sunset, finding an empty booth flanked by retarded rock-star wa
All keyed up for no reason, he left most of his food on the table, was returning to the Opel when his cell beeped. Moe.
“Hey.”
“Anything on your end?”
Aaron said, “Don't have much of an end, Moses.”
“You're not improvising?”
“Make a suggestion, Moses.”
Silence.
Moe said, “You learn something, tell me right away,” and hung up.
Does he expect me to learn something? If so, first compliment his brother had ever tossed his way.
He headed back into the hills, ready for yet another circuit, maybe this time he'd actually hazard a pass by the house with the fancy gates.
Before he arrived, Manuel called in. “Got something maybe interesting. Jaguar XJ, long wheelbase, gunmetal gray, lady at the wheel. She went up Swallowsong and something about her intrigued me so I followed and guess where she went? I'm a natural, you need to start thinking about forty an hour-”
“You left your post?”
“You want to bitch, go ahead, but it worked out. I carried a rake and an airgun up the street just in time to see her drive through those crazy gates. No one called La Migra, okay? She definitely went in and she definitely came out. Total time in there twenty-eight minutes. Nice-looking lady.”
“Blonde? Brunette?”
“Gray,” said Manuel. “But nice-like she kept it that way on purpose. When she came out she looked grim. Like whatever had gone on during those twenty-eight minutes hadn't been fun.”
“Did you get the plates?”
“I'll give you a two-dollar discount, settle for thirty-eight if I get dibs on the dirty details for a screenplay. Stuff I've been working on doesn't work. Too much Pynchon and DeLillo, not enough Story of O.”
“The plates,” said Aaron.
“So it's a deal? Excellent. Got a pen?”
Aaron used a pay-as-you-go cell to contact his DMV source. Ka-ching, Mr. Dmitri. The tags matched a one-year-old Jaguar registered to Arlene Frieda Solomon, forty-one years old, brown and green, five two, one twenty. Home address on McCarty Drive in Beverly Hills.
Nice neighborhood, just south of Wilshire, pretty, well kept, two-story houses ru
Arlene Solomon had let her hair go gray since her license renewal two years ago. Her DMV photo showed a thin-faced, big-eyed brunette.
Real serious-almost mournful. DMV hassles could do that to you, but still, this one seemed downright morose.
Aaron BlackBerried onto the net. Arlene Frieda Solomon evoked over a hundred hits.
Psychiatrist Arlene Solomon cited the rise in eating disorders among younger and younger children as evidence of pressure by…
Arlene Solomon, M.D., a Beverly Hills psychiatrist specializing in anorexia-bulimia, says…
A panel of experts at the Oak Center in Beverly Hills, chaired by Dr. Arlene Solomon, an expert in…
He logged off, phoned Alex Delaware.
The psychologist said, “I've heard of her, but don't know her personally.”
“What've you heard?”
“Smart, well trained, knowledgeable. She used to run the eating disorders clinic at the U., may still be doing that.”
“Dedicated, too,” said Aaron. “Nice office on Bedford Drive, but she makes house calls.”
“Her type of patients sometimes need that, Aaron.”
“And patients like Mason Book get all kinds of special privileges.”
“Hard to say, unless we know how she deals with everyone else.”
Doctors. Always protecting each other.
Aaron said, “Your guess was spot-on, Doc.”
Now maybe, you'll give me another.
Delaware said, “Sometimes you get lucky.”
“Anything else you can tell me?”
Several beats. “Nothing comes to mind.”
Aaron said, “Well, at least we know why Book was hospitalized.”
“Probably.”
“What do you mean?” said Aaron.
“An eating disorder doesn't eliminate all sorts of other issues. Book's nutritional status might be okay, but he still could've come in for depression, anxiety, even suicide.”
“Rumor based on truth… I guess starving yourself could be thought of as slow suicide, right?”