Dating Is Murder

“He just told you all this? And do you believe him?”

“Yes. It’s what I was talking to that cop about. There’s a hierarchy to crime. Homicide detectives don’t go after shoplifters, and on the other side of the fence, Marty isn’t going to get all sweaty over his little green cards if he’s just kidnapped someone. And he was sweaty. So I told him I only cared about A

I closed my eyes and melted into the heated leather seat. One short night’s work resulting in violence, deception, destruction of property-albeit a plunger-all for a phone number. A doubt assailed me. What if A

“She’s a bad judge of girlfriends too,” Joey said. “She told Britta her dark secret. And Britta told the agency, which left A

Little Fish, I thought. I had another thought, then, one far less palatable. The FBI.

Biological Clock hadBiological Clock found, for once, a restaurant with class. Etude in Beverly Hills, tiny and chic, was willing to accommodate the show after hours. We got there a half hour late, before things had got under way. I’d never been on the set when not actually working, and I was nervous about my appearance. The disguise Fredreeq had put together for me, glasses and a cloche hat, was in the trunk of Fredreeq’s car, an oversight on everyone’s part. The best I could do at this point was my sweatshirt with the hood pulled up.

The shoot was outside, a garden warmed by standing heat lamps, yet cold enough to justify my hooded head. Still, my appearance was odd. I could tell by the way Etude’s owner turned us away, until Joey identified herself as the show’s producer and asked that I be seated at an out-of-the-way table. There were only nine tables, so out-of-the-way was relative, but to my great relief, no one paid attention to me. The other diners were “fillers,” friends of the owner, and the cast and crew were too preoccupied to notice background players. I might be wiggy from a night in San Pedro, but I could still, apparently, spy.

I turned on my phone and listened to three voice-mail messages from Simon, each one more peremptory than the one before, the third one telling me to follow standard operating procedure tonight and all of them telling me to call him. I turned off my phone. The last thing I needed was to explain the last seven hours to the Feds. I was alone now, Joey having gone to deal with production details, so I began standard operating procedure, checking around for Beverly Hills shopping bags and listening for European accents. Etude did not have a working pay phone, according to my waiter, so I didn’t have to deal with that. Meanwhile, the evening’s couple and expert took their places at a table Paul had lit with a cliplight attached to a tree. A bottle of Takei Sake awaited them.

The contestants tonight were Vaclav and Sava

Sava

Vaclav seemed improved by his close proximity to her. I’d worried that he was too foreign for the TV audience to warm up to, but tonight he seemed dashing and urbane. A lovely, sophisticated couple. I imagined that Sava

Across from them sat a generously proportioned woman in a tweed suit and red turtleneck that suggested Wisconsin. I tried, without success, to imagine her manufacturing drugs. Cheese, maybe. When the camera went on, she smiled into it. “Hello, I’m Ursula Fitzgerald-Camacho, a personal educational consultant, here to shed light on a topic that many pre-parents do not find stimulating.”

“As long as you’re stimulating, Ursula,” Vaclav said, giving a throaty laugh.

Sava

Ursula’s smile faltered. “Education in California is one of the most complex issues our elected officials grapple with. Sacramento, like every state capital, must draft a budget that accommodates unfunded federal mandates, demanding fiscal sacrifice-”

“Cut!” Bing yelled. “Sweetie. Words that bore us: ‘Fiscal.’ ‘Budget.’ ‘Elected officials.’ The only sacrifice we want to hear about is human sacrifice, virgins in the rain forest, that kind of thing. Start again. Action!”

Ursula’s smile died, but she launched into a dissertation on public versus private schools. I was distracted from this important topic by a woman one table over, shifting in her seat. Revealing, under her chair, a shopping bag.

“… study elementary school test scores to determine which neighborhood suits you,” Ursula was saying.

“We have to move to have a child?” Sava

“No, dear, only to educate the child. Think Harvard, then work backward. California ranks poorly in pupil-per-teacher ratio nationwide, and L.A. Unified is-”

“Cut,” Bing yelled. “Sweetheart: ratios, nationwide, nobody cares. Make it sexy. Also, you got something green on the corner of your mouth.”

I leaned down to get a better look at the shopping bag. Fendi, Hugo Boss, Ermenegildo Zegna: any of these would indicate a dead drop. And the people at the table, a nice middle-aged couple, would they be Little Fish’s customers or employees? If I could just see the shopping bag’s logo-

“-difference between public schools is considerable,” Ursula was saying.

“So’s the difference in rent between neighborhoods,” Sava

Another good point, I thought, and slid out of my chair. Ursula agreed, noting that rent saved by living in a less desirable neighborhood could add up to an a

What kind of snacks? I thought. Caviar? Dom Pérignon? I crouched between tables, straining to see Bing’s camera. I didn’t want to show up in the background of his shot. But Bing was on the move, so I waited, pretending to tie my shoe. I thought of Mrs. Rodriguez and Mrs. Glück, two women who’d helped with homework, packed lunches, gone to track meets, band practices, dance rehearsals, day after day for years. Now, having signed off on the last algebra assignment, term paper, college application, these soccer and fussball moms found themselves filling out police reports.

“The young brain,” Vaclav said loudly, “is a sponge. Languages must be learned before nerve endings myelinate-”

“Vaclav!” Bing yelled. “No nerve endings, no sponges, no science words no one knows. Jesus Christ, it’s like Face the Nation tonight.”

Bing stopped moving, so I approached my quarry in a crouch reminiscent of a ru

A waiter with a large tray weaved around tables, delivering soup to one and all, intoning, “Lobster bisque” in hushed tones. I hoped he couldn’t see me.

“… overwhelming for pre-parents,” Ursula said. “But look at the top ten best-paying jobs: physician, lawyer, pilot, pharmacist, marketing exec, architect, and the four engineers: aerospace, chemical, electrical, mechanical. Isn’t that what we want for our kids?”