She sighed. He heard papers shuffling. She put him on hold for a full minute. “Okay, Chuck, here it is. For a company called Elite, they sure didn’t seem to have much going for themselves. The receptionist proofed the ads, a little beach tart is what she sounded like on the phone. Anyway, it’s Number Eighteen Palisade, up in Newport Center. I’m sure the receptionist will just love you.”
“Rad.”
“Like, woah. Any chance you’re coming back? I really did like the piece you did about my rug dealer being a Persian prince, and his family being held hostage by the Ayatollah.”
“That one was true. Just nobody bothered to ask him. Put me through to Billingham, would you?”
“I think he misses you, Chuck.”
Frye asked Billingham for his job back and Billingham said no. Frye told him he had a Pulitzer winner on a Little Saigon patriot who finally got tracked down and beheaded by Hanoi. Bill Antioch looked on with horror.
Billingham waited. “I read the papers, Frye. Nothing at all about anybody’s head rolling. This kind of like watching that welterweight go down and calling it a dive?”
“It was a dive, and I can substantiate every word of it. Now this murder piece is already written. The slug at the top says Frye/Ledger. Cost you my spindly salary for a look at it.”
“No can do. I’ve replaced you with a J-school girl already.”
“What do you pay her, two-seventy-five a week?”
“Two-fifty.”
“There should be a new rung in hell for editors like you.”
“Give us a quote about how the Fryes are coping with the kidnapping.”
“Get fucked, Ron.”
“Go to another paper. Our circulation’s dying anyway.”
“I just may do that, and you’ll be sorry I did.”
“How come you need an address for Elite Management?”
He guided the Cyclone through the long thin shadows of the Newport Center palms. The palms were newly planted, a hundred feet tall and there were millions of them. Everyone had a different story of what they’d cost: some said three thousand per tree, some said twenty thousand. The idea was to make the place more attractive to shoppers and the palms were brought in, like relief pitchers, after twenty years of so-so consumerism.
On the afternoon that he was fired, Frye had sat in his car for an hour and watched them plant a few. The root systems, carefully bound in wet burlap, were the size of living rooms. Now the emerald grass of Newport Center had been rolled right up to the trunks and the trees looked like they’d been there all along.
Number 18 Palisade was on the west side of Newport Center, in a building that housed a bank, a beauty salon, and a jewelry store. He climbed the stairs, looking in, each of the clients in a different state of beauty improvement. The hairdressers hovered over them, all elbows and chatter.
Elite Management was next to the restrooms. The door was locked, so Frye pushed the intercom button. The surf-bunny sounded half asleep when she asked who was there. Frye said he was UPS. The lock buzzed open and he walked in. The girl’s desk plate said SHELLY — RECEPTIONIST. Frye smiled and watched her face turn sour at his lack of packages and brown uniform. She had long blond hair, a denim dress, and skin rich and dark as teak wood.
“You’re not UPS, no way,” she said.
“That’s true.”
“There’s no reason for you to be here.”
“Why not?”
She picked up an index card and read Frye the blurb about Elite not being geared to the public. He studied the office: a small room with two chairs, a desk, a Hockney litho on one wall, and a door behind Shelly. The door was shut. She had been brushing her hair. The brush lay on her desk blotter, trailing golden scraps. She finished the reading and looked up at him. Her face changed. “You’re Chuck Frye, aren’t you?”
“I am. And you’re Shelly, right?”
She smiled and put her hairbrush in a desk drawer. “I heard you’ll be at Radically Committed Saturday night.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”
“Woah!” she squealed. “Like what’s the deal?”
“The deal is I want to see Rollie Dean Mack.”
“Oh, that’s going to be hard, Chuck.”
“Is he in?”
“No.”
“When will he be?”
“Beats me.”
“Must be in sometime.”
“I’ve worked here all summer and I’ve only seen him, like, three times. I usually say he’s in the field, ‘cause that’s what I’m supposed to say. But I wonder what a millionaire like Mr. Mack would be doing in a field. Think about it.”
“Come on, I really have to see him, Shelly.”
She brought out her brush and ran it through a couple of times. Her hair gave a static crackle, lifted out, and hung a moment. Her teeth were white as typing paper. “I’m telling you, Chuck. I sit here eight hours a day. I do my nails, then my hair, then my makeup, then I listen to the radio, then do it all again. I’m not allowed to talk on the phone to my friends or this would be great. Daddy got me the job. Anyway, I take calls for Mr. Mack and Mr. Becwith. I write the messages on this.” She held up one of those three-color memo pads that make a different color copy for each person.
He sighed.
Shelly kept brushing her hair and smiling. She shook her head. “Sorry.”
This chick’s no dummy, he thought. Harder to get past than a free safety. “Damn it, Shelly, I surf all morning and it isn’t easy, you know? I gotta work at it, like everyone else does. I come in here to see your boss about a job and all I get is a runaround.”
“I’m real sorry, Chuck. I love the way you surf. And the way you moon the camera in Committed. Can’t wait till that part.”
“So you’re not going to let me see him?”
“I told you. He’s hardly ever here. Neither of them are.”
From the utter blankness on Shelly’s face, Frye could only conclude she was doing her job and that was that.
“You know, Chuck, I was in Mega looking for a board the other day. I looked all around. Gotcha has good boards but too expensive.”
“My stuff’s better. How much you want to spend?”
“Not much.”
“Shelly, we can work a deal. You let me see Mr. Mack and I’ll give you a board at cost.”
“Can’t do it, Chuck. I told you what the deal here is.”
“I’ll give it to you for free.”
Shelly’s eyes glittered. She laughed perfectly. “I’d love a Mega board.”
“Get me Rollie.”
“I’ll get you as close to him as I can. How’s that?” She stood up and opened the door behind her. Frye walked into the larger room. Two desks and chairs, two round wastebaskets, two blotters, a couple of lamps. The office was a mess. It looked like the Ledger newsroom. Piles of paper on each desk, trashcans full, notices and bulletins thumbtacked to the walls. The blotters were scribbled upon. The desk calendars were on the right day. He flipped through Mack’s, but found no hint as to where he might be. In fact, there was no hint as to where he’d ever been. Not a single note in eight months. His finger came away from the desk top with dust on it.
“Oops,” said Shelly. “I’m supposed to dust every morning before they get here, but I forgot.”
“Before they get here? I thought you said they don’t come in.”
“They don’t. You know, like, dust before they got here if they ever did. But they never do. That’s what I mean.”
He noted the pile of yellow message slips on each desk. Shelly said they never told her to put them there, but she did anyway just in case they came in, and to cover herself.
“Who’s your boss?”
“They both are.”