“We’re all cut from the same cloth,” I told him.
“This isn’t a joke.”
“It wasn’t meant to be a joke.”
“Why is he here?” he questioned with an outstretched finger pointed in Hector’s direction. He might as well have been pointing to a three-day old carcass rotting in the sun, the way he refused to turn his head fully in Hector’s direction, as if wary of being overcome by the foul stench of rotting flesh. Before he would allow me to explain, Jeff commanded that Hector leave the room.
“Let’s just relax and talk like adults,” I said.
“You ruined the museum for me,” he started on another tangent.
“I didn’t ruin anything,” I countered.
Jeff was a one-punch fighter. He took his shot and if it didn’t land, he either ran or moved on to find a heavier weapon. His armory was running thin because he was already reverting to the pity club.
“Gao doesn’t want anything to do with me,” he moaned. “He called me and said we’re through. That he won’t support the ballot initiative. He thinks it’s a trick. He thinks I am in on it with the old man.” I thought about how the direction of this great city could so easily be altered by a cryptically-worded ballot initiative started by one unstable man and promoted by an equally-yet-differently-unstable man. “How crazy is this world?” he asked as if he could hear my thoughts, but he was referencing something else altogether. “The guy I’d rather see dead as my partner in crime,” he laughed. I couldn’t tell if he had forgotten Hector was in the room or he made that comment on purpose. “What the hell did you say to Gao to get him to think that?”
I recapped my first uncomfortable meeting when Gao thought I was coming to see him with a peace offer from Valenti. “I don’t know how he got that idea,” I said, watching for Jeff’s reaction. There wasn’t much, but I was still certain he had helped foment the idea in one of their many discussions. “Today’s meeting was a little unexpected. There was a building in Alhambra, an old Victorian with several Chinese occupants.”
“They aren’t all related, you know,” he said.
“I tracked down the corporation on the deed,” I continued, “and that led me out to Arcadia to a development company linked to Mr. Li. We happened to be at the office, I questioned him on it and he flew off the handle.”
“Well, why wouldn’t he? You’re harassing him about some stupid building. No wonder he thinks you are trying to undermine him.”
“It’s not a stupid building, Mr. Schwartzman.”
“Knock the mister crap off.”
“It’s not a stupid building,” I repeated. He already had his next snarky comeback ready and was just waiting for me to finish so he could lob it my way. “Its address is linked to your daughter.”
He got as far as the first word when my comment hit him and its meaning finally registered. That wiped the smirk off his face.
“Jeanette,” he whispered. It was the look of legitimate remorse. “What do you mean by linked?”
I explained what Hector and I discovered inside the Victorian house. Jeff listened to the details with a look of both shock and confusion. When I finished, he asked:
“But what does that have to do with Jeanette?”
“You knew your daughter was pregnant, right?”
“Pregnant?” he said in a way that made you feel the nausea he was experiencing in his stomach. The man grabbed at the thinning hair on the sides of his head and let his hands drag down and tug onto both ears. He muttered something to himself, even using the second person tense to add to the severity of the personal indictment. I couldn’t exactly make it out but it sounded like, “You’re such an asshole.”
Hector and I diverted our eyes. It was difficult to witness a man’s humiliation on something so fundamental as raising a child. I turned to Hector to suggest that we leave him alone with his thoughts.
Then, the room erupted with a woman’s blood-curdling scream. I had never heard something so primal. I instinctively ducked and covered my head with my arms. Hector leapt to his feet and pulled the knife from his pocket. Jeff didn’t move an inch. He sat at the desk and kept his face buried in his hands.
After a moment I realized the source of the scream came from the art installation on the wall. The woman’s face in the video was back to that cold stare but you could see her chest heaving as she recovered from having just wrenched her guts out. She was composing herself for the next scream.
“I can’t figure out how to shut it off,” Jeff mumbled. The broken man was getting closer to the moment when he would accept defeat and all the ignominy that came with it. He had an expression of serene surrender. But my read on Jeff was slightly off as he apparently had one more fight left in him.
“What do you need from me?” he asked, raising his eyes to meet mine. “I have to do something to help bring Jeanette home.”
“If you ask her to do something do you think she will do it?”
“Probably not,” he admitted, “but I can try.”
“That’s all we want,” I told him. “We need your help, Jeff.”
That seemed to warm his spirits some.
“This nonsense has gone on long enough,” he stated, rising from his chair. “It’s time to bring her home.”
I took his offer for a handshake. He was feeling magnanimous enough to even extend the offer to Hector. The old bastard took a moment but eventually accepted it.
I glanced up at the video behind him. I didn’t know how long the intervals were between screams, but just knowing it was coming cast an unnerving pall over the room. I wanted to be long gone before it happened.
Jeff walked us to his office door but no further.
“I have a few calls to make to my daughter,” he announced. It was good to have him back from the edge. He was a noticeably different person. “And who knows,” he added cheerfully. “We get this thing cleared up perhaps the museum deal can still be salvaged. That’s not the priority, obviously,” he amended, “but it could be one outcome of all this craziness.”
Hector and I left him with his calls and his illusions and made our way out of the foundation’s office. We got as far as the elevator before the woman’s scream came barreling down the empty hall after us. It was still going as the doors closed to whisk us downstairs.
A TIGHT WINDOW
The drive over to Beverlywood took three times longer than it should have. By the time we parked in front of Nelson Portilla’s house, the sun had long since vaporized the marine layer and beat down on us with little obstruction.
After the mini-victory with Jeff Schwartzman, I wanted to speak to the kid’s grandmother and solicit her help in bringing her boy home — and Jeanette with him. But Hector, with his dark glasses and knife poking out of his pocket, didn’t put very many people at ease. The last time they met he violated her home and nearly ran her over in the process.
“I need to speak to her alone,” I said, “and convince her it’s in the boy’s best interest to help us.” He shot me a look like he didn’t have any faith in me and my persuasion capabilities. “You have your doubts?”
“We made a deal,” he shrugged.
“Yes, we did.”
“It’s never good to come between an abuelita and her boy,” he warned as I approached the house. That gave me pause as I recalled the abuelita’s other “boy” and his heavily-armed thug friends.
“Well, it’s better than throwing her son in a head-lock,” I shouted back with little to no conviction.
After several knocks, the old woman opened the door and recognized me with a broad smile. She graciously shuffled me inside and as I crossed the threshold I shot Hector a look for doubting me.