“One week advance good enough?”
“Whatever you think is right is right with me,” he kept up the charade. “And don’t feel you have to—”
“Take the fucking money, Badger,” I said, growing annoyed.
“You’re a prince,” he smiled as the check disappeared, with some effort, into the narrow slit of his two-sizes-too-small jeans back pocket.
He walked me out, a little lighter on his feet and showing no effect of the twenty-eight-hundred dollars of my money weighing him down. What started out as a side job to get central air in my house was turning into a gaping hole in my already bleak bank account. But I couldn’t begrudge Badger. This was, after all, his livelihood and who was I to extort him just because I happened to save him from dehydration caused by a temperamental dominatrix.
Out on the sidewalk, he gave me a sweaty hug and declared I was, yet again, his number-one priority.
PROGRESS
The blogger’s address was in North Hollywood. Traffic was good once I got out of the congestion around Echo Park Lake and merged onto the 101. I steamed up and over the Cahuenga Pass and down into the Valley.
The San Fernando Valley was a figurative, and on days like today, a literal purgatory. Flat, hot, and endless, the monotony of the basin mirrored the lives of the nameless people living there. The temperature outside flirted with 100 degrees but never quite committed to triple digits despite its best efforts.
The apartment complex was deep in North Hollywood where the streets and buildings were laid out in perfect symmetry, inheriting the same form and function of the orange groves they replaced decades prior. I went through the glass doors that led to an open courtyard where a blue-green pool sat untouched for yet another year. The apartment was on the second floor in the back, and I took one of the four outdoor staircases.
The woman who answered the door was a frumpy maiden much younger than her image let on. She lived in a cramped studio with sagging bookcases and a worn throw rug on top of even more worn wall-to-wall carpet. She led me to a spot before a small air conditioner that was as effective against the heat as a fan blowing air over a bowl of ice cubes. I sat in a cheap fold-out chair. She relaxed on the edge of a futon and had one leg pulled up under the other so she could pick at her toenails while she spoke.
“I got an email through the site and it just said that they had information on a family member of an important man in the city. They were vague with the details, particularly how important this man was.” She retold the events leading to the publishing of the article with a detached, almost bored affectation. It was as if she wanted to convey to me that this job didn’t matter to her and she rather hated it but was resigned to doing it. For now, anyway.
“Then what happened?”
“Nothing. Total radio silence. I wrote it off as a crank — you get a lot of these. Though part of me sensed this one was legit, I wrote back and never got a reply. Until four days ago. I got an email late in the night that laid out all the details, the baby out of wedlock, the underage angle, and most importantly, the identity of the important man.”
“Who was it?” I asked. I needed to confirm if we were talking about the same family. The woman eyed me suspiciously, trying to figure out my angle, if there was one.
“If you represent the family, then you should know, right?”
“But I first need to know if you know.”
“Oh, I know who it is.”
“Did you verify the source?” I asked.
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have pushed the story otherwise.” There was an element of nicked pride in her response, as if she was hurt that I questioned her ethics in publishing unseemly stories about people’s private matters.
“And they are credible?”
“As credible as it gets,” she responded mysteriously.
“What does that mean?”
She suddenly felt the power shift over to the futon and took the opportunity to exploit it.
“Can we work out a deal?” she asked tentatively. She was as new to the shakedown as I was. I had stopped by the ATM on the way, expecting this moment. I placed twenties in various amounts in various pockets in case she played hardball and I could claim “all the money I got” routine. Little did I know that fifty bucks was all it would take. I gave her the extra ten because I felt bad for her.
“So who was the source?”
“The source was the source,” she answered with a riddle and the annoyingly sly expression people make when telling riddles.
“Your source was Jeanette Schwartzman?”
The woman touched the side of her nose. We apparently switched from riddles to charades.
“How did you know it was her?” I asked, still not quite believing it. The logic wasn’t working.
“It was her. She had photographs on her phone with Carl Valenti. She looked just like the girl in the photos. And they knew details that made me very comfortable they were who they said they were.”
“Who was she with?”
“Some boy, sort of effeminate, probably Hispanic but I shouldn’t guess ethnicity without being sure.” I had never believed Nelson was involved in anything nefarious but now it was a question if he and Jeanette were in on something nefarious together. “I don’t think he was the father.”
“Why do you say that?”
She gave me a “don’t make me say it out loud” look. She wasn’t comfortable discussing people’s ethnicity and it seemed she was equally uncomfortable discussing someone’s sexuality.
“Let’s just say the baby didn’t look like him,” she said, avoiding anything inappropriate. For a gossip blogger, she held pretty high standards.
The fact that the person behind the placement of the story was the subject of the story itself was a puzzler that I still couldn’t quite comprehend. I probed to see if Jeanette gave any kind of insight into why she was doing it.
“I asked her that. She was vague and didn’t really want to answer. She was quick to point out that it definitely wasn’t for money. I sort of believed her.”
I moved off the events in the past and focused my attention on the future. Standard practice in Corporate America was to conclude every meeting with someone asking, “What are our next steps?” It was an admirable attempt to convince everyone that, although we had just sat around talking nonsense for fifty-five minutes, it wasn’t without purpose and we needed concrete proof that it was all worthwhile. Humans have an enduring desire to feel like we are making progress.
For me, I didn’t want to let a lever go un-pulled. I needed this woman as an ally if Jeanette ever contacted her again. And although it was unlikely, perhaps she could be used to lure her back home. But I didn’t want her to think that she could exploit this situation for more money. Given her recent negotiation skills, I deemed this risk rather low.
“We could use your help, if you are up for it.” I handed her my business card and scribbled my personal number on the back. “If you ever hear from Jeanette, please call me first. The family would be grateful.”
She watched me take a quick glance around the cramped studio apartment and her face expressed a look of shame. I never intended to make her feel bad. It was an unfortunate habit of mine when meeting people like her in Los Angles. I felt the urge to piece together their history that led them to their current situation — a bright, personable-enough woman with a set of values still intact, sitting in a crummy apartment, picking her feet, and waiting for the sun to go down to provide at least a modicum of relief from the heat.