Hills, headed not for a taxi and an imaginary girl in West Hollywood, but here, this bland institution, this lobby with its fake plants
and fluorescent lights and insipid carpeting. What was it about a
bank that made everyone so quiet? Any other situation where people stood in line, they chatted and joked and answered cell phones.
But in the implied presence of money, everything went quiet, the
only sounds the shuffle of paper. An occasional cough, or the rustle
of a sleeve as someone glanced at a watch.
There are cameras and security guards and yours is a famous
face. If someone recognizes you . . .
“Can I help you?” The greeter looked fresh-scrubbed, his suit
nice but not stylish, his cheeks pink.
“Yes,” she said. “I have a safe deposit box?” Letting her voice go
higher at the end to emphasize that it didn’t hold false passports and
unregistered weapons, but the kind of documents regular people
might store there, and that thus it was something not often visited.
That this was a small novelty, but not worth noting.
“Yes, ma’am,” the man said. “Come with me, Ms. . . .” “Hayes.”
“Ms. Hayes.” He led her to an empty desk—why were there always empty desks at banks?—and sliding behind it, “May I see
your driver’s license?”
She nodded, dug her wallet from her purse, slid out her ID. The
picture was a few years old, taken around the time Candy Girls first
aired, and showed her with her real hair, dark brown and shoulder
length, layered to frame her face. It was a dead ringer for the image
on a hundred billboards and magazine ads, and no port wine stain
marked her cheek. She held it for a second, not wanting to pass it
over. What if this guy recognized her? Would he think to ask a question? Would he say she looked like that actress? The name on the
ID. was her real name, Elaine Hayes, not Laney Thayer, but still,
the leap was small.
Find it. Fast. Bennett’s voice ringing in her ears.
Elaine Hayes passed the card across the desk and made herself
smile.
The man punched a few keys, his eyes on the computer monitor.
He glanced at the license, punched a few more keys. Finally he said,
“Here we are. Box 152?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He typed some more. “Did you hear the news?” “What’s that?”
“There was a shooting at the Farmers Market.”
“Really?”
“Just this morning.” He looked across the desk at her. “Can you
believe it?”
“Wow. No. My husband and I go there all the time.” “Scary, isn’t it? You think you’re safe, that that sort of thing only
happens somewhere else, but.” He shook his head. “Right this way,
Ms. Hayes.”
She followed him, keeping her head down, feeling the cameras
pointed like accusing eyes. He led her to a side door, typed a quick code on a number pad. An LED went from red to green, and he
opened the door, then gestured her through.
The room was just as she remembered. A wall of numbered boxes
with metal doors, gray carpet on the floor, and a clean, powdery
smell. A closed-circuit camera stared from the corner.
“Here you are,” he said. “You can use this for privacy.” He gestured to a desk framed with a curtain. “When you’re done, just put
the box back. The door will lock behind you.”
“Thanks,” she said, and waited for him to leave. Then she took
out her key chain and used the smallest one to open the lock, pulled
out the box, and took it to the desk, closing the curtain behind. She said a little prayer to the universe: Let it be here, please, let it
be here and I’ll finish this quietly. Daniel will never need to know. Elaine flipped up the lid of the box. Inside were papers in manila
folders, contracts and tax statements. Two passports, hers and his.
An envelope with a dozen photographs. She’d forgotten about those,
the pictures she’d let Daniel take of her; he’d called them “erotic,”
she’d called them “porno,” but posing for them had been fun, given
her a glow, knowing that in fifty years they would have these shots,
the two of them young and lusty and naked. Once the show hit,
they moved them here, not wanting some ambitious faux-friend to
ransack their drawers and sell the pictures to paparazzi. There was
a brooch that had belonged to her mother, and seeing it gave her a
flash of memory, golden sunlight and hair that smelled like honey
and the necklace dangling down as her mom leaned over her. What was not there, what was conspicuously absent, was a diamond necklace worth half a million dollars.
She wanted to turn the box upside down and shake it. She wanted
to punch the table and scream.
Be calm. If you want to keep your secret, you have to be calm. Elaine closed the box. Slid it back in the frame. Walked out the door. The same man wished her a good afternoon as she passed, but she just kept her head down until she stepped back out onto
Wilshire.
Somehow things had gotten worse instead of better. Laney
Thayer raised a hand to her forehead, squeezed her temples. It had
been a long shot, she supposed. But where else would Daniel have
put the necklace? This was the safest place. Though now that she
thought about it, she couldn’t imagine him driving in from Malibu
to tuck it safely away before he went on his cross-country suicide
run. That was the problem with improvising, you just had to hope
that you were going in the right direction. If it had paid out, and the
necklace had been here, she could have called Bennett— “Hey, is that Laney Thayer?”