The Bright Spot Read online

  “What’d you find?” Dee asked. She was lying on the bed on her side, her head propped up on one arm, one bare leg bent at a similar angle. I was sitting on the chair in front of the closet. She’d been watching me.

  I held up the theater program. “Ed used to act, apparently.”

  “Oh yeah. He wished he’d been an actor. That’s probably one of the reasons why he took to you.” She laughed, pointing at the program. “I know that play. Right after we read it in high school, I babysat this kid whose folks were going to see it and made the mistake of telling her the name. So she’s like, ‘I want to go see a dollhouse! I want to go see a dollhouse!’ all screaming and crying and stuff, and there I was, stuck with her, trying to tell her she’d be bored to death by it, that it was just about some woman who wanted to be poor for the rest of her life, but I could never shut her up, never get her to believe me. She thought it was about dolls and dollhouses. That was the last time I ever babysat.”

  I laughed at her story, and our eyes met. I sprang to my feet, and held the shoe box in front of me. “Do you mind if I hang on to this for a while?”

  She rolled over on her back, her hands behind her head, looking up at me, a dreamy smile on her face. “It’s evidence, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Then I guess you’d better take it with you, when you go.”

  “Thanks.” That’s all I could say. Anything else seemed too risky.

  She gave me a moment longer to do the reasonable thing and get into bed with her, but I stood my ground. “You’re just determined to leave, aren’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She got up off the bed in one quick movement and took my arm. “Well, let’s get it over with. I don’t know how much more rejection I can take.”

  I started to say, I don’t know how much more I can dish out, but I didn’t. I was bucking for sainthood.

  She took me to the car, nestled in its own cocoon off the foyer, and opened the door. “You know how to use one of these?”

  “You enter your destination on the map thing, push Start to go, Return to send it back. I think I can handle it.”

  “I don’t need the car back right away—I have others—if you want to hang on to it for a while and send yourself back with it.”

  “I’ll send it right back. Believe me. You don’t want me to leave a car like this parked in my neighborhood.”

  “It’s got a security system.”

  “I don’t want to kill any of my neighbors either.”

  “It doesn’t have to kill anyone. You just don’t want to come back.”

  Only in my dreams, and I’d feel guilty about those. I got in the car, into a soft leather seat designed to put chiropractors out of business. She leaned inside and gave me a goodbye kiss, a mere peck compared to our last effort. Always leave them wanting more.

  “I want that stuff back when you’re through with it,” she said, pointing to the shoe box in my lap.

  “Of course. I have your address. Thanks for everything. It’s been a pleasure meeting you. Sorry about Ed and your husband and all.” I found home on the map screen with a few stabs of my finger, hit Start, and I was out of there. I didn’t look back. There was no point. I was moving too fast.

  I’d made it out alive—at least until Trey, wherever he was, checked out the hot kiss on his surveillance, but I decided not to tell Jackson about it. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him. Nobody kisses the peeper. Jackson ought to know.

  DADDY NEEDS A NEW PAIR OF SHOES

  10

  CUSTOMER: Eumenides?

  TAILOR: Euripides?

  —OLD JOKE

  I PICKED UP AN ESCORT BEFORE I WAS HALFWAY home—Murphy in his cruiser. We pulled up on the new road next to what I now knew was his parents’ place, now the closest point on the grid to Lu’s place. I was still trying to process that one. Once you knew, it was obvious, even the same friendly, easygoing manner. He’s still a cop, I reminded myself. I left the shoe box under the seat.

  It was early yet, and no one was stirring on the other side of the chain link. The place just looked like a junkman’s packed-dirt backyard in the daylight. It took people to make it anything else. The whole neighborhood looked quiet. There probably weren’t more than a half-dozen folks watching out their windows, watching Nick talk to the cop.

  “How was it?” Murphy asked, smirking.

  I didn’t ask what he meant by “it.” “I think you’ve got her all wrong.”

  “Must’ve been pretty good, then.” He gave me a hard look, thinking (hoping?) I’d done L’il Lu wrong.

  “We had a nice conversation, under the circumstances.”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I checked out that name you gave me. Officially, she doesn’t exist. There’s a notice in the newspaper, probably pulled right off the crime report for that day—they do that sometimes. The report itself is now a ‘corrupted file.’ That’s what happens to files you’re not supposed to see anymore—they get ‘corrupted.’ Nobody bothered to corrupt the newspaper. Officially, the newspaper made a mistake, made it up, just pulled that name out of a hat. Before that, no Galatea Ritsa. After, the same. Looks like she was undercover and got killed in a hit-and-run accident. The newspaper report got out before anyone could kill it.”

  “If she was a spook, maybe it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Those sorts of accidents don’t show up in the papers, or even the crime reports. Knocking somebody into a tree with an SUV doesn’t sound like spy versus spy. But whoever did the cleanup wasn’t too thorough. I got to thinking that the newspaper said SUV even though it was a hit-and-run. How’d they know that? There must’ve been a witness. I checked the officers’ logs who would’ve worked that area, would’ve been the ones to find the body, interview the witnesses. We’re required to log all that, to account for our time. It’s separate from the crime reports. Seems that an officer interviewed Edmund Kennemeyer that night around seven.”

  “So he was on the scene.”

  “That’s a leap, but it makes sense. But you know what’s got me curious, Nick? You said you didn’t find out about this woman from Kennemeyer, so I got to ask you—where did you get the name?”

  I should’ve had a story ready, but I didn’t. I had to make it up on the spot. It wasn’t exactly my best work. “It came up in a meeting about this role I’m considering I told you about—James Dumfries after the war, embroiled in controversy. I didn’t even know if she was a real person. You wanted something from me, so I gave you all I had.”

  “And who, exactly, dropped the name?”

  “I don’t recall. One of the writers, I guess. Probably got it out of the newspaper files.”

  He gave me his little cop smile. “There’s exactly one newspaper file, and there’s nothing in it to connect her to Dumfries.”

  “Maybe one of the researchers has been in touch with the family,” I suggested, as if we were brainstorming together. “I really have no idea. She was just another character to me.”

  “Do you have the script for this thing?”

  “Oh, there’s no script. It’s still under development.”

  “What’s the name of the company?”

  “There’s not really a company yet. Just some meetings.”

  “You rode the bus all the way out to Llewellyn on the strength of some meetings?”

  “That’s right. I was drawn to the role.”

  “Who was running these meetings?”

  I gave him the names of a couple of producers I was certain would never, ever return his calls. He took a little notebook out of his inside pocket and wrote them down.

  “Why do they want you, if I may ask?”

  “I look like Dumfries—when he was a younger man. They did a look-alike search. Anybody who’s interested in a certain look can search the Guild files for any number of variables, including look-alike. It’s done all the time for biographies, historicals, unless they’ve got the budget for a big name—and then nobody cares what the s
ubject really looked like.”

  “I thought they did all that stuff with effects.”

  “Effects take time if they’re done right. Actors are cheap.”

  Murphy took a glance around at where we were standing. He couldn’t argue with me there.

  “How about James Dumfries? Would you happen to know his present whereabouts?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He opened up his little notebook. “I’ve been checking, naturally. His last known address is what they call a total living facility in Maryland. They specialize in old guys who have a bad habit of wandering off—at least that’s their story. Seems he showed up missing a couple of months ago, and they still can’t find him. Sounds like he snuck out with some help. They believe he’s still alive. All the patients or guests or whatever they are have life monitors, and supposedly his hasn’t checked out yet. What about a Jesse Salvador—you know him?”

  That one was easy. “No. Doesn’t ring any bells.”

  “Maybe he was using another name. It’s been hard to sort out just who he was. He worked at the facility, some kind of shrink supposedly, but all his diplomas are phonies. He disappeared same time as Dumfries—after he’d been having regular sessions with the man for several months. Now he’s turned up dead. Seems he was stuffed into a garbage truck by some ’ware workers around the time he disappeared. Some old buzzard claimed to have seen it happen out his alley window— there’s a bunch of these total living facilities around there—but nobody took him seriously until they heard about Kennemeyer. The investigating officer there gave me a call, asked me if this ’ware killers story was the real thing, and I told him it looked that way to me. They’ve been sifting through the local surveillance as well as the waste disposal company’s database ever since. The workware people too, naturally, have been all over this one. I talked to the officer a little while ago. They recovered the body this morning from a landfill in Charles City, Virginia. I got the exact lot number if you’d like it.”

  He flipped his little notebook closed. “We see everything. We hear everything. We even file our garbage. But most of the time we don’t look, we don’t listen. We don’t know the garbage from the bodies.”

  His anger hung in the air. He wanted to be a good cop, the kind that catches the bad guys and makes the world safe. I knew the playground where he grew up. He must’ve been playing on one in his own head to come up with the good-cop fantasy. I almost felt sorry for him. “What was this phony shrink supposedly treating Dumfries for?”

  He flipped open the notebook. “ ‘Artificial memory,’ they told me, some kind of technique for using ’ware with senile dementia patients to assist their memories. They wouldn’t tell me much. I’m just a dumb cop, you understand. That’s two people dead, Nick. And everywhere I turn, James Dumfries and the fellow who looks just like him keep showing up. Why is that, Nick? What do you know about this? Why is it I get the feeling you’re not being completely straight with me?”

  “Maybe you’re psychic. Ever hear of the Fifth Amendment?”

  “A time or two. We can deal unless you’re the killer.”

  “No we can’t, and you know it. ’Ware killers. Dead spooks in a landfill. It’s too big for you. And even if we could, I don’t want the press.”

  “You’re an actor. I thought you thrived on publicity.”

  “Only the right kind.”

  “You afraid people will find out your real name?” he said casually. “Start that Bright Spot stuff up again?”

  Check. And I was just starting to like the guy. That’s what he was doing following me home. He had hold of an arm to twist now. “You know about that?”

  “It wasn’t that hard to track down—we’ve got our own look-alike searches. Once I thought to search the dead, adjust for age, there you were. Jackson has this theory you killed that other fellow and stole his identity, but he’s not in love with it. I think you paid a guy to fix it for you. If he was a reputable crook, he might’ve even told you it wouldn’t hold up if anybody really started checking, so you should keep your nose clean. I figure you were trying to start over. Is that about right?”

  “Close enough.”

  “You must take this acting thing pretty seriously.”

  “Don’t let it fool you. It’s all an act.”

  He chuckled at that. “Maybe so. But I figure if I lean on you, it might not get me anywhere, so I got no reason to share this information with anyone unless I have to. I’d rather play it nice. Come on. Help me out here. You must have something.”

  “Find Dumfries.”

  “Thanks for nothing. You know anything that can help me find him?”

  “I wish I could help you out. I really do. But I just know history book stuff. I understand he had a wife, kids. Have you tried tracking her down?”

  He searched my eyes. “Oh yes. Wasn’t too hard. She’s still living in the house where she and her husband lived; her family was the one with the money, it seems. Interesting little detail: The house is about a half a mile from where Galatea Ritsa was hit forty years ago—if you can believe what you read in the papers.” Murphy smiled. He’d been waiting to pull that one out of his hat. I take back what I said about cops never learning to act. Murphy must’ve gone to night school.

  “And what does she have to say?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’m riding out there tonight. Say, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you come along? Use some of that charm with the ladies on this old gal? She didn’t sound too cooperative on the phone. If you’re going to play her husband, you must want to talk to her, right? You did say you really wanted to help.”

  Yeah. Right after he let it slip he knew my name. Check and mate. I walked right into that one. But I didn’t want to pass it up either, like a role I had to play. I did want to talk to her. I wanted to talk to her very much. Jimmy’s wife, the woman who never came up once in that diner, oddly enough.

  “Okay, I’ll ride along, but only if you leave Jackson back at the station.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “Yeah, I know. He’s just a cop. We should all try to understand.”

  “Watch yourself.”

  “You keep telling me that. Isn’t that your job, watching all of us, making sure we do right?”

  “Somebody’s got to. See you at six. We can’t be late. The woman tells me she goes to bed at eight.”

  I didn’t want Murphy to see the shoe box, so I left the car sitting there and walked to the house as he drove away. I took the opportunity to freshen up and call Lu at work. While it was ringing, I walked out back with Buck so he could zoom around the tiny yard a few times and freshen up the bushes.

  Wally answered in a talkative mood. The creative juices were flowing, erupting, spewing. He launched into telling me about a new plotline, something he was fond of doing in spite of all my attempts to stop him. He wanted to get the war into it, he said. That was part of Billy and the Big Guy from the beginning—our heroes could show up inexplicably, anytime, anywhere, with Victor and the She-Creature hot on their heels. It might be Mars in the future (Wally found a dog-eared Kim Stanley Robinson paperback at a flea market) or New Orleans in 1812 (he heard Johnny Horton singing in a documentary). Some reviewers thought it was art. It was really just that Wally was nuts. If he wanted something in the show, it went. It didn’t matter whether it made any sense. It didn’t matter what else was going on. Plotlines weren’t resolved in Billy and the Big Guy as much as they gave up and went away. And now it was the war, as only Wally could do it, and he wouldn’t stop telling me about it. I’d stood there too long. Buck was pissed out and was gathering his toys from around the yard, piling them at my feet for a major play session.

  “Wally!” I shouted—cutting through his rambling synopsis involving a rabbi, a tank driver, and some sort of two-hankie deathbed conversion to I’m-not-sure-what religion—“I just wanted to tell you I’ll be there just as soon as I can catch a bus.” I hung up. I felt bad, I really did, but I could’ve been buried
in squeaky toys by the time Wally won the war. It would’ve been better if I’d waited it out and talked to Lu, but she’d understand. She felt the same way: Give me the lines, not the notion. Talk’s not the script. You can’t act talk. There’s this guy, see, doesn’t cut it. Besides, the longer I talked to Wally, the longer it would be before I caught a bus. I scooped up Buck and tossed him on the bed with a couple of toys and told him to knock himself out.

  When I came trotting out to the car, there were three young men gathered around it, discussing its merits.

  “I’m telling you, the security shit’s not turned on,” one of them was observing to another as I came up.

  “Hey, guys. Don’t lean on the car. I’ve got to send it back.”

  “Nick! This is yours?”

  “Just a ride from a nice lady. Pardon me. I need to get something out of it.” I went inside and got the shoe box, punched Return, and closed the door. It warned everyone in a pleasant tone to get the hell out of the way, then shot back to Llewellyn.

  “Aw, man, why’d you have to do that? We could’ve made a deal, Nick. You could’ve played a little scene: ‘Some mean boys beat me up and took your car, nice lady. Come here, baby, and be nice to your poor busted-up man some more!’ ”

  Everybody laughed. This was Vincente—he added that e on the end all by himself—the neighborhood comedian. “Nick, is it true you actors get all the pussy you ever want?”

  “That’s no way to speak of women. And yes, it’s absolutely true.”

  “I guess that’s supposed to make up for being a broke chump all the time, huh?”

  “You got it.”

  André, who was more impressed to have a professional actor in the neighborhood, asked, “Is this the same lady sends that limo around?”

  “No. That was just a gig Lu and I did a few months back.”

  “I thought I seen it a couple times.”

  “You think you see a lot of things,” Vincente remarked. “What’s in the box?” he asked me.

  “Shoes.”

  He smirked at my old shoes. “ ’Bout time.”

  Another cheap laugh. I was tired of playing straight man and took my exit. I stashed the shoe box at the house, walked to the bus stop, and waited a long time for the bus. It was driverless, nearly deserted. I sat in the back with my feet in the aisle.