Tyler began to get his breath back. He crawled over to one of the walls and rested his back against it, regaining his composure a bit.
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“For a while,” Tyler said, “he never went anywhere interesting. He’d go to work, then go home, just like the rest of the world.”
Tyler had calmed down. Having been pressed to the edge of death, he was able to speak with clarity and hon-esty.
“But I followed him anyway. I’d sit there, outside his office. It was pathetic. Then once, on the weekend, I saw him drive out of his house alone and go downtown. And I tailed him, of course. He went to this karate studio. It was one of those studios that sits in, like, a strip mall. A strange little place. I was a couple blocks away, parked, but I saw him go in.”
Tremaine said, “What, he was taking karate lessons?”
“That’s what I thought. But when he walked in, he wasn’t wearing a karate uniform. And there were no other students showing up. I guess he could have changed and showered in there, and taken a private lesson or something, but this place was a little dump. It seemed weird. So the next weekend, I went down to the studio by myself, just to check it out. I made sure to go at the same time he had gone. This time I parked in the strip mall. I walked in, and there was no one around. Then, this guy comes up to me, the owner I guess, and says, ‘Can I help you?’ I said, ‘I hope so.’ Then he said, ‘Do you want a karate lesson?’ And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘Then what do you want?’ And I just looked at him. And he looked at me. Then he said, ‘Do you have a card?’ And I gave him one. And he called my office, talked to my assistant and didn’t leave a message. I figured later he was checking to see if I was a cop. Then he said, ‘The show’s five hundred bucks.’ I paid him and he 178
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took me into a room in the back. I sat down, the room was pretty nice, and there was a stage in front of the chair I was in. A few minutes later, a stripper walked in and started to dance, taking off her clothes, writhing around, the whole deal. And then . . . and then a man walked in. And . . . and he stripped, too. And . . . screwed her, fucked her, right there on the stage. And I watched. It was a live sex show.”
Tremaine and Marvin were looking down at Tyler Wilkes. Tremaine, for the first time, fully believed something coming out of the mouth of this guy.
Tyler continued. “I quit following him after that. I’m not exactly sure why, but I quit. But I never told anyone.
What’s weirder, Roger Gale going to a sex show or me following him to a sex show?”
With Marvin Kearns in back, Tremaine drove Tyler Wilkes back to Think Big Advertising. The three rode the majority of the way in silence. Tremaine asked Tyler exactly where the karate place was and Tyler told him, but, mostly, the three men sat in silence. It was just the wind coming through the windows and the noise from the street.
As Tremaine pulled into Think Big, he said, “Paul Spinelli never wants to hear about any of this. It didn’t happen.
Understand?”
Tyler Wilkes, calm now, said, “What do Paul Spinelli and Roger Gale have to do with each other?”
Nothing. Tremaine knew that. He looked at Tyler. He didn’t answer his question, he just looked at him. Right at him.
Tyler held up his hands and said, “I don’t know and I don’t care and I’ll never even think about it much less talk about it.”
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Tremaine nodded. Tyler got out of the car and slowly walked toward the entrance to his ad agency.
Tremaine and Marvin watched him and Marvin said,
“Did you get the information you needed?”
“Yeah, that guy had nothing to do with Roger Gale’s murder. He’s no longer a suspect.”
Marvin got in front, then Tremaine threw the Cutlass in drive, and headed back to the trailer park.
“Your performance was nothing short of stellar, by the way,” Tremaine said.
“Thank you.”
“And, just so you know, when Spinelli goes to redeem his gift certificate, he’ll be treated well and told that Herman, who has long since sold his stake in the place, had to go back to New York to take care of his mother.”
“An admirable thing to do.”
“I thought so.”
Tremaine reached in the glove for a smoke. Marvin said,
“I think I’ll join you in one.”
“Every now and then they aren’t so bad.”
They dropped down to the PCH, smokes in their mouths, both enjoying the familiar, nostalgic feeling that they were headed back to Malibu.
“Oh, and Tyler Wilkes?” Tremaine said. “You have nothing to worry about. He’ll never say a word to Paul Spinelli.”
“I know,” Marvin said, and he blew out a plume of smoke that, in an instant, got sucked out the open front window of the Cutlass.
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Tremaine was on his way down to the karate place. It was gray out, a rarity in L.A., a nice change. He was on Olympic, taking it all the way downtown, through Westwood, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, and Hancock Park. He was seeing myriad sections of the city and never going left or right. Just straight, due east, away from the beach.
He thought about what he knew. Was it more or was it less? Was the whole reason Roger Gale had pulled the Wendy Leahy ruse just to keep his wife from knowing about a stupid sex show? Tremaine knew, from the in-ception of his research on the guy, that Roger Gale had no problem going out of his way to mold the way people thought—about him, his company, his ideas. His work stint in a plant in Detroit proved that. But paying a woman Michael Craven
to pretend she was having an affair with him? Would he go that far just to hide the fact that he liked to go watch people have sex? At the end of the day, that’s not that big of a deal.
Real-life porn, that’s it. And it couldn’t have been that hard to sneak downtown every so often. The guy, according to everyone he’d talked to, was always on the move. No one would notice. So why get Wendy Leahy involved? Why go to those lengths?
And why was his wife so convinced he was having an affair in the first place? Where was the intellectual, adult relationship Evelyn Gale had referred to?
We go to plays
and talk about books and ideas
. . . Hiring a P.I. to follow around your husband? That’s more like soap-opera love.
Did Evelyn get paranoid just because of a trip or two downtown for a little live smut? Or was Gale doing something else, something even Tyler didn’t know about?
Tremaine thought, that’s the question. What was Roger Gale’s motive for paying Wendy Leahy to help facilitate that illusion? Tremaine understood the psychology of it.
Admit it, really admit it, and his wife would be off his back so he could do what he wanted. Go downtown at his lei-sure, whatever. But again, why go to those lengths? Why was it so important that his wife not know what he was up to?
Or maybe, maybe, it was just as it seemed. Roger Gale wanted freedom from his wife’s suspicions, for whatever insignificant thing he was up to, so he got her off his back.
In his own crazy style. The guy was a professional manipulator. That’s what he did for a living. Better than anyone in the world. So he figured out a way to manipulate his wife’s thinking, and he executed it. In an extremely high-concept 182
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way. And the five grand he gave to Wendy? That was nothing to Roger Gale. Yeah, Tremaine thought, maybe it was just another campaign for him. Another dramatic form of manipulation. And, in his stellar style, it worked.
Downtown L.A., some skyscrapers and a thriving business community during the week, but a world apart from Beverly Hills and Hollywood and Malibu and Santa Monica. No glitz, no flash, but a nobility that’s palpable.
Old buildings mixed in with the skyscrapers, locals crawling the streets who lived there, who worked there, who weren’t a part of the stereotypical L.A. Tremaine liked it down here, resented that this part of the city played stepchild to the famous and fancy sections.
Tremaine weaved his way through the streets, looking at the shops and the buildings, soaking in this forgotten and unappreciated part of town. He got to Seventh Street and went left, west for a few blocks, back toward the beach.
The buildings began to shrink around him, he was nearing the outskirts of downtown proper. And there was the little strip mall, right on the corner of Seventh and Coronado, right where Tyler said it was.
The strip mall took up the whole corner of the block. It was comprised of five or six random little establishments and the karate studio with its façade that said Karate Studio, right there in the middle. There was a sushi joint in the corner space of the strip mall, and next to it sat a sad little store that sold nothing but lightbulbs. It was called Just Lightbulbs. There was also a barber shop, an old one, run-down, sad-looking. Flanking the karate studio, there was an aquarium and reptile place on the left, Underwater World, and a wig store on the right, Expert Wigs.
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Tremaine thought, maybe I’ll pick up an iguana for Lyle to pal around with. The bulldog and the lizard. He could ride around on Lyle’s back. No, Lyle wouldn’t like that . . .
Tremaine parked the Cutlass in the strip mall’s little lot and sat in it thinking about what to do. He pulled out a Marlboro, lit it, smoked it. He looked at the karate studio.
Bright lights, mirrors on the walls, but no action going on inside.
Tremaine got out of the Cutlass and walked in.
He stood inside, alone, looking around. It was pretty small, just one big room with wooden floors, mirrors everywhere, and bright, bright lights. There was a door in the back of the room that presumably led to a back section of the studio. Tremaine was staring at the door as it opened.
A black man in a karate uniform walked out of the back.
“Can I help you?” he said.
It was the same thing he had said to Tyler, and to Roger Gale, probably, too. The man in front of Tremaine looked dangerous. Had a look in his eye, a glimmer, that Tremaine suspected he could use to be charming or mean as shit.
Tremaine smiled and said, “Man, is there a bathroom I could use here?”
“Only for students.”
The two of them stood there looking at each other. Out of the corners of his eyes, Tremaine could see a million versions of himself and the black man in the ubiquitous mirrors.
“I’m in a jam,” Tremaine said. “Too much coffee. Please.
I just have to take a piss. I already tried the aquarium place next door, they said no.”
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The man laughed and said, “All right, man. I’ll show you where it is.”
He led Tremaine to the door he had come out of at the back of the studio. He opened it and led Tremaine in, following closely behind him. Once behind the door, Tremaine could see a hallway, a long hallway, with several doors on the right-hand side, maybe four, and two doors on the left. It was clean and kind of nice-looking. Freshly painted white walls, no dirt anywhere, and blond hardwood floors just like up-front.
The guy led Tremaine to the first door on the left, still standing close, right there, and said, “This is the bathroom.”
Tremaine thought, he could have stayed up-front and said, “The bathroom’s the first door on the left,” and let me find it on my own. But he didn’t. He led me back here personally. Maybe he didn’t want me to go in the wrong door . . .
Tremaine went in the bathroom and the man stood outside, watching him as he went in.
The bathroom was also clean and nice. Tremaine made sure to actually use the bathroom, as he was sure the man was standing outside, right outside. After Tremaine flushed, but before he washed his hands, he heard, through the wall, what sounded like a woman laughing. Had to be coming from the other room on the left, adjacent to the bathroom, not any of the rooms on the right.
Tremaine washed his hands, dried them, then walked out of the bathroom, and there was the guy, waiting for him. Looking right at him, that glimmer holding firm in his eyes.
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“You’re a lifesaver,” Tremaine said.
“Been there.”
The guy motioned for Tremaine to lead the way out, back to the front of the studio, and Tremaine did, walking straight out, not even looking to the left at the four closed doors.
And there they were again, the two of them, standing face to face in the front of the studio, their reflections all over the place. Tremaine thought, how does this guy fit in to my puzzle? And then he thought, should I ask him about Tyler Wilkes, about Roger Gale? Tremaine looked at the guy. Intense, but calm. No, this one’s not the person to ask.
Tremaine said, “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”
The guy looked at him and nodded. Before heading for the door, Tremaine took one last look at the guy standing there, his black skin contrasting with the white cloth of the karate uniform. Tremaine looked in the man’s glimmering eyes for just a moment, and, in that moment, he could see charm, suspicion, and evil.
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Tremaine left the strip mall and drove two miles west, back toward the beach. Then he turned the Cutlass right, back on Olympic now, then right again, back toward downtown, back toward the karate studio. But this time he approached it from the back side, north of Seventh Street, from behind the strip mall. He pulled the Cutlass into the alley behind the stores in the mall, where the employees of the aquarium store, the wig store, the karate studio, the sushi restaurant, and the barber shop parked. He then went left down an alley that ran perpendicular to the one he was on, did a U-turn, and tucked the Cutlass behind a four-foot brick wall, facing the alley behind the strip mall.
He sat in the car and waited.
Dusk fell, then night. Six smokes and side one of the Allman Brothers
Live at Fillmore East
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Michael Craven
He watched various people from the various establishments head out into the alley and get in their cars and leave for the day. Mostly people he didn’t recognize, and then one guy he did. The black guy from the karate studio. Tremaine watched the guy get in his car, a Corvette, a new one, and cruise down the alley, away from him. Then the Corvette went left, away from Seventh, and was gone.