Chapter 2
Orange and red streaked the sky as the sun shimmered through the smog layer that hung across Los Angeles like a beige blanket, a perennial part of life in the big city, as tenacious as a divorce lawyer and equally pleasant. The storm had blown through and exhausted itself the prior night, and not a cloud now marred the balmy spring day.
A convertible white 1973 Cadillac Eldorado, the top down, growled its way through traffic on the gridlocked streets leading into downtown, consuming enough gas to power a cruise ship, its red leather upholstery faded from the years but still garish enough to turn heads. AC/DC blared from the crackling speakers, the singer's shrieking caterwauling a lewd promise over the driving guitars and thumping drums, drawing stares from a few of the surrounding cars' occupants - those not on the phone making deals or excuses or promises they had no intentions of keeping.
The light on La Cienega turned red and the big car rolled to a stop as Artemus Black punched the button on his cell phone and listened to the warbling ring on his earpiece. He was running late, and hoped that his office manager, Roxie, had made it in before him - he hated to set a poor example by being tardy, but hadn't accounted for the pileup that had put a twenty-minute dent into his well-oiled plans.
He considered his reflection in the rearview mirror as he waited for her to pick up, noting that his gleaming black hair, cut like mid-career Elvis, could use a trim. His piercing blue eyes radiated intelligence and a sincerity he rarely felt, although he would certainly pretend to care if he thought it was important to a case or could gain him an advantage. And he looked sharp in his choice of lightweight gray vintage-cut suit - very Bogey, he thought with satisfaction, straightening the skinny oxblood tie, also vintage, and in keeping with his preferred style of Elmore Leonard-era noir. At least that was his perception.
"Black Investigations - er, crap, I mean, Solutions. Black Solutions. May I help you?" Roxie answered on the fifth ring, sounding frazzled.
"Nice. Very professional, Roxie," Black chided. The name change had been his latest idea for increasing business and being able to charge more per hour. Investigations sounded lower-end, whereas Solutions...well, who wouldn't pay a few bucks more for a solution to their problem, whatever it was? It had come to him about midway through a self-help and motivational program he'd been listening to, taught by a self-declared success guru and celebrity flim-flam seminar speaker whose claim to fame was hosting fire-walk programs and group stadium gropes of orgiastic affirmation.
"Whatever. It's a stupid name. I don't see what was wrong with the old one," Roxie responded.
"It didn't reflect our scope."
"What does that even mean?"
Black had been working with Roxie on improving her attitude, but some days it seemed like a losing battle. It was a pity she was so good at what she did - running the office, juggling administrative duties and research that made the FBI look like neophytes.
"It means I think we can improve our brand, Roxie."
"Our...brand. I see. Have you been drinking?"
"Branding is very important."
"Maybe if you're a cowboy or a steer. Wait - did you mix up your meds again?" Roxie asked.
"Please at least try to answer the phone professionally. Is that too much?"
"I don't know. I'm getting confused about our brand. Are we not a private detective agency named after that Brad Pitt movie?"
"We're a solutions enterprise group. We provide security and investigation solutions. Brad Pitt has nothing to do with it."
"And here I was sticking around because I thought I had a chance at him. I hear he likes to smoky-smoky. Angelina goes berserk on his ass because all he wants to do is party hearty."
"I could pretend I have any idea what you're talking about, but I know better."
"What's that noise? A leaf blower? Seagull fight?"
Black turned down the stereo. "There. Better?"
"Are we at the part where you tell me what you want?"
"I wanted to let you know there was an accident en route."
"En route? So we're going to start speaking French to each other now? Like some kind of Euro-trash secret agent code?"
"A fender bender. I'll be a little late."
"I'll alert the media."
"Is that your subtle way of telling me there are no calls?"
"Oh, wait," Roxie said, her voice quickening with excitement, before returning to her usual dry delivery. "Hmm. Never mind. No, no calls. Does that mean I won't get paid this week? I'm starting to worry now that Brad's off the table."
"Brad was never on the table. Come on, Roxie, I've never stiffed you. Relax. Money's in the bank."
"I do the books, remember? The account's emptier than a Kardashian's head."
"Don't worry about it. Something will come up. It always does. I haven't let you down yet."
Roxie let out an exasperated sigh. "Was there something else, Mister En Route Solutions?"
"No, I just wanted to let you know I'd be in soon."
"Did you quit smoking?" she asked, skepticism dripping from every syllable. "Wasn't this the weekend you were going to?"
"Soon. Roxie, why do you always bust my chops? Why can't we ever have a simple, normal interaction?"
"Besides that you're delusional and have a Bogart fetish, you mean?"
"See? That's what I'm talking about. You can never stay on track."
"Hold on. The other line's ringing," she said.
"No, it isn't. I don't hear anything."
"Hmm. Maybe it's going to. I've been thinking I might be psychic."
"You aren't psychic. There's no such thing."
"I so totally knew you were going to say that." Roxie paused dramatically. "Is there anything else?"
"I don't suppose there's any way I could get you to make some coffee, is there?"
"You know I don't drink coffee. It's poison."
"I was thinking more for me, Roxie."
"It's poison for you, too."
"Roxie. Please?"
"Starbucks is just around the corner. Oh, here comes the call!"
"Do you not realize I can hear everything, including that the phone isn't ringing?"
"Pick me up a vente chai."
The line went dead, and Black shook his head as if to clear it. Roxie was brilliant, but hard to deal with when she got her back up, which was early and often. An aspiring singer in an indie art rock band, her instinct was to flout authority, which he more than understood from his youth - but it wasn't so great when it was his ass getting flouted. The problem was that she ran his company, so he had to suck it up and take whatever she was dishing out. Which, today, appeared to be a heaping helping of screw with Black. A regular menu item with her.
A lowered BMW seven-series sedan eased up beside him at the next light. The tinted windows rolled down, revealing three laughing homeboys whose gangsta rap was vibrating the street. Black looked over at them and nodded, and they exploded in peals of mockery at his flimsy white-boy suburban cool. He was afraid it was going to escalate until a motorcycle cop pulled to the crosswalk between them. The BMW's windows whined closed and the music dropped to earthquake level, and the impassive policeman eyed the big sedan without comment before turning to glance at Black's pimpmobile. Black tried his nod again, and the cop shook his head disgustedly before gunning the throttle and pulling away as the light changed. Black wasn't sure which was worse - being dissed by the homeboys or the five-oh. Obviously, L.A. was a town singularly lacking in good taste.
Then again, it always had been. He still remembered moving here over twenty years ago, fresh out of the army, having exchanged his M16 rifle for a Gibson Les Paul guitar, determined to make a splash in the music scene and become a star. Seven months of living at home with his crazy parents after his discharge had been enough to drive him three hundred and fifty miles south of Berkeley, California, to Hollywood, where the music scene was happening and vital, and miracles could occur seemingly overnight. Guns N' Roses had broken big the year before, and the whole Seattle grunge thing hadn't really caught on yet, so if you were a rock guitarist with aspirations of hitting it big, Los Angeles was the epicenter of the music industry.
Black goosed the gas and lurched forward, enjoying the feel of the hazy sun on his skin. It seemed like only yesterday he'd rented the fleabag apartment three blocks off the Sunset strip, relieved to be free of his parents' nutty ideas and hippy lifestyle. They'd already done enough damage to his psyche, starting with his name: Artemus, an idiotic homage to a crappy seventies-era TV show - The Wild Wild West - whose number two character, Artemus Gordon, had somehow cut through his father's drug fog around the time of Black's birth and seemed like a brilliant namesake for his only son.
He hadn't even named Black after the star of the show. No, that would have been too fortunate. His moniker was drawn from the little weasel guy who dressed up in funny costumes every week while the star, James West, kicked serious ass and took names. So instead of James Black, he was Artemus. A name he despised, as he had since he'd been old enough to realize how badly screwed he'd gotten in the name department. His parents had neglected to give him a middle name, so as soon as he hit his teens, he took the one he wished he'd been given, and went by James, shortened by his friends to Jim.
Black swung onto Pico and nosed the Cadillac east toward his office, the recollections infuriating him even twenty-plus years later. He took a few deep, calming breaths, as he'd been counseled to do by Dr. Kelso, his therapist, and willed the agitation away. An old woman in a Camaro almost sideswiped him when she pulled from the curb without looking, and he flipped her off while standing on his horn. He knew it was childish, but he felt strangely better.
Black circled his block, looking for a parking space, and cursed his circumstances for the thousandth time. Living in an apartment that was only slightly nicer than the one he'd had when he hit town, perpetually on the financial rocks, making it job-to-job with no consistency to any of it. Anyone else might have turned to introspection, but the only thing that bubbled to Black's surface was more rage - at being thoroughly boned by the cosmic powers that be, butt-rammed at whim by a bombastic deity who'd singled him out for persecution, raising him up just enough to give him hope for the future and then slamming him to the canvas, crushing his dreams, leaving him empty and broken inside.
At least my positive thinking tapes are paying dividends, he thought morosely. Then again, it was easy for his doctor to counsel harmony. He hadn't written an album of hit songs, met the love of his life - who also had pipes like Joplin and the sex appeal of Shakira - and then been screwed out of both at the last minute, just as things were taking off, preparing for a world tour opening for Nirvana to support the release of the record that would go on to become one of the biggest sellers of the nineties. Easy for his quack to say, "Take a few deep breaths" and dismiss his rage as a personal failing. He hadn't climbed to the top of the mountain only to be thrown off its sheerest face.
A spot opened up on his right and he signaled as he slowed, earning an angry honk from the car behind him. Black offered another middle finger and then swung into the space, all thoughts of his past banished in favor of controlling his focus, just as his MP3s soothingly advised. He was a winner. Everything leading up to this point had made him one. It was his time now. He was master of his destiny and everything was possible, each new day the start of a powerful, compelling beginning.
A tidy enough mantra, indeed, though with a delicate hint of pure BS, he decided as he shut off the engine. But it was all he had. That, cigarettes he had to quit smoking soon, and anger. Always anger, as familiar to him as his favorite underwear.
Succumbing to his base motivations, he cracked the glove compartment open and extracted a hard pack of Marlboro reds, and after a moment's hesitation, withdrew one and lit it with the car lighter. Black greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs, despising his weakness even as the rush of nicotine into his constricting vascular system dampened his annoyance at the world, if only momentarily. The cigarette didn't last long, and he considered having another one, then checked the time and swore under his breath.
When he pushed through the door to his "suite," as the small antechamber and postage stamp office was referred to by the landlord, Roxie was on the line with someone. She glowered at him as he inched past her desk, which faced the dilapidated black faux-leather couch he'd bought from the prior occupant for a hundred bucks. He pretended not to notice her disapproving gaze and ignored the fact that, even though he'd asked her a hundred times to dress appropriately, she was again wearing a tight ebony concert T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, the better to display her tattooed arms. She brushed an errant dyed black lock aside and put the call on hold.
"About time. Where's the chai?"
"Damn. I forgot. Running too far behind. Who are you talking to?"
"A potential client. Says she knows you."
A furry, rotund form approached from beneath her desk and rubbed against his leg before stalking away, leaving a trail of cat hair on his suit trousers, which drove him nuts. Mugsy was a stray that had figured Black for a soft touch the day after he'd moved in, and had promptly taken up residence in the office, doted upon and spoiled rotten by Roxie, whom he adored.
"Really? Who?"
"Have you been smoking? You smell like a big fleshy ashtray."
"I resent the fleshy crack. Uncalled for."
"If it fits, own it."
"Who's the client, Roxie?" Black tried again.
"Crap. I could think better if I had a refreshing chai in front of me. I get all forgetful if I don't have my fix."
"Roxie. Who?"
"Says her name's Colleen. Sounds kind of whack. A little loco, if you know what I mean."
Black searched his memory banks. "Colleen Fleishman?"
"That's it. She wants to talk to you. Line one." Mugsy resumed his position under Roxie's desk after gracing Black with a wide-mouthed yawn and a look of complete disdain.
"What did you two talk about?" Black asked as he moved into his office and plopped down into his worn executive chair.
"She wanted my advice on currency hedge derivative contracts. What do you think we talked about? Ask her yourself," Roxie said with an exaggerated eye roll and her trademark sneer, then turned to face the sofa again, her part in the discussion at an end, annoyed because he'd forgotten her drink.
Black hit the call button and lifted the handset to his ear. Colleen was a friend from way back, although he hadn't talked to her in months...no, make that years. At one time she'd been a heavy hitter gossip columnist, but the business hadn't been kind to her of late, and as the industry had shifted from paper to online, she'd fallen on hard times. But she still knew a lot of people. A lot.
"Black Solutions, may I help you?"
"Solutions? What the hell does that mean?"
"Colleen?"
"Maybe I should say, Colleen Solutions?"
"Colleen. Nice to hear from you. Been a while."
"Your receptionist is a hoot. You banging her?"
"Colleen. Come on. I'm not going to dignify that with a reply. Really."
"You should never bang the help. That's a good rule to live by."
"Thanks for the tip. You should write greeting cards - you have a gift. But concern over my love life aside, what's up? Everything okay?"
"With me? Never better. I can't get anyone in this stinking berg to answer my calls, but other than that, can't complain."
"I answered."
"I meant anyone that mattered."
Black was beginning to wonder whether he was wearing his "I'm an asshole" shirt today, or if perhaps this was the new normal for his interactions with the opposite sex.
Colleen's tone softened. "Sweetie, it was a little joke, okay? You know I love you. I'm just bitter because you won't jump my bones. Probably worn out from your twenty-something hottie answering the phone, am I right? Men are all pigs."
"Maybe you could do fortune cookies, too. Greeting cards and fortune cookies. We'll be rich," he said, and then tried one more run at it. "What can I do for you today, Colleen? I'm kind of busy..."
"Yeah, your receptionist told me. Sounds like LAX over there. You've got a lot on your plate."
He waited a beat, refusing to be drawn in. He knew her, and he knew that she'd get to her point when she was good and ready. This was all just foreplay.
"But assuming you can push all the other big 'solutions' cases aside, I think I've got one that will pay the light bill for you. Maybe even get you a new suit."
He stopped scanning his emails and leaned back in his chair, his interest piqued. "Really? You know what a clothes horse I am. I have expensive tastes."
"It's all that retro junk you wear. You should dress like an adult."
"Again, your counsel is priceless. I'm making notes. But you mentioned a case?"
"I did. It's a friend of mine. A bigwig who's got a problem. I was trying to get some dirt about his next movie, and he let slip that he's in big trouble. So I suggested he talk to someone who's a professional. That would be you, by the way."
"A bigwig? Those are my people. Who is it, and what's the problem?"
"Not so fast. This will go a lot easier if you come out to my place. I can walk you through it. Won't take too long. Besides which, I haven't seen you for all kinds of forever."
Black groaned inwardly and then glanced at the big pile of nothing on his desk. Colleen lived in a mobile home off the highway that stretched like a ribbon through Riverside to Palm Springs and beyond. If he was lucky he could get there in forty minutes, now that rush hour was over.
"All right. You sold me. Give me the address and directions again. It's been a while. I can probably move some things around and make it out there in an hour or so."
"Yeah, Roxie felt you might be able to. She's a firecracker, isn't she?"
Black eyed her in the other room, now texting someone on her cell phone, swinging one black denim-clad leg slowly as she hummed to herself.
"That's the understatement of the year."