Wendy Hornsby - Bad Intent

He shrugged, smiled his shark smile. “My stringer must have mentioned it.”

I would have argued, but among the dead pens in the top drawer, right there beside the orthodontist’s bill, was the second notice for payment of Casey’s tuition. So, okay, maybe it was partly a money thing. I signed the release, crammed my copy into the drawer, and pushed Ralph’s copy toward him.

He broke the silence that had settled over the room with a smooth conversational gambit: “Your project sounds like an interesting one.”

I took a couple of deep breaths. “Anything else I can do for you, Ralph?”

“Not professionally.”

When I stood, my standard dismissal gambit, he rose too, unfolding six and a half feet of worn-out skeleton. He was a skinny, aging preppie, his expensive clothes rumpled as if he were forever stuck in rebellion against a too-strict mother. Going about life looking like an unmade bed was perhaps the most endearing quality about Ralph.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked, ejecting his thirty seconds of Etta from the machine and slipping it under his arm. “Want to swap some lies about the old days in prime-time news?”

“Another time. I’m trying to get out of here early. You see the unpacked piles around this office? You should see what Casey and I have to deal with at home.”

“You girls are going to like L.A., Maggie.”

“Maybe it has to grow on you,” I said. I looked out the window, across the dense-packed freeway and toward the hills beyond.

We were in day four of the September Santa Anas, hot, wild winds that blast down through the canyons north of the city. According to the bank across the street, the air temp outside was one hundred and two, again, and the humidity a crackling zero percent. The winds had died down somewhat, enough to let in a puke-yellow layer of smog. I was not enchanted by any of what I saw.

I got up and walked Ralph to the door. I made my cheek available for the obligatory air kiss. This was L.A., after all, and I was trying to fit in. But he grabbed my shoulder in a quick, just-us-jocks squeeze instead.

“Maggie,” he said, grinning again. “A little advice. For anything to grow on you, you have to stand still and let it take root.”

“I’ll remember that.”

Ralph’s a big shit, but he’s far from stupid. I opened the door and listened to him walk away down the linoleum-covered passageway. I was tired of Ralph, but his leaving left me feeling oddly alone.

I made some calls. My second-string shooter, a free-lance cameraman named Thieu, had some scheduling conflicts so I had to set new appointments with a Catholic Social Services counselor for Thursday and a county case worker for Friday to accommodate him. I called Central Juvenile Hall to make sure that everything had been approved for me to come in on Wednesday to talk with Tyrone Harkness.

Finding LaShonda DeBevis was my next priority. I wanted to interview LaShonda DeBevis on tape because she would give symmetry to my documentary. Like Tyrone, she had been raised in the Jordan Downs projects. What made her different was that she had finished school and gotten out. A rare success story.

Mike had told me LaShonda was a librarian in Lennox, a neighborhood down by the L.A. airport. I got the library’s number from information and placed the call.

“LaShonda transferred out,” I was told. “She’s gone up to the Hacienda Heights branch.”

I asked for the number there, and called Hacienda Heights. After some telephone tag, I got to the head librarian, Chuck Kaufmann.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Kaufmann said, talking fast. “We’re in the middle of a remodel. It’s pretty chaotic. Anyway, Miss DeBevis isn’t here.”

“When will she be in?”

“Can’t answer that. When her paperwork came down Friday, it was a surprise to me. With these budget cuts, I was told I had to lay off some staff. Out of nowhere, here was a transfer with less seniority than any of my people. I called downtown and raised some Cain. They backed off and somehow in the fuss they decided to release the funds for the carpet I requested three years ago. That’s what all the noise is you hear. I want to get the new rug nailed down before someone in the head shed changes his mind.”

“So, where is Miss DeBevis?” I asked.

“All I know is my carpet is blue,” he said. “But try Valencia.”

I gave him my number in case he heard from LaShonda, then I tried Valencia. No LaShonda DeBevis. I didn’t have time to call county personnel and go through their procedures. I looked at my schedule and decided I could squeeze in a trip down to Lennox to talk to her former co-workers within the next few days.

There are a lot of Hanna Rhodes stories in the ghetto-drugs, teen pregnancy, prison time-but Mike knew her and insisted she was worth some effort to find. The number he had given me for her grandmother was no longer in service and there was no new listing in the city. I put her name aside. If I had time at the end of the week, I would get back to the search.

There were a lot of other details I could have tended to, but I needed to get out, move around a little.

I gathered up some unedited tapes and a ream of notes, stuck a reminder on the door for the custodian not to clean my office-I would clean, if I wanted clean, myself-and locked my new deadbolt.

There is nothing quite like stepping from an air-conditioned building out into the full force of a true Santa Ana condition. At first there is an instant of chill as every bit of moisture on your body suddenly evaporates. Then comes a wave of heat like a solid white light that envelops you, blinds you, pours into your lungs, and steals your breath. By the time I had crossed fifty feet of shimmering asphalt and made it to my car, I felt thoroughly desiccated. Like bleached bones in the desert.

The free-lancers from the offices across the hall from mine were off in a corner of the lot filming face shots for a political spot; the elections were six weeks away. I recognized the incumbent district attorney, Baron Marovich, scowling his Godam-I-earnest scowl for the camera. He had made it from the brouhaha downtown unscathed, his perfect graying hair unmolested. He didn’t seem to perspire.

I knew the city was in for a nasty campaign siege when I saw who his campaign manager was, a rotund little gnome watching the filming from the driveway. In the world of political whores, Roddy O’Leary was a high-dollar, big-breasted, allnight-whips-and-chains fuck. He had a genius for creating Willie Horton-like nightmares for the opposition, fingering with amazing accuracy exactly what scared the shit out of the largest number of registered voters, and playing on it.

It seemed to me impossible that Roddy O’Leary could have been spawned by woman. More likely, he was the residue left when the air of some smoke-filled room cleared.

O’Leary was watching his candidate with exquisite concentration. I rolled up alongside him, letting my front fender all but kiss his ass. He turned around in shocked surprise and recognized me before he could let off his usual stream of expletives. He backed up and leaned in my window. Sweat poured down his red face, plastered his short-sleeved shirt to his round belly.

“Move it, O’Leary,” I said. “You’re blocking the driveway.” He laughed too hard, showing a lot of tobacco-stained teeth. “What brings you to town, MacGee?”

“The name’s MacGowen,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here. I thought I came down to work, but I’m beginning to think that somewhere along the way I must have sold my soul to the devil, because it feels like I’m in hell.”

“It’s hot,” he confirmed, wiping his face. “But like Truman said…”

“It was good advice,” I said. “Problem is, there’s no way to get out of this kitchen.”