Laugher Page 8

  “What about the Long Walk? The fight. That the local cops were looking for him?”

  He furrowed his brow, “Oh. I forgot to tell them about that. It must have completely slipped my mind, I’ve been so busy. I should call him.”

  “No. Don’t worry. It’s just fine,” I said.

  “Are you working with them on this?”

  “...Sort of.”

  He nodded without really knowing what I meant.

  “May I ask you something in private?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry, I have an appointment at one-fifteen. I’m running late.”

  “It will just be a moment,” I said and he led me into his office. I didn’t sit. He closed the door behind him.

  “I was hoping you could tell me if Mr. Lawson was renting a car.”

  “The detectives asked that very same thing. I gave them all that information. You could speak with him. I’m running late.”

  “Was he, Mr. Brennan?”

  “I’m sorry, detective. I really don’t have time to repeat all this information.” He checked his watch.

  “Just yes or no. Please. Was Mr. Lawson renting a car?”

  He gave an annoyed exhale through his nose. “No. He was not renting a car. And his name does not appear on our valet records.”

  It didn’t surprise me. Lawson wasn’t in on business. He was after something. Or someone.

  “Detective, I really must be going. Please.” He opened the door and I stepped through. He gave me a hurried goodbye and headed down the hall.

  My phone beeped. A text message from Nora: “Where are u?”

  Outside, Nora was standing next to my car with her suitcase.

  “You check out?” I asked. I opened the trunk and put her suitcase in.

  “Yes. Where were you?”

  “Just confirming a suspicion. Did you talk to anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  We got in the car.

  “Lawson wasn’t renting his car.” I said.

  “So he was working for Grossman?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “And he killed Jack.”

  “Slow down,” I said. “We don’t have proof of anything. This is all speculation.”

  We were on the 5 headed south with two hours ahead of us. I told her to reach into the back seat and grab the papers I printed off my computer. The list of Barrys. She scanned through them.

  “I don’t recognize anything,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “There has to be somebody you know named Barry. Or someone Denny told you about.”

  “I don’t know, Marshall!”

  She called me by name. I almost called her Charlotte, but luckily stopped myself before the words broke through.

  “It’s ‘Detective,’” I said. “Call me ‘Detective.’ Please.”

  Her body shrunk a little, sunk into her seat.

  I was frozen for a minute. We were exiting the L.A. county limits into the O.C.

  “Here,” I said handing her my Blackberry. “I want you to start calling the names on this list. Ask for Denny.”

  “What good will that do?”

  “This is all we have to go on right now.”

  “There’s ten pages here. I’m your client, not a secretary.”

  “Then we’ll wait till we get there and knock on every door in San Diego.”

  She gave me a hard look and started dialing. “Hello, may I speak with...” she checked the paper, “...Barry Patrick, please? Is he in? Thank you...Yes, uh, Mr. Patrick, I’m looking for Denny Granger, have you seen him? Denny Granger...Wrong number. I see. Sorry. Yes, thank you.” She hung up. “One down,” she said.

  “Very good,” I said. “You’re a regular Columbo.”

  Eighty minutes and ninety miles later, we were forty down with no luck. My back was aching. The gun was pushing into my hip, but I didn’t want to remove it in front of her.

  “I’m done,” she said. “You’re running low on battery anyway.” She put the phone on the dashboard and leaned her head against the window and stared at the ocean.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after five minutes of nothing but engine purring. “I’m just so worried.”

  “I understand.”

  “What if we don’t find him? What if he’s not even there?”

  I didn’t know how to respond. The way things were looking, she was probably right.

  She leaned her head back against the glass. “Have you ever lost someone?”

  “...Yes.”

  “I don’t know if I could bear it.”

  A few moments after that, she picked up the phone again and continued dialing.

  ------------------------------

  We were almost through Encinidas when she finished a call. “That was the last one,” she said. “Nobody’s heard of him.”

  She handed the phone back to me. I put it in my pocket and she put the papers in the back seat where they were. Next to them was the manila envelope.

  “What’s that?” She said and grabbed it.

  “Oh, um, that’s Denny’s police report. From his arrest eight years ago.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell me you had this?”

  “Didn’t think it was important. There’s nothing unusual about it.”

  She wasn’t listening. It was already open and being read.

  “Your boyfriend’s a pretty tough guy,” I said.

  “Denny told me about him.”

  “Who?”

  “Nathan Roscoe.”

  My head jerked in her direction so fast I almost changed lanes without signaling. “You know him?”

  “Never met him, but I know who he is. He was Denny’s laugher.”

  “What the hell is a laugher?”

  “Comedians use them sometimes. Mostly when they’re still unknown and trying to get the attention of agents and managers. They pay the laugher to come to their shows and laugh at all their jokes, no matter what.”

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “It’s infectious. Even if the jokes aren’t funny, if one person is laughing, it spreads to the rest of the crowd and makes for a better show. Denny had a few of them in New York. Different guys for different clubs.”

  “What did he tell you about Nathan Roscoe?”

  “Denny mentioned him in passing just a few times. Said he betrayed him on the night of a big show. Maybe that’s what this was about.” She put the report back in the envelope.

  A realization burst into my head with a battering ram. I changed lanes so fast it was almost involuntary, and cut off an SUV to barely make it off the exit.

  “Jesus! What the hell are you doing?!” she said.

  I pulled off the ramp and into a gas station.

  “You still have half a tank,” she said.

  “Do you have a pen?” I asked, reaching into my jacket.

  “What for?”

  “I need a pen!” Nora grabbed her purse off the floor and set it on her lap. Then opened it and started searching.

  I dug out the business card that was in Silvio’s mouth, took it out of the bag and smoothed it out on the wheel. Nora handed me a pen and I started writing.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Look at this...”

  I handed the card to her: N a t h a n R o s c o e.

  “Oh my God...” she said.

  “Whoever killed Silvio didn’t want anyone to find this. Do you have reception on your iPhone out here? You have internet access?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I need you to plug Nathan Roscoe into a search and tell me what comes up.”

  Instead, she placed her thumb and index finger on either side of the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes tight like she had a bad headache.

  “What’s wrong?”

  No answer.

  “Miss Massey?”

  “I just want to find Denny and go home.” Her voice trembled as the words
leaked out.

  “I’m working on it. But I need you to help me.”

  She didn’t move for a minute. Then she opened her eyes and took a deep breath. Tears were forming on the edges, but she held it together. “Okay.”

  “Okay...Can you please search Roscoe’s name on your phone?”

  She did. Her voice came back to normal.

  “...Nathan Roscoe...Facebook page, LinkedIn page...”

  “Check his LinkedIn page.”

  “It’s the wrong one. This guy’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma.” She continued scrolling through, her delicate index finger lightly flicking the iPhone screen. “Wait...”

  She grabbed the card off the dash and examined it. Then looked back at the screen. “This is it. Nathan Roscoe. Angel City Bank and Trust. This is their website.”

  She handed the phone to me. The building with wings was the logo for the bank. The page displayed Roscoe’s picture and short biography.

  “He’s a leasing officer,” I said. “But he’s back in L.A. Shit.”

  “You’re not turning around, are you?”

  “...No. No.”

  “Denny said he was in San Diego.”

  “I know.”

  I put the card away, but not before writing Roscoe’s phone number and extension on it, then turned the engine and pulled out and got back on the freeway. San Diego wasn’t far off. The skyline showed through ocean mist.

  Chapter 8

  Traffic was heavier than I anticipated. We didn’t get in till quarter after four.

  “You hungry?” I asked.

  “I suppose.”

  I pulled into a garage near the Gaslight district. There was a small Chinese place on Market Street. Synthetic tapestries hung on the orange walls. We missed the lunch rush so there wasn’t a wait. The hostess sat us in a booth near the bar and put down a pitcher of water and two glasses. When the waitress came, I ordered sesame chicken. Nora got a side salad and a bloody Mary. She sat in silence, staring straight down into her lap like a kid whose been put in time out.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t look up. Her brow was furrowed and her face was so still it made me wonder whether she was angry or puzzled. Probably both.

  “Did Denny ever perform down here?” I asked.

  “Sorry?” I must have broken her trance.

  “I said has Denny ever performed down here? Are there clubs?”

  “Oh. Um, yes, there are clubs. Umm...I’ve never booked Denny anywhere here, but he was a traveling performer before I signed him.”

  The waitress dropped off the salad and her drink. Nora immediately took a swig and started eating, then stopped when she realized I hadn’t gotten mine.

  “Go ahead,” I said. She did. “Where at? Which clubs?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not familiar with the scene here.”

  “That’s where we should start. If he has connections, they’re most likely through his work.”

  She nodded. The waitress came back with my chicken. I used a fork because I never could get the chopsticks thing down right. We ate without much to say.

  Nora turned to her purse next to her on the bench. She unzipped a side pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “Here,” she said. “I insist.”

  I wiped my sesame seed mouth with the napkin and took the paper. It was a check for a thousand dollars.

  “I told you this wasn’t necessary.” I extended my arm to give it back to her.

  “And I told you to call me Nora.”

  She wouldn’t accept it.

  “Nora...” I said, “Please take it.”

  Her arms were folded like a stern schoolmaster.

  “I’m still on Slavas’ retainer,” I said.

  “And now you’re on mine. I’m officially your client now.”

  I dropped the check on her side of the table.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  “Let’s just say I could use the karma.”

  She sat forward, looking at me with twisted eyes.

  “Trouble at home?” she said. “With the wife?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  The burning in my stomach came back. I looked down at my plate and kept eating. “You can pay me if we find Denny.”

  Wrong choice of words. Her eyes morphed from twisted to razor sharp. She snapped up the check, slipped it back into her purse. “When. When we find him.”

  I nodded.

  After the meal, Nora stood outside and made a phone call. She had already made what seemed like twenty calls to Denny’s phone that day, to no avail, but now she was talking to her office in New York. Before leaving, I asked the hostess where the nearest comedy club was. She told me about the Off-Broadway Improv on 10th Ave and G Street.

  A gust of wind blew open my jacket as I stepped outside. I preferred to keep the gun on my hip a secret from Nora, but she caught a flash of it, and her face turned gaunt.

  “Just in case,” I said and buttoned my jacket. She didn’t say anything and we headed down the sidewalk. The place was only three blocks away so we decided to walk.

  “I’m going back to New York tomorrow,” she said.

  “That soon?”

  “I have to. My clients need me.”

  “What about your fiancé?”

  “We’ll find him.”

  “By tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what if we don’t?”

  “We will.”

  “That’s not what I asked you. I asked what if we don’t.”

  She stopped and turned to me. “Denny is here. And he’s going back with me.” Her certainty concerned me. It seemed not to come from a place of faith, or hope, but knowledge. As if the outcome was inevitable and she was just going through the motions. She continued on while I stuck a cigarette in my mouth and felt another chilly gust of sea wind.

  -------------------------------

  “I’m sorry, but there’s no Denny Granger here. Nobody performing, nobody on the reservations.” She was a hard-spoken Mexican girl in her mid-twenties with a slight accent.

  I was standing at the box office just inside the main doors of the Off-Broadway Improv. Nora was against the wall behind me. “What about someone named Barry?” I said.

  “Barry who?”

  “Barry anybody. Could be first name or last.”

  “Sir...”

  Before she could protest any further, I held my license up to the window. “This is important,” I said.

  Maybe it was the words “Private Investigator” that jolted her, but I think it was the bad picture of me. Whatever it was, it made her start cooperating. “Just a minute,” she said.

  “Gracias.”

  She was typing into the computer. Nora crossed up and stood next to me. “These are all the comedy clubs in San Diego.” She held up her iPhone with search results on it. I nodded.

  The girl looked back at me. “Nobody named Barry has a reservation tonight.”

  Nora went to the door and left in a hurry, eager to move on to the next place. “Thank you,” I said and followed her out.

  We walked back to the car outside the restaurant. The sun was starting to set. A tanker’s horn blew as it set out from port and into the open ocean.

  There were five results that came up on her phone. The next closest place was called The Attic.

  And that’s exactly what it was. The ground level of the building on Island Avenue was a grocery. On the side was a neon sign pointing to a flight of stairs leading upwards.

  This place was much more claustrophobic. Their shows started early and the crowd had already arrived. I felt like the last bit of toothpaste being squeezed from the tube as I made my way through the halls.

  “Over here,” said Nora. She was behind me, pointing to a white board just outside the showroom, which looked similar to The Chuckle Hut except this place had customers.

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