Still Lives(52)

“Nice place,” he says in an unreadable tone.

“I’m lucky to have an office.” I fumble for things to say. “They almost put me in a cube.”

Hendricks’s roving eyes finally stop on a little Zen garden that’s gathering dust on my sill. The square wood frame holds sand and pebbles; a black rake perches on the corner.

“Yours?” he says.

I nod. My brother John gave the Zen garden to me as a joke when I told him I was moving to California. “If you rake the sand, it’s supposed to make you feel peaceful,” I say. “I keep it because the rocks are the only things in L.A. that remind me of my childhood creek.” I hesitate, then add, “I grew up in the mountains.” Too, I add mentally. I grew up in the mountains, too.

Hendricks listens to all this with his head angled, as if he can’t quite understand my English, and then nods.

“Try it if you want,” I say.

To my surprise, he lifts the Zen garden down to my desk and starts combing.

“I told everything I knew to Detective Ruiz,” I say.

The rake makes gentle scratching sounds. “I don’t work for the police. I work for Janis Rocque,” he says. He piles all the rocks but one in a corner. Then he combs the sand so that it radiates out from the pile, like ripples in a pond. Finally, he puts the lone stone across the garden and presses it deeply down; the flowing sand almost drowns it. “She’s an inquisitive woman,” he adds.

I peer at his work, surprised at how he made the crude materials so expressive. “I like the splash.”

Hendricks sets the rake down on the frame’s corner.

“What does Janis Rocque want to know about me?” I ask.

“She doesn’t want to know anything about you.” Hendricks raises his head, and for the first time his sleepy guardedness is gone and I see a different man, blinking at me, the way people look when they emerge from water. It’s so shocking to see his direct gaze that it momentarily steals my breath.

“Cases like this …” He pauses as if steeling himself for what he has to utter next. “There’s often collateral damage. Sometimes, people get hurt who shouldn’t. People like you.” His blue eyes lock on mine. “I just want you to understand that you can call me anytime, day or night. If you need help.”

“Okay,” I say with a little unintentional laugh. “I have your card.”

He almost looks bashful. “Good,” he says.

A shadow passes my door: Yegina. She’s carrying that Art of the Race Car binder around again. She waves and gives me a grin just as Hendricks turns to look. I wave halfheartedly back.

Hendricks sets my Zen garden on the sill. “I’ll see you around,” he says.

“That’s it?” I say. “That’s all you wanted to say?”

He pauses with his hand on the door handle.

“There is one question I had,” he says. “Did you know that Kim Lord was pregnant?”





19

The loading dock door inches up. Morning light floods the cave where the crates are stacked. Fritz, our security guard, stands in the glare, his head craned toward the underpass. A large truck is backing up outside, beeping its way, and the noise ricochets against the walls and floor. Red lights flare above the truck’s giant bumper. Their glow looks garish, menacing, but my senses are hardly reliable now. Everything shimmers as if someone has punched me between the eyes.

Evie emerges from the registrar’s office, a clipboard in her hands. The light from the underpass throws her features into sharp relief. She told me once that she came to L.A. to become an actress, but I can see why she didn’t succeed. She’s undeniably pretty, but in an impenetrable way. Even as she waves at me, her face looks as carved and immobile as a mask.

“Just let me handle this first,” she says. “Can you wait a minute?”

I could wait all day. It’s not like I can work with my mind like this, playing the end of my conversation with Hendricks over and over. How did he know Kim was pregnant? “Shaw told me,” said Hendricks, and then his voice changed, interrogating me.

I hadn’t known? No.

Had anyone known? No one here. Not Rocque gossip. Not common knowledge at all. I was so stuck on refusing the idea—of Kim Lord’s ripening belly, of a mother-to-be painting herself locked in some pervert’s torturing head box—that I couldn’t ask Hendricks why it mattered if I knew. All I could think about was Kim in a few months’ time, strolling slowly, full of Greg’s child, running her hands absently over her curving stomach while he hovered protectively, watching her step. I put my head in my hands, and probably—no, definitely—moaned, whereupon Hendricks fled my office like there was a dog inside threatening to bite him.

I try to focus on the moment at hand. “What’s coming in?” I ask Evie.

“Going out.” Evie points at two large crates. “Two Rothkos.”

The truck stops, and the driver hops down and opens the back door. Empty truck. Pickup. He spreads the base with packing quilts.

“Major loan,” I say.

“Abstract expressionist show at the Hirshhorn. I should be going with them instead of using a shipper,” Evie says. “They’re fragile.”

The way she says fragile, it sounds so protective, almost maternal. I wish I loved objects the way Evie does, investing them with a precious presence, because I want to feel more about things. Or feel less about myself.