Finally, the guy on the phone spoke. “Because I think the man in the iron mask needs help.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think—and this is the part where I know I sound crazy—that he might really be a prisoner.”
“Not crazy,” I said. “Batshit crazy.”
I heard him breathing on his end of the line. Breathing hard. Raspy. He’d gotten himself worked up. Finally, he said, “Do you want the job?”
I thought about it—and thought about my past few crazy cases, both of which involved creatures of the night—and said, “What the hell. Crazy is right up my alley.”
Chapter Two
Roxi and I were sitting on her balcony.
We were looking out over Los Feliz, which is a sort of borough in Los Angeles, except they don’t call them boroughs here, and I can never pronounce Los Feliz right anyway. Whenever I try to pronounce it right, I get corrected, and if I try to pronounce it another way, emphasizing the ‘e’ in Feliz, I get corrected again. I’ve decided there might just be something wrong with me.
“How do you pronounce Los Feliz?” I asked Roxi again, who was now my girlfriend of a couple of years, God bless her patient heart.
“Not the way you pronounce it,” she said. She was sipping on a glass of chardonnay with her feet crossed over the balcony railing. Three stories below, a steady stream of people swept up and down Vermont Avenue. Toward, undoubtedly, a slew of trendy restaurants.
“No one pronounces it the way I pronounce it,” I said. “Apparently, I’m the only one in Los Feliz who can’t pronounce Los Feliz.”
“Los Feliz,” she corrected, emphasizing the ‘e’ in a way I thought I just had. “And you’re not the only one who can’t pronounce it. People who just move here can’t pronounce it; that is, until they learn how to pronounce.”
I sighed in a manner that suggested I gave up, which I don’t often do for anything, especially cases.
Roxi grinned and reached out and touched my thigh in a way that always sent a shiver through me. And just as the feeling coursed through me, I fought it back. What right did I have to feel shivers, or pleasure of any kind?
I didn’t. Not now. Not ever.
Roxi must have sensed me recoil, even if slightly, and gently withdrew her hand. How and why she stayed with me was still a perplexing puzzle that I had quit trying to understand nearly two years ago. If I hurt her feelings by recoiling, she didn’t show it. She knew me better than most—perhaps better than anyone. She knew I was damaged goods, and she knew what she had gotten herself into. Instead, she took a sip from her chardonnay, re-crossed her legs and asked what case I was working on.
And so I told her about the mystery man in the iron mask, who made nightly appearances in the Medievaland shows, and who was, apparently, carted off to a subterranean chamber beneath the arena.
“You’re kidding,” said Roxi.
“Do I ever kid?” I asked.
“Good point. Okay, so this guy is strapped to, what, a sort of upright gurney, à la Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal Lecter?”
“That’s how I envision it,” I said.
“And it’s all part of the show?” she asked.
“Apparently.”
“But your client doesn’t think so?”
“Right,” I said.
“Does he know how crazy he sounds?”
“I think he does.”
“And?”
“And he still wants to hire me anyway.”
“Is it ethical to take his money if he’s crazy?”
“I haven’t taken it yet.”
“You’re going to check out the scene first,” said Roxi.
“Right.”
Below me, I watched a car bump into the back of another car at the Los Feliz Blvd and Vermont intersection. The bump was minor. The first car barely moved, if at all. If anything, it was all brake squeal and no bark. Still, the driver of the first car got out. An older guy wearing a sweater around his shoulders, he jawed in a manner which suggested anger. Or even hate, although I couldn’t hear what was being said. I had been in an accident a few years ago. Two of them, in fact. Two accidents, two deaths. My wife in the first, my son in the second.
Two for two, I thought, and wished all over again it had been me.
“And this guy in the iron mask...your client doesn’t know who he is?”
“Apparently, no one does. At least, no one who’s talking.”
“And he sees the guy being wheeled to an elevator that leads below the arena?”
“Yes.”
“Still strapped to the gurney?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s weird,” said Roxi. Roxi was about my age, but looked younger. Guys ten years older than me still looked younger than me. Going through what I went through had a tendency to age a guy...and drive him to the brink of a massive, catastrophic depression. Roxi helped me steer clear of such a depression. Roxi was a bright light in what would have been, I was sure, an unbearable existence.
“You can’t just go in there and ask about the guy in the iron mask,” said Roxi.
“No.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I’ll poke around,” I said. Below, the older guy was now taking pictures with his camera phone.
“You’re good at poking around,” said Roxi, and I was sure that was the wine talking.
But I let her flirtatious comment go, as usual. Maybe another day, another lifetime ago, I might have flirted back, but my days of flirting were over.
Forever.
Chapter Three
Medievaland looks like a big castle.
It was definitely not something you’d expect to see in the middle of Orange County, a county famous for its desperate housewives, beaches and, perhaps, citrus fruits.
Then again, what did I know? I lived in a small apartment in the heart of Los Angeles, an hour northwest of Orange County. Desperate housewives in my part of town didn’t make TV shows. They hired me to follow their husbands. Or find their missing kids. That was my specialty, actually. Finding the missing. Tough field. Especially when I found them dead.
Or worse.
With that said, this part of Orange County—in a place called Buena Park—reminded me a lot of Los Angeles: rough streets, graffiti, homeless and traffic. Yeah, I felt right at home.
That is, of course, until I found myself on Beach Boulevard and surrounded by a surprisingly large crowd of tourists, all here to see Knott’s Berry Farm, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and Wild Bill’s Dinner Theater. And, of course, Medievaland.