“Eh, a little, a few small speaking parts in some junky TV stuff. Plus, he had a second-billing role in a thriller called Down a Dark Road, and after that he couldn’t get arrested. I think—well, this is the one thing he could never admit. But later, after a lot of psychoanalysis, I had to admit that maybe the reason things petered out for him was ’cause he got his shot in that movie, and it kind of proved he wasn’t…not that he couldn’t act, but he wasn’t star material. The movie’s not very good, and he’s part of why it ain’t that good.”

“That’s awful,” Endi said.

“No,” Jensen said, “it’s honest.”

I said, “Did he, like, give up?”

“Yup. After the movie tanked, he worked his way through law school selling appliances at Goodwin’s, and he did real good at all that. Not that he cared. I mean, here he was, a middle-class guy, a lawyer with two cars and a two-story home, best part of town, but he was miserable. Or at least he seemed miserable to me. All the good fortune in the world couldn’t heal that wound—he still thought of himself as a flop. He was kind of an ogre, too—verbally abusive to my ma. He could flip on a dime and go off, scare the daylights out of us.”

“That must have been so hard for you,” Endi said.

“Worst part was he…he exuded this real gnarly dissatisfaction. Nothing ever seemed to please him, like daily life was a chore or a humiliation. ’Cause no matter how good things got, well—he expected a different destiny.”

“My uncle had a little bit of that,” I said. “He made it through Korea too. He was a good man, he never took it out on us, but I don’t think he ever got over his big band days. And I wanted to cheer him up so bad.”

“Me too, man!” Jensen said. “I wanted to turn that shit around. I wanted to achieve what my pops couldn’t.”

“Like that would’ve helped,” Endi said wryly.

“It’s a child’s logic,” Jensen said. “Any shrink’ll tell you, you can’t beat someone at their own game and honor them at the same time. I got close—maybe closer than he ever got. I had a few tunes that were picked up for a silly beach flick, but to my surprise he wasn’t happy about it at all. ‘Frame the check,’ was what he said, which was just a potshot ’cause he knew they were paying me sub-scale.”

I said, “Ouch.”

“Anyway, the deal never even went down and he started encouraging me to quit. ‘Let’s just say showbiz wasn’t very kind to you.’ All kinds of subtle, nasty shit.”

“Such a bummer,” I said. “I can totally relate. I never did save my uncle’s good name.”

“Yup,” Jensen said with a sigh. “It’s hard.”

“But you persevered,” Endi said to him. “And you’re still making music. And helping people. That’s what counts.”

“That’s right,” Jensen said. “I turn to the art form for my sustenance. I try to get past the showbiz, the liars and grabbers and all that petty ego shit, and just do the work. And it isn’t about fame. It’s about putting a smile on their faces.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Hold on—lightbulb! Could Endi come to the nursing home for one of the sings? She really does have an amazing voice and the seniors would love her.”

Jensen said, “That’d be great.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t, I—”

“But don’t you see,” I said, “it’s a total natural. You’re a…a social worker, a caregiver—and a beautiful singer. This could be a new integration.”

“Yeah, but I’m not a real performer, I mean, I have really bad stage fright, I—”

“Well, there’s no stage to speak of,” Jensen said. “It’s very low pressure. Just fall by tomorrow and join me for a song or two. You’ll have a good time.”

“I don’t know.”

“Adam’s right—it could be a nice combo of your talents. And if it goes bad…” He smiled. “Most of ’em won’t remember anyway.”

We laughed. Endi and I exchanged a glance and she squeezed my hand under the table.

“All right kids,” Jensen said. “Let’s go check on the old man.”

The three of us rode the elevator back to the waiting room. Up at the nurses’ station, they told us Charles Elkaim was in the clear but too tired for visitors. They said he would likely be sent back to the Shalom Terrace the next day after tests. Apparently, he was lucky that Nurse Rosa had taken his blood pressure and saw it was sky-high right before his collapse.

Relieved, Jensen bid us adieu and I walked Endi the four blocks north back to Ziva’s. At her front door, she slipped her arms around me and we kissed under the awning. Then she said, “Thanks for the dancing lesson.”

I made it back to the car around 2:00 in the afternoon, light in my step, still marveling at this blue-eyed angel who seemed to fall from out of the blue. I hit the app and started a shift, but into this beaming mood, one funny phrase kept poking at me, something Jensen said in passing—the liars, the grabbers, all that petty ego shit. An image accompanied this harshing of my mellow, a hiccuppy VHS on rapid rewind—it was Lazerbeam telling me with a straight face that he had discovered the band, that they were thrilled to be on Pioneer, and that he did not know Cinnamon Persky at all, had barely heard of her.

But Kip and Rog flat-out stated otherwise—The Daily Telegraph were going places, or trying to, and it was Cinnamon who was working the hustle.

The more I got stuck on this, the more I absolutely knew—Lazerbeam had lied to me about the band, about Cinnamon, all of it, right to my face. Whatever Kip and Rog had to hide, whatever that kook Gladstone was trying and not trying to tell me—one thing was for sure: Larry the Lazerbeam knew way more than he fronted, and he was playing me for a sucker.

I cut the app and headed back to Centinela Trailer Court.

24

Marie opened the trailer door with a smile this time—I smirked and gently pushed past her. The hairy old geezer was in the kitchen on his knees in a Foreigner T-shirt and cutoff jeans, shuffling through a pile of sleeveless 45s, maybe a hundred of ’em.

“You,” I said, “you lied to me.”

He looked up, caught off guard, tried to play it off. “Hey, it’s Sherlock Holmes. What’s happenin’, pops?”

He started to get up and I grabbed him one-handed by the tee, hoisted him up against the tin wall. The rickety sink creaked with his weight.

“You lied to me,” I repeated. “About the band.”

His hands shook. “Whoa, Nelly! Mellow out, guy, you and me are pals, remem—”

“You ain’t my pal.” I pressed gentle but firm and stared right into his washed-out gray eyes. “They didn’t start with you and they definitely didn’t stop with you. Something happened—they kept going. Spit it out.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, “don’t spazz.” He cast a worried glance at Marie.

I let him go and stepped back, and he did a little corrective pull on his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” I said, sounding insincere. “But Devon Hawley’s dead, I’m the one that found him—and I don’t have time for more bullshit.”

Lazerbeam fished anxiously for his pack of American Spirits—Marie watched us like someone at a ping-pong tournament.

“I…we heard that,” he said. “Awful. But you don’t think we had anything to do with that?”

“Out with it.”

“Okay, okay—so maybe I skipped a part or two,” he said, lighting the cig. “They shopped around.”

“Yeah, I already know that—I’ve been to see Kip and Rog. Then what?”

“They made a demo or some shit. And then it didn’t take. There wasn’t much to it, see what I mean? They couldn’t sell it. And then the boys came crawling back to me begging to put out the tracks. And that is the honest truth.”