Mickey sat in a chair near the unlit fireplace. Well, sat isn’t the right word. She perched, maybe an inch of her rear on the front edge of the seat cushion, with her back ramrod straight and her hands picking and pulling at each other as her eyes darted from me to Hondo and back again.
Hondo sat on the sofa across from her and said, “Its okay, Mickey. We’re worried about him, too.”
It was as if the sprinkler system came on. Mickey buh-hawed and more tears came than I’d imagined could come from two eyes. Big drops one right after the other, building and dropping from her lashes and off her nose and chin and plopping on the floor like marble-sized rain.
Hondo looked at me and motioned with his head toward her. I walked over to Mickey and placed a hand on her thin shoulder. “Mickey, it’s okay. We just want to find him, make sure he’s all right. Make sure he’s not in any trouble.” That started another round of hawing and head shaking.
“There, there,” I said and patted her shoulder. Suddenly Mickey stood up and hugged me close with a surprising spidery strength, crying her eyes out on my gray windbreaker, smearing mascara, snot, and tears all over the front where she rubbed her face back and forth. I held her until the crying subsided to sobs and shudders and gasps, and then to whimpers and small keenings and finally to deep, exhausted breathing.
She raised her face to look up at me. Gene Simmons in his Kiss days had less black around the eyes. She gave me the same look a shooting victim gives the first paramedic to reach them. “C-Can you find him? Oh, please?”
“We think what you can tell us might get us closer.”
“I don’t know anything. Bob, he...he was at the office Wednesday and said he’d see me the next day, and then...he disappeared.”
I sat her down and took a vacant chair. “How did you try to reach him? When did you first miss him? Take us through every step.”
Mickey attempted to push down the spikes of hair as she thought it through, “It was the next morning after he missed two studio meetings, nine and ten o’clock. I tried his car phone - the one in his Ferrari, not the Hummer - I tried that later, then I called his home, his personal cell phone, his office cell phone and the studio cell phone. I tried the studio, the home in Malibu, his yacht in Marina Del Rey, and I left e-mails on all five of his computers and those of Mr. Meadows’ executive assistant. I’ve done that every day since he’s been gone.”
I looked at Hondo, but couldn’t read anything behind the sunglasses. Hondo said, “You call any people he hangs out with?”
“Yes, all one hundred and twenty four names I have in my rolodex.”
Hondo cocked his head, “Are there any people you might not have listed? New acquaintances, someone special?”
Mickey acted offended. “No, I know everyone Mr. Landman considers phoneable.”
Phoneable? This girl would be a riot at a scrabble tournament. I said, “Mickey, pest control is phoneable. Couldn’t there be someone you don’t have listed?”
She gnawed at the skin around her thumbnail as she thought. After two minutes, I worried that her teeth might scrape bone, but she finally spoke. “He did make some calls from his office. They were funny.”
“Funny ha-ha or funny weird?”
“Funny weird. He would close the door and use a cell phone. I noticed because the line wouldn’t light up on my phone.”
Hondo asked, “Did he make a call like that on Wednesday?”
Mickey chewed another inch of skin from her thumb before saying, “Yes. He called about four in the afternoon, and he left a half hour later.”
&nbs
p; I asked, “Are you sure of the time?”
“Yes, because the Fed-Ex man came and I signed for a package at three fifty-five and it was right after that. And he left at four-thirty because I had to cancel a four forty-five meeting for him.”
Hondo looked at me, “We can find out who he called pretty easy that way. Might be something.”
“We’ll check it out.” Mickey began wringing her hands and her eyes filled. I said, “Mickey, we’re going to find him. You’ve been a big help.”
Mickey started bawling again, and after she grabbed me and buried her face on my chest, I wondered if my nipples would prune from all the moisture.
**
After Mickey dried out we had her write down any of Landman’s phone numbers we didn’t have, the name and location of his yacht, and then we walked around the house to see which vehicles were and weren’t there. He had fourteen, and all were there, even the Hummer, painted with scenes that were god-awful.
Mickey said, “Bob was feeling very Southwestern when he had it painted. He hired Valdar, you know, the Volga artist? He’s staying at Bob’s Malibu house for a few months while he gathers the essence of the American experience.”
Saguaro cactus, buttes, and howling coyotes that looked more like Lassie than wild canines silhouetted against a full moon. The worst image in the scene was of a party of six Fabio-looking Indian warriors – four of them blondes – on horseback dressed in Plains Indian costumes including braids and full headdresses with feathered tails flowing in some unseen breeze. You’d think Valdar could have gotten the right Indian Nation for the terrain. Mickey continued, “It’s very masculine, don’t you think?” She was practically wetting her pants.