Текст книги "The Eternal Summer"

Автор книги: Paul MacDonald

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

A FAMILIAR SOUND

This time I came prepared.

I parked my car in an open spot fifty yards or so from the house. I brought food and water to last for some indeterminate length of time, enough backlogged newspapers to occupy my mind, and a blanket and pillow, but I didn’t end up using the latter. For a day and a half I stewed in my car in the merciless heat and picked at the flaw in the consensus thinking around the blackmailing scheme. If Jeanette and Nelson were complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, why would she be the only one who had to lose her life?

In the time outside his house, I never saw Nelson but that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of activity. It mostly revolved around Nelson’s brother, often accompanied by his grandmother but sometimes alone, coming and going from the house on an endless stream of errands, most of the time returning with arms laden with giant shopping bags of unknown contents.

Things settled down in the evening. The lights burned behind the curtains for so long that I thought no one ever turned them off. They eventually went dark sometime after midnight and stayed dark until a brief moment in the early hours when a light from somewhere deep in the house clicked on. The faint yellow spoke of insomnia or thirst or something else. It didn’t last long and the house remained dark for the rest of the night.

I never went to sleep. I turned the car on once or twice to pump some heat into the cabin and to activate the wipers to clear the collection of dew from the front windshield. The city was remarkably still in those few hours before sunrise. A beautiful sun eventually inched its way in between the houses and lit up the side of my face. The wonderfully sad pink of an early Sunday morning befell the neighborhood.

I watched the abuelita waddle out in a floral print dress and fake pearls and purse heavy with the words of God. Her son, reluctantly “dressed up” in black slacks and a white t-shirt, trailed behind her at a distance that conveyed a preference for doing something else with his free morning. I checked my watch – quarter to nine. Fifteen minutes until the service began. I placed a quick call, gave it a few minutes in case they returned home for some forgotten donation envelope, then got out of my car and pushed my stiff legs to the front door of the house.

My knock rattled the metal door like tin plates used to scare crows out of a cornfield. I didn’t think Nelson would run but the delay in answering the door led me to doubt that assumption. Just as I was about to loop around the back, the door opened and the kid stood there looking disheveled and sleepy-eyed. He still had his pajamas on. I gently brushed past him before he mustered up any form of defiance. There was an unmistakable smell lingering in the air, something sour. I helped myself to the couch with the overworked springs. Nelson remained by the door, his hand still on the knob.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he started three seconds too late because I was already seated and had no intention of leaving. “You can’t come in here. You’ll wake everyone up.”

“They already left for church,” I told him.

“Oh,” he said, looking around like someone trying to get their bearings.

“Why don’t you sit down,” I instructed. “I have a couple of questions for you.”

“I already talked to the police.”

He came and sat opposite me anyway.

“I know. I want you to talk to me.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I asked you to.” I spied one of the shopping bags in the corner. “What’s all that?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, looking annoyed.

“Mind if I take a look?” I had no intention of getting up, but Nelson did and made a move to intercept me. It was the fastest I had ever seen him move. “Must be something important.”

“What do you want?” he asked. He was getting his legs under him and stood over me in as threatening a pose as he could probably ever muster.

“Can you tell her to come out, please?”

“What?”

“Come on, kid, stop screwing around and tell her to come out here so we can all talk.”

“She’s not even here,” he tried. “I don’t know where she is.”

“It’s okay,” said a soft voice.

Jeanette stood at the edge of the hallway. She wore a nightgown that looked borrowed from an old woman and probably was. Her hair was loosely pulled together in a band and rested limply on her shoulder. Her eyes were heavy from interrupted sleep and spoke of a mother’s weariness. Even her voice, made deeper from having just awoken, added a few years to her.

“You’re the man working for my grandfather?”

She was the only one who questioned my temporary job whose gaze didn’t include a judgment with it.

“Right now, I work for a faceless corporation. But yes, your grandfather hired me to find you.”

“You found me,” she smiled. “Now what?”

“Let’s talk about it.”

Jeanette joined Nelson on the couch. He took her hand in his to offer up support but it was clear in the gesture and in the way she sat there that she was the one providing the support to him.

“So, tell me the plan.”

Neither wanted to start but it was clear by their shared look that they had thought something out in fairly deep detail. It took some coaxing by me to get it out of them. Jeanette eventually took the helm and explained their next move and that’s when youth finally revealed itself in all its glorious stupidity.

They had some vague plan involving a cousin in Mexico and fifty grand they thought they were going to get to live off but didn’t. They made it sound a hundred times that because, as they reminded me numerous times, “everything is super cheap in Mexico.” Nelson had relatives to help with the baby and they could work and live some simple life and get away from the “meanness of people” in our city. Apparently, only happy, caring people lived south of the border. I let them blabber on because there was something charming about their irrational hope and the total conviction in which they expressed it. They were just a couple of knuckleheads too delusional to see the inanity of a “plan” that didn’t deserve that name.

I led them to believe I would help them so that I could dissuade them from trying it in the first place. And the one thing I knew I needed to do to accomplish that was to not let them out of my sight. I threw out the hundred grand that Valenti promised me and that if I could collect it then they could have it to help set up a life in the pueblo. That idea excited them far more than I thought it would. They latched onto the offer like it was the single solution to all of their troubles. They went so far as to strategize how they could help me get it. Jeanette could meet her grandfather to prove that I fulfilled my duty and then she could escape at a later date. We all agreed this was the best approach, and although I thought it was the dumbest idea ever uttered, I couldn’t help but share in their excitement.

Jeanette got up from the couch and headed back down the hallway towards the bedrooms. Then I heard what her mother’s ears heard before me, the soft gurgling and then the full cries of a hungry baby. Nelson and I continued the planning discussion and worked out the remaining details before we could fully lock it into place. There was a knock on the door, and I found myself answering it without even thinking it through. Even when confronted with a face so out of place from our current location, I still didn’t think twice about it.

I shuffled Sami into the room and only when he shoved me forward with one hand and brought up his second hand that held a rusty hammer did I realize my mistake. He shut the door and locked it. His wild eyes danced about the room. He didn’t see what he expected to see and continued searching until he did.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Who?” I tried.

“She’s here,” Sami droned. “I know she’s here. She told me.”

“I don’t know who told you what but whoever you’re looking for isn’t here.” It was like talking to a concrete wall. I heard my words bouncing back to me but they had no effect on the man they were directed at. He just kept asking the same thing over and over again. He rocked on his heels like the ground swelled under him in intermittent waves. There was a serenity and distance in his eyes that was more unnerving than when I first stood under his penetrating gaze. He was talking to us but you got the sense he didn’t even realize there were humans in the room with him.

“I don’t know who you are looking for but I can help you find her. It shouldn’t be too hard,” I continued in the hopes of directing his attention away from the back room. “Do you want to talk about it here or should we go outside where we can have more privacy? It might be better if we went outside. I don’t really know these people all too well so I don’t want to impose on them any longer that I have already. We should probably go outside and talk because I have some other things that we need to discuss, too. Some things I need your help on.”

I shot Nelson a reassuring nod and slowly moved towards the front door, towards Sami and the hammer he held by his side. He opened up his stance, just a little, but the meaning of the gesture was there – he considered letting me pass. I walked into the opening and crossed within striking distance of the hammer. I felt somewhat confident he was going to let me pass but I couldn’t really be sure. And the thought that I now had my back to him made me even more on edge, as a blow from that hammer to the back of my head could come without warning at any moment. I reached out to the lock and in doing so, I glanced back at Sami. He hadn’t moved. I turned the lock very carefully to avoid any sharp sounds that might disturb whatever balance he currently had. The lock moved easily under my thumb. I reached for the door handle and did the same thing. The door slowly swung open and I pivoted to face him.

“Let’s talk outside,” I said softly. Sami started to lean in my direction. “We’ll be better when we talk out here.” He looked up at me and I believed I was finally starting to get through to him. His eyes had a flicker of life in them, a spark of engagement. His leg swung around and took its first hesitant step towards me.

Then that sound again from deep in the house. I heard it first. I watched Sami’s right eye narrow like he was trying to reconcile the distant gurgle with the people in the room. Confusion crossed his face as he couldn’t quite put it all together. I filled the silence with my dithering, just spilling out nonsensical words, anything at all to mask the sounds and distract his attention from what was coming out from the back of the house. It didn’t work. The unmistakable cries of a newborn filled the room. Sami’s head snapped around and his body followed with cold, sleek precision as he calmly walked back in the direction of the baby’s sounds.

I ran after him. It was the only time in my life that I just acted. I caught him outside Nelson’s bedroom and threw my body into his backside. We toppled to the floor, and I rolled off his back and into the hallway wall. I reached out for the arm with the hammer and grabbed what I could. He jerked his arm back and freed himself from my grip but he also lost his balance and fell back into the opposite wall. Jeanette’s screams filled the narrow space. Nelson came bounding down the hall. I barked an order but he was already ahead of me and dashed into the room with Jeanette and the baby and slammed the door shut. The room was the only source of light in the hallway and the closed door cast a near darkness between me and Sami. I didn’t wait. I threw myself forward to the spot where I thought he was. I felt a hard wall but I also got a piece of soft flesh. I clawed at it and anything I could. I felt something warm and moist which might have been his eyes. He wriggled underneath me. I tried to make myself as heavy as possible to keep him down. There was a loud thud and I found myself letting out an airless cough. My back suddenly felt hot and tingly. I gasped for a breath of air and although all the components to breathing were in motion, no air came in.

Another thud from the hammer crashed down on my back, this time lower and squarely on a bone. My mind became singularly focused on keeping his body close to mine. I somehow knew that distance between us meant more blows from the hammer but in more dangerous parts of my body. But with each swing, I felt myself being drained of what little energy and strength I had. My arms numbed from exhaustion. I held on but without any kind of force. I was slipping down. My eyes, now adjusted to the darkness, saw a form moving up and away from me. It made a swift, arching motion, the hammer slightly trailing.

Then the form jerked backwards and a loud clap exploded in the hallway. Sami spun off his feet and stumbled down to his knees. There was barely a pause before he propped himself up with the hammer and got back to his feet. He struggled back into a striking pose. And despite the window of escape, I remained in my position on the floor. The hammer squared itself for a blow to my head.

“Don’t do it!” a voice behind me shouted.

It jarred Sami from his focus of crushing my skull. But he didn’t drop the hammer. He stared at Detective Ricohr and the gun pointed at his chest. In the brief ten seconds of stand-off between Sami and the gun, I could see the deliberation in his head and the eventual conclusion that his own life was much too important for him to let it end prematurely. He smiled and let the hammer fall to the floor.

BLACK ROCKS

The following couple of days were a flurry of activity involving a quick hospital stay and the interminable visits from members of the police. Claire came to see me a few times but her face was only a brief respite from the litany of nurses and doctors and detectives that asked endless questions that I was often too tired to answer. Detective Ricohr came once just to admonish me for ignoring his advice.

“But I did listen,” I reminded him. “I called you before I went into that house.”

“And if you hadn’t you’d be dead,” he shot back.

Neither wanted to admit that the other was right.

Eventually, I was released from the hospital and took a taxi home, forced to lean forward onto the passenger seat because it was too painful to lean back.

I returned to work after a few days and had to explain in detail the reasons behind my unexpected leave of absence. Each detail felt like yet another pinprick in the trial balloon of my attempt to earn the leadership role of the department.

Pat Faber eventually set up a meeting for early Tuesday morning. We terminated people on Tuesdays so the selection of this day caused me concern. He greeted me without his usual banter and somberly waved me over to a seat in his office. He waited a moment to collect his thoughts. In that time I scanned the shelves behind him. They, too, were lined with crystal trophies and awards just as Bob Gershon’s shelves had been. I wondered if they were legitimate.

The firm would never terminate me because I lost the bid to take the leadership role but they would make it clear that my future there was not a long-term option. I would scuffle along for a few years and then quietly be forced out. But I was too young to retire and would have to reinvent myself with all the youthful energy and drive it takes to reestablish a career. That thought made me sick to my stomach.

“There’s a stretch of country behind my house in Palm Desert,” he began and I thought to myself, this bastard has more houses than hairs on his head. I also pondered the fact that I had heard every single one of Pat’s folksy metaphors but I had never heard this one. “It’s named after an old prospector who tried to make his fortune in the hills. There are still remnants of his work – old wash planes, pick axes, tunnels carved out of the scrabble. I take Bessie back there and let her run. She loves the open country as do I.”

“Me, too,” I think I muttered, but Pat ignored me. He even looked a little miffed that I was interfering with his rhythm.

“There’s one cave in particular back there,” he began again. “Bessie stumbled upon it. It’s up a narrow canyon that I’m sure no one has seen except for the man who made it. And me.” There was a thick vein of pride in his voice. “The front is collapsed, the beams forming a big X, but you can see somewhat in there, depending on the time of day. If you shout inside it takes a long time for your echo to come back. It’s deep. I can’t tell you how many times I have stood in front of that cave. Bessie, the old girl, she won’t go near it. It scares her. It intrigues her but it scares her. At some point in life, Chuck, a man is going to come upon a cave like this one.”

My mind raced with the possibilities of what the cave stood for. Was it my career – abandoned, hopeless, a hole of lost dreams? Was it Pat’s delusional self-journey – daring, solitary, the pinnacle of his life’s work?

“And you have a decision to make. The hardest decision in your life because the cave has so many unknowns.” My heart sank with each additional line. “Chuck, I stood there this past weekend and stared at that entrance for an hour. And a single thought came to me.

“A black rock isn’t black in the dark,” he stated, and paused long enough for those profound words to sink in. I found myself nodding along with him despite not understanding anything that was coming out of his mouth.

“Chuck, you are the man to lead this group. Congratulations,” he said and rose to shake my hand.

I rose to accept with a handshake and squeezed harder than I needed to. “Pat, I know this wasn’t an easy decision,” I told him. He brushed it off but I could tell he was very proud of the “courage” he exhibited in selecting me. “You made the right decision.”

Not one to miss an opportunity to cut someone down a peg, he shot back, “Then you have your mission. Prove it to me.”

We chatted a little bit further about the group and direction it needed to go in but he had no time for petty details. His work was done and it was time to get another coffee. At the door, I turned back to ask the question that was gnawing at me.

“Hey Pat, if you don’t mind telling me, what was it that made you go with me?”

He thought about it a moment, then said:

“You were very honest in your interview.”

The truth would be revealed some time later when I discovered the real reason I got the job. It had nothing to do with my answer in the interview but everything to do with a few well-placed telephone calls by Carl Valenti to a few select, influential men at the firm. But I wasn’t disappointed in the least. I had always believed that career success was driven by ten percent skill and ninety percent luck. I would forever be grateful for the opportunity to enter into that rarified air of upper management where one’s entire role was just to be – to be and to give opinion.

My old boss Bob Gershon questioned this foundation but that was his biggest mistake. He searched for value, for meaning in the role. The value was simply having the role in the first place.

Later that day I got Paul’s concession speech. He came into my office and gushed on and on about how happy he was for me, but I didn’t believe it for a second. I would in time hear about how Paul had done everything in his power to discredit me with anyone who would listen during the run-up to the interviews. This was revealed to me on numerous occasions after I got the promotion. It was standard corporate operating procedure to curry favor with the new lead by bad-mouthing the guy who had bad-mouthed me.

But I was the victor and needed to display a modicum of humility and to rise above it all and be the better man; righteousness came easily when I had all the power. I put out my hand and Paul, in typical Paul fashion, took hold of it and pulled me in close for a big man-hug. He slapped me hard on my back, too hard, and I winced from the still lingering pain from the hammer blows.

“Paul, let’s meet next week to discuss the obesity campaign,” I offered as an olive branch. Paul accepted it enthusiastically and rattled off several new ideas on how to make it a success. I just smiled to myself because I knew that my very first decision as head of the group was to cancel all work on the campaign. Paul’s rabid pursuit of anyone over a hundred and fifty pounds would finally come to an end, and the one great accomplishment of my career would be what I chose not to pursue.

I had other designs for Paul. And decorum be damned, I was going to make his life a living hell. His first job for me was to make a recommendation on whether we should renew the contract with Badger as our lead investigator. I would let him do the due diligence he needed to discover all of the unseemly details about Badger. I would let him passionately recommend that we terminate relations with him and his firm. And I would wait until the very end before I over-ruled him without even the slightest of reasons why. Badger was someone I wanted around.

No one wanted Sami Halilayen around. He was convicted of the murder of Morgan McIlroy and sentenced to life. Police easily pieced together the events that led to her being strangled in the back seat of her own car and it ended up being a fast trial. Morgan was one of Sami’s many conquests, one of several involving underage girls. Upon learning about his relationship with Jeanette, she confronted him in a meeting at the parking lot in Chinatown. She threatened to dismantle whatever fragile spiritual empire he was building, never mind the threat to land him in state prison for statutory rape, and for that she had to be killed.

There never was any link between Sami and Tala’s activities to extort money. As far as the police were concerned, they were separate incidents. There were surprisingly few details about Morgan’s murder in the press and no charges were ever filed for the illegal acts he performed on underage girls, one of which resulted in a baby boy. For once the influence of the powerful resulted in a good deed – it was better for all involved if the past remained in the past.

As for Valenti and the others, it became clear that they didn’t want me around much either. I tried several times to connect with the Valenti clan but all of my feelers went unanswered. It felt like a non-verbal dismissal. I instead followed their lives from afar through the press.

The museum plan for the edge of Chinatown was scratched in favor of a different spot further up the hill in the Alpine district. It was another random spot but maybe not as random as it looked on the surface. Gao Li was back in the fold as he and Valenti formed a partnership to develop the area into a mixed-use space with the museum serving as the cultural centerpiece. Valenti had seized upon the opportunity with his granddaughter in the birthing clinic to knock Gao Li off his perch. But they were each man enough to put their differences aside when this new opportunity arose – money once again proved to be the great uniter. There they were on the TV praising each other’s virtues as they unveiled the elaborate design for the new museum. Valenti had hired a new architect who clearly understood his vision and the need for that third story with his name emblazoned across the top.

Also back in the fold was the hapless Jeff Schwartzman. He was there during all of the ceremonies but you sort of had to look for him back among the throngs of people. He was the one smiling the most. Valenti had pardoned him for past sins and granted him that which he wanted all along – directorship of the museum. He had the title but it was unclear if any power came with it. I had the sense Jeff only wanted the title.

It was too late to remove the ballot initiative that was at the heart of the museum conflict. As autumn fell over the city, voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly endorsed a measure they didn’t understand. Some bright developer would eventually exploit this unwanted measure in the years to come but for now it was just a bunch of meaningless words etched forever in the books of this great city.

With autumn came the bright days and cooler nights, and my desire for central air conditioning dissipated but not my desire for the hundred grand that I was supposed to use to install it. Valenti stiffed me on the payment. Perhaps he thought saving my job was enough of a reward but I never would have needed that offer if I didn’t get involved with him in the first place. I let my anger fester until one Saturday I decided to confront him. I drove out to Benedict Canyon and parked my car in front of the Valenti compound. I waited most of the day before the front gate. I convinced myself that I needed that money but inside I knew it was for other reasons.

Late in the afternoon the front gate swung open, and I saw the black sedan coming down the driveway. I got out of my car and stood in the middle of the entrance to block it from leaving. The sedan slowed to a stop. Hector was at the wheel. He stared at me from behind dark glasses. I could see the white-haired gentleman in the backseat. I went around to the side of the sedan, the rear window rolled down, and Valenti stuck his head out.

“Let me guess,” he smiled, “you want your money.”

“Fuck off,” I told him. “I want to talk to Hector.” There was a long, awkward pause. “Alone,” I said.

Eventually the rear door opened and the old man dragged himself out. I watched him take the long walk back towards the house and at that moment it was worth far more than any hundred thousand dollars.

Hector got out of the front seat and shook his head but I could tell that even he enjoyed it. Despite the ordeal he had gone through he didn’t look any different. Black shoe polish really was the great concealer. I didn’t know what to say to him so I just put out my hand and settled on, “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For saving my life,” I told him. “I guess I owe you.”

At which point he tossed my hand aside like it was something rotten.

“You don’t owe me shit,” he said. That same logic had changed the course of his life and he didn’t want it to change mine.

A car desperately in need of a new muffler coughed its way toward us. I recognized Nelson at the wheel and moved out of the way to let him pass. As the car went by I spied Jeanette in the back seat with the baby. Whether it was deliberate or not, she didn’t look up. Perhaps it was better that way – the last thing she would need was any kind of reminder of the events that led her to that moment. But for me, just getting a glimpse of her put my own mind at ease. As the clunker rattled up the driveway I turned back to Hector.

“She living here now?” Hector nodded. “The old man must be in all his glory.” Hector didn’t have to confirm it because I was certain that was the case. I could even see it on the old man’s face when I told him to leave us to talk.

We stood there for a moment but there was really nothing left to say and it was slowly becoming uncomfortable so I just wished him some random good-bye and headed back to my car.

I drove along the ridgeline until I came to one of the passes. I made the turn and crested the top of the hill and then began the long, rapid descent towards the Westside.

There were questions that needed to be answered.

***

The details surrounding the blackmailing scheme defied logic. The first request for money came from Jeanette for forty thousand dollars. I assumed that money was for the payment to the birthing clinic. She had asked Morgan for a similar amount. The money was paid to Nelson’s brother who was clearly doing his little sibling a favor by collecting it in case there was trouble.

Nothing after that made sense.

Jeanette had the baby in the dingy clinic in Alhambra but was kicked out after Gao got a call from an anonymous woman alerting him to her location. If the caller’s goal was money, she could have easily extorted it from Gao but she never asked for it. Then Jeanette inexplicably leaked her own story to a gossip blogger. I assumed this was her way of putting pressure on Valenti to ramp up the price of her return. But when I spoke to the kids at Nelson’s house, they kept talking about some miniscule amount of money – fifty grand – when the amount requested and delivered to Tala was in the millions. That was where the anonymous female caller returned, and this time it couldn’t have been Tala. Someone had tipped Sami off to Jeanette’s location at the Beverlywood house. Someone wanted her and the baby dead.

Meredith answered the door. Maybe it was the weather but this time she wore a plain pair of jeans and a loose-fitting cardigan. You couldn’t be impressed by the lack of body fat under that ensemble. There was a change in attitude as well. Gone was the transparent pursuit of attention under the overly-flirtatious behavior, which only succeeded in making you feel sorry for her. She just looked like a pretty, middle-aged woman at one of the higher-end department stores. Meredith led me into the living room and we sat in opposite chairs.

“I’d pay you the money if I had it,” she said.

“I know you would,” I told her. “But that’s not why I am here. Have you spoken to her?”

“Have you?” Meredith asked hopefully, and I correctly assumed she hadn’t. I shook my head. “Jeanette’s living with Dad now.”

“I just came from there.” Despite informing her that Jeanette and I hadn’t spoken, she leaned in as if I were about to give an update, but I had very little to give. “She looks good. Nelson seems to still be in the picture.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Poor kid will eventually realize he’s gay but for now it’s better for both of them to have each other. She’ll need that support. And Dad?”

I hadn’t realized the extent of her exile.

“I don’t know, it’s always hard to tell with him,” I started. “He seems happy.”

“I’m sure. It’s a second chance for him,” she added.

I heard no resentment in her words. I gathered from previous talks with Meredith and from my own observations that the old man wasn’t the best father out there. And it seemed that Meredith was coming to the same ugly conclusion about her own efforts. Behind the “second chance” was a hope that there would be one for her. She conveyed that in an odd, but brutally honest way.