Romeo's Town (Mike Romeo Thrillers Book 6)

by James Scott Bell

  “No offense, I hope,” I said.

  “Only embarrassment,” Chris said.

  “You want to come back here?”

  “To work out? Yeah, I’d like to.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I talked it over with Jimmy. He agreed to let Chris come back. Then Jimmy went to White Guy, whose name was Terrence, and told him he was banned for six months, and if he ever wanted back in he’d better come with an apology and a better attitude.

  Situation handled. Without a riot. What a novel idea.

  Chris wanted to talk to me about criminal law and investigation, so we had some Gatorade and chatted. Jimmy came by and I asked him if he had a lead on San Dae-Ho. Jimmy said no.

  Chris said, “I know that guy. He works out at Pereira Dojo on Devonshire.”

  “How well do you know him?” I asked.

  “Not much. I just know he’s got a rep.”

  “It was good I ran into you, Chris,” I said.

  “You rammed into me,” Chris said.

  “Guilty,” I said.

  I drove to the Pereira Dojo. I parked on Devonshire and walked to the entrance, looked through the glass. There was a workout going on inside.

  No one in there matched the description of San Dae-Ho.

  I got back in Spinoza and made a U to the other side of the street, parking directly across from the dojo for a bit of unglamorous surveillance. After an hour I gave up and thought about driving back to the beach. It just seemed a shame to end an official trip to the Valley with a goose egg. Mandi McGuane was not much help. Shane McGuane and his buds were a complete bust. But it was getting into late afternoon, and there really wasn’t anywhere to—

  —that’s when the thought hit me and jacked up my pulse. I took a deep breath and called Sophie.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Mike.”

  “Well hi.”

  I liked the way she said hi.

  I said, “So… want to talk about my guest appearance?”

  “Absolutely,” she said.

  “What would be a good time?”

  “Any day after three-thirty or so. Or the weekend.”

  “Would today be too soon? I’m in the Valley.”

  “Today would work. How far away are you?”

  “I don’t know. I’m at Devonshire and Reseda.”

  “Hm, probably twenty-five minutes, half an hour.” She gave me the address. “I’ll leave word at the office that you’re coming to see me.”

  The Constantine Academy occupied a prime piece of real estate in Tarzana. It was flashback time for me, as the design of the place was Ivy League. The tuition, no doubt, was of similar magnitude.

  The office receptionist had my name on a list. She gave me a visitor tag and directions to Sophie’s room. I walked past a grass field where soccer practice was going on. Looked like eighth graders. Their practice uniforms were sharper than my best clothes, though that bar is not particularly high.

  On the other side was a nice rose garden inside a brick edging. Pink floribunda from the look of it. I approved.

  I turned a corner at Room 11. Using my powers of deduction, I found Room 12. The blinds were open. I saw Sophie sitting at a desk in the front of the room, looking over papers.

  I opened the door. Sophie looked up. “Mike.”

  I liked the way she said my name. I was liking the way she said anything.

  She stood and said, “Come on in.”

  I came in. And looked around. The room was decorated with book-themed posters. Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, Animal Farm, Moby Dick.

  “What do you think?” Sophie said.

  “I think this is a good room in which to think,” I said.

  “We encourage that.”

  “It’d be nice if they encouraged that in the public schools.”

  “Easy now,” she said.

  “Socrates would have taken hemlock a lot sooner if he had to take orders from the LAUSD.”

  She smiled.

  And yes, I loved the way she did that, too.

  “How’d you get this gig?” I said.

  “A friend of mine teaches fourth grade here. When something opened up in the middle school she recommended me.”

  “You like it?”

  “Love it. Class sizes are just right.”

  “You have a favorite?”

  “Eighth grade English.”

  “What are you into right now?”

  “We just finished Julius Caesar, and now it’s The Wednesday Wars.”

  “I don’t think I know that one.”

  “Coming-of-age story. About a boy who discovers the wonders of Shakespeare.”

  “Imagine that,” I said. “A teacher who wants kids interested in Shakespeare.”

  “So you approve?”

  “O let my books be then the eloquence of my speaking breast.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “With a little help from sonnet twenty-three.”

  She smiled again, the warm and inviting kind, the kind that a red-blooded American man before the MeToo age would have taken and run with. Music rising, take her in your arms. Long, satisfying kiss.

  I cleared my throat and said, “At least I think it was twenty-three.”

  Was there a hint of disappointment in her eyes?

  “Well now,” I said. “What am I to tell your young charges?”

  “I thought it would be nice for them to meet someone with a classical education who is now doing interesting work.”

  “I assume without the part about the occasional breaking of bones.”

  “You think you can nuance that?”

  “For you, I could nuance an elephant stampede.”

  She smiled and looked down.

  We were silent for a long moment.

  I said, “Speaking of elephants…”

  Sophie looked up, puzzled.

  “There’s a great big one sitting in this room,” I sad.

  She got it. “I know.”

  “I think it’s going to follow us around until we, um, dispatch it.”

  “And how do you propose we do that?”

  “Well, you know what they say about how you eat an elephant?”

  “One bite at a time,” she said.

  “How about we take it that way, one bite at a time?”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  I pushed my heart back down from my throat to my chest.

  “And speaking of bites, may I take you out for a sumptuous meal?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking In-N-Out.”

  “With animal-style fries?”

  “Naturally.”

  “How can I resist?”

  We ate in the car in the parking lot, but for me it was like being in the Eiffel Tower overlooking Paris. When I dropped her back at the Constantine Academy, I felt like a small chunk of the elephant had been dispatched. There was still a lot of pachyderm to go, so I asked if I could take her for a drive on Saturday. She said that would be nice.

  It was getting on toward sunset when I got back to Paradise Cove. I put on KJAZZ 88.1, plopped on the sofa. It was a peaceful five minutes. Then my phone buzzed.

  Ira said, “Where are you?”

  “Home again, home again jiggity—”

  “Michael, listen.”

  “Okay, boss.”

  “Clint Cunningham hanged himself.”

  There’s a reason they call it a gut punch. I got plenty of those physically in the cage. When you get news like this, out of the blue, you feel it in the same region of your body.

  I sat up.

  Ira said, “He didn’t succeed, thank God.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “I just got notified. He’s in the infirmary at juvi.”

  “So… wait, wasn’t there a hearing today?”

  “It was taken off calendar when Clint didn’t show. Which means we still represent him.”

  “What are
we supposed to do?”

  “I asked that notification of Clint’s parents be left to me. You’ve met with both. Do you have any suggestions?”

  I thought about it. “It would be a good idea for someone to be with Trista when she hears it. I’ll go.”

  “Give it to her tomorrow morning. Let her sleep. They won’t let her see him anyway and there’s nothing she can do now. What about the father?”

  “I’ll leave a message with his office.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He’s not the warmest of men,” I said.

  I went outside and sat on my porch. The sound of ocean waves echoed through the cove. Usually that’s a comfort. Tonight it was a reminder that human life is evanescent and the sea is forever. We’re here for a short time and should make a difference for the good before we dissolve into the earth. So you try with a kid like Clint Cunningham, but he tries for a fast exit. You feel powerless. You feel like you let him down. You feel like there’s no point in trying anymore if that’s all you get from the effort.

  But then, if you keep listening, the sea will remind you of something else. It didn’t erode rocks and make beaches by giving up. You’ve got to admire the perseverance. So you decide to be like the sea.

  I called Trista Cunningham in the morning. I told her I wanted to update her on Clint’s case, and asked if it might be convenient if I stopped by.

  “Is something wrong?” she said.

  “Clint is making a motion to represent himself.”

  “A motion?”

  “In court. The hearing was supposed to be yesterday. It’s better if I explain in person.”

  Pause. “All right.”

  The drive was torturous. I kept going over in my head the right thing to say. I’ve never been good at that sort of thing. Ira says it’s because there’s an ice ring around my heart. Maybe he’s right. At least this wasn’t a death notice. Only once did I deliver that kind of news, or rather went along with the deliverer. It was back when I worked for Joey Feint. He was hired by a husband and wife in New Haven to find their missing daughter, age 16. They thought she’d run away because there’d been a lot of fighting about boyfriends and school.

  It wasn’t like that at all.

  In fact, she’d been kidnapped, raped and murdered by a neighbor of the couple, a forty-year-old accountant with a spotless resume. Joey cracked the case, found the body, called the cops, and went to deliver the news. I watched a man and woman fall apart and felt powerless to do anything about it, though I knew exactly what they were feeling. That scar tissue never goes away.

  Life is all about scars. It’s what you do in spite of them that counts. That doesn’t make delivering news like this any easier.

  Trista answered the door. “Come on in, I’ve just got to finish one thing. There’s coffee in the kitchen. Help yourself.”

  She went back to her computer. “I’ll just be a second.”

  “No rush,” I said, more to myself than to her.

  I went into the kitchen. A cup was waiting for me by the coffee maker. I poured some, took a sip. I put both my hands around the cup, letting it warm me. Then I headed back to the living room.

  Trista was tapping away, looking hard at the monitor.

  I sat. The house smelled lightly of lavender. A good thing. Lavandula angustifolia, English lavender, is used in aromatherapy to soothe and relax. I got the impression the smell was coming from an essential oil diffuser. Good, bring it on. She’s going to need it.

  “Done,” she said, and closed her laptop. “Sorry.”

  “No need to apologize,” I said.

  She came over and sat in the chair opposite me. “So what’s going on? It’s driving me crazy not to be able to talk to Clint. Is there any way he can get out of there?”

  “We’ll get to that,” I said. I put my cup on the coffee table. At that moment I thought about all those movies where the guy says, “Give it to me straight, Doc.” I wished this was only a movie.

  “Trista, last night we got some news—”

  “What news?” She knew it was bad.

  “They told us Clint tried to hang himself.”

  Trista’s hand went to her mouth.

  “He’s all right,” I said, stretching the truth. “He’s in the infirmary.”

  “Oh God!” Trista stood. She walked around her chair and faced me again. She balled her hands into fists and pressed them against her head. “I need to see him!”

  “We’ll work to make that happen,” I said.

  “I want to see him now.”

  “I know,” I said. “They have procedures. As I say—”

  “That’s outrageous! That’s so…” Her words trailed off, replaced by heaving sobs. She turned her back to me, as if embarrassed.

  For a second I was frozen. Then I went to her, wanting to put my hand on her shoulder. But I held back. She turned around. And put her head on my chest, crying.

  I held her for a moment, then guided her back to the chair and sat her down. I went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. I came back and put the cup in her hands. There was a box of Kleenex on her computer table. I brought it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “Anything I can do for you?”

  “Can you stay awhile?” she said.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re my only link to Clint.”

  “You’ll see him soon,” I said.

  “It’s torture,” she said. “Do you have kids?”

  “No.”

  “It’s hard.” She dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “I sometimes think, was it worth it? And then I hate myself for thinking that.”

  “Don’t hate yourself,” I said. “I imagine every mother has that thought at one time or another. Always the question is, what do we do with our thoughts? Some people give up, some people keep going. You strike me as a keep going type.”

  “Thank you for saying that. You seem like a wise man.”

  “I think you need a long, gray beard to be one of those.”

  She smiled slightly. “May I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “How did you become this, an investigator?”

  “Ira Rosen is a good friend of mine,” I said. “I needed the work.”

  “But you…”

  “Yes?”

  “You seem… did you attend college?”

  “Never graduated,” I said.

  “You mean you dropped out?”

  I nodded.

  “What college was it?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  She looked surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to pry.”

  “It’s a part of my life that’s over and done with,” I said.

  “I understand,” she said with a tinge of sadness.

  “Yale,” I said.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “Not as big a wow as people think. It’s a place like any other place, captive to the times.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was originally established for the education of young men into the ministry. The first rector was the Reverend Abraham Pierson.”

  “Is he famous?”

  “Only to people who like to read memorial plaques.”

  “I guess it’s not training ministers anymore.”

  “There’s a divinity school,” I said.

  Trista must have picked up subtext in my voice, because she leaned forward and said, “Were you part of it?”

  “My mother was,” I said. “She taught there.”

  “Your mother sounds extremely interesting.”

  “She was,” I said.

  “She’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can tell you miss her.”

  “Every day.”

  “And your father?”

  “Same.”

  “I’m… I keep saying I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “We’d have a better world if more p
eople said it.”

  We sat in silence for awhile, the kind that happens when two people realize a certain bond has formed, forged out of shared suffering. There’s no need for words then. Just the comfort of quiet—the welcome, momentary peace of knowing you’re not alone.

  I took the 101 back to Hollywood. The drive through the Cahuenga Pass brings you out where the first thing you see is the Capitol Records Building. It was built in the 50s and designed to look like a stack of records. Wonder what kids looking at it today think. A stack of Eggo waffles maybe?

  Just past that is the Gower offramp. I got off, turned left and then right on Franklin and took that all the way to Los Feliz.

  Ira was working at the computer when I came in.

  “Be with you in a moment, lad,” he said. “Pour yourself some tea.” He nodded at the pot on the corner of the desk.

  I got a cup from the kitchen and came back and poured. “What brew is it today?”

  “Morning Thunder,” Ira said. “A mix of black tea and roasted maté.”

  “You need your own podcast,” I said. “Tea and Talmud with Ira Rosen.”

  “Be quiet for five minutes, please.”

  I went to his bookshelf and browsed. Ira had two copies of Fahrenheit 451, paperbacks with different cover art. I took the one that had the figure of a man dressed in paper pages that were on fire. I took it and my tea to the window bench and opened to the first page.

  It was a pleasure to burn.

  It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

  I couldn’t help making a noise that sounded like Hmmm.

  “How’s that?” Ira said.

  “Just murmuring,” I said.

  “My experience in life has taught me that a murmur is the product of a stimulus.”

  “Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451.”

  “Ah,” said Ira. “He said he was not writing to predict the future, but to prevent it.”

  “Too bad it didn’t work,” I said.

  “Drink your tea.”

  I read a few more pages and then Ira was finished. He wheeled over to me and asked how it went with Trista Cunningham.