by Dianne Emley
Somers followed Tito down a narrow hallway with two rooms off each side and a small bathroom at the end. Tito opened the last door on the right and they walked into a small, sunny room, hot with the afternoon sun. The windows were covered with light blue curtains and the bed had a navy blue spread. A small bookcase held books in Spanish, mystery novels, Spanish and English dictionaries, a book on taking charge of your life, and a few general business textbooks: Marketing, Business Mathematics, and Introduction to Finance. A worn wooden desk stood against a wall. A “From the desk of…” pad was squared beside a pencil holder that held new pencils and a small red, white, and green Mexican flag. A stuffed iguana crawled by the wall and a small flamenco dancer doll danced next to it, a sneer molded onto his plastic face.
Tito took down one of the business texts. “See. Always working to make himself better. That was Alley. He took business classes at the junior college over on Vermont Street.” He paused, smiled wistfully, and shook his head.
“Did Alley do well in school?” asked Somers.
“Very well. He was a very bright boy.”
“Qué pasa, Tito?”
“Maria, we woke you up?”
“I not sleep.” She looked at Somers. “I know you from my son’s funeral.”
“I’m Detective John Somers. I’m investigating your son’s murder.”
Maria Muñoz nodded wearily. “What you doing here, Tito?”
“The detective wanted to know about Alley’s trips to Mexico. I came to show him this.”
Tito pulled an airline envelope from beneath the pencil holder and showed Somers a computer-printed itinerary. Alley was flying into Mexico City on Friday night and back home again on Sunday with a driver to Oaxcatil arranged on Saturday.
“Did he always fly over the weekend?”
“Yes. He said he had to work the weekends now.”
“Detective, tell me, what happened to my son,” Maria sat on the bed, her hands limp in her lap, her shoulders curved forward. A few threads of gray hair were woven through the black.
“What do you think happened, Mrs. Muñoz?”
She sighed and her shoulders curved deeper. “I don’t know. Something not right. Too much money.”
“Maria, his promotion. He was doing well,” Tito said.
She waved her hand and blew out air. “No one gives a handicapped deaf boy that much money.”
“Oh, Maria. You read about it in the paper all the time. Those bankers there, those stockbrokers, they earn millions. This is a great country.”
“They give my son money over a white American. A whole American who hears and speaks? This country not that great.”
“He worked harder than the rest. That’s all.”
“Mrs. Muñoz,” Somers said, “do you think your son could have been involved in something illegal?”
“I don’t know. I ask him, Mijo, what you do? Why you have so much money? You doing something wrong? You tell me. He say, ‘Mommy, I don’t do anything make you ashamed of me.’ I say, ‘Okay, just remember, you have to face God,’ and he say, ‘That’s okay, Mommy, I always do the right thing. I work hard. I want you to be proud of me.’ I tell him it’s not money that make me proud of him.
“My boy, he had a hard life. People so mean, you know—they make fun of him. And he is very proud. So when I hear from Oaxcatil, how he acting down there, spreading the money around, I know he trying to tell them something.”
“Did Alley hang around with the Cirrus Street gang? Could they have put him up to something?”
“Detective,” Tito said, “I tell my good-for-nothing nephew out there that I kill him and I kill his homeboys too if I find out they’re behind this. He says I insult him. That Alley was blood.”
“My boy knew the difference between right and wrong,” Maria said.
“What do you think happened, Tito?”
“He wasn’t someone from the neighborhood. Everyone tells me. I don’t know. I guess it was God’s will.”
“God’s will that my boy dies on the street like a dog. I not understand this God.” Maria got up and walked out the door, her blue terry cloth slippers shuffling on the carpet. Somers guessed she was about forty but she moved like someone much older.
Somers looked through Alley’s drawers and closet and under the bed without finding anything pertinent. He turned down another offer of food and drink, shook hands all around, promising to do his best, then left. Outside the house, Somers approached Chuy and his girlfriend, who were sitting on the curb. The air smelled of marijuana.
“Chuy, who killed your cousin?”
“You find out, azul, and we’ll take care of him.”
Somers watched two girls playing hopscotch on a chalk grid drawn on the sidewalk. One of the girls stood at the end, knees together, feet together, toes barely outside the line, and threw her rabbit-foot-and-trinket marker. It hit the cement with a scrape and a jangle.
“I’ll keep in touch, Chuy.” Somers got in his car to drive home.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Is John Somers there, please?”
“Who’s this?”
“This is Iris Thorne. Who’s this?”
“I don’t have to tell you who I am. You called here.”
“Is John there?”
“He’s here.”
“Can I speak with him, please?”
“Yeah. Hang on.”
The telephone receiver banged once, twice, then several quick times as it swung from its cord.
“Dad! That Iris lady is on the phone.”
Iris bristled. “John, hi… I’m on my way over, but I lost the directions to your house.” She forced a chuckle.
“Oh. You still want to come?”
“Of course I want to come. I… they must have fallen out of my pocket. I don’t usually lose things, but lately…”
“Well, don’t feel obligated. I know you’ve had a long day.”
“Don’t you want me to come?”
“Of course I do. But if you’re tired or if it’s not good for you, it’s okay. I thought maybe I put you on the spot today in the parking lot.”
“Not at all. I’ve been looking forward to it. Tell me again where you live. Was that your daughter?”
She lost the directions to my house. She doesn’t really want to come over.
Somers sat at his desk in the den. He chose the blue dry erase pen and wrote Alley at the top middle of a white board that was nailed to a wall. Down the left side, he wrote: Uncle Tito, Mrs. Muñoz, Chuy/Cirrus St., Carmen, Lady Upstairs.
He drew a horizontal line and wrote: briefcase, ice pick, Oaxcatil, hearse/Cadillac. Down the right side he wrote: Stan Raab, Teddy Kraus, Joe Campbell, Billy Drye, Jayne Perkins, Iris Thorne. He put a question mark next to Iris’s name. Then he circled her name and circled it again.
He took the photo of Alley that he’d enlarged from Alley’s California ID card, a somber Alley with serious eyes, and stuck it to the white board with a magnet shaped like a pineapple that said HAWAII. Then he opened Alley’s briefcase.
There was a plastic package of tissues. A book on time management. Some seashells in a Ziploc bag. A brown paper bag with an apple and a napkin and a neatly folded, used piece of aluminum foil. A pocket calculator. A magnifying glass toy from a box of Cracker Jack. New pens and pencils. Junk, just like Carmen had said. He lifted and prodded the contents with a letter opener from his desk.
He pulled a tissue from the plastic package and folded it over his fingers. He pulled a memo pad from the file compartment. “From the desk of… Alejandro Muñoz.” He held the pad by the edge and turned it so that the surface caught the light. There were writing impressions, but he couldn’t make them out. He put the pad back. An opening in the face of the file compartment held business cards. He took one out. They were imprinted with the McKinney Alitzer logo and read: “Alejandro Muñoz, Director, Mexican Operations.”
Somers looked out the den window at the afternoon shadows, then looked back at the card,
flicked the stiff paper with his thumb, and put it in his wallet. He looked at his watch, closed Alley’s briefcase, and moved it to the center of the desk. He noticed a chocolate-colored smear on a corner.
Somers examined his face in a Coors mirror over a couch. A blue-and-white mountain stream splashed around one edge. He unbuttoned his Levi’s and tucked in the white cotton shirt woven with blue ticking stripes that his daughter had given him for his birthday, probably picked out with the help of his ex-wife. It seemed as if he had always been dressed by women.
Iris’ll probably have me in Armani suits. Hold on. This is just dinner. Anyone can lose directions and it’s just dinner.
He prodded the soft circle of flesh that rolled out a little over his belt. He ran his hand over his chin to check for any prickly spots.
Maybe I should wear slacks. Too formal. Or shorts. Wait. It’s just dinner with an old friend.
Iris brought the TR to a crawl and squinted at the street signs, looking for Cat Canyon Road where she was supposed to turn left after she’d passed the junction of Old and New Topanga Canyon boulevards. Cars and motorcycles sped around the twisting road that connects the arid San Fernando Valley to the east with Malibu over the hills and on the other side of the canyon to the west. The canyon road was lined with ersatz western shops, patchouli-and-clove-scented health food restaurants, cozy Italian restaurants with dangling Chianti bottles, funky rock-and-roll boîtes with Harleys parked outside, woodcraft studios cluttered with pelican and dolphin sculptures, and clothing boutiques where tie-dye was miraculously in vogue again. Folks sold fruit and vegetables from roadside stands and carpets and framed pictures and shorts out of car trunks.
The middle of the canyon was far from anywhere—far from the freeway, the malls, the beach. Parts of it were wooded and laced with creeks, home to coyotes that roamed at night and picked off careless house cats, home to deer, a few mountain lions, tortoises, and skunks and snakes. Home to people seeking a country flavor in L.A. Home to the counterculture residue.
Iris found Cat Canyon and turned, crossing a wooden bridge built over a small creek, dry from the drought. She found Withered Canyon, the second turn, and wound her way up and up. The pavement ran out and turned to dirt scattered with pebbles. She followed the road to the end and parked in an unpaved clearing overlooking the summertime-browned Santa Monica Mountains and the blue Pacific. The fault line beneath the mountains had crumpled and folded the earth so that the brown hills looked like a bedspread after a restless night.
Residents had nailed wooden placards painted or carved with their names to a post at the bottom of the road. Ramshackle wood-frame houses with homemade stained glass windows, wind chimes made out of metal tubing, and dogs sleeping in beds of fallen pine needles stood next to newer structures of cement and greenish glass blocks or dark wood and smoked glass that looked like those in feature articles in architectural design magazines. “Haut Style on a Narrow Lot in the Wilderness.”
Iris walked up the road, which got steeper and steeper, the heels of her pumps slipping on the gravel and poking small, round holes in the dirt. She balanced on one foot and grabbed the other to examine the damage to her Bruno Maglis. At the top of the hill, she saw a steel mailbox on a post painted with John Somers’s street number and primitive daisies. She climbed a neat path bordered with sturdy, spring-blooming ice plant and small boulders and finally saw the house when she reached the crest. It clung to the hillside, built in several stories descending the side of the hill, and was wood, stained to look like redwood.
Iris pressed the doorbell. No answer. She tried the door. It was open.
“Hello?”
A muscular, white bull terrier burst through the door, barking. Iris stood still. She watched the dog and the dog watched her with one blue eye and one brown eye. He growled.
“Buster, stop it.”
The girl followed the dog out the door. She was of indeterminate adolescent-girl age, somewhere between eleven and fifteen. She was almost as tall as Iris, lean and tan, with curves that looked out of place, as if the dolls had hardly been put away. She wore baggy, knee-length jams, an oversized T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, rubber, rainbow-hued flip-flops, and several frayed and dirty friendship strings tied around her wrist. Her fingernails and toenails were painted with badly chipped rose polish, an attempt at glamour without the discipline to maintain it. She had long, thick hair, pulled back in a ponytail, in Somers’s auburn color.
“You’re Iris,” she stated.
“Yes,” Iris said, feeling unwelcome. “Are you John’s daughter?”
“Didn’t he tell you about me?” She patted the dog’s head.
The dog narrowed his eyes at Iris, raised his muzzle, and sniffed the air in her direction. His throat rumbled and the fur on the back of his neck stood up.
“He… sure, he…”
John Somers rounded the side of the house. “Iris.” His voice came out in a light bubble. He cleared his throat. “You found it. And you met Chloe and Buster.”
“Sort of. Hi, Chloe.”
“Hi.” Chloe whipped around and walked into the house. The dog followed. She started to pull the door closed, then popped her head out. “Dad, I’m going to Courtney’s house.”
“Okay, but you’re coming back for dinner.”
“But Daaaad…”
“We’ve already talked about this.”
Chloe sighed theatrically and closed the door hard.
John looked at Iris and shrugged. “Thirteen.”
“I don’t think she likes me.”
“Chloe? Of course she likes you.”
“Does she live here?”
“No, she lives with her mother in the Valley but comes here as much as she wants, which means she practically lives here during the summer. Come in. Let me show you around.”
John pushed open the front door, which was inset with stained-glass panels. They creaked down a wooden hallway into a living room with a high beamed ceiling and knotty pine walls lined with built-in bookshelves crammed with books, records, and knickknacks. A coffee table made out of a resin-covered slice of tree trunk was flanked by two well-worn sofas. Sunlight streamed through a glass wall opening onto a wooden deck that extended the length of the house. The deck had a hole in the center to allow the trunk of a broad oak tree to pass through. Its branches grew over the house, shading and littering it with fallen leaves.
They poked their heads into the den and then into an upstairs bathroom, where an orchid with a single long stem heavy with spotted flowers grew on the windowsill. He pointed down a narrow staircase to the bedrooms. They walked through a sunny kitchen, trimmed in yellow and magenta tiles, that overlooked the canyon. It was a working kitchen. Wooden spoons, spatulas, scrapers, tongs, and chopsticks, all stained from use, were crammed into a ceramic bin.
John took two glasses and a bottle of wine from the refrigerator. They walked out the backdoor and down a sloping yard to a flat terraced area where rows of tomato plants heavy with fruit grew in mesh cones next to well-tended rows of carrots, radishes, and tall corn. The dog was lying in the corn, the leaves brushing his back. An old peach tree spread thick branches covered with fruit and dark oblong leaves over a far corner of the yard. John and Iris scattered the birds that were eating the fallen fruit.
“Nice place,” Iris said.
“You like it, really?”
“Sure. Are you surprised?”
“It’s sort of… rustic. It doesn’t seem like it would be to your taste.”
“I like things rustic. How long have you lived here?”
“Ten years.”
“Your wife didn’t want the house?”
“No. She said it was too much me.” Good move. Let her know how little Penny thinks of me. He turned and walked into the vegetable patch. “Help me pick some tomatoes. I’m doing a tomato salad with basil and olive oil.”
She walked into the soft earth. “That’s right. You said you were a good cook.”
�
�Yep. You?”
She shrugged. “No. But, I like it when men are.” Her heel sunk deep into the dirt. When she tried to free it, her foot came out of her shoe and she toppled forward. He caught her, grabbing her forearms.
“Be careful.”
He looked down at her and met her eyes, which looked very blue with the deepening sky. She laughed nervously and looked back at her shoe, which was embedded in the ground three feet behind them. He released her arms and held out a hand.
“Hold on. I’ll pick it up.”
She put her hand in his palm and he leaned over and dislodged the shoe. He tapped the dirt out, dusted it off against his Levi’s, and presented it to her like Prince Charming at the ball. She supported her weight on his palm and bent over to put the errant shoe back on her foot.
He looked down at her long-boned hand that crossed his palm, at her narrow, enameled nails, felt her warmth penetrating through his skin and savored a sweet remembrance. Her hands and feet were always warm.
“Sorry. What a klutz.”
“Well, you’re not dressed for crawling around in the dirt.”
“I wanted to change clothes, but I had to do something and I ran out of time.”
She stood on both feet and slid her hand from his palm. He closed his hand as if to hold her touch. She walked back to the grass.
“These tomato plants remind me of my father,” she said.
“He was my inspiration.”
“No kidding?”
He squatted in the soft dirt by the row of tomato cones. He lifted a tomato away from the vine and turned it in his hand until it released.
“Seedless beefsteak tomatoes. I remember your dad out in your backyard, walking around with a hand pump, spraying them with God knows what. Carrying the little green worms he found in the palm of his hand, jingling them like coins. How is he?”
She watched the line of Somers’s back through his shirt, which was pulled taut and tucked into jeans that were stretched across his muscular hips and thighs. “Crazy as ever.”