House of Smoke

by JF Freedman

  The police covered the town like a blanket, especially the downtown shopping and restaurant areas that are the tourist centers. The bike patrol was especially visible—teams of uniformed cops wearing bicycle shorts and safety helmets, .44 automatics prominently strapped to their sides, rode their mountain bikes along the streets all day and night the entire weekend.

  The extra vigilance had paid off. The gangbangers laid low, people had fun. To ensure the public tranquility, more arrests than normal had been made. You looked drunk—in the slam. Tell it to the judge tomorrow. And the same mind-set applied to the overaggressive panhandling from the homeless population.

  Which means that the jail is jammed to overflowing, which is why Frank Bascomb, instead of being sequestered all night in his one-man lockdown cell, where a suspect in a big dope deal normally would be held, found himself unexpectedly transferred to a common tank, occupying the same space with drunks, derelicts, and scumbags of every description. It wasn’t what his jailers wanted, but there had been a highly publicized kidnapping and murder in the county a few months ago, and the case had gone to trial on the eve of Fiesta. All those defendants had to be quarantined, which took up most of the individual cells. Some of them had been doubled up in a single cell, which technically is illegal, but in a pinch you do what you have to. The rest of the individual cells were already occupied with level 5 inmates who had a history of violence and couldn’t be allowed into the general population. Frank Bascomb is a known quantity, the foreman of the Sparks properties, until tonight a respected member of the community. He isn’t going to cause any trouble. So when some really bad guys were brought in late, men who have to be kept in isolation, Frank was kicked out into the general population.

  In the county jail, as in all modern jails, there are television cameras everywhere, high up on the walls, that monitor what’s going on. This doesn’t mean that they see every inch of territory—there are plenty of blind spots. But they give a sweep that allows a good general overview, so if anything is happening out of the ordinary, the jailers manning the observation areas, which are centrally located islands in each wing of the jail with banks of monitors receiving the TV camera feeds, know right away and can take the proper steps to fix it.

  In addition, visual counts are made hourly, cell by cell. The guards look in each cell, making sure it’s full, that the inmate who’s supposed to be in it is, in fact, there. It’s a good system, but like all human systems it isn’t foolproof.

  Tonight is a good example. Because the jail is over the legal limit there are areas, like the one in which Frank’s being kept, that aren’t properly monitored, since they normally aren’t used at night. Not that that should matter—they’re all drunks and derelicts, they’re sleeping it off, it’s one big den of bums.

  So when one of the homeless winos sharing the tank with Frank starts yelling early in the morning, even before wakeup, the jailer running section duty in this wing doesn’t think it’s any big deal—another drunk fighting off a hangover. He drains his coffee before leaving the protection of the observation room to go inside and see what all the commotion is about, because by now it isn’t one voice screaming bloody murder, it’s all of them.

  “Motherfucker!”

  Some asshole’s lost control of himself, the stench from his diarrhea shit drifts halfway down the hallway, no wonder all the prisoners in there are yelling like banshees. Nothing worse than a drunk shitting all over himself.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ!”

  Where the rope had come from, a length of clothesline like what you hang your wash from, they had no idea: the sheriff repeated that statement later on to the hordes of media vultures who jammed into his conference room, while glossing over why Frank had been sequestered in a drunk tank in the first place; he’ll have to do some fancy dancing later with Sacramento and the attorney general’s office about that little fuckup.

  Bottom line, there shouldn’t have been any rope in there, it was an inexcusable fuckup, but so many men had been forced in here during the night there hadn’t been enough time to search everyone properly, that’s the only logical explanation.

  Frank’s neck hadn’t snapped. He’d died from suffocation, which is no picnic—it could’ve taken up to fifteen minutes. His face was purple-black from the concentration of blood and his eyes had bulged out of their sockets like Roger Rabbit’s. There were claw marks around his neck where he had tried to loosen the rope.

  What happens when a man hangs himself is that all the extremities open. Snot comes out of your nostrils, drool from your mouth, piss from your dick. And your sphincter relaxes as well, so if you have anything in your bowels out it comes, usually pretty watery. This is the reason the stench in the cellblock that morning was especially vile.

  3

  VERY DRY BONES

  FRANK BASCOMB IS DUMPED unceremoniously into the ground in a small, private funeral at a tiny rural cemetery next to an evangelical church near Lake Piru, in Ventura County, where most of the markers have Hispanic surnames and no one’s ever heard of the Sparks family, none of whom attend except Laura, who comes out of a sense of guilt, fear, and anger, and confusion, standing near the scrubby grave site in the heat, listening to the funeral home preacher mumble the usual homilies about a man he’d never met, glancing up sharply as he suddenly snaps the dog-eared Bible shut, her eyes for a moment meeting those of the half-dozen other mourners, cowboys from the ranch who had worked under Frank and came because it was their duty to, plus two common-looking women she’s never laid eyes on before, not relatives of Frank’s, he’d had no family they’d been able to contact, his past had been strangely ambiguous, now it would be forever sealed under this hard-baked clay, who are these women, she thinks, her curiosity piqued, other girlfriends, people who wander into funerals, what?

  There had been no public announcement. The family had wanted to get this over fast, without fanfare. Miranda had arranged everything, she pushed the coroner (another family acquaintance) to waive an autopsy, which is SOP in such deaths, so that the corpse didn’t lie around in the morgue for a week or more, which is the common practice in most overburdened county labs. She even supervised the purchasing of the casket, by phone: a plain pine box, the cheapest one. Frank was to be buried as cheaply and quickly as possible, the book to be closed and sealed shut.

  The others drift away from the grave site. The cowboys glance at Laura, heads down, mouthing homilies of condolence. They get into ranch pickups and drive off; the boss might be dead, but they’ve got work to do, a 20,000-acre ranch doesn’t wait on anything.

  Who are these women? Laura thinks, watching them from a distance as they linger a moment at a respectful distance from the grave, moving to the side as the backhoe starts pushing the dirt over the casket into the hole. They are both in their mid-thirties, she guesses, wearing bought-for-the-occasion cheap summer dresses that look like they came off the same rack at the Broadway, pantyhose (even in this heat; Laura is barelegged), cheap rickety heels. They aren’t the type of women who are comfortable wearing heels, Laura observes.

  Could they be women Frank kept on the side? They’re not particularly attractive.

  She can feel a wave of jealousy and insecurity washing over her. God knows how many women Frank had stashed all over creation.

  The two unfamiliar women approach Laura, hands in vague salute on their foreheads to shield their eyes from the piercing sun. Laura is wearing sunglasses and a wide-brimmed hat. The light is fierce, and the kick from the hard clay ground compounds the glare.

  “You are Laura Sparks, aren’t you?” one of them asks.

  “Yes,” she answers, tight-lipped.

  “We work on your ranch,” the woman informs Laura by way of introduction. She nods to her companion. “She cooks, I clean.”

  “Oh.” Laura is taken aback. “Nice to meet you.” She extends her hand. And she had thought Frank was fucking them. That’s a relief, at least.

  The women shake hands with her
. Their hands are rough like men’s.

  “Appreciate somebody from the family coming.”

  Laura half-nods, half-shrugs. She’s uncomfortable and dazed.

  “Must have been a shock.”

  “Yes,” Laura says.

  “That’s Frank,” the second woman offers. “Always scheming.”

  “I … wouldn’t know.”

  “Lot about that man you wouldn’t know.” The woman looks at her frankly, her eyes slits in the white sunlight.

  “Obviously,” Laura replies firmly. These are employees of the family, they should be addressing her with a certain civility.

  “Live hard, die young,” the woman tosses off.

  They turned away abruptly, walking towards the road where the cars are parked.

  “Hung himself,” one says caustically to the other, not realizing Laura’s still in earshot. “You think anybody’s stupid enough to believe that shit?” Her voice is flat second-generation dust belt, from Coalinga or one of those ugly Central Valley towns, Laura thinks.

  “Newspapers bought it.”

  “You believe anything you read in the dumb newspapers? Or TV? You got more sense than that, girl.”

  “Nobody seems to be making much of a fuss over it.”

  “People are stupid. Anyway, nobody gives a shit about a dead dope dealer.”

  “The stories the walls could tell about that family.”

  “And everything they touch.”

  Their laughter is bitter.

  What is going on? Laura wonders. And what are those references to her family? Is the whole world in on some sick joke and I’m the only one that doesn’t know about it?

  Kate rides her body board, taking a long wave all the way into shore. She’s been out in the ocean—Butterfly Beach, near the Biltmore—for over an hour. It’s not mid-morning yet and the sun is already blazing, it’s going to be another scorcher, especially by Santa Barbara standards. But not as humid as it’s been, thankfully; the weather’s coming back to central coast normal.

  The waves have been breaking good. She’s ridden several of them, enough to give her arms, shoulders, and legs a good healthy soreness.

  The first thing she’d done the week she hit Santa Barbara was find an apartment, a furnished studio she survived in for six months before moving to her present digs. The second thing was to walk into a local surf shop down by East Beach and start asking questions about boards. That afternoon she took her first lesson.

  She loves water, particularly the ocean; the sensuousness of it, the salt taste, cold temperature, the danger in the undertow, and the fatigue when you’ve been out for hours but won’t come in until you’ve ridden one more set.

  That she had never surfed before didn’t matter. That many times she’s the oldest person out there, definitely the oldest woman, doesn’t matter, either. What mattered was that she was going to do all the things she’d wanted to do and hadn’t, including things, like surfing and swimming, she hadn’t even thought of. She was California born and bred, she should know how to surf. She doesn’t look like a surfer girl—her eyes are gray, her skin closer to olive than ivory, it matches up well with her luxurious hair, which she streaks occasionally, depending on her mood.

  “You look like a rich Sausalito Jew-broad with that hair,” Eric had sneered once when she’d come home from Cut ’N Curl with tastefully feathered platinum streaks.

  “In your dreams.”

  He had probably smacked her for that crack. She doesn’t remember. If not for that, for something else equally trivial. Any excuse would do.

  She windsurfs, too. Once, after she erroneously thought she knew it all (a big part of her stubborn nature), she went out way past the safe point, halfway to the islands almost, like she’d seen the hotshots do, and when it had been time to turn back the wind was against her and the tacking back and forth was tiring, too tiring to keep at, and finally, completely exhausted, she had dropped her sail and laid on the board and watched the sun fading in the horizon behind her and realized this was a way people died.

  She wasn’t ready for that. It had scared the shit out of her, sitting out there all alone, no one around to help. She’d been more scared that afternoon than she’d ever been during any of her titanic battles with Eric, even more than she’d been during any of the terrifying incidents she’d encountered in all her years on the police force (including the Losario family disaster, the incident that had changed her entire life).

  A fishing boat had spotted her, a tiny speck on the flat twilight horizon. That was a lucky fluke, because the boats don’t normally fish in that area, but on this day one was. They pulled her on board and took her in with the halibut and abalone.

  After that she cut down on the windsurfing and put her energy into board surfing where she’s more in control, closer to the water and the shore.

  She grabs her board, towel, lotion, slips into her sandy thongs, and walks up the path to her car, which is parked along Channel Drive. A quick run back to her apartment, shower and change—then she has to go to work.

  “How did you hear about me?”

  Kate and Laura are sitting in a back booth at Esau’s Coffee Shop, eating a late breakfast; rather, Kate’s eating. Laura, too nervous to eat, is drinking herb tea and picking nervously at a bran muffin, the crumbs scattered on her side of the table.

  “From Mildred Willard. She’s a friend of my mother’s. She once told me she’d met this woman detective who’d moved here recently. She thought that was pretty neat, ‘a real lady gumshoe,’ she called you, ‘not a character out of a novel.’”

  Mildred; from her group. That’s a first—a job referral from someone in the group. Almost all her cases come through lawyers, which she prefers, civilians coming in off the street aren’t always trustworthy.

  “Do you have an attorney?” she asks.

  “Tom Calloway’s our family lawyer.”

  Kate knows Tom Calloway. Tom Calloway is no friend of hers. When she first started out on her own Tom Calloway hired her to do a background check for him, since the agency he normally used was too busy. Calloway’s one of the big guns in town; this was a chance to improve her clientele and her standing in the field, so she worked extra hard at it. She did a good job, quick and professional. Calloway told her he was very pleased with her work, and she never heard word one from him again. He went right back to his regular way of doing business, working solely with PIs who pee standing up.

  Most of the lawyers she works with have gotten past that antiwoman nonsense, thank God. After all the feminist rhetoric, it’s still a man’s world sometimes. Taking a case from a Calloway client will taste extra sweet: if you can’t join ’em, kick their ass.

  “He doesn’t know I’m seeing you,” Laura informs her. “I’d prefer he didn’t know,” she adds.

  “That’s fine.” She knew that already.

  She’ll have to remember to thank Mildred Willard, while at the same time tactfully making sure the woman keeps her mouth shut about how they really know each other.

  She cuts into her order of ham, a slab large enough to cover a butter plate. With it she’s having eggs over easy, home fries smothered in salsa, sourdough toast, and coffee laced with half-and-half. She doesn’t worry about cholesterol or calories, the surfing works it off.

  Laura watches Kate chow down. She takes a sip from her tea, to have something to do with her hands.

  Kate looks at the girl sitting across from her. She’s having a hard time with this. If she wasn’t, Kate would be concerned.

  “You didn’t see it, I hope? Or afterwards?”

  “Oh God, no.” Laura places her cup in the saucer. “I never saw him again, once I left the boat.” She brushes strands of fine blond hair back off her face, a nervous tic. “I tried to see him when he was in jail,” she adds, wanting Kate to know that, “but they wouldn’t let me.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Kate says, instinctively reaching across the table to touch the girl’s pale hand. “Was he�
�” she hesitates, wanting to get this right—“close to you?”

  “He worked for us. Our ranch foreman. For several years.” There is an awkward pause, which Kate doesn’t attempt to fill.

  “We were dating,” Laura admits, after some hesitation.

  “Uh-huh.” Kate mops up the last of the yolk with a piece of toast, drinks some coffee, holds up the cup to the passing waitress for a refill.

  “Actually, we were …”

  “I understand.” He was the girl’s lover, Frank the foreman. She’d assumed that as soon as Laura had started in about it. The girl shouldn’t have to speak of something so personal with a woman she doesn’t even know, not this early in the game.

  The subject needs changing. “So what is it you would like me to do for you? About your friend’s suicide?”

  Laura looks up at her. It’s the first time she’s looked directly at Kate since they sat down.

  “I don’t think it was a suicide,” she says.

  The statement hangs heavy in the air between them, like a sudden sopping humidity.

  The words reverberate inside Kate’s head. “You think your boyfriend was murdered? Inside the county jail?”

  “Yes,” Laura says, “that’s exactly what I think.”

  They stand in the late-morning sun next to Laura’s BMW convertible, in the parking lot on Gutierrez next to the freeway. The reflection off the asphalt burns Kate’s eyes.