by Toni Andrews
Butchie clapped him on the back. “No, Roger, you were doing just fine. I just thought it was time to change the subject. You know Sam doesn’t like everyone hearing about that stuff.”
“Right, right.” Roger looked contrite. “Sorry, my dear. Being in the presence of a lovely young lady has obviously gone to my head. Forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive,” I told him. Not by me, anyway.
So Sam had been in Iraq. It must not have been in the latest war, based on what I knew of his recent history. I wasn’t really all that surprised. Sam obviously had secrets, and there were a few facts that had never added up. He’d discussed martial arts with Tino in a way that led me to believe he had more than academic knowledge of the discipline. I’d once seen him scale a telephone pole like a monkey, and he’d busted down a door with too much precision for it to have been his first time. And he’d conversed with the Tunisian owner of a local restaurant in his own tongue. Fluently, according to the restaurateur.
There was some activity at the back door, and I turned to see Lifeguard Skip and a couple of his cronies come in. Skip was probably in his late fifties but, from what I’d been told, had in fact once been a Newport Beach lifeguard. There were about six guys named “Skip” local to Balboa, and they each had a nickname.
The newcomers were happy to see Butchie, and came over to say hello and be introduced to Roger. Lifeguard Skip wasn’t quite homeless or quite a bum. He had, at the moment, a one-room apartment, and he worked odd jobs for cash. Sam sometimes employed him, as did several of the other local business owners. I didn’t know his two friends as well, but they were cut from similar cloth. Usually at least one of the three had enough cash in his pocket to buy a few beers, but they were always glad if someone with more regular income was willing to stand a round, as Butchie could usually be relied upon to do.
I was mentally debating a second beer when the bar stool behind me scraped against the cement floor.
“Hello, Mercy.”
“Hi, Sam.”
“Hey, Egghead. Beer?” Jimbo liked Sam, too, although I’d never thought the handle with which he’d christened him was a good fit. Of course, Jimbo still subscribed to a school of thought in which “egghead” meant anyone educated. When Sam had first arrived in Newport last spring, knowing few people, he’d sometimes sat at the bar with a book. He favored large, impressive-looking volumes on military history or novels with seafaring heroes. Not too many people brought books to Jimbo’s bar.
“Sam, my boy,” said Roger, having spotted his son. “Have you met this pretty girl here?”
“Yes, Dad, I know Mercy.”
“Ah, yes, Mercy,” repeated Roger, and I wondered if he’d forgotten my name. “So, Sam, did you get your business all squared away?”
“Yup. After I drink this, we’ll head on home, okay?”
Roger looked at his own glass, which was nearly empty. “Perhaps I’ll join you in another mug.”
“You’re only supposed to have one.”
“Well, yes,” Roger said, “but these mugs are really quite small….” He looked appealingly at his son.
Sam smiled, and I saw both pain and affection in his expression. “Yeah, they are. Okay, just one more. Jimbo?”
Jimbo, who had been observing from a distance, drew a fresh beer and brought it over. Roger thanked him and turned back to Butchie, who was in the middle of a riotous and off-color tale.
“I’m glad I finally got to meet him,” I told Sam. “He’s a nice man, Sam. And very proud of you.”
“I know.” Sam was quiet, not looking at me. “He’s been—well, he hasn’t been good lately. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t be able to keep him home much longer. Then, a few days ago, he just woke up one day, almost his old self. I know it can’t last, but it’s sure great to see him like this.”
Sam inclined his head toward his father, and I saw that Rog had joined in the tale, even getting off his bar stool to act out part of the account as the others laughed uproariously. “I always said that no one could tell a story like Dad. He was a journalist for the Navy, you know, before he became a college professor.”
“How did he feel about you going into the military?”
Sam’s head snapped around, his cheerful expression gone. “I’ve never actually said I was in military.” His voice was perfectly calm, but there was something underneath it. Something unsettling.
“Roger mentioned Iraq.”
Sam put his beer down and turned toward me with deliberation. He seemed to be choosing his words carefully.
“Dad sometimes forgets that there are certain things he isn’t supposed to talk about. I know he’s said more to Butchie than he should have, but Butchie’s an old Navy man and knows how to keep his mouth shut. But—” I saw a vein twitch in his temple. “If you’ve taken advantage of his illness to ask questions about things that I’ve already told you I’m not at liberty to discuss…”
Adrenaline coursed through my veins and made my scalp tingle. How dare he?
“Do you actually believe that I would take advantage—that I would use your father to—to…” I shut my mouth and took a deep breath before the outrage could take hold of me and make me start yelling or, worse yet, pressing.
“Even if he brought it up on his own, you shouldn’t have encouraged him—”
“I didn’t encourage him!” My voice had risen, and Butchie’s head swiveled toward me, eyes bright with curiosity. I turned my back to him and looked straight at Sam. Struggling against the rising tide of my temper, I measured my words carefully.
“I didn’t encourage him,” I managed to say more quietly. “And Butchie interrupted him before he had the chance to say much. But, Sam, after all the grief you’ve given me about keeping secrets from you, you have to admit that you’ve been keeping a pretty damn big secret yourself. Do you blame me for taking notice?”
“Grief?” The derision in Sam’s tone could have cut diamonds. “You think I gave you grief? I let you keep your secrets, Mercy.”
“Until you broke up with me,” I shot back.
Sam glanced over my shoulder, and I realized he was looking to see how much attention the other men were paying to us. Jimbo, a veteran of thousands of barroom arguments, had remained discreetly at the other end of the bar, attuned enough to our body language to know we would rather not be overheard.
The only thing to do was make myself scarce. I’d come into this place to avoid tension, and this conversation was the last thing I needed after a day that had started off stressful and progressed to nerve-wracking. I’d wanted to wind down before bedtime, and at this rate I would be up half the night.
I stood up. “This is not the time or the place for this discussion,” I said, sounding pompous even to my own ears. Would there ever be a time and a place? “I’m going home.”
I was out the door and halfway across the parking lot when I heard his voice.
“Mercy, wait.” I almost kept on going, but I stopped. Sam caught up.
“I’m sorry I accused you of—of manipulating Dad. You’re right, you would never do that. You just caught me off guard when you bought up Iraq.”
I folded my arms, a barrier between us. “I’m sorry, too. That I brought it up. I should have kept my mouth shut.”
He shook his head. “No, actually, I need to know if Dad is being indiscreet.” He looked back over his shoulder at the light streaming from the bar’s back door. “He doesn’t really know all that much himself, but—” He bit his lip.
“Can I walk you home?” he asked, surprising me.
“I’m fine—it’s only a couple of blocks.”
“I know. I just want to say something to you.”
I nodded, and we turned down the alley. He waited until we’d crossed Balboa Boulevard and were almost on the boardwalk before speaking.
“We—you and I—only talked about this once before. I told you I had taken an oath, and that was why I couldn’t tell you everything.”
“Ye
s.”
“Yeah, well, I could have told you some things without violating that oath. Not much, but enough to—to explain a little bit about why I can’t talk about it. I should have trusted you that much.”
Here it was, my opening. Time for me to admit that I should have trusted him more, too. Time for me to tell him—what? That I didn’t know who or what I was? That the only other person I’d ever met who was anything like me had turned out to be a monster? Even Madame Minéshti, the gypsy woman who’d told me there were others like me and that her people had known about them for centuries, didn’t know for sure whether I was human.
The moment stretched—and passed. Our secrets would remain secrets, at least for the time being.
It really was a short walk, and we were in front of my house before the silence had time to get uncomfortable. I suddenly realized how very, very badly I wanted to invite him in. I paused, uncertain, wondering if he knew what I was thinking.
“I have to get back to Dad. He was having a good time tonight, but things can change fast with him.”
Relief and disappointment warred in my belly.
“Okay,” I said. “Sam, I really did enjoy meeting your father. I’m glad I got to see him on one of his good days.”
“I may bring him to work with me this week, since the weather’s supposed to be good and I’m between regular caregivers. I think all the activity’s good for him.”
“I’m sure it is. Good night, Sam.”
“Good night, Mercy. Stop by and say hello to Dad tomorrow, if you’re around.”
“I might do that. Mondays are quiet.” I went inside without turning on the lights and moved to the living room window, where I could see through the blinds. I watched his form in the pools of light the street lamps shed on the boardwalk until he turned the corner to head back toward Jimbo’s.
“Meow?” Fred sounded inquisitive as he rubbed against my ankle.
“No, he’s not coming in.” Sam was one of Fred’s favorite people, with his calm voice and slow, deliberate movements. “And you’ll be glad to know Cupcake’s spending another night at Sukey’s.” The loud, rumbling purr allowed me to perpetuate my delusion that Fred understood every word I said.
I looked at the clock. It was almost eleven, and I needed to get ready for bed, but I feared that the day’s events would swirl in my head like a carousel, preventing sleep. Sighing, I sank onto the sofa and picked up the remote control. I clicked over to the classic movie channel, where a black-and-white image of Olivia de Havilland’s sweet, soulful features filled the screen, and Fred jumped up and settled on my lap. I toyed with the idea of getting the vodka bottle out of the freezer but never quite made it off the couch.
I let the sentimental old movie sweep me away, and when my eyes got heavy, I didn’t fight the feeling. I was just trying to decide whether to get up and go to the bedroom when the pounding started.
8
“Mercy! Mercy, you still up?”
It was Sam’s voice. I sat up groggily. “I’m coming.” Fred was stalking back and forth in front of the door. I stumbled to the foyer and managed to get the lock disengaged.
The Sam illuminated by my entrance light was a different man from the one I’d seen…how long ago? I couldn’t see the clock from where I stood. He was disheveled and sweating, his eyes wide.
“It’s Dad,” he said. “He wandered off. Butchie thought he was in the bathroom, and—”
“I’ll call the police,” I said.
He stopped me as I started to turn away. “Already done. They’re looking in all the alleys and doorways, and along the bay front. I was heading over toward the pier, and I saw your light on, and thought—”
“Of course. Just let me put my shoes back on.”
We headed straight across the dunes to the water’s edge. The beach was wide here, and the lights from the closest parking lot did little to amplify the glow cast by a quarter moon. The tide was coming in but still pretty low, with six-foot wave faces breaking into inches of water. Farther north, man-made breakwaters made it easier for swimmers to get in and out of the surf. Here the diagonal shore break often caused body surfers who got caught in the bruising churn to say they’d “been maytagged.”
I knew that the moonlight was deceptive, only pretending to illuminate the beach, and even small shadows could easily hide a man’s form.
“Dad!” Sam called, cupped hands in front of his mouth. “Hello, Dad!” His shouts were largely drowned out by the sound of the waves.
I’d grabbed a flashlight, but its beam didn’t really illuminate more than a tiny wavering circle on the sandy expanse. Nevertheless, I scanned it back and forth as I walked.
“Roger!” I shouted, aware of my voice being swallowed by wind and water. “Roger Falls!”
“I don’t think he’d be on the beach after dark. Even if he wandered over this way, he’d go toward someplace with lights.” He pointed toward the pier, now only a couple of blocks away, bright as a beacon.
As we increased our pace, I saw a police cruiser come around the corner and pull slowly onto the pier. A handheld spotlight shone from the passenger window, illuminating first the sand on either side, and then the water, as the car moved farther onto the pier.
“Roger Falls!” The amplified voice was definitely loud enough to cut through wind and wave noise, but nothing stirred on the pier except for a couple of late night fishermen, who turned curiously.
The base of the Balboa Pier is set back a long way from the water’s edge and the pier itself rises high above the ocean waves. We altered our course to angle away from the water and back to the boardwalk, where stairs scaled the side of the pier. By the time we climbed the steps, a second police car had arrived, and now everything was illuminated except the area directly underneath the pier.
Sam waved to one of the cops, who stopped to wait for him. As they spoke, I went partway back down the staircase and directed my flashlight’s beam into the shadowy recesses at the pier’s base.
It was built farther back than the high tide normally reached, and I expected to see litter, but the sand looked pretty clean. Toward the water, several signs warned No Swimming Under the Pier. Wooden beams running between the enormous concrete pilings cast weird shadows and tricked the eye. Back near the base, something was sticking up just behind a pile of sand. I wanted a better look at it. First I turned off the flashlight, and then I took a couple of steps back up the staircase and shouted.
“Sam! I’m going to look under here.” Sam turned and held one hand to his ear, his expression telling me he’d heard his name but not the rest of what I’d said. “I’m going to look down there,” I yelled, gesturing. He nodded and returned to his conversation, and I went back down the stairs and, turning my inadequate flashlight back on, stepped into the shadows.
I searched for whatever had caught my eye before I’d spoken but couldn’t see it from this angle. Just pitted sand—kids played here during the day, and the trucks that smoothed the sand on either side couldn’t fit between the pilings to smooth the craters left over from the construction of castles and treasure-hunting excavations. The sand was soft and difficult to walk in.
I was about to head back into the light when I finally spotted the thing I’d noticed earlier. Something the same color as the sand but too smooth, too regular. I trudged over toward it, and as I got closer, its outlines became clearer.
It was a tan deck shoe.
My mind whirred into high gear. Sam almost always wore deck shoes—had his father been wearing them at Jimbo’s? I couldn’t remember. They were pretty common—the shoe could have been here for days. Still…
I swung my light around the space. “Roger! Roger Falls!” My voice was swallowed by the thunder of waves, much louder here as it echoed against the ceiling created by the pier above. Other than the shoe, I saw nothing that didn’t belong here. I shone the beam toward the water, into the latticework of supports leading down to the pilings. Stupid—a monkey couldn’t climb up there,
never mind a senior citizen.
I looked at where the pilings emerged from the frothing ocean. The waves seemed larger and more violent under the pier, broken up by the pilings. A couple of people drowned or were severely injured under here every year, despite lifeguards’ best efforts to keep swimmers away from the roiling chaos. I couldn’t make out much in the beam of my household flashlight. What was needed was a spotlight, like the ones on the police cars.
Uncertain about what to do, I picked up the shoe. It was large, the right size for a tall man. As I headed back toward the stairs, I saw the flashing reflection from one of the cruisers’ lights—it must be leaving the pier and heading back toward the street. I cursed the sand that impeded my progress when I finally reached the base of the stairs and watched the second cruiser also pull away from the pier and cruise back toward Balboa’s main intersection.
“Wait! Come back!” I shouted, but I knew I couldn’t be heard. I practically ran up the steep steps, which didn’t feel difficult after the drag of the sand. I ran to the middle of the pier, where I was illuminated by lights on either side, and waved my arms in the air, the deck shoe in one hand. “Come back!” Maybe they would see me in their rearview mirrors. I jumped up and down, but first one cruiser and then the other turned the corner onto Balboa Boulevard and disappeared.
Frustrated, I turned toward the end of the pier. Sam had spotted me and was running. I could tell he was shouting but couldn’t hear his words. One of the fishermen, seeing the commotion, was coming my way, too, although he was still forty or fifty feet behind Sam.
I ran to meet Sam and held out the shoe. “Is this…?”
He grabbed it, eyes wild. “Where did you find this?”
“Under the pier. But I can’t see anything with this stupid flashlight. We need to get the police car back here with the spotlight. Can you call 9-1-1?”
“No, I don’t have my cell phone.” His frustration seemed to vibrate through his entire body, and he raked the hand not holding the shoe through his hair.