January Justice

by Athol Dickson

  Soon after that, they found a young woman named Nancy Fleming lying unconscious below some scrub brush on the hill behind the trailer. She worked for the caterer and had been sent over to serve the meal. Once she regained consciousness, she said she remembered walking toward the trailer with our food and then waking up in an ambulance, but nothing in between.

  Investigators tested the remains of the meal and the blood from Haley’s body and mine. The lab results showed a cocktail of several kinds of amphetamines and hallucinogenic drugs, including lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. They said it was a massive overdose. One of my doctors said she was surprised when I regained my sanity three months later.

  I was still unsure I had returned to sanity, even then. The abject terror of an uncontrollable imagination doesn’t fade easily, or soon. For weeks, which turned into months, psychiatrists worked with me. Eventually I came to understand the challenge. What I had to do was simple: rediscover something I could count on. If the drugs had torn away the calm and distant place that had sheltered me from the fear of combat, something else must take its place. Otherwise, the threat of madness would be ever present.

  One day a chaplain from my old unit came to visit. It turned out he had come several times before, but that was the first time I had noticed. Captain Bud Tanner was a good marine. I had first met him at a forward operating base in Afghanistan. He was with the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines at that time, stationed in Delaram, which was just one barricade and some barbed wire away from being overrun by Taliban at all times. My squad and I had been passing through after a pretty tough mission. Word got around about what we had just done, and Bud came over to the hooch to check on us. He and I hit it off, and after his deployment when he ended up at Camp Pendleton, we got to know each other better.

  It was Bud who showed me where it says in the Good Book to think about true things. Noble things. Whatever is right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy. It was Bud who told me see that such things were always there, even when I couldn’t think of them. They hadn’t died with Haley, and they had never stopped existing, even while I was lost within the chaos in my skull. And because they were always there, because they were external to me and didn’t rely on me in any way for their existence, I could hold on to them, or the idea of them, and in doing that, regain some sense of stability.

  I had my doubts about Bud’s theory. Compared to the enormity of my pain, it seemed like clutching at straws. It wasn’t the dependable, calm and distant place that had sustained me in fearful moments before combat. It wasn’t inside me. It wasn’t part of me. It was no more under my control than the madness was. But it was my only chance, if I wanted to live long enough to avenge my wife.

  5

  Simon slipped into the guesthouse bedroom carrying a steaming cup of french roast coffee. He served it in an Aynsley china cup and saucer on a mahogany lap tray, one of a set of lap trays made in Charleston, South Carolina, for a planter who had been killed in the 1831 Jamaican Baptist War before the trays could be delivered. I knew this because I had once read a book about the Jamaican Baptist War, and because Simon, who was something of a historian, had once gently corrected my wife when he overheard her tell me that the tray was made in 1832.

  As Simon set the coffee on the bedside table and moved to open the curtains at the windows, I remembered the morning when he and Haley and I had discussed the tray. Simon had been serving coffee. Haley and I had been in bed together, the same bed where I now lay alone, in that same room, my bedroom in the guesthouse. It was three hundred and twenty-two steps from her bedroom in a neocolonial Spanish-style mansion overlooking Newport Harbor, built by Howard Hughes during his Jane Russell days, and which Haley had renamed El Nido, the nest.

  It was my first thought of Haley for the day, and I had been awake nearly half a minute. Things were improving.

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  “I believe it is just past one in the afternoon, sir,” replied Simon in his right proper English accent.

  “Guess I should get up.”

  “If you say so, sir.”

  “I do say so. I just don’t want to do it.”

  “Should I close the curtains and remove the coffee so you can retire?”

  “Do what you want. I didn’t ask you to come in here and open the curtains in the first place.”

  “Very good, sir.” Simon left the curtains open and the coffee on the bedside table and moved toward the door.

  “Simon,” I said.

  He stopped and turned to look at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Think nothing of it, sir.”

  “I’m feeling pretty sorry for myself.”

  “I believe you have every right to be distressed.”

  “Maybe. But it isn’t healthy if it drags on too long.”

  “A wise observation, sir.”

  I sat up a little bit, then took the cup off the tray. “I’ve been kind of hiding out, haven’t I?”

  “We have done our best to respect your privacy.”

  “And I appreciate that. But it’s been a week. I’m back. I need to act like I’m back.”

  “As you say, sir.”

  “How have you guys been getting along?”

  “Mr. Fujimoto and I have been able to manage the household’s affairs as well as one might expect under the circumstances. We did, however, lose Maria.”

  Maria had been Haley’s cook and maid over at the mansion for many years.

  “What happened?”

  “The paparazzi were much more aggressive than usual. She learned they had been interviewing her mother. I believe her mother was quite distraught at the intrusive nature of their questions and their tactics, so Maria decided it would be best for her family if she gave her notice.”

  “That’s a shame. Have you replaced her yet?”

  “No, sir. One did wonder if that would be necessary.”

  I took a sip of the coffee. It was excellent, of course. “What have you guys been up to all this time?”

  Simon pursed his lips as if in thought. “Let me see… Mr. Fujimoto laid in a new bed of impatiens at the south end of the front lawn. He also erected a small arbor above the bench where Miss Lane often sat to observe the harbor. I believe he planted violet bougainvillea there, which was her favorite color as you may recall. He stated his belief that it should frame the bench quite pleasantly in future years. I myself noticed a bit of rust on the second-floor railings, so I took the liberty of engaging painters.

  “One of the refrigerators in the pantry started making a strange humming noise, which required replacement of a motor. I did that myself. We took delivery of a billiard table, which Miss Lane had ordered for the sunroom. Its placement there required removal of a sofa and four occasional chairs, which I disposed of with the Salvation Army.” He paused and looked at me. “I hope that decision was acceptable. One did wonder if they should be sold; however, in the end I decided Miss Lane would have preferred that they go toward a benevolent purpose.”

  “You must have been bored stiff.”

  “It has been a rather dreary seven months in her absence. And in yours, if I may say so, sir.”

  “Except for the paparazzi.”

  “Yes, sir. They were quite distressing in the early weeks, but more recently they seem to have lost interest.”

  “Well, at least there’s that.”

  Through the window I saw Teru Fujimoto walking underneath the sycamores. He wore his usual coolie hat, green trousers, and green shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the ropy muscles in his forearms. He held a plastic tray by the handle. In the tray were little sprigs of something leafy. In his other hand was a garden trowel.

  Watching him I said, “Is Teru doing okay?”

  Simon paused a moment before answering. “He grieves, sir.”

  “And you?”

  Simon looked away but didn’t reply. I watched his profile as he gazed out the window. The quintessential Englis
h butler. A pristinely tailored suit. Aquiline features. Silver hair, worn slightly long and combed back from a tall, smooth forehead. It was very unusual for Simon to ignore a question. Suddenly I felt ashamed. I had forgotten that I wasn’t the only one who loved her.

  I said, “Have you thought about what you’ll do now?”

  He turned to me, his eyebrows raised. “Do, sir?”

  “I’m sure there are a lot of folks in Newport who would love to have you. Or maybe Laguna or Malibu. Friends of Haley’s in the business.”

  A mask of neutrality quickly replaced his rare flash of emotion. “I understand. Is there anything more I can do for you, sir?”

  “There is one thing.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What’s with all the ‘sir’ business? You never used to call me that.”

  He looked at me and raised one eyebrow. “It is the normal appellation for one’s employer, sir.”

  After Simon left, I sipped the coffee. It seemed Simon had expected to stay on at El Nido. I hadn’t thought of that. With Haley gone, I had assumed he would want to leave as soon as possible. That was certainly my intention.

  Then I remembered the last thing he had said, and an astonishing realization came to me. I felt foolish not to have considered it before. Probably it had been rattling around in the back of my mind for weeks, but in all of the confusion, I hadn’t taken hold of it and focused.

  Could it really be possible that El Nido was mine now?

  As I sat in bed pondering that possibility, a memory slowly emerged of a man, a lawyer, who had come to see me in the hospital. Hadn’t he said the grounds, guesthouse, tennis court, pool, helipad, dock, and mansion… all of it had been left to me? Yes, I was almost certain that was what he said. I hadn’t thought of it again because it hadn’t seemed important. Details about property and money don’t matter much when your own mind isn’t under your control. Bigger fish to fry and all that. But while the world around me still dissolved into chaos sometimes, mostly I had begun to see the same so-called reality as everybody else. Maybe I should be paying more attention.

  I got to my feet. I pulled on a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a white polo shirt, then slipped into a pair of flip-flops. I glanced at my reflection in the mirrored door of the Edwardian armoire. The polo-shirt sleeves fit tightly around my biceps and hung loosely over my flat stomach. After my mind had begun to come back, they allowed me to work out twice a day at the hospital’s physical therapy gym, so I probably remained the only limo driver in Orange County who could do sixty one-armed push-ups in a minute. At least I still had that.

  I walked out of the bedroom. I paused and looked around at the living room and the kitchen, with the little dining area. It had never felt like home. Now that I apparently owned it, the guesthouse seemed even less homey. The interior had been carefully designed to coordinate with Haley’s Spanish-colonial mansion, with rough-cut beams stained dark brown, a heavy iron chandelier with simulated candles, and multipaned windows set deep in recesses carefully plastered to simulate the thick walls of an adobe hacienda.

  I crossed the living area and peered into the guest room. There stood my easel and the folding table beside it, on which my brushes and paints awaited. The harbor scene on the easel remained unfinished, exactly as I had left it the day before the murder. It seemed unfamiliar, as if it had been done by someone else. I tried to imagine myself painting again and found myself thinking instead of the day when my new life began with Haley Lane.

  6

  After thirteen years in the Marines, I had been demoted to the rank of private, confined in the stockade for half a year, and then dishonorably discharged. Standing there in the spare bedroom of Haley’s guesthouse, I didn’t bother thinking about why it had happened. I only thought about the fact that I had limped back to lick my wounds at my grandparents’ ranch near Uvalde, Texas, where I grew up.

  One weekend, after spending most of that summer running cattle with my grandfather and his Mexican crew, I drove over to San Antonio. I had decided not to worry about money for a while and took a room downtown at the Menger Hotel, which is across the street from the Alamo. That first night I had a drink in the old hotel’s bar, a Texas icon where Teddy Roosevelt famously recruited his Rough Riders.

  Nobody accosted me. I hadn’t been in the cell phone videos they showed so many times on television, so my face wasn’t as well known as the rest of the so-called butchers. I was minding my own business with a glass of single malt when a little guy in shorts and sandals and a riotous Hawaiian shirt sat on the stool beside me. After a few minutes, he asked if I was from around there. I told him I was from Uvalde.

  “Where is that?” he asked.

  I told him it was about an hour and a half west, out past Hondo.

  “No kidding?” he said. “That’s funny.”

  I didn’t see the humor in it, but there didn’t seem to be much point in disagreeing. I went back to what I had been doing, which was drinking Scotch and thinking about what I ought to do with the rest of my life.

  After a while the guy said, “How’d you like to make five hundred dollars?”

  I wondered if I should get up and walk away, but he had kind of an earnest look about him in spite of the ridiculous getup, so I asked what I would have to do for the money.

  “Just drive me around,” he said. “Out west, where you’re from.”

  It turned out he was scouting locations for a motion-picture company that planned to shoot a film on location in southwest Texas. Parker, they planned to call it, about the mother of the last free Comanche chief, Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped by the Indians as a child and “rescued” twenty-five years later, only to starve herself to death when she wasn’t allowed to return to the tribe. Every Texan knew the story.

  The little man’s name was Morton Saperstein, and he was pretty good company once I got past the New Jersey accent. We took my old Ford F-150 pickup on several forays out into the hill country over the next few days, Morton and me, with an ice chest filled with sodas and sandwiches on the seat between us. I took him up to Pipe Creek and Bandera and Kerrville, where he wanted to spend a lot of time looking for a spot to film along the Guadalupe River. We went out to Lost Maples and then back down to a spot I knew on the Frio River, called Comanche Crossing, which is near Concan. I suppose having grown up there, I was used to the idea that the countryside was littered with scenes straight out of John Ford westerns, but Morton was fascinated by the fact that there really, truly had been Indian massacres at various locations all around that country.

  Morton suggested that I might want to work for the production company while they were in the area as a kind of driver-bodyguard. He mentioned the pay for six weeks of work, which was nearly what I had earned in half a year as a marine.

  “You’d have to join the union,” he’d said.

  I told him I was used to joining things and asked him whom I would be guarding.

  He asked me if it mattered.

  I said no, not really.

  When the film company arrived nearly four months later, it turned out to be Haley Lane.

  She and I didn’t talk much at first. I met her at the door of a house they had rented for her in Alamo Heights, walked her to the car—the production company had provided a dark green Range Rover—and drove her to the locations, most of which were places I had shown Morton. Sometimes she had her assistant with her in the backseat. They would review the morning’s lines together or talk about other business.

  It was impossible to avoid hearing them, so I soon learned she had controlling investments in companies all over the world—mines, shipping companies, hotel chains, and so forth. It was obvious she managed her investments personally. She also spent a lot of time discussing things like hospitals in Ghana and orphanages in Mexico, and I began to realize she was talking about taking care of thousands of poor people.

  I’ll admit to a certain reverse snobbery at first. I had expected a major movie star to be a self-absorbed
fool. But by the end of the first week, before she and I had even had much of a conversation, I knew beyond a doubt she was one of the smartest and most generous people I had ever met.

  The sun was rising behind us one morning as I drove her out of town. It was just her and me in the Range Rover that day. I sipped coffee from a thermos lid as we headed west on Highway 90. She was focused on some paperwork in back. Her cell phone rang. From her half of the conversation, I figured George Clooney had the flu and couldn’t work.

  When she hung up the phone, I said, “Back to the house?”

  She said, “I guess so.”

  The highway rose over a hilltop about half a mile ahead. I slowed and made a U-turn to return to San Antonio. When the Range Rover was on the shoulder of the road, pointing east, she said, “Could we stop here a minute?”

  I pulled a little farther off the highway. She opened her door, got out, and walked a few yards up ahead of the truck. I got out too, and stood beside the front bumper.

  With her back to me, she said, “I had no idea Texas is so beautiful.”

  Below us, row after row of hills rolled toward the horizon, the white limestone dotted with mesquite trees and glowing golden in the first rays of the sunrise. I said, “Yes.”

  She looked back at me. “You’re from around here, aren’t you?”

  “About forty miles farther west.”

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “I’ve been working pretty hard for a long time. I need a day off, and this country is so gorgeous. Would you take me someplace where I could relax a little? Maybe someplace only local people go?”

  I drove her to Uvalde, where we stopped at Ramirez’s, a little place that used to be a burger stand but had been converted long before to serve Mexican food. You walked up to a window, placed your order, and paid Jane Ramirez, and one of her daughters brought your meal out to you at the picnic tables under a huge live oak. I asked for a couple of burritos filled with frijoles, chopped potatoes, onions, scrambled eggs, and fresh salsa. I also bought two slices of pecan pie and four bottles of water. They wrapped the food in foil and put it in a plastic bag, and then they put that into another bag, which they filled with ice.