January Justice

by Athol Dickson

Russo talked around a last big bite of burger. “If you say so.” Even someone clear across the dining room could have seen the contents of his mouth. Then, just for a second, I looked him in the eye. He looked away immediately, but I had seen the raw intelligence there, and I realized all the rest of it was probably an act. I decided to call him on it.

  I took a huge bite of my own burger and let a little bit of it fall out when I talked. “I heard the Delarosa woman was with the URNG.”

  “Seems like you heard a lot.”

  “Do you think she was with them?”

  “She most likely was, yeah.”

  “What makes you think that? Because she said so?” My mouth was still full. It was hard to say the “s” sounds without spewing bits of burger across the table, so I did.

  Russo was watching me suspiciously, his eyes aimed at my mouth. He said, “Because of the evidence, all right?”

  “What evidence?”

  “She knew a lot of details about Toledo’s life back in Guatemala. She talked about him like he stole his money from the Indians. She sent her demands to a TV station. She sent in videos. You probably saw them, right? Everybody else did.”

  “I remember.”

  “Yeah, well, the uniform she wore and the insignia checked out. And she mentioned several known members of that commie group of hers.”

  “The URNG aren’t really Communists. At least not anymore. Nowadays they’re just another Guatemalan political party.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Why would she shoot videos?”

  “To convey her demands.”

  “Yeah, but videos contain a lot of extra information. It’s harder to control. It’s not safe. Why not just send notes?”

  Russo pushed back from the table. “Obviously Delarosa wasn’t trying to play it safe, because the deal wasn’t about the money. It was personal. She believed Toledo was responsible for her father’s disappearance in Guatemala.”

  This was new information to me. “How do you know that?”

  He looked at me. “We did our job. She could of picked any of the guys who used to run things down in Guatemala, but she picked Toledo. We wanted to know why, so we asked around. Turned out she had a grudge against him personally because of her father. But it was also an act of terrorism. A way for the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca to make a statement in a big way. If you steal from the Guatemalan people, the URNG will get the money back, and they will kill you, okay?”

  I nodded. He had pronounced Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca perfectly. I felt a little foolish for underestimating him earlier. I said, “That makes a lot of sense.”

  He brushed bits of food off his potbelly, slid out of the booth, and stood up. Looking down at Harper, he said, “You ready?”

  Harper started to go for his wallet. “I guess so.”

  I said, “Don’t worry about the check.”

  Russo said, “We won’t.”

  11

  The next day was Haley’s birthday. It was the first thing on my mind when I opened my eyes that morning. I ached at the thought. I probably would have rolled over and gone back to sleep in self-defense, except I didn’t want Simon coming over with a cup of french roast at three in the afternoon. So, although it took a few minutes to summon the gumption, I got up. I decided the time had come to go see Haley.

  After a shave and shower, I put on my best black suit. I walked across the property to the garage and got into her Bentley. As I waited for the gates to open at the end of the driveway, I saw Teru standing in the distance. He wore his usual green shirt and trousers, and a pair of black rubber boots that came up nearly to his knees. He was sending smoke signals skyward from his pipe and spraying water from a hose onto a flowerbed. I saw a little rainbow in the mist around him. I realized he was watching me. The gates were open and I drove out. I didn’t wave good-bye.

  They must have picked me up outside the estate, but I was in my own little fog of grief. I didn’t notice until I had already turned south on the Pacific Coast Highway and had gone nearly all the way through Corona del Mar. I glanced in the mirror as I drove by the Five Crowns restaurant, and there they were, three cars back in that same black Suburban.

  The anger came back all of a sudden. It drove away the grief. It seemed to be my only other setting. I decided it might feel good to do something about the guys behind me, so after I passed Cameo Shores and the shopping center, I turned left at the light toward the upper parking lot for Crystal Cove State Park. I paid the ranger lady with the Smokey the Bear hat, and she raised the traffic bar. I drove in about one hundred feet, then stopped. I shifted into reverse and waited.

  The Suburban pulled up to the kiosk about a minute later. After the men had paid and driven past the upraised bar, I stepped on the accelerator and moved in reverse. About a second later, I was right in front of them. With the kiosk on their left, the curb on their right, and the bar already down behind them, they had nowhere to go.

  They got out.

  I got out.

  We met on a little gravel-covered area beside the driveway.

  One of them wore the top three buttons of his shirt undone, showing off a gold medallion that he wore around his neck, just as he had done the day before at the Galley Cafe. When we were about six feet apart, the other one moved a couple of steps to Medallion’s right, so they had me flanked. It’s what I would have done.

  I shifted my weight slightly forward to the balls of my feet. My knees were bent a little, and my left foot was a little farther forward. I held my arms down with my elbows flexed to place my hands slightly in front of my hips with the thumbs rotated up. I didn’t take up the stance consciously. After countless hours of hand-to-hand combat training, it was second nature. I noticed both of them were standing the same way. I thought that was interesting.

  I said, “Hi, there.”

  “Hello,” replied Medallion. “How can we help you?”

  “I don’t know. I think my car might be stuck here.”

  “Stuck, he says,” said the Other One. I noticed that he had a Beretta M9 holstered in plain sight at his right hip. I thought that was another interesting thing.

  The ranger lady opened the kiosk door and said, “What’s going on out there?”

  The Other One said, “You better stay inside.”

  She looked at me. “Do I need to call the police?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” I said.

  “Okay.” She closed the door.

  “That’s fine,” said Medallion. “But while we wait, I do think maybe we can help you. Do you mind if I offer some advice?”

  Since they were both speaking with a Spanish accent, I switched to that language. “I am always willing to listen to advice.”

  He switched to Spanish too. “Stay away from the URNG.”

  “Who are you guys?”

  “That Valentín Vega, he is a bad man. He could get a person hurt.”

  His accent was Guatemalan. I said, “Seriously, who are you?”

  “I am Señior Rodriguez. My associate is Señior Lopez.” It was like saying they were Smith and Brown. “But we want to keep this conversation focused on you, Señior Cutter. We are very worried that you might become involved with Valentín Vega. You could get hurt if you do that. You might even get dead.”

  “Who is going to kill me? You?”

  He seemed to think about it, wrinkling his brow a little. “It is better not to talk about things that way. We would like to be your friends. We are just hoping to help you avoid some very regrettable trouble.”

  Switching back to English, I said, “Trouble is my business.”

  “We know what business you’re in. You should find a different client.”

  “No, come on. Trouble Is My Business. You know. Philip Marlowe?”

  He looked confused.

  I said, “The Raymond Chandler novel? No? Seriously?”

  The Other One said, “Are you trying to make fools of us?”

  “Foolish is as
foolish does,” I said.

  I didn’t care who they were or why they had been following me. I only wanted to offend them. I wanted to fight. I wanted to hurt them or somebody, anybody, even if it was myself.

  The Other One took a step forward. I smiled and made a little “come on” motion with the fingers of one hand. He reached for his gun.

  “Stop,” said Medallion. “Listen.”

  We all heard the approaching siren. The two Latinos didn’t seem concerned. When the police arrived, Medallion and his partner could simply say I had blocked them in for some reason, and I seemed to want a fight. Their proof was the position of my car. On the other hand, I could say they had been following me for at least two days, but of course I had no proof. It seemed best to avoid that conversation altogether.

  I said, “Maybe we should finish this another time. Unless you want to stay and speak with the police?”

  “Just move your car,” said Medallion.

  I stepped backward, facing them as I moved away. They both did the same as they backed away from me. Moments later I had pulled out of the driveway and into the parking lot. With the Bentley no longer blocking them in, they did a U-turn and drove back out past the kiosk toward the Pacific Coast Highway. I followed them out of the lot. We passed the police cruiser coming in. At the PCH, the guys in the Suburban turned right, back toward Corona del Mar. I turned left toward Laguna Beach.

  As I followed the coast, I told myself it would have been better if I had restrained my anger just a little bit and focused more on learning about the men. But I had picked up a few things. It seemed they were professionals. Amateurs would probably have stood close together for moral support. The way they had immediately stepped apart to flank me implied good training. Also, their posture as we had faced off indicated pretty clearly that they had extensive hand-to-hand combat experience.

  But professionals aren’t so easily spotted when they tail a vehicle, so it also seemed obvious they had wanted to be noticed. That meant their goal was to warn me off. They weren’t interested in surveillance, which meant they already knew everything they wanted to know about me. Which was a lot more than I knew about them, thanks to my lack of self-control. I shook my head. Where was my discipline? Gone, apparently. Dead and in the ground with Haley.

  Six or seven blocks south of Laguna’s Main Beach was the Country Garden, the shop where Simon ordered flowers for the main house. Or where he used to order flowers. That was Haley’s thing: flowers in every room. I had no idea whether Simon was still buying them.

  I parallel-parked at the first spot I saw, paid the meter, and walked back to the shop. Ten minutes later I was outside again, strolling toward the Bentley with a dozen violet-colored roses in my left hand. Haley’s favorite flower.

  Across the street I saw Castro. He was sitting behind the wheel of a Ford Focus, one of those nondescript little cars they rent you at the airport. He had it idling in the driveway of a sandwich shop facing out toward the PCH. It was a pretty good position strategically, since he could turn either way from there.

  Again the anger came. It seemed as though the whole world wanted to tail me, when all I wanted was a little time alone with Haley. But I told myself the thing to do was continue on and ignore him. I walked back to the Bentley, got in, put the roses on the passenger seat, and pulled away from the curb. As soon as there was a break in the oncoming traffic, I turned left and drove the short block uphill to Glenneyre, then left, and then left again around the block and back downhill to get on the PCH again, heading north. When I passed the sandwich-shop driveway, Castro wasn’t there.

  It was a typical January day in Southern California, which meant it was pretty much like every other day, except a little warmer. The marine layer had burned off, so there was sunshine, and plenty of it. The Pacific sparkled on the left, with Catalina Island floating out on the horizon.

  I thought about the times when Haley and I had gone out on the Panache to pick up her mooring at Avalon. She would send her staff and the crew ashore for the evening, including me, telling everybody, “I vant to be alone; I just vant to be alone,” doing Garbo perfectly and playing it straight. After dark I would hop a shore boat at the pleasure pier, and they would drop me back out at the Panache. She and I would indeed be alone, except for the moon above the island, and the village lights twinkling in houses on the hillsides, and the night herons swooping through the masts around us, and Perry Como crooning on the stereo. We would make love under the stars up on the flybridge and drink champagne and make love again, and it would be magnificent.

  But all of that was over and done with. So it was north through Corona del Mar again, the shops and restaurants on both sides, the traffic thickening and the birds-of-paradise along the median, and then a right on MacArthur Boulevard and up the hill with the Fashion Island office buildings on the left. Then there I was at Pacific View Memorial Park, where they had put Haley in the ground while I was screaming in the hospital.

  I entered through the main gate and passed some flags and a sign that said “Court of Valor.” A few good men in the ground over there, I figured.

  Following Simon’s handwritten directions, I went left at the fork, up the hill. Almost at the top, I parked between two mausoleums. There was another sign that told me the mausoleums were called “Lagunita Courts.” I turned off the engine and sat there looking down the hill toward a little reservoir, which was all the water I could see, and I wondered why they called the cemetery “Pacific View.” Not that there was anything wrong with the place. In fact, I liked it all right as far as cemeteries go. John Wayne was supposed to be down there somewhere, so Haley probably would have liked it too. I could almost hear her saying, “If it’s good enough for the Duke, it’s good enough for me.”

  The graves were marked with bronze plaques on granite stones, flat at ground level. The hill was beautifully manicured, like a lawn falling away toward the reservoir below. There were a few live oaks, and flowers in bronze vases here and there. Some of the flowers were plastic, some real. I figured Simon, Teru, and Higgins must have picked the plot, because I was pretty sure Haley hadn’t been prepared for this.

  I flinched at the tap on the Bentley’s side window. I looked, and there was Castro, pointing his Glock at me.

  He motioned for me to lower the glass.

  I did.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Get out.”

  I sighed. I reached over and picked up the roses. I opened the door and got out.

  Valentín Vega’s bodyguard didn’t back away. He stood right in front of me, the Glock aimed at my belly, but within reach. That was a mistake.

  I spoke to him in Spanish. “Do you know where we are?”

  He said, “That is not important.”

  I felt the rage rise up and knew I only had a second or two before I lost control. I didn’t want to kill the man, so I turned away and headed down the hill. I figured if he put a bullet in my back, it might be better all around.

  “Hey,” he called from behind me. “Hey, pendejo, you better stop right there.”

  Ignoring him, I kept walking.

  I followed Simon’s directions, lining up the two largest live oaks and moving to a position about two-thirds of the distance between them to the right. I walked with the roses in my left hand and my face turned down so I could read the names on the bronze plaques. Behind me, Castro had stopped shouting. I had no idea if he was following and didn’t care enough to look. After a few minutes, I found her.

  Haley Lane, it said. No middle name. No date of birth, or death. Just her name, because for most of the Western world, that would always be enough.

  There was a small bronze vase beside her name. I hitched up my suit pants, squatted down on the balls of my feet, and slipped the roses into the vase. I put the palm of my right hand on her name. I felt the strength go out of me. I sat down hard on the grass beside her marker.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “Oh, Jesus, God, help me.”

&nb
sp; The ground rose up. I felt it rolling like Pacific swells below the Panache’s keel. It was as if the dead were pushing up against the turf around me. I was flotsam on a roiling sea of sorrow. I heard the cawing of a crow and looked straight up to see it circling. As it flew, it left ashes in its wake, ashes like a trail behind a jet spiraling above me, the blackened smudges spreading out to block the sun, swirling round and dropping down and meeting with the rolling turf, everything in motion, and me without my lover for a handhold. I closed my eyes and remembered my doctors, and I told myself to think of what is true. The ground was solid. The sky was clear. The only ashes were the ones inside my heart. I opened my eyes and looked again, and everything seemed normal, whatever that was.

  “Get up,” said Vega’s bodyguard.

  He was standing right behind me. I didn’t acknowledge him in any way.

  Castro kicked me in the small of my back. “Get up.”

  I winced and rose. I turned to face him.

  He said, “You think you know what it is to grieve?” He made a little gesture with the gun toward Haley, and then he aimed it back toward my stomach. “This here, this is just one woman in a grave. In my country, there are fields where five hundred people lie together. They have no name above them, like this one here. Who are they? Nobody will ever know. But I know who put them there. It was you did that. You, the USA, and your puppets in the junta.”

  It was the second time he had pulled a gun on me. Most men didn’t get to do that twice.

  I said, “Fidel, look at me,” and behind his sunglasses, he raised his yellowed eyes to meet mine, and I stared at his face while I slapped the gun aside with one hand and took it from him with the other, a move I learned from a marine in Somalia. And then his Glock was in my hand, pointing back at his belly, and he was looking down from his gun in my hand to his own now-empty hand, and his pockmarked cheeks began to flush.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Shut up and turn around,” I said, motioning with the Glock.

  He slowly turned his back toward me.

  I said, “Get on your knees.”